Ekko Astral is not a trans group. They could have a trans frontwoman in Jael Holtzman. Much of their material may be about transgenderism. Additionally, they may have increased their fan base through online word of mouth in places like trans Twitter. But at the end of the day, they are not a trans group.
This three-piece punk band will remind you of the bullshit that consumes everyday life, but give you “hymns of power” to live by and help you overcome it. The songs are short, bold and aggressive – their debut full-length album. pink balloonsclocking in at under 36 minutes, it exists in what the band calls the “mascara” genre.
As a group, Ekko Astral wants to fight to make the world a better place. And that means speaking out on a variety of topics, including transgender rights, Holzman says. Because harnessing the energy that people bring online into the physical world and bringing people who fight for it together through mutual aid – no matter the size of the crowd – is where the magic happens. This is as much a political project as the band, and it goes far beyond the personality of their singer.
Ekko Astral is also at the forefront of the fight to ensure that while the internet is becoming less safe for queer people every day, there is a group of artists and musicians who are fighting to recreate these safe spaces in person. “People are becoming increasingly isolated. People are increasingly just sitting behind their screens and their phones, so you really need to try to develop campaigns that are designed to be disruptive,” Holzman says.
Having worked as a congressional and climate journalist in Washington, D.C. since 2017, Holtzman knows the power of media narratives and how they shape the world around us. Seeing major artists speak out on important political issues, she decided it was time to use her connections in the music industry to spark that kind of energy for transgender rights.
This May, that energy became Liberation Weekend, the largest transgender-led music festival in Washington DC. Over two days, more than 30 artists such as Speedy Ortiz, Ted Leo, Barty Strange, The Ophelias and Ekko Astral performed in the nation's capital to help raise more than $30,000 for Gender liberation movementa non-profit organization that works to “build a people's movement for physical autonomy, self-determination, collectivism and self-actualization.” But the influence was not only monetary.
When Republican lawmakers tried to use Congress' budget bill to ban Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care, Holzman and other artists used connections made at the festival to organize social media pressure campaigns aimed at raising awareness of the cuts. She says the steps have helped lawmakers use the procedural measures available to them to fight, rather than giving in to Republican efforts.
Using money raised through Liberation Weekend, the Gender Liberation Movement staged protests outside the Supreme Court following the ruling. United States v. Skrmettiwhich upheld a Tennessee law prohibiting gender-based grooming for minors. These rallies attracted international media attention, bringing the issue into the public spotlight.
This fall, Ekko Astral will return to the work the group has always done while traveling around the country: mutual aid for the direct benefit of transgender people. The reality that the trans community “spends a disproportionate amount of time” online compared to other groups is causing many of us to become “hyper-verbal,” Holtzman said.
This has allowed groups of trans musicians to create new musical communities over the past five to seven years, and then use the knowledge they have to tour to create something “really beautiful.” Now, she says, they're finding a way to use those growing communities to work together and create something even bigger.
“Imagine if groups just decided to take it upon themselves to use their platform while on the road and say, 'If you're sitting at a table with merchandise, would you give, like, $5 to help this person pay their medical bills?' Imagine how far this will go,” she says.
For trans artists, Holtzman adds, many are “acutely” aware of how limited access to reliable, life-saving healthcare is for our community. Add to this a layer of artists, a group that rarely benefits from access to health care through employment, and you have a group willing to use tools like mutual aid to make up for what governments and corporations lack.
This spirit of mutual aid and finding support systems in the cracks of society is rooted in a musical tradition with a long history: DIY spaces. Trans musicians have historically thrived in these arenas, with less control from traditional labels and media, and thriving through an online community is vital.
It is known that the DIY industry has grown from punk rock scene late 1970s in the US, where bands shunned by major record labels set up their own venues to hold concerts in unauthorized locations. A variety of groups, including anarchists, working-class people, people of color and queer people, found refuge in punk rock and other DIY aesthetics.
It was in these places that Nicole Maroulis, a quirky guitarist and songwriter, fell in love with music. They first started playing music around the age of 14, inspired by the DIY spirit. Maroulis eventually launched his own project, Hit Like a Girl, and released his first record in 2017. Today, they embody this DIY spirit by working as hired musicians, photographers, tour managers and merchandise salesmen throughout the music industry. They also run a non-profit called No More Dysphoria, which raises money through various tours to help transgender people get the gender-affirming care they need.
The Maroulis started small: They said they sold 20 poorly made T-shirts at concerts where they knew the artists. This has led to increasing opportunities to hear No More Dysphoria at a variety of concerts, in increasingly larger venues. As word spread, more bands began to participate in flag displays in music videos or on stage during tours.
The project is now an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, continuing to help more and more people gain access to life-saving health care, even as internet algorithms do their best to try to bury any transgender content. Platforms like Instagram blocked young people's access to LGBTQ content for months. X, formerly Twitter, faced accusations algorithms that “downvote” certain words associated with the queer community.
“It's harder now to connect with people online and make sure the right people see it because everything is hidden so often,” Maroulis says. “But I guess that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.”
Even if our internet platforms continue to fragment and degrade – like Elon Musk's ever-changing X policy, which seems to allow insulting transgender people – this does not mean that the knowledge transmitted on tour will stop spreading. In fact, it's the other way around, says Maroulis. Selling T-shirts and raising money is just one part of the equation as people on tour strive to share resources to help their community. Of course, these same resources can be shared through videos aimed at transgender people seeking information about accessing transition care on, say, Instagram, but they lack the human connection that meeting on the show creates, they say.
As more and more bands work to harness the energy of Liberation Weekend, they are reminded how important music can be as a unifying force, especially in more conservative parts of the country where bands don't always tour. Tilly Komorny, guitarist for the band Home Is Where, grew up on the northeast coast of Florida, in an area with a reputation for being unfriendly to transgender people. After getting involved in the local DIY scene at the age of 15, she realized that playing music could make a tangible difference to people in her community. Komorny organized local transgender-led music festivals to help pay for friends' surgeries or name changes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they had to hold these festivals online.
Seeing how many more people they reached, Komorny cites the online community she had access to that helped them break out and connect them with more resources to organize more support for transgender people on tour. These connections made during this period have been important to the band as they prepare to embark on their biggest tour to date, with the potential to reach more people than ever.
The group is partnering with the Campaign for Southern Equality, donating proceeds from every ticket sale to the group's transgender resettlement fund, which it calls “an easily accessible form of social responsibility” that any group can benefit from.
After Liberation Weekend, Komorny says the biggest lesson she learned for Home Is Where is to prioritize local vendors at the tables at shows on their next tour. It may take a little more effort before committing to these shows, but the opportunity to introduce crowds to smaller organizations that have resources that may be available in their own backyard is well worth it.
Komorny adds that after accumulating all the energy that the group has been able to harness online, now is the time to turn that potential into a real organization.
“If you can get people who are excited to go to the show and then they see that all the other things that are part of the culture are there, that's ideal,” she said. speaks.
