Elle Barbara
Elle Barbara is an avant-garde singer-songwriter, recording artist, experimental theatre director, video director, performer, community worker, and pinup, based in Montreal, Quebec. Her music alternately combines elements of dance, disco, sophisti-pop, synth-pop, prog, jazz, and glam, with an interest in library music, orchestral music, and psychedelic soul. She has been an underground fixture in her native Montreal for more than a decade. A lover of the odd, obscure, and overlooked elements in pop music, Elle Barbara finds inspiration in unexpected sources, like off-the-radar acts Su Tissue, Francis Bebey, Martin Newell, and Alain Kan, in addition to mainstream luminaries such as Madonna, Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and Mary J. Blige.
Rising from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s, Elle Barbara has seen her work soar to enduring albeit niche acclaim, in a part-time artistic career whose highlights include duets with Lætitia Sadier and Sean Nicholas Savage. In the later half of the 2010s, Elle Barbara’s efforts mostly centered around community organizing and solidarity work. She notably helped establish an anti-poverty grassroots collective whose mission was to grant discretionary funds to low-income trans feminine people, and did peer work to promote harm reduction methods and offer active listening and legal support to society's most vulnerable.
She began transitioning in 2015 and mainly releases music as Elle Barbara's Black Space, a concept group she formed to feel less isolated as a Black trans femme navigating Montreal's underground. She is also partly responsible for reviving Montreal's ballroom scene.
Elle Barbara is an avant-garde singer-songwriter, recording artist, experimental theatre director, video director, performer, community worker, and pinup, based in Montreal, Quebec. Her music alternately combines elements of dance, disco, sophisti-pop, synth-pop, prog, jazz, and glam, with an interest in library music, orchestral music, and psychedelic soul. She has been an underground fixture in her native Montreal for more than a decade. A lover of the odd, obscure, and overlooked elements in pop music, Elle Barbara finds inspiration in unexpected sources, like off-the-radar acts Su Tissue, Francis Bebey, Martin Newell, and Alain Kan, in addition to mainstream luminaries such as Madonna, Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and Mary J. Blige.
Rising from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s, Elle Barbara has seen her work soar to enduring albeit niche acclaim, in a part-time artistic career whose highlights include duets with Lætitia Sadier and Sean Nicholas Savage. In the later half of the 2010s, Elle Barbara’s efforts mostly centered around community organizing and solidarity work. She notably helped establish an anti-poverty grassroots collective whose mission was to grant discretionary funds to low-income trans feminine people, and did peer work to promote harm reduction methods and offer active listening and legal support to society's most vulnerable.
She began transitioning in 2015 and mainly releases music as Elle Barbara's Black Space, a concept group she formed to feel less isolated as a Black trans femme navigating Montreal's underground. She is also partly responsible for reviving Montreal's ballroom scene.