Taylor Mac – A 24-Decade History of Popular Music

Chapter 1 (1776–1836)

Where else to start a subversive spectacle about the United States than 1776, the year the 13 American settlement colonies declared independence from the British? Taylor Mac charts a unique history of this era, covering the early women’s liberation movement, the War of 1812 and the Indian Removal Act, which served to legitimise the displacement of Native Americans. Issues of migration and colonisation jostle with hetero-normativity and queer performativity. In the first chapter judy – Taylor Mac’s preferred gender pronoun – celebrates the things that have been forgotten, buried, or dismissed by Manifest Destiny.

Chapter 2 (1836–1896)

In the second leg of Taylor Mac’s musical extravaganza, we follow the secret routes of the Underground Railroad, an escape network that rescued more than 30.000 African American slaves before and during the Civil War. Mac stages a competition between two luminaries of 19th century verse with songs by Stephen Foster and poems by Walt Whitman. After reenacting the Civil War with ping pong balls and pup tents, the evening culminates in “The Marskado”, judy’s psychedelic dinner theatre version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera “The Mikado.”

Chapter 3 (1896–1956)

In the third chapter, Taylor Mac begins the history of 20th century America with the songs of the crowded and airless tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. After showing us the horrors of the frontlines in the First World War, judy returns us shaken and stirred to the speakeasies of New York to celebrate the artistic and social movements of the Harlem Renaissance. This chapter finishes with a musical protest against racism and displacement, recreating the Zoot Suit Riots, a series of racist disturbances against the Mexican-American residents of Los Angeles during the Second World War.

Chapter 4 (1956–2019)

The finale of Taylor Mac’s 24-hour pageant through 24 decades history of the United States is all about revolution and political protests. In the fourth chapter, Judy pays tribute to Bayard Rustin’s March on Washington with protest anthems and follows the Civil Rights Movement in the struggle against racism and discrimination. Judy heralds the lesbian and gay rights movement in the fight for freedom and equal rights in the 1960s and 70s, from the joys of Flower Power and Disco to the devastating AIDS-epidemic and the rises of Queer Power. The fourth chapter of “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music” celebrates the communities that unite against oppression to bring about social transformation.