Banjee (as in: "banjee boy" or "banjee girl") is a term fromball culture describing a person embodying an urban, tough swagger. The term is mostly associated withNew York City and may beNuyorican in origin.[a][1][b]Attitude,clothing,ethnicity,masculinity,physique, andyouth are all elements of what has been called "banjee realness".
According toThe Village Voice, "banjee boy categories have been a part ofvogue balls since at least the early 1980s".[2] The 1990documentary filmParis Is Burning featured "banjee realness" as one of the categories in which contestants competed fortrophies.
Of his experience with the term, a gay black man writes:
Banjee. That was the identity I was given back in the summer of 1991, when I,half out/half in approached the colored museum of theChristopher Street piers. I was new to the life, so I had no reference for what people were talking about, but I soon gathered that "banjee" meant that I wasn't a "queen." Whatever the terms of identification, all I knew was that there was one thing that brought both the banjees and the queens (and whatever lies between) to the pier: we were men who loved men. An anxious 19 year old, I wore my banjee realness designation like a badge of honor. ... a queen schooled me on how my masculinity was something that carried great weight, not only in the gay world, but the straight world as well.
— Tim'm T. West[1]
The wordbanjee never entered mainstreampop culture, but it had currency as gay slang throughout the 1990s. In 1997, authorEmanuel Xavier coined and referenced the term in his debut poetry collection, "Pier Queen". In 1998, a report in themedical journalAIDS Patient Care andSTDs regardingsafer sex practices among young Black and Latino men was entitled "Banjee Boys Are Down" (down, in thisvernacular, meaning "supportive of it"), named for a project ofBrooklyn's Unity Fellowship Church to get safer sex information to young men of color.[3]
The 1999 playBanjee, written by playwright A.B. Lugo, presented at the Milagro Theater/Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (and in another NYC venue in 2004), is "the story of Angel (played by Indio Meléndez), astraight homeboy, and Tony (played by Will Sierra), an admittedlybi banjee, who've known each other since childhood".[4][5][6][7]
The termbanjee has also been used by several producers ofgay pornography in presenting the type of young man described herein. For example, in 1995 a company called Pleasure Productions produced aDVD calledBanjee Black Boys[8] (and five similarly namedsequels)[9] andc. 1999–2003 a company called Banjee Boy, Inc. produced films with taglines such as "Wanna see some of the sexiest, thugged outgangstas that NY has to offer?".[citation needed] There are other examples from adult films, as well as several pornographicwebsites (such as "Banjee Boy Group Slam") that still use the term.[10]
While seeming to have peaked in popularity during the 1990s, the termbanjee is still in use. For example, a 2003 web page for arestaurant inEast Harlem describes its clientele as an "eclectic mix of patrons that range from pretty neighborhood Banjee boys to some of thewise guys that once populated the space formerly."[11] In 2008, the bandHercules & Love Affair has performed wearing matching shirts with the word printed on them.[12] In the 2000s and 2010s, New York clothing labelHood By Air's designer Shayne Oliver used banjee culture as a general point of reference[13][14][15] and an LGBTQ+ clubnight in London in 2013, featuring a DJ named Borja Peña, called itself "Borja's Banjee Mix", referencing black masculinity.[16] Looking backwards, the 2018period dramaPose, set in 1987's New York City Ball scene, has characters walk for the category "realness, bring it like a banjee boy" in episode 1x06 "Love is the Message", written byRyan Murphy andJanet Mock.[17]
Homo thug is a more recent and more popular term which is nearly synonymous with banjee.[18][19] However,homo thug does imply that the man in question is primarilyhomosexual. In contrast, a banjee might be bisexual or only haveopportunistic homosexual sex with men when women are unavailable—a theme in many of the pornographic films mentioned above.
Gayngsta, aportmanteau derived fromgay andgangsta, is another recent coinage. It has mostly been used in relation to theundergroundLGBThip hop scene as shown in the documentaryPick Up the Mic and featured in the "Homorevolution Tour 2007" with these artists. While easily discernible in writing, pronunciation is barely discernible fromgangsta.[20][21][c]
Banjee girl is heard so rarely that it is difficult to define. In discussing a fashion show inParis, one reviewer wrote in 2005:
The low-rise skirt in denim is the first of its kind seen on the Parisrunways. What is now clear to me is that no self-respecting BanjeeLatina, orghetto-fabulous "Shamecka-girl" or high rolling white chick will be ever able to resist its urban appeal.[22]
Several examples of the use of the termbanjee girl exist in theblogosphere but it has rarely, if ever, made it into print ormass media. Exceptions includeRuPaul'sBillboard charting single "Back to My Roots", which includes the term in a list of hair fashions, an episode of the2014 season ofRuPaul's Drag Race[23] andSharaya J, whose 2013 debut single was called "BANJI"; she also used the name for her production company when she split fromMissy Elliott's labelThe Goldmind Inc. in 2016.[23]
In the 1990 documentary filmParis is Burning,banjee girl andbanjee boy were used in comparable frequency. Coupled with the film's focus on theball culture, an inextricably-connected transgender and drag subculture of 1980sNew York City, this lends itself to a contextual definition of those performers impersonating females and attempting to exhibit the ultimately judged quality of holistic visual verisimilitude—"realness".
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Banjee Boys Are Down is the newly funded project of the Unity Fellowship Church inBrooklyn to help the 56% of blacks (including people of Caribbean descent) living with AIDS in Brooklyn, where some neighborhoods have been severely stricken by AIDS. For example, it is estimated that 1 in 37 people living inBedford-Stuyvesant and 1 in 36 people living inFort Greene, both predominantly black neighborhoods and believed to be home to many black/CaribbeanMSM, are HIV positive.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)Hood By Air had always stunned at fashion shows with spectacular displays that in 2014 included a live vogue performance. The company's aesthetic of dark, "banjee," and deconstructed looks had first crystalized in secret party spaces like GHE20 G0THIK and eventually transformed into a CFDA-winning label.
The category is 'realness, bring it like a banjee boy'. I wanna see all that ghetto swag. ... [To one man:] Alright, I said banjee, not prison. ... [To Papi:] Oh my, I didn't knowRun-DMC had a new light-skinned fourth member!
