Template for Contacting Your Representative About Supernova Visa Issues

Ska music has always been political - by, and for The People. Unfortunately, current politics have kept ska music away from the people at the Supernova Ska Festival this year. It is time for us to make our voices heard.

If you are new to contacting your representatives, please know that I am proud of you for taking a few minutes to help your community be a more equitable place! You are taking an active step in empowering your community and our country. ❤️

Follow the steps below to contact your representatives:

1. Identify your representatives.

   1. Find your Representative here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

   2. Find your Senator here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

   3. Search your state's website for how to find your district's state House of Representatives

2. Determine how to best contact your representatives through their websites (form, email, letter mail).
   

3. Use the following template as a starting point to contact your local representatives about the impact you felt from artists visas being denied from performing at Supernova Ska Festival. Remember: your representative represents YOU, so let them know how policy impacts your life.

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Dear (Representative/Senator/Congressman or Congresswoman) (Last name):

My name is (Full Name) and I am a constituent in your district. I am writing to inform you about a recent visa situation that negatively impacted a music festival I support each year. Due to this administration's policy changes in immigration and visa approvals, nearly one quarter of the bands scheduled to perform were not able to because of visa issues.

For over a decade, The Supernova International Ska Festival has welcomed artists from across the globe to the state of Virginia to perform. This year, 34 bands were scheduled to play over 3 days. 8 of those bands (23.4%) came from abroad and were unable to perform due to a variety of visa issues. At least eighty musicians were impacted. These bands/individuals are from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia. This independently-run festival is familiar with navigating the visa process, however, this year's disproportionate amount of delays and denials resulted in great disappointment and financial losses.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident and more and more artists are being denied the opportunity to perform in front of American audiences. As a patron of the arts, I fear we will continue to see cancelled concerts, disappointed fans, and artists avoiding the United States. I am concerned over the long-term negative impacts this will have on our culture and communities.  

Even though the festival has concluded this year, I know that this pattern will continue within our community and across our country. I am asking you to please consider the impact to arts and music when representing my and our community’s stance on new visa and immigration policy.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

  (Signature)

(Full Name Printed)

How I Accidentally Made A Documentary

In the 10 months since publishing my documentary "Blue Beat Baby", I have received so much kind feedback and enthusiastic questions about Brigitte and how I uncovered her story.

I will be real - I did not plan on doing any of this research and documentary work! But oops. I did.

My work with Brigitte all started out by me simply trying to design an updated Beat Girl pin to go alongside my other Banbury badge reproductions. I wanted the redesign to have a face that was more reminiscent of Brigitte Bond, the woman she was based on, so off to google images I went. The first photo result at the time was this photo with the description that mentions a "sex change". At that time, I had heard nothing of Brigitte being transgender, so I began to google around with frustratingly few results. Was this the truth, or was it a case of mis-matched data on a stock footage site? Miraculously, an original press photo showed up on eBay soon after I started researching. What I did not know when I purchased it is that it had an original blurb on the back that confirmed that she was trans. The rest of the blurb left me with more questions, (Engaged? Sir John Waller? Large inheritance? What?!) and it was down the rabbit hole from there.

I got "stuck" around 1965, because I did not yet know she had changed her stage surname from "Bond" to "Saint John". I texted my friend Heather Augustyn to see if she had any info on her, since I knew she was writing "Rude Girls" at that time. We traded what information we had and agreed to share what we found going forward.

I spent about two weeks looking for anyone named Brigitte that could have matched, and came across her name in an accidental way - by a misspelling of the folk singer Bridget St. John's name on Ready, Steady, Gone!. Googling "Brigitte St. John" was promising, but I did not want to get my hopes up too high since I could not confirm it was actually her. Once again, eBay miraculously delivered an original press photo from "The Billy Graham Incident" stating that she was trans. That was the smoking gun for me. It was her! From there, research opened up a lot and I was able to fill in a decade of her life performing as Brigitte Saint John.

I do often wonder if she changed her stage name again after 1976 and that is what is stopping me from finding her...but I have combed (and continue to comb) through countless vedette and "adult" ephemera from that time and place and have yet to find any that are definitely her. The closest possibility to her changing her name I have found is Brigitte Saint Jacques, but all I am going off of is name and face similarity. Nothing else can be found on this singer, so I'm not holding my breath that this is the same person.

My research is still ongoing and I do something with it nearly every single day. I really enjoy it and find it very fulfilling. This whole accidental journey has inspired me to dig even deeper into Ska and subculture history, and I plan to share more of that soon on this blog, YouTube, and Instagram. Please follow me to keep up to date with my fascinating finds.

Brigitte Map

I have created a map with all the locations related to Brigitte. You may explore the map by clicking the image below: