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In the darkness of the AIDS epidemic of the 70s, Sylvester’s stardom was the disco ball whose glimmer continues to spotlight how Black queer people impact culture today.
Born on September 6, 1947, icon Sylvester is most known for his 1978 hit song “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” He was also notably known for his feminine and androgynous fashion, as well as his falsetto vocals, not to mention his music and influence as an openly queer Black person at the height of the HIV and AIDS crisis.
In honor of Sylvester’s birthday, here is a look into his legacy—from his adversities to his estate post-mortem—and why it still matters today.
Like many Black, queer trans and nonbinary artists, Sylvester’s career was marked by the irony of how his unprecedented success was still overshadowed by his white counterparts, like David Bowie. Sylvester was a pioneer of disco music and created the blueprint for the future of musicians to come.
Sylvester’s teens were spent being a part of The Disquotays, a group of Black trans women and cross dressers. Having lived through a homophobic upbringing in Los Angeles, California, Sylvester moved to San Francisco in 1969 at the precipice of the gay rights movement. Moving through homelessness in the Bay Area, Sylvester eventually joined the now-renowned avant-garde drag group The Cockettes. By the late ‘70s, he was the frontman of a rock group, Sylvester and his Hot Band. Following failed attempts at commercial success with the band, Sylvester went solo and signed with Fantasy Records, based in Berkeley.
By 1977, he released his debut album and gained traction in the disco scene. Adamant to write a hit record, he and his guitarist James Wirrick enlisted producer and electronic music pioneer Patrick Cowley to be a part of what would become Sylvester’s most famous song “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
In an interview with The Guardian, Wirrick said, “Sylvester preferred to work with straight musicians. He used to say: ‘There’s only room for one queen in this band and I’m it.’”
The song is also considered to be a touchstone in the hi-NRG genre, following “I Feel Love” by Donna Summers. Peter Shapiro, author of Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco described the song as, “an epochal record in disco history” and “the cornerstone of gay disco.” Its cultural significance was so major that in 2019 it was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
In 2020, filmmaker Lauren Tabak and writer Barry Walters created the new documentary short Love Me Like You Should: The Brave and Bold Sylvester, consisting of archival footage, rare performance clips, and interviews following the celebrity of Sylvester.
Interviewed in the film, Billy Porter reflects on Sylvester’s impact on him, saying, “He was a gender-fluid Black man in mainstream music. That hasn’t happened since. There’s been a lot of us who have tried, and I’ve been trying for 30 years. Nobody did it like Sylvester.”
In an interview with HuffPost, Walters claimed that Sylvester’s relatability reaches beyond people like him. “[Hopefully people] can recognize in Sylvester that part of themselves that doesn’t meet society’s expectations,” said Walters, who added that “Those same things that would’ve put Sylvester on the lowest rung of society’s ladder made him a star back then and legendary today. At a time when most of us are struggling, particularly Black Americans, who’ve been kicked around since the beginning of our country, that’s a hugely important lesson.”
That lesson of embracing insecurities as a superpower rings true, still. World-renowned drag superstar RuPaul Charles, whose music is inspired by Sylvester, once said, “The only thing wrong with me was that I thought there was something wrong with me.”
In an exclusive phone interview months before his death, Sylvester told The Los Angeles Times, “It bothers me that AIDS is still thought of as a gay, white male disease. The black community is at the bottom of the line when it comes to getting information, even when we’ve been so hard hit by this disease. I’d like to think that by going public myself with this, I can give other people courage to face it.”
Alongside his activism around HIV and AIDS was Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay Board of Supervisors member. In the biopic movie Milk, Milk celebrates his victorious campaign for City Supervisor in which one of the people he greets is Sylvester. Sylvester and Milk were often at the same parties and gay parades—including Sylvester performing at Milk’s last birthday party before his assassination. A series of photos from the party convey the loving friendship between the two—even a shared kiss.
Focus Features described their relationship as: “If Milk was the Mayor of Castro Street, Sylvester was its undisputed first lady, a cultural icon and the source of the movement’s most recognizable soundtrack. Sylvester and Milk were very much part of the same movement, and not just because they shared a home base. Their affinity illustrates just how integral music—and dance music in particular—was to gay movements in Milk’s time.”
When Milk’s murderer was only sentenced to eight years in prison in 1979, thousands of people marched to City Hall in protest. The San Francisco police moved into the Castro—where Sylvester and Milk were based in—with riot gear and clubs. The police shut down Castro Street, and vandalized the Elephant Walk, where Sylvester performed on Sundays. The next day, which was also Milk’s birthday, Milk’s friend Cleve Jones organized a birthday party at The Elephant Walk, wherein Sylvester sang “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” for the mourning crowd.
As Sylvester’s rose to stardom, across the country in New York City ballroom communities of Black and brown LGBTQ people who congregated underground began to emerge. In ballroom, to be “real” is to be passable, be it passing a straight person or passing as a cis person. To be “real” is to blend in and go unnoticed, and therefore unmarked.
Joshua Gamson, author of The Fabulous Sylvester:The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco—the only biography of the legend—writes about the implication of the singer’s proclamations of “realness” in 1978.
“That was a radical thing,” Gamson told The Guardian. “You’ve got a gay queen making up a song about their everyday life. It’s not like this deliberate: ‘I’ve got to write a song about being gay.’ It’s: ‘This is my life, I go out on the dance floor, and, within 10 seconds, I’ve identified someone. And by the end of the song, you’ve made me feel God. I’ve felt ecstasy.’ And it’s definitely gay ecstasy. It’s not something that people were writing and singing about.”
James died on December 16, 1988 at the age of 41 due to AIDS-related complications. In his will, he bequeathed the music’s eternal royalties to the AIDS Emergency Fund (AEF)—now merged with Positive Resource Center (PRC)—and Rita Rockett’s food program at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86 for AIDS patients.
However, due to the tremendous debt that he had accrued over the course of his career, there were no royalties.However decades later Gamson reached out to Sylvester’s will attorney Roger Gross for an interview. Because Rita Rockett had already closed by 2005, Sylvester’s estate attorney Steven Ames Brown and Gross petitioned the probate court to have Project Open Hand, a nonprofit organization providing meals to ill community members as the replacement beneficiary of the estate. In 2010, $140,000 in accrued royalties were split between the two organizations.
Brown tells Reckon that Sylvester knew firsthand what the plight was like for “people who are destitute and in the streets with no resources,” he said, noting how it was completely unsurprising that the estate money was left to the two organizations.
“Sylvester was an ambassador of goodwill for every LGBTQ person,” Brown continued. “And for me to be able to make sure that his recordings are only used in ways that are appropriate to [his politics], is an honor and a pleasure.”
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