‘Whatever God Brings, We’re Going To Be In It’

March 2022

A MYKAL KILGORE performance isn’t just a show or concert; it’s an experience. Kilgore’s mind-blowing vocals and presence captivate, yes, but there’s more to it than that. In creating an atmosphere abundant in inclusion, empowerment, freedom, joy, truth, and love, Kilgore ministers to the soul. It’s a taste of the beloved community we hunger for.

A Black queer man, Kilgore uses his platform and prodigious talent to advocate for Black and LGBTQ issues. With a Grammy nomination in 2020 for his performance of the song “Let Me Go” further raising his profile, he’s getting even more opportunities to educate and entertain. In December, Kilgore spoke with writer and filmmaker Rebecca Riley via Zoom.

Rebecca Riley: When you perform, what do you hope audiences experience and take with them?

Mykal Kilgore: I want us to do a better job of being present with one another and seeing the thing inside each other that is eternal and sacred and perfect and special: I think that it is God. I want people to leave feeling like they have had a human experience at the show that allows them, and forces them, to be in their own emotions, to find pockets of empathy for others, and, more than anything else, to just truly see one another.

How would you describe your journey with faith as a Black queer man? Rocky. Having to get up in front of church every Sunday is probably what turned me into who I am today, someone who is comfortable in a crowded room, who has a strong sense of fairness and justice, who loves art and culture. The Black church did that for me. But it also planted some of the most painful ideologies inside me that I’ve spent my whole life trying to unlearn. Maybe because I truly feel like an adult now, I can look at my parent, the church, and go, “You did the best you knew how to do. Now, if I’m going to stay here, we’re going to have to make some changes. Some of your dogma, and some of what humans did to the pureness of faith, we’re going to have to pull that stuff back.”

Can you give an example of a dogma you find unacceptable? That only certain people are allowed to experience the full glory of ministry. You get the sermon all the time about how God can use a donkey—God can use anyone. And then it’s like “except for women, except for gay people, except for young people.” That makes modern Christianity very difficult for me. When we don’t allow God to be for everyone, it shrinks God’s goodness. It shrinks God’s majesty. And it shrinks God’s desirability.

My idea of God and faith has turned into something that brings more joy than sorrow. The only moments of sorrow I really feel are [that] a lot of people feel damned to hell because somebody told them [they are], and not because of what they’ve experienced in God. We have done a bad job of being ambassadors, and I do hope that we rend that curtain between secular and sacred and allow the human experience to be all of it.

How do you attempt to do that with your art? Tell the truth. My experience as a Black person is as sacred as it is secular and bringing that to the stage is important to me. My experience as a queer person, my experience as an American, and some things that are even more focused, like, I’m not just a Black person, but I’m a dark-skinned Black person with locs. I’m a queer person who has no problem expressing his femininity. I feel like I’m the reflection of my parents, their good, their bad. And if God is our father, if God is our mother, I reflect that, so I deserve to be treated with that level of respect. It gives me boldness to tell the truth, to tell my story and to explore faith onstage.

I try to treat the stage like the Pantheon. I explored it one time when I was working on cruise ships. The tour guide told us that there’s a hole in the [Pantheon’s] roof because whatever God brought—be it rain, sun, wind, cold, snow—the people wanted to experience in that place. There was a hole to allow God in. I want there to be a space to allow God in, and whatever God brings, we’re going to be in it. [Laughs.] We’re going to experience it. If God brings silence, then we’ll be in that silence, and that’s okay.

In September 2021 you released “The Man in the Barbershop,” a song of unrequited love from a Black queer perspective. Why was writing this song important to you? I am newly of the mindset that I’m only going to write songs I need until all the songs I need are written, and then I can write other stuff. [Laughs.] I needed this song that didn’t require me to change pronouns for it to apply to my life. I am of a certain age. I am of a certain background. I’m of a certain ethnicity. I’m of a certain everything, and I wrote [this] because I needed something that felt couture, that felt like the sleeves were right, the pant leg was right, everything, the waist was perfect so that when I sang it, it was healing me. I do feel a responsibility to young queer folk coming up after me, for them to feel a level of normalcy, that being queer is not something strange. That’s why I wrote it—because it’s so normal.

Black folks have always created spaces where we can find solace, safety, and the freedom to celebrate who we are. But Black queer folks are often excluded. What gives you hope for reclaiming those spaces? I’m always seeing moments that give me hope because young people are not accepting what some of my generation and the generation before me would accept. It’s so exciting to see people with a mind for justice that goes outside of their own personal needs. It lifts my spirits when I see, especially, Black men raising a voice for Black women. As a man, even though I’m queer, I get to experience the world in a different way than a Black woman does, a Black queer woman, a [disabled] Black person. I am cisgender so I enjoy lots of privilege, but young people are teaching me every day how to either use my privilege for good or to step further away from whiteness in a way that allows for equality and equity.