An Introduction to the AIDS Quilt Songbook and Its Uncollected Works

The AIDS Quilt Songbook was a musical response to the shame surrounding the outbreak of the HIV virus and was one of the first art song publications to deal with the topic of HIV and AIDS. This DMA thesis documents the significance and history of the AIDS Quilt Songbook, traces the progression of the project up until December 1, 2008, and documents the work, experiences, and words of the composers who have been inspired to contribute to the AIDS Quilt Songbook Project. In 1981, the medical and popular press reported the first cases of a quickly spreading virus among homosexual males. This virus is currently diagnosed as HIV and AIDS. Lack of funding consumed the early years of what grew to become a national pandemic. The artistic community was one of the major catalysts for funding and education. Cleave Jones and other gay rights activists developed the NAMES Project as a memoriam for those lost to the pandemic. The AIDS Quilt Songbook was created to parallel the AIDS Quilt as "a never-ending work whose meaning and spirit is renewed and redefined with every addition." This concept of additions has continued the expansion of the AIDS Quilt Songbook Project from 1993 to the additions premiered on December 1, 2008 (World AIDS Day) at The Court Theater in Chicago, Illinois, entitled the "Chicago AIDS Quilt Songbook: A Benefit for Season of Concern." The AIDS Quilt Songbook project has sixty-seven documented additions, but only eighteen of the sixty-seven additions are collected. This thesis examines the events, compositions and experiences of the composers: Chris DeBlasio, Ricky Ian Gordon, Daniel Kallman, Cary John Franklin, and Evan Kuchar, who submitted compositions to the AIDS Quilt Songbook between 1991 and 2008. The compositions examined are: Walt Whitman in 1989 by DeBlasio, I Never Knew by Gordon, When I am dead, my dearest by Kallman, As Imperceptibly as Grief by Franklin, and Death Spiral by Kuchar