Whilst attending a Pride event back in 2016, London-based cabaret performer and singer Sadie Sinner was surprised to see no Black lesbian artists on the line-up. She saw that other performers of colour also had notably less prominence on the bill as well.
That moment led to the creation of the Cocoa Butter Club. Formed as a retaliation of sorts to the lack of diversity on the main stage, it's since become a crucially important and sacred space for queer artists of colour.
On any given performance, the club will feature everything from comedy and live music to erotic poetry and dance. It’s a varied hotpot of culture that shines a spotlight on talented performers who, more often than not, do not always get the credit they deserve.
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Described as being a ‘spirited soiree’ like no other, the club will perform in Manchester on February 9 as part of this year’s Queer Contact festival.
Amongst the line-up will be drag performer and artist Val the Brown Queen. Describing herself as the ‘Bollywood bombshell in a Burkha’, Val, 28, first got into drag seven years ago whilst working at a bar in Manchester’s Gay Village and being convinced by a colleague to give it a go. The rest, as they say, is history.
“I had no real interest in performing whatsoever at first,” Val, originally from Levenshulme, tells the M.E.N. “I am the most iconic drag queen ever because I’m a drag artist that hates attention. I get anxiety and feel ill when people are looking at me all the time.
“But that first time, I chose my outfit from top to bottom and I really enjoyed the creativity of it all. After that, I decided to keep it going and I’ve just never stopped since then.”
Val said being able to perform was a chance to proudly embrace their south Asian and Muslim heritage. “There was barely any representation for brown people in Manchester at the time so I thought, why not be it?,” she explains.
“I was inspired by Blaq Ivory, who was one of the only brown drag queens in Manchester for a long time and I wanted to be the representation for this generation and pay it forward.”
Val, who will also be performing with the Pan-Asian cabaret collective Bitten Peach during their sold-out Queer Contact shows, admits there has been times when her heritage has been a barrier when getting booked for shows. "There were times I was the only person of colour on the line-up," she says.
"I was used as a diversity hire or a tick box because people just wanted the praise of having a person of colour on the line-up instead of actually caring about why they deserved to be on the stage.
"I’m British, I’m Pakistani and Muslim and I mesh them all together in my performance. I’m not just a monolithic sort of representation of the cultures but even then, I’ve found out that I’m still not deemed to be completely British."
Speaking of Cocoa Butter, Val adds: “I’m excited to be part of this legendary creative. It’s sadly still true that many of us won’t get the opportunities unless we often create them ourselves and help us all get our way through the door.
“I’m in a very grateful position because I’ve had a few South Asian queens in Manchester come up to me to tell me how they’ve got into drag or performance because of me and that’s what it’s all about.
“It’s nice to see things are moving forward after so long and things are getting there. We’ve still got a while to go, but we’re getting there. We’re coming for everyone’s jobs, so watch out.”
Another performer taking part in the Queer Contact show will be Manchester-based hula hooper Natasha Moonshine.
Natasha, 30, made her professional start with the London-based hoop troupe Marawa's Majorettes in 2015, but says her talent has been evolving for years before that - even if she wasn’t aware of it at the time.
“I lived in Botswana for about a year when I was younger,” she says. “As an only child, I would keep myself entertained with this yellow hula hoop. For some reason, I’d blocked this out for years until my mum reminded me of this.
"I like that hooping can be so varied. You can just evolve with it, there’s an endless amount of tricks with it that I'm yet to learn. I never get bored with it. When I'm hooping, it locks out my thoughts. It’s a form of therapy for me, essentially.”
As well as performing, Natasha also teaches hula hooping lessons to ‘anyone up for the challenge’, but she says it’s only recently that she believes her career has truly started to take off.
“For me, personally, it wasn’t until after the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic where more people really started booking me for their shows,” she explains.
“I think it was because there wasn’t - and still isn’t - enough representation out there and, after all the protesting and awareness, more people started to open their eyes. Performers like myself have always been around, we’ve been reaching out for years, but, eventually, we were starting to see the opportunities come through.”
She says she too has faced situations where she has felt singled out in the performance space as a person of colour.
“I’ve felt tokenised before,” Natasha says. “There’s often been times when there’s been a rotation of different white performers, but I'd still be the only person of colour on each of those bills.
“I felt quite guilty about it in all honesty because there are other performers out there who would be just as honoured to be asked. It shouldn’t have to just be one or two people who get all the opportunities.”
It’s for that reason why Natasha believes shows like Cocoa Butter Club are so important for artists like her. She says they can elevate performers and introduce them to the rest of the world.
“They put the spotlight on people who are often left out," she says. "They shine a light on Black performers who aren’t often given opportunities or who aren’t in those public spaces. They really give us a platform to perform and elevate ourselves.
“Representation is important. There’s times where I’ve performed in certain places and a person of colour will come up to me and say ‘oh, it’s so good to see someone like you doing this’, but why? We do exist, we’ve always been there and it’s very important for spaces like Cocoa Butter Club to make people aware that we are talented."
Teasing her routine for the Queer Contact show, Natasha says her performance will, naturally, involve a lot of hoops.
“I don’t want to give too much away but it’ll be something special, for sure,” she laughs. “Contact is one place I've always wanted to perform at. Many years ago, when I came to Manchester on a night out, I went to Contact and I've always wanted to perform there since.
“It’s going to be very special for me to be in that building and to be part of this show. It’s going to be a full circle moment. Just being around amazing performers is going to be fantastic, I'm really looking forward to it.”
The event itself will be hosted by Birmingham’s finest Yshee Black. Now living in London, Yshee made a name for herself by creating the city’s biggest drag lip-sync contest, the aptly-named Church of Yshee.
Like Val, Yshee says she too fell into the world of drag. She explains: “I was always out in the scene and partying with my friends and there were more and more people doing drag in the clubs due to the popularity of Drag Race.
“My friend was putting on an open mic night and asked me to host it - despite me having absolutely no clue whatsoever about drag. But everyone seemed to enjoy it.”
After a few months, Yshee began performing in London, where she competed in Johnny Woo’s LIPSYNC1000 competition at the famed Glory bar. She competed against big leagues in the drag world, such as Bimini Bon Boulash, Gingzilla and Freida Slaves.
Following the competition, Yshee was handed her own club night back home in Birmingham. “I didn’t know much about drag but I wasn’t going to say no,” she explains.
"“The Church of Yshee started in 2017 and went on for about five years. Black Peppa was one of the winners and I gave Ginny Lemon her first gig so, you could say, that all the main girls come through me. Or at least that’s what I’m saying!”
In fact, Black Peppa, who rose to prominence on the recent series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, is Yshee’s drag daughter. “I’ve taught her everything she knows,” Yshee boldly claims.
Yshee says that she hopes audiences will embrace what Cocoa Butter Club has to offer and, in turn, give more artists a platform to shine. “Shows like this are so needed because there’s such a lack of diversity within the queer arts scene as it is,” she says.
“It’s lovely to be part of a production that just feels so unapologetic in what it is. There are still many places where there really aren’t that many queer people of colour performing. People need to see the variety, the difference and the talent on offer.
“That’s one of the reasons why I love going to Manchester so much and I'm so excited to host this show. It’s wild. I'm also so honoured to be able to host this at Contact which is a great space too.
“It’s going to be unapologetically black, unapologetically queer and we’re gonna have a good time. And we’re all going to CELEBRATE.”
Cocoa Butter Club will perform as part of Queer Contact on February 9. Tickets here.
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