MIAMI TIMES: Kunya Rowley paves way for local Black queer artists

Written by Bianca Marcof | Miami Times Staff Writer

In the beginning of his operatic career, Kunya Rowley’s presence commanded the stage. But one thing stuck out to him at his voice auditions and performances.

And that was the fact that there were very few people who looked like him in the field – a Black gay man.

“It was a discouraging experience,” he said.

Now, Rowley extends opera beyond the stage and amplifies the Black narratives of those he wanted to see on those stages by creating his own platform. But it didn’t happen overnight.

The New World School of the Arts graduate had every intention of further pursuing his career, but the costs of the profession would drive him to work a full-time corporate job instead in order to save money.

In 2021, Hued Songs set up a concert behind the historic Dorsey Library, where Bookleggers has a film and Black history library.

(Martina Tuaty)

“As artists going through school, we always think that there’s only one path to being successful and that is being on stage and performing,” Rowley said. “(But) working in this very nontraditional, non-arts role really helped to make me realize that I had other skills that I otherwise may not have discovered around strategy and building and finance.”

His unconventional path would lead him to his calling in 2017, when he won a $20,000 award from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for his 150-word artistic proposal, “Hued Songs of Strength and Freedom.” The funding allowed him to jumpstart the nonprofit group he currently leads, Hued Songs.

“I realized that no one was going to create this platform. I could either complain about it or I could take a chance,” he said.

The 501(c)(3) organization produces performances that celebrate the diversity of Black culture through the arts – with music, dance and spoken word – all across South Florida.

One of the most important factors for Rowley is keeping the arts accessible, which is why all of Hued Songs’ shows are free of charge or offered at little cost. He also makes sure to “go where people are,” he said. He and accompanying artists have performed in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, whether it’s been for “Spirituals & Òrìṣàs” at the Overtown Performing Arts Center or West Palm Beach’s Norton Museum of Arts’ “Art After Dark.”

In 2021, Rowley launched the first annual “Juneteenth Experience,” which will be back this year at the North Beach Bandshell. His organization received funding from Knight to expand the show to Broward and Palm Beach in 2023.

“What I found as I started to produce performances and build Hued Songs was that there were other Black and brown artists who were also looking for a space where they can be seen and heard and paid,” he said. “I began to derive joy out of helping others in my community and helping to build up other artists.”

But Rowley didn’t stop at Hued Songs. In his mission to magnify Miami’s voices and celebrate diversity and culture, he is the director of music, access, arts and culture at the Miami Foundation, and a member of the NAACP Miami-Dade chapter and Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau LGBTQ Tourism Advisory Committee.

He is a Miami native, sort of. He was born in North Carolina “by mistake,” he said, explaining that his mother happened to be traveling at the time, causing him to spend the first three weeks of his life in the state. Since then, he’s lived all over the Magic City: in Little Haiti, Miami Gardens and North Miami Beach.

Today, Rowley is preparing for his upcoming local show, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,” which is named after a book of the same name by one of the few openly gay Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance period, Richard Bruce Nugent. Teaming up with Bookleggers Library, The Underline and O, Miami, Rowley is bringing an evening of multimedia performances of music and poetry inspired by Nugent to the Brickell Underline Friday, April 29.

He was first introduced to Nugent’s work by Nathaniel Sandler, founder of Bookleggers, who shared the story with him years ago. Set in 1926, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” follows a young artist named Alex who finds himself torn over his attraction to Beauty, a man, and his relationship with a woman named Melva.

“It is a really beautiful, unique piece of work,” Rowley said. “It unapologetically and unabashedly celebrates these themes of differentness of identity that it has not hidden; it is open and it is inquisitive and it is colorful.”

His hope is to be able to share and explore the work, which is still very timely, through different mediums.

There will be songs, all written by Black composers, with texts by Langston Hughes and Sappho (both of which academics believe were queer based on subtext in their writings). There will be dancers and choreography to the themes of Blackness and the LGBTQ+ community. And Rowley will sing alongside instrumentalists.

Animation was also created to accompany the story for audiences to view.

“For me, what was really important for this performance was that we had performers that also are representative of this work, and so everyone in this performance is Black or a person of color and everyone that will be performing on stage is someone that identifies as queer,” he said.

You can catch “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” April 29 at 7 p.m. at The Underline’s Sound Stage Plaza for free. Visit HuedSongs.org to keep an eye out for future performances produced by the organization.