When Jason King was a kid, his family had a compilation full of disco hits from K-tel records in their music collection. On that tape was the song You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) from the singer Sylvester. Jason-who is a musician, a nationally recognized journalist, and the Chair of NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music-didn't know much about Sylvester at the time. In fact, he wasn't even sure if Sylvester's signature falsetto belonged to a man or a woman. But he knew it was his favorite song on the tape.
Sound Barrier host Jason King.
As an adult, Jason's love of this song led him to learn more about Sylvester, an openly gay Black man living in 1970s America who dressed in drag and challenged gender conventions with a fervor few other musicians possessed. Though he wasn't a household name, Sylvester's innovative sound and persona paved the way for countless artists-particularly LGBTQ artists-to express themselves freely. And this is a big reason why Jason's appreciation for Sylvester has made its way into his journalistic and academic work.
This has set the stage for the launch of Sound Barrier, our new documentary podcast hosted by Jason that aims to explore artists who have made pioneering contributions to music and culture. Fittingly, he has turned his focus to Sylvester for season one-exploring not only the singer's life, but also the influence Sylvester has continued to have on BIPOC and LGBTQ artists after his death.
In celebration of Black Music Month and Pride Month, For the Record caught up with Jason to talk about his journey creating Sound Barrier, Sylvester's one-of-a-kind music career, and why Sylvester is more relevant today than ever before.
The description for Sound Barrier labels Sylvester as a musician who is perhaps even more relevant today than in the '70s and '80s. In your eyes, what makes him so relevant right now? Sylvester is someone who was an intersectional figure before intersectionality was a buzzword. He's somebody who was operating at the nexus of being Black and being gay and being femme when those things were still considered stigmas-they still are to some degree. But they were certainly considered stigmas at that time.
He was just unapologetically himself despite incredible pressure from his record label to be more straight and more normative. Every time he met that pressure, he pushed back and he became more himself. And so I think he's instructive to contemporary generations of how to be yourself at all costs.
Are there any particular eras or aspects of Sylvester's life that you've focused on over the course of the season? It covers him chronologically in every aspect, but one thing we take a close look at is his musicianship. I feel like Sylvester is often celebrated for being a cultural icon, which he was, and for being a pioneer around issues of identity. But he did it through the lens of music, and he was a phenomenal musician.
I really wanted to talk about the way his career evolved over the years and to push back against the narrative that Sylvester's best work was in the '70s and everything that came after that was an afterthought. I think his '80s work is some of his most creative work, particularly given that he had an AIDS diagnosis in the late '80s and was still continuing to make really important music.
Sound Barrier features many notable LGBTQ artists who span multiple generations. How did you decide on these featured guests? Well, we knew that we wanted to have scholars who really studied and thought about Sylvester's life. So that includes Joshua Gamson, who wrote the biography of Sylvester, The Fabulous Sylvester.
We knew that we wanted to have his collaborators, his friends, and people who knew him at that time who could testify about who he was: singers like Jeanie Tracy and Martha Wash, as well as Patrick Cowley, who was an innovator with synthesizers. And then we knew that we wanted to also have the younger artists who may not have known Sylvester, who may not be vested connoisseurs necessarily, but who have been touched in some way by Sylvester's music or his spirit.
So I reached out to people whom I felt were in Sylvester's musical genealogy. That included Alex Newell, famous for their work on Broadway and Glee; that included Billy Porter, who I think is very outspoken about how much of a role Sylvester played in Billy's own self-acceptance-before and after he won his Tony award for Kinky Boots; that included the vocalist and rapper Mykki Blanco, who's maybe not directly in Sylvester's vocal tradition but is very much influenced by Sylvester in other ways.
In reporting out season one of Sound Barrier, the team managed to unearth some never-before-heard demos and interviews from Sylvester. How were you able to discover these, and what do they reveal about him? I thought I knew a lot about Sylvester, but I learned a lot through this series about what made him tick, his musical choices, his aesthetic, and the pressures that he faced.
And having heard Sylvester's unreleased early 1970s demos before, I felt like one of the things I could bring to this series was to connect our team to Universal Music Group executive Harry Weinger, who has been in possession of these unheard recordings. They were produced by Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, and they're fascinating because they capture Sylvester as a work in progress who was really figuring out who he was and how to be his most authentic self. And he did that in these first recordings.
In one of the demos, he's singing Superstar, which is a song that's incredibly famous because it's a Leon Russell song that was performed by the Carpenters and later by Luther Vandross. Sylvester is doing maybe the first cover of it, but it's ast
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
When Jason King was a kid, his family had a compilation full of disco hits from K-tel records in their music collection. On that tape was the song You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) from the singer Sylvester. Jason-who is a musician, a nationally recognized journalist, and the Chair of NYU's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music-didn't know much about Sylvester at the time. In fact, he wasn't even sure if Sylvester's signature falsetto belonged to a man or a woman. But he knew it was his favorite song on the tape.
