Though the title of the “Queen of Disco” is commonly associated with legends like Gloria Gaynor and Donna Summer, one of the first to truly reign supreme within this genre was Sylvester. Known for ...

Unapologetically gay disco pioneer Sylvester was one of the many LGBTQ artists whose lives were cut short by the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s while the Republican-led government willfully ignored the ...

What a man he was. Born in 1947, Sylvester James first had sex in 1955, but he never claimed he’d been abused. “One of the choir leaders turned me out,” was how he put it. Three years later his mother ...

Sylvester in March-1979 at the SF War Memorial Opera House – Photo: Phil Bray READ THIS STORY IN THE MAGAZINE Much of the world met Sylvester in the late ’70s as the unapologetically androgynous, ...

“He was about as outrageous as styrofoam! “When I charged into his room at the Holiday Inn, he was lying on the couch, kvetching about exhaustion, a backache, and his root canal session like a bored ...

It seemed pretty fabulous at the time. Anthony Wayne, fresh in New York from his native Virginia with a music-theater degree in his pocket, quickly landed his first role. Many more jobs followed, in ...

February is Black History Month — and each week, all month, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison is here to talk about a different trailblazer and maverick of Black music. These musicians took risks ...

Among the most fitting festivities of Pride Month is a celebration of the disco queen Sylvester, whose gender-and-genre-bending career ascended with hits such as “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and ...

Sylvester is immortal, all over the world, still very much revered as the shining example of a Black gay man who recognized his purpose as an artist and representative of LGBTQ culture. A new ...

Izora Armstead and Martha Wash (a.k.a. The Weather Girls) performing at the Vic Theater in Chicago, Illinois on March 22, 1986. (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images) When “It’s Raining Men” was released ...