EDINBURGH 2022: Jordan Gray Guest Blog

Guest Blog: Jordan Gray brings effervescent new comedy show to the Fringe

Jordan discusses making the move from music to stand-up comedy.

The UK's hottest transgender comedian Jordan Gray blogs for Broadway World about bringing Is It A Bird? to the Fringe. Jordan tells us how she manages putting her feelings into lyrics whilst maintaining the humour, the main differences between music and comedy and how she is able to fuse them together successfully.

From 2008 to 2018, I was a professional recording artist, with 7 independent albums under my array of pretentious belts, touring the UK and Europe under the stage name Tall Dark Friend. I was also the first ever transgender person on The Voice (2016). You don't have to be polite; I know you didn't see it.

In 2018 I left "serious" music behind and went full-time as a stand-up comic. I turned my musical attention to comedy songs - landing on a style that critics have described as "Tim Minchin with tits". Why did I move from music to comedy? I get bored. A more interesting question might be: "How does one conflate the two?"

One easy way to make people think you're proper clever is to present a false dichotomy with a bit of flowery language, then proceed to compare and contrast the two things over and over.
However... this one's a banger:

Comedy is about telling a very effective lie. Music is about sharing a vague truth.

Comedy is an exercise in high-fidelity communication. An effective comedian has meticulous delivery. Every single word is calculated for maximum impact and dropping a single beat disrupts or even dismantles the joke. Music communicates raw, ineffable, intangible emotion. It's the reason why so many of us can take a song to heart without even really knowing all the words - warbling along until we get to the chorus.

On the surface, combining the two disciplines seem counterintuitive - and that's not wholly inaccurate. A need for greater diction in comedy detracts from the naturalistic flow as a singer.

Technical rehearsals are different. As a serious vocalist, you usually want your voice swamped in reverb. As a musical comedian, your voice needs to sit above the music and be as dry and crisp as Sauvignon Blanc.

I believe there are roughly TWO schools of musical comedy:

1. "This is funny, and you and I BOTH know it's funny". Jokes, set to music, delivered with a wink and a smile.

i.e. Victoria Wood, Steve Martin, Adam Sandler, Billy Connolly.

2. "This isn't funny, it's serious". Well-crafted music underwritten by misguided lyrical content. These performers require us to suspend our disbelief, believing that the artist is earnest in their delivery.

i.e. Tim Minchin, Bo Burnham, Jack Black, Ricky Gervais as David Brent.

Then there's musical parody. Don't get me wrong, it's effective. But if you're gonna do it, you'd better knock it out of the park. Because if my Nan can do it off the top of her head, stood at a sink washing up, it ain't art. Musical parody hijacks our natural habit to latch onto things we recognise for comfort - be that a song or even just the predictable conceit of a rhyming scheme. Call me a snob, but a rhyme doesn't count as comedy. With the exception of Katie Pritchard, who is a genius.

So, what do music and comedy share?

"Timing" is surely an obvious answer - given the amount of cabbies that have come to that "mind-blowing" conclusion while driving me home from a gig. Both also deal in metaphor. Both masquerade as entertainment while secretly speaking truth to power.

And the latter is where my interest lies. I moved from music into stand-up comedy because telling surprising and disarming stories into a microphone is the most effective way I know to change hearts and minds en masse. Now, do that to MUSIC (a numbing agent to soften the pinch) and you've got a recipe for real social change. That's why I did it.

Jordan Gray: Is It A Bird?, Assembly George Square (The Box), 10.25pm, 3-28 August (not 17)

Sponsored content

To post a comment, you must register and login.