[Cover photo credit to Hector Adalid]
New York performer, singer, and producer David Driver has announced The Stonewall Jukebox: A Documentary Concert, live at City Winery in New York City on June 28, 2024 benefitting The Stonewall Community Foundation. Part musical performance, part little-known oral history, the show tells the uplifting story of how The Stonewall Uprising came to be, and how it continues to impact contemporary LGBTQ+ culture.
Through musical performances interwoven with contemporaneous texts pulled from magazines, books, interviews, and songs that were played at The Stonewall Inn, the show pays homage to the real people who lived, fought, and survived The Stonewall Uprising, and sheds a light on the social and political climate that paved the way for this turning point in LGBTQ+ history.
Driver says:
I was drawn to this material by its diversity. Its joy. Its exuberance. During the phase when we were researching the material itself, I loved to close my eyes and imagine what it must have been like in that sweatbox of a venue, 50 years ago, surrounded by all sorts of people having all sorts of experiences. Having no clue that they were about to be in the midst of a huge moment in our shared history.
Joining Driver and his band The Riot Squad on stage are guest singers and narrators like Michael Musto, Aisha de Haas (RENT, Caroline, or Change), Everett Bradley (Bon Jovi, Springsteen), downtown NYC icons Machine Dazzle (Taylor Mac), queer burlesque artist Tigger!, and many more.
Scant evidence survives from the venue itself, but one major piece of information remains: the music that was on the venue’s two jukeboxes, the work of artists like Sly & the Family Stone, Judy Garland, The Flirtations, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Petula Clark, Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Lesley Gore, and The Beatles.
About The Stonewall Community Foundation
The Stonewall Community Foundation is a prolific grantmaking institution, by and for LGBTQ+ people. Partnering with donors and dynamic nonprofits, we mobilize resources to advance queer liberation, including racial, social, and economic justice. Stonewall’s mission work includes organizational funding and capacity building, scholarships and microgrants, leadership development, and administration of donor-advised funds.
