By AILEEN BURKE
Staff Writer
Audience members who came to Lea DeLaria’s HOME.COMING concert Saturday night looking for a traditional jazz artist got a lot more than expected.
Her highly-anticipated appearance at Picotte Recital Hall in the Massry Center for the Performing Arts lasted a little over an hour and a half and was diverse in content; DeLaria and her trio covered everything from ‘The Ballad of Sweeney Todd’ by Stephen Sondheim to the ‘My Cat Fell in the Well’ by the Merrytime Macs.
She spoke on a range of topics including but not limited to her newest release House of David delaria + bowie = jazz, which in a phone interview early last week she said was is “the best thing she has ever done, and [she] includes Boo in that,” and her feelings President Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Brett Kavanaugh, plus her brand of radical feminism.
Throughout the night the audience showed her their consensus through applause; the room was in non-verbal agreement that it is time for women to take a stand. In the same aforementioned phone interview, DeLaria said “Women need to get in touch with our rage, women can’t yell, or spit, or holler. And it’s time to.”
“I am elated that the school was able to secure an artist like DeLaria who so long has represented the gay community in order to bring a diverse voice to the Albany community,” said senior Samantha Karian, an english major.
Similar sentiments were echoed by drama and performance professor Angela Ryan-Ledtke: “[DeLaria] didn’t hold anything back. It feels good to have no censorship, she wasn’t quiet about it…loud and proud” said Ryan-Ledtke. “A true artist.”
Ryan-Ledtke went on to speak about the job of an artist, that job being speaking out about critical issues, and how that is something artists typically shy away from since they want to strictly entertain.
“She didn’t do that. Now is the time for speaking out” said Ryan-Ledtke.
DeLaria noted in both her interview and during the concert that she does not cover standards in the American Songbook. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to listen to the same 500 f**king songs,” she said. DeLaria has been involved in jazz performance since she was 12 years old. She would perform in clubs with her father, a jazz pianist, with whatever group he had was accompanying that night. DeLaria “fears for the state of jazz.” She said that she looks out into her audiences sometimes, and that it looks like the cast of “Cocoon III.”
With her creative application of what she likes to call “the language of jazz” to modern material, DeLaria is always raising the bar as to what jazz can be. The majority of her set came from her House of David album. “David Bowie taught me to speak my truth,” she said. According to DeLaria, the hardest part of creating the album was only picking 12 songs.
Although she loves her work in music and film, she said one of the best parts of her fame is the ability to reach women with her feminism. “Most of my followers now are college-age women,” said DeLaria. “I get to [students] before someone says ‘Jazz isn’t cool’ or ‘stick to the status quo.’ I get to speak my truth, and hope you take that truth with you.”
