Had Vassy listened to her music teachers when she was seven-years-old, she might never have become a certified Platinum recording artist with multiple chart-topping dance hits.
“I always wanted to do music, even from a young age,” says the Australian-born vocalist. “But I was actually kicked out of school choir. I was told I don’t have what it takes. Can you believe that shit? I have sort of a weird voice. But I think it’s because I was just instinctively an artist, at a young age. I probably wasn’t singing the melody like the rest of the kids, following protocol. I was totally doing my own little thing.”
It’s that same powerful, brassy, yet soulful voice that’s propelled Vassy’s rise. The 34-year-old has had five different singles reach the top ten on Billboard‘s Dance Club Songs Chart, including No. 1 hits “We Are Young,” “Hustlin’,” and “Nothing to Lose,” her most recent project, produced by the “Godfather of EDM,” Tiësto. Her trademark voice has also been featured on popular singles like Tiësto and KSHMR’s “Secrets” and David Guetta and Showtek’s “Bad,” which earned her an award in 2015 at the 30th Annual International Dance Music Awards.
Vassy has always been an unapologetic defender of the downtrodden, outcasts, and the marginalized, speaking out against bullying, working with people with disabilities, advocating for at-risk teenagers, and serving as an LGBTQ ally and ambassador to the NoH8 campaign.
“When I was 14 in high school, one of my dearest friends, a special little soul, used to get teased,” she says. “I remember one day asking him, ‘When are you going to tell your family you like boys?’ He just looked at me, poor thing. He was shocked, and he started crying…. I didn’t even know what ‘gay’ was. I just instinctively was in tune with sexuality, and how it can differ, and it’s a versatile place.
“I was just one of those kids, like I don’t give a shit. If I ever saw anyone vulnerable get teased, I would just step in and tell that little bully where to go. I wanted, from a young age, to protect people who got teased by other people, and that’s how I became passionate about advocating for human rights. Not just gay rights, but all rights.”
Currently hitting various festivals and Gay Prides internationally, Vassy is especially thrilled to be performing at the Capital Pride Concert on Sunday, June 11.
“The energy at these festivals is awesome,” she says. “People are really there to celebrate, and it’s a day where everyone’s coming together to celebrate the same thing. I feel there is a bond, a very special bond, that happens. It’s that one day where we’re all there for the same reason. There’s just love in the air.”
Vassy is scheduled to perform on the Main Stage of the Capital Pride Concert on Sunday, June 11, around 2:15 p.m. Times are subject to change. For the latest updates, and info on how to purchase VIP or Pit Passes, visit capitalpride.org.
I first saw Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain in 2005, at a three-screen, not-for-profit cinema in suburban Washington state. I went with my then-boyfriend, and for the next two hours and fourteen minutes, I wept silently next to him.
At 16, I came into political consciousness as the second Bush administration fought to maintain a conservative bulwark against progress by endorsing a constitutional amendment defining marriage in strictly heterosexual terms. While I was out, I felt righteously angry that others felt I should hide who I knew myself to be.
Twenty years after the film's release, Brokeback Mountain returned to theaters. The end of June also marked a decade of nationwide marriage equality thanks to Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court granted homosexual couples the "equal dignity" afforded to our heterosexual counterparts. Today, I go to the movies with my husband. And sitting in the cool, dark of the cinema last week, I reflected on the ways Brokeback Mountain helped change the national discourse and still resonates in deep, meaningful ways for people across the country.
On July 21, Wilmer Chavarria, superintendent of Vermont's Winooski School District, was detained for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport after returning from a family visit to Nicaragua with his husband, Essex High School teacher Cyrus Dudgeon.
Officers seized Chavarria's phone and computer, separated him from Dudgeon, and interrogated him for at least five hours about his marriage and his job, according to Vermont's alternative weekly Seven Days.
During the interrogation, agents questioned whether Chavarria and Dudgeon were really married and repeatedly asked if Chavarria was actually a school superintendent. In an email to school board members, Chavarria described the experience as "abusive interrogation" and said he was "treated in a manner that is deeply disturbing and unacceptable."
D.C. police are searching for three men who allegedly hurled anti-trans slurs at 43-year-old Cayla Calhoun before brutally attacking her and leaving her with serious injuries.
Calhoun, a sommelier and bartender at Annabelle restaurant, left work around midnight on June 29 and stopped at the Golden Age, a nearby bar, for a quick beer, according to The Advocate.
After leaving Golden Age, Calhoun rode a Onewheel electric board through Georgetown and along Rock Creek Parkway. Near the National Mall, three men on scooters emerged and began shouting anti-LGBTQ slurs at her.
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