They haven’t done that yet, but they have performed at Presidential inaugurations (for Bill Clinton in 19) and marched in the official inauguration parades for Barack Obama in 20. “Jon once said that the pinnacle of success for his dream would be to play a concert in the Rose Garden at the White House,” Nancy Corporon told A&U.
The Band’s reach and influence has expanded far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. For four decades now, the non-political-but-visible SFLGFB, the city’s “Ambassadors of Joy” (honored in 2017 by the Board of Supervisors as the City’s “official band”) have played and marched through many of our most exuberant celebrations as well as our darkest days. Thus, any act of getting queer folks together was indeed a political act, even if it was just getting together musicians who “march to a different drummer” to have fun making music. The late 1970s were marked by a handful of advancements for the LGBT community-e.g., the passage of LGBT-protective civil rights ordinances in cities around the country-but they were also marred by extreme prejudice and outright hatred, the most famous example being Florida orange queen Anita Bryant and her disgusting crusade against LGBT rights in Dade County, Florida, which set off similar backlash against LGBT rights around the country. But somehow I knew that this very special man had found his place in the world.”Īlthough Jon espoused no political agenda-Jon’s sister, Judy Sims Billings, told A&U, “Shortly after he started the band, Jon said to me, ‘I’m not trying to make a political statement, I just want to get people together to have fun making music’”-a little historical context is called for here. Nancy Corporon, Jon’s longtime friend and the Artistic Director of the Band 1990–1996, told A&U, “I’ll never forget how he described San Francisco after he had visited: ‘It’s hard to explain but this is a city where I belong in a way I’ve never belonged my entire life.’ Jon had not yet come out to me. Frustrated with the job-he wanted students who were as serious about music as he was-he followed a friend to San Francisco and began teaching school in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. Jon Reed Sims (1947–1984) was graduated from Indiana University and then moved to Chicago where he taught music to junior high school students. Under the current leadership of drum major Mike Wong (front, center) and two assistants, the Band marches up Market Street in the 2015 Pride Parade. There was also no way for any of us to know that, a mere three years after the 1981 Parade, the Band’s drum major and the founder of the SFLGFB would die of AIDS-related complications. Like the Parade itself, the Band has grown and changed its name-the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band-but they have never stopped making a joyous noise in the forty years since their founding in 1978. When the Band marched before me, playing “San Francisco,” I knew that I had come home, never to roam again, as the song promises. There’s not a lot that I remember from my very first Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco in 1981-after all, it was thirty-seven years ago, and yes, it was still called the Gay Pride Parade! But I do remember that the 1981 Parade was the first time I saw and heard the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps. Founded by Jon Reed Sims, the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band Celebrates Forty Years of Making a Joyous Gay Noise