Internal dispute over Pride float
Bluegrass nonprofit split on entry in S.F. parade
“I have always felt that this organization made a very concerted effort to stay away from social, political or any potentially divisive issue.” Tim Edes, board chairman of the California Bluegrass Association, who voted against allowing a Gay Pride Parade float
It was a simple idea: A live bluegrass band would “pick” music from the back of a flatbed truck. But the choice of venue — San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride Parade — wasn’t.
The California Bluegrass Association, a nonprofit founded in 1975, is supported by nearly 3,000 banjo-playing members. And as the twangy music has gained popularity on California’s coast, deep chasms over how and where the tunes should be strummed have formed.
In a state segregated by a patchwork of blue and red county lines, the tension between liberals and conservatives is no more emblematic than this: a fight over whether a bluegrass band sponsored by a statewide nonprofit should participate in a gay pride celebration. About a half-dozen people have dropped their $25 annual memberships over the issue — but there are more than 100 new members.
At a meeting in January in Bakersfield, the nonprofit’s board voted 10-1 to allow the local San Francisco region, which has about 300 members, to enter a float in the June 25 parade, a first in the nation for a bluegrass association. But there will be another association board meeting in Turlock (Stanislaus County) at the end of the month, with some conservative and founding members arguing the endorsement
should be withdrawn because gay and lesbian rights are inherently controversial and political.
It “was an unwritten rule that we left all those things at home, that our festivals, concerts and jams was about the music,” said banjo player and board Chairman Tim Edes, 65, the lone dissenting vote in January.
“I have always felt that this organization made a very concerted effort to stay away from social, political or any potentially divisive issue,” he said. “By entering a float in the Pride Parade, we are endorsing a nonmusical enterprise. We are establishing an opinion, an opinion that may not be shared by all of our members.”
About one-third of the nonprofit association’s members live in urban areas along the coast, like Los Angeles, Marin and Santa Cruz counties, with two-thirds living in Central Valley towns and the foothills above Sacramento.
The association has long been run by an older subset of musicians who came of age in the era of mandolinist Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs. Some 50-yearolds say they feel like youthful outliers at jams, and younger folks have historically run for the association’s board in lower numbers because of burgeoning careers, raising children and limited time. But friction has built within the group over how to modernize the music and the organization.
That’s where San Francisco’s Pride Parade comes in. Younger members say the spotlight will draw new musicians into the organization, whose numbers have dwindled in recent years. Older members call the move unnecessarily political. A message board on the association’s website has drawn more than 100 responses.
“I am not against the gay pride parade or its right to happen, but doesn’t this set a precedent?” wrote Rich Evans of Los Gatos, 67, who plays guitar and mandolin. “Would the reasoning that allowed this to happen apply if we were asked to participate in a KKK march? I think not, but I fail to see the difference.”
Others see it as supporting an agenda. Jeanie Ramos, 72, said she and her husband, Terry, 74, dropped their membership because of the board’s vote. Ramos, of Brentwood, joined the organization in 2008 after attending the first Lakeshore Bluegrass Festival at Lake Havasu on the Arizona border.
“This decision by the board has caused me much distress and grief,” wrote Ramos, who plays guitar. “I feel this has crossed over the line and brought us into involvement in political and social issues.”
And while younger members aren’t surprised at such reactions, they maintain that the float could be a good thing.
“There has been a certain amount of resistance” to the float, said San Francisco region vice president Ted Kuster, 53, a technical writer at Salesforce who plays banjo in four bluegrass bands, including the Beauty Operators and Nobody From Nashville.
“Some people have grown up thinking of gay rights as a political movement,” he said. “Most of us have stopped thinking that a long time ago. But this is still a real thing for a lot of people. We are just trying to subvert the normal, standard reaction when you hear ‘bluegrass,’ which is hillbillies, backwoods and bootleggers — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
On Tuesday, about a dozen people clustered around Kuster’s kitchen table in the Mission, eating pizza and peering at a diagram of the float. They discussed the donations that were pouring in, as the San Francisco region is paying the full cost. Their GoFundMe campaign was at $6,205, somewhat shy of the $10,000 goal.
They discussed how many 90-cent rainbow flags printed with banjos they should buy and the benefit house concerts to be played before the parade. The float’s main band will be led by fiddler and singer Laurie Lewis, with two more bands of local musicians and high school students.
Time until the Pride Parade: 10 weeks.
“I am so impressed,” said fiddle player Karen Celia Heil of Bernal Heights. The 62-yearold pulled up the figures on her phone. “We have really got it together. Wow, this is amazing.”
Until it wasn’t. The conversation shifted to the Turlock meeting and the older, conservative — and very vocal — members who want the association to withdraw its support.
“A lot of those people feel ambushed by us,” said Kuster, who threatened to quit the association if the vote to endorse the float is rescinded. “They feel like we mobbed them and forced them to vote for us.”
“We didn’t force them to do anything,” rebutted Brandon Godman, who lives in the Castro. The 29-year-old plays the fiddle as a break from his sales job for Codabow International, a musical bow company. “I’ll make and bribe them with a rainbow cobbler. That’s the only cobbler we will have around here.”
More than 1 million people normally attend the Pride Parade. Last year, there were 30 floats. Bluegrass association organizers hope their float will expose more people to bluegrass beyond the boundaries of the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival each fall in Golden Gate Park and the smattering of city music venues, like Amnesia, Plough and Stars Irish pub and Soma StreatFoods, where it’s offered. So far, it’s working.
Scott Gates of Los Angeles said he invested in a lifetime association membership, which costs $750, after hearing about the association’s float. The 21-year-old started playing the mandolin and guitar when he was a child, growing up around the nonprofit’s campfires, youth programs and festivals. But it has lacked the fire of new members, he said.
“Bluegrass music’s traditions will not suffer with inclusion, but will flourish, as diversity has always flourished throughout thousands of years of documented musical evolution,” Gates said. “This is poised to be one of the biggest, wide-open public inclusions of bluegrass music. Bottom line: We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
On Tuesday, as volunteers ringed the table talking late into the night, a printout depicting their float taped to the wall fluttered in the wind. Monochrome figures danced in the back of a silver pickup truck. For now, their plans are moving forward. Striped across the platform and the roof — a victory in itself — were rainbows.
“Who is going to Turlock?” asked Custer, writing a list of those who might speak at the board meeting.
Nearly all those at the table raised their hands.