The Kennedy Center’s annual Sisterfire showcase returned this year with a new theme: love songs. The event featured three DMV-based queer Black artists, each sharing their interpretation of love through their unique musical styles. For Be Steadwell, Sisterfire Lovesongs’ curator, love is a powerful tool that humanizes people. For marginalized identities, creating space to openly and unapologetically talk about love can feel like an antidote against oppression.
Sisterfire builds on the 45-year-long mission of its parent organization Roadwork, a multiracial coalition of LGBTQ, social justice, and anti-racist arts activists in D.C. Roadwork’s Sisterfire Festival showcased artists from 1982 to 1989, particularly women of color who tackled local and global social justice issues. Although no longer a festival, the annual Sisterfire performance began in 2018 after a Sisterfire Revival concert sparked a new generation of arts activists to restart the showcase.
Growing up in D.C., Be Steadwell saw Black women at the center of the musical narrative, creating music and spaces that were celebratory and joyful but also gave opportunities to mourn. With this in mind, Steadwell curated this year’s showcase around Black and queer love as it relates to ancestors, self-love, romance, and heartbreak.
The three artists chosen by Steadwell performed their own love song round-robin style before coming together to perform as a group. The artists collaborated in a Sisterfire tradition, which facilitates community building between artists. Each artist’s individual performance was a unique compilation of how they navigate feelings of love. Rebekah Laur’en, a classically trained singer turned alternative R&B singer, songwriter, and producer, centered her performance around self-love and healing. Spirit McIntyre, a composer and lyricist, produced a family-centered soundscape where they layered vocals from their mother and sister with instrumental rhythms and ambient sounds. Like Water, an electronic and acoustic instrumental producer, focused on ancestral love with a meditative twist.
For marginalized identities, having space to openly and unapologetically talk about love can feel like an antidote against oppression. Sisterfire Lovesongs showcased the importance of love, particularly for queer Black people, and how it can be a tool for humanizing people. The event continues the cross-generational celebration of resistance, coalition building, and emancipatory performances that characterized the Sisterfire Festival.