The Big Freedia that the world knows is a New Orleans rapper who makes everyone want to release their wiggle with her strapping, resonant chanting over muscular, bass-heavy bounce beats.
But when Freedia played Nashville Pride, she also showed her sanctified side.
I set out to capture what it was like for Freedia’s fans, fellow performers, and the LGBTQ+ guest choir Nashville in Harmony to catch the spirit of her new gospel material. The best way to experience this story is by listening above. A transcript follows.
Big Freedia: It’s my full circle moment just to be able to have a choir behind me. Directing the choir, it feels like I’m a young kid again and I’m going back to choir rehearsal and getting ready for Sunday service.
Wesley King, artistic director for Nashville In Harmony: [Freedia’s] team was wanting to do this collaboration with LGBTQ choirs across the country.
It’s funny, because Nashville in Harmony is a secular group. We actually intentionally don’t do anything that’s religious.
I think the majority of our folks know Freedia from her other work, and so I think this was a big, “Oh!,” moment for a lot of people. They were like, “This is the first time that I’ve been really moved by gospel music in a long time.”
JT Landry, tenor: Yeah, it’s hardcore gospel. I mean, really, the mass choir vocal stylings, the very overt lyrics, it is unapologetic.
A lot of us in this choir have been told our whole lives that we should be ashamed of who we are, God doesn’t love us, we don’t belong in the church. And Big Freedia is saying, “No, that’s not true at all.”
Albani Varner-Williams, fan: I’ve been watching Big Freedia since I was in high school. I remember when she first got her television show. I watched it and I had my mom watching.
My mom’s a boomer, so she kind of grew up with a certain scope of things. But [watching Freedia’s show together] really opened the door to have certain discussions and be a lot more, I think, accepting of other people and their backgrounds.
I think gospel music can speak to anybody. You don’t even necessarily have to be Christian or from the church. Gospel music is inspirational music, and I think that through her gospel music, [Freedia’s] going to inspire other people.
Jiger Allen, fan: I’m not a big fan of gospel, but some stuff I can get jiggy with. So if you put gospel with Big Freedia, I think that’d be a good, you know, collab in terms of genre.
Team Freedia backstage prayer: We pray for each and ever person in this circle. Let us all have an amazing show today, oh God. God give Freedia the supernatural strength in the name of Jesus, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. God touch each and every dancer and touch each in every singer…
Liz DeWeese, choir member: [Freedia’s] song “Church” says, “We don’t need a preacher to go to church. We don’t need a deacon to hear the word.” And it’s so right.
For me, it is a picture of folks who bring with them a very deep understanding of who God is to them, while an institution has said, “We reject you.”
In a time when leadership and government and culture are all making strong statements about where the dividing lines are — “You’re either this or you’re that, and you can’t be anything in between, and if you’re not this, then you’re with us” — community is the way that we stay safe in this time. So I really feel like, yes, Big Freedia is performing in the South, Gospel music, at Pride, bringing together all of these layers of ways in which community must touch each other.
