ZAMBA

PERFORMER

Zamba by Marianne Barcellona, 1972.

I met Zamba through Ford Wheeler, by way of Rumi Missabu, who you all know: here, here, and here. Zamba and I instantly bonded over the fact that we were both born in Stockton, California, an interesting city in California’s Central Valley.

Zamba has been influenced by many of the significant aspects of American counterculture. He was raised in a working-class Latino family and neighbourhood, and, as a child, sensed he was “different,” long before he developed the language for it. He found his way to San Francisco in the mid-1960s, when hippie culture was beginning to flourish. For Zamba, this was the first time he had experienced creativity, sexuality, and spirituality on an expansive level. In fact, these experiences led him to embark on a journey guided by intuition, community, and serendipity.

Zamba's inner self directed him to the two lesser-known but still important performance art troupes (Seattle, Washington’s Whiz Kidz, and New York City’s Angels of Light). He started his performance career with a pink sequin dress while with the Whiz Kidz. The Angels were a radical, free artist group that celebrated the spirit of the Cockettes. Zamba's experiences in communal living, loft stages, the glam rock scene, and collaborations with Hibiscus, Tomata du Plenty, and Jackie Curtis are all part of a world where creative expression, queerness, and the will to survive co-existed.

— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project

“Some of my childhood was magical. My grandmother lived in a house on the front of our property—my parents built a house behind her house. So I had a magical upbringing. My grandmother was a big gardener—she had all kinds of herbs—and she raised canaries. Because I was so young, I didn't realize that we were really in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. I was very happy. When I started grammar school, that's when things kind of shifted a little bit, because interacting with other children, being different, being Hispanic, I was often chased home from school by other kids. I had a lot of friends who would kind of side with me, but we were in a tough place to grow up. When my sister was in school, I was called every day to pick her up from the principal's office because she was crying in class.

My father worked really hard and had a good job. My grandfather worked first. He started when they first moved to California. He was working in the fields picking fruit. He eventually became an employee with the Western Pacific Railroad, which is pretty fabulous. He used to switch the trains around in the roundhouse. So, as a young child, it was great to visit my grandfather and be part of that, to be on a train with my grandfather in charge. We never discussed money. I never knew about money, and I never knew that we were poor. So I take that as a rich life.

I started to realize I was different, and I didn't quite know how to deal with it. In Stockton, California, there weren't any people around that I could relate to in any way. So I became very introverted. That's when I started painting—when I was 11 years old, that was about the time I began to realize there was something different about me. I was terribly afraid to tell my parents about anything, because I really felt that there was something wrong with me. I felt like I had an illness or something like that.

One of my best friends at that time was Billy Tucker. He was a quintessential all-American boy, and we were just best friends. We hung out, we played. There was a creek near our house, and we used to go and play there. I was completely unaware of any kind of desire.

I yearned. One of the pivotal parts of my life, the most important part of my life, was in Stockton one summer. I was living with my grandparents, and they didn't speak English. It was a fun time because my grandmother was always cooking, my grandfather was around, and I got to do whatever I wanted. I would watch Johnny Carson late at night on television, and that show really turned things around for me because I realized there was a world beyond here. By watching Johnny Carson and then hearing the term ‘a city that never sleeps,’ it just seemed like an oasis in the desert.

When I was with my grandparents, there was a Rexall drugstore in my neighborhood. I was walking to that neighborhood because my grandfather would give us a quarter or something. We'd get candy or a soda, and they had a revolving wire book rack, and I was looking through there. By this time, I was older—I was probably a junior in high school—I was looking through this book rack. I saw a biography about Verlaine and Rimbaud, and the last pages of the book cover, the back of it, had a synopsis that said something like ‘outlaw homosexual drug addicts.’ I'm paraphrasing. I immediately bought the book, brought it home, and it just opened up this whole world of other people who existed in this world and were not confined to this very small, simple place. This was the beginning of yearning to change and leave there.

There was an opportunity for my father. He got a great job in San Francisco, so we moved to the Bay Area, and that's where I finished high school. I did have friends who I suspect now were gay, but at that time, we didn't know any of that about them. The only reason I even suspected it was because one of my friends announced to me that his new name was going to be Mariposa Easter. One day, my parents were going out and asked me to babysit. So I stayed home, and then my friend was going to come over to sit with me. At that time, West Side Story was just breaking. It was a very exciting time.

I knew someone named Tom Harmon. He was very involved in the theater. He had a single mother, and they lived in a double-wide. He comes over one day, and he's in full makeup. I had never seen him like that, and he had never discussed it with me, or anything like that, but my father opened the door, and he went, ‘Well…’ It was kind of like an Archie Bunker moment. He goes, ‘Well, what do we have here?’ The next day, my father said, ‘I think he's a fruitcake.’ That was the beginning of kind of realizing that I was treading in uncharted waters.

At one point, the librarian at my high school said, ‘Would you like to go to a party?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I felt very excited because an adult invited me to a party. I didn't understand the implications. I was naive. He was always suggesting certain books to me, and one of the authors he suggested was Tennessee Williams. I was just overwhelmed by this excitement: ‘Oh, my goodness, there's someone out there talking about something that resonates with me.’

I decided to go to the party. I had a Vespa at the time. I rode my Vespa over the bridge to San Francisco from San Leandro, California. I'm sure it's not allowed anymore. I went to this party—I walked in, and it was near Nob Hill. It was subdued lighting, and it was just all men. I was in high school. They were dancing and drinking, and I went into the kitchen to get something to drink, and then I started to have a panic attack. I got really nervous about the situation, and I left. I didn't feel comfortable. It was so foreign to me, and nobody had ever talked to me about it.

Zamba by Peter Hujar, circa 1973.

Later, when I was in junior college, we marched with Joan Baez, everyone singing We Shall Overcome—many times in Berkeley. We’re still marching. We were always anti-war. We believed it. I’ve always believed in peace and love. It sounds kind of corny, but I do believe in that. It was like a combustion of music and dressing up, and wearing flowers in your hair, and just being free. There were no restrictions. It was a very exciting time. I was always cautious about my life.

I had a boyfriend whom I liked very much, and it just ended. I was very naive and really hurt by the situation, so rather than face it all, I just wanted to move to get away from it. And one of my roommates at the time wanted to move to Seattle, Washington, and I said, ‘Oh, well, I'll move with you.’ It was just like that. It was instantaneous. His name was Diva La Loom. That was already the beginning of people starting to dress up, form communes, give their communes names, and kind of be outrageous. We would really dumpster dive and shop at thrift stores, and we could put together complete outfits from nothing. That was the beginning of the change that happened in me and my introduction to the theater. I rented a trailer, and we drove to Seattle.

On the drive north, we stopped in Oregon—I think it was in North Bend—and went into a coffee shop to get coffee or something. I had very long hair at the time, and when we walked into the coffee shop, there was a dead silence. Every person in there kind of stopped talking, turned around, and looked. I said to my friend, ‘We have to get out of here right now.’ We just ran and got into our car. It was the beginning of them having seen a real hippie or some kind of freak. I never liked the word ‘freaks,’ but it was used a lot during that period. I moved to Seattle. While I was living on Capitol Hill, I went out one evening, and I met the guy who was in charge of Scream—it wasn't Screaming Mimi's. He introduced me to the Whiz Kidz, a local theater troupe like the Cockettes.

I met Tomata du Plenty. He invited me to his house. I went home with him. He lived in a big house—it was a commune, actually. In the morning, he asked me to come downstairs with him. He said, ‘I want you to see something. I want you to try something.’ We went downstairs, and the basement was entirely—it was like just piles of clothing from dumpster diving and shopping. He pulled out this pink sequin gown. He said, ‘Try this on,’ and I put it on. That was the beginning of my career with the Whiz Kidz. Tomata just said, ‘We're gonna put on a show, and I want you to be in the show.’ I said, ‘Sure.’

We opened for Jimi Hendrix in Seattle, and we somehow convinced—there was Gorilla Rose, Tomata, and I forget the other people—we convinced the owner of the Subterranean Room, which was this abandoned building. It was like an office building. We convinced him to let us do a show in the evening since it was abandoned. He agreed to it. It was really wonderful because it was—I look back on it now, and I think, well, this could have been the mini roots of something like Saturday Night Live because we just did everything in front of the audience, and there was no set manager. There was no—we would find our own props. We'd find our own costumes, our own clothing, and we would just say, ‘Well, we're doing a show on Saturday, and we will put posters around town.’

I had just read an autobiography of Lupe Vélez, and I was very excited about her because of her Latin heritage, and I related to this kind of offbeat, wild woman. I decided that my program would be about her death. She had overdosed on sleeping pills or something like that, and so she actually fell and supposedly broke her neck on the toilet bowl. There are different renditions that she choked on her vomit, something like that, but I reenacted it. I found an old toilet. We reenacted this scene, and that was kind of the beginning for me as a performer.

We were then invited to perform at the University of Washington. I was a huge fan of Yoko Ono, and I decided to do Yoko Ono. I had very long hair at the time. I felt like I didn't, I really didn't have to—to do makeup or anything like that, but I did have earphones on, and I went on the stage, and I had one of her songs playing, and I just started singing to it like—they freaked out because there was no background music. People didn't know what I was doing or saying. They came up and took me off the stage. I think they thought I was having an attack or something, and that was really a memorable moment for me. I really enjoyed it.

After the Whiz Kidz—I had a really strange incident in Seattle. I love dogs. I've always had dogs, and I had one of my dogs with me, a little Yorkie, and he was stolen. That was the beginning of negativity. I went to a party given by a commune. We were invited. All the Whiz Kidz were invited there. We had no food. I think I lived off of granola. And we just really had—we had no resources. As I said, our clothing was dumpster diving and handouts. At this party, there was all this great food: vegetables, etc. It was someone's birthday party, and they brought out this beautiful cake, and we all sang Happy Birthday. I was skinny as a rail. I got a piece of the cake, was just scarfing it down, and I finished it. Then the announcer got on and said, ‘We want to thank Angel commune for providing the LSD in the cake.’ I just completely froze. I had my hands on my legs. All I could feel was bags of water, and it was the most horrific experience that I've had with a drug. I don't really know how I got home. I asked someone to take me home. My car was still there. I couldn't drive. It was a really scary situation.

The next day, I asked a friend of mine to go with me to pick up my car. I was going down a hill, and I looked to my left. The light was green for me. I looked to my left, and I saw a car careening toward me. I said to my passenger, ‘You better hang on, because this guy's going to hit us.’ Sure enough, he did, and I had a sports car—he totaled it. We were not hurt, but that was the final straw for me. I felt that I had to leave Seattle.”