How a gender fluid, observant Jew found acceptance at Coachella

Coachella has embraced diversity more than ever before in 2017: More women, more Latino music and now its promoters are embracing one deeply religious Jewish singer-songwriter who also identifies as gender fluid.

Ezra Furman dresses in female attire but goes by a male name and uses a male pronoun. He also is an observant Jew. When he was in an earlier band, he took gigs on the Sabbath, but, since going solo and touring with his own band, Ezra Furman and the Boy-Friends, he refuses to perform on Saturdays and Friday nights.

So, Goldenvoice agreed to accommodate Furman by booking him at 2:35 p.m. Sunday on the Outdoor Theatre at Coachella. 

MORE COACHELLA: Live coverage

“I used to observe at home but, on tour, I didn't,” Furman told The Desert Sun. “I thought, there's no way I can keep being a professional musician and not play shows or travel Friday nights and Saturday before nightfall. I thought I would have to quit touring. But people I work with, both friends and strangers, have been much more accommodating than I expected. Don't underestimate the folks who toil in the music biz. So many of them are total sweethearts, and that sweetness saved me.”

Not all observant Jews accept Furman's gender fluidity. But he said that's a challenge he faces beyond his own religious community.

“A few non-Jewish people too, and non-religious people,” he said. “But mostly not. Mostly, people I love and respect love and respect me back. For most people that's easy to do. You just have to listen.”

Furman, who has an upbeat indie rock sound with his band, the Boy-Friends, describes his battle for acceptance in a song titled, "Restless Year," from his 2015 album, "Perpetual Motion People." He writes in that song, "I can't go home although I'm not homeless" and "I'm just another savage in the wilderness."

NEW COACHELLA: Much of the festival is being reinvented

In a text below his YouTube video for the song, he adds, "This is how I live, moving wildly and freely through a world that has nothing to do with me." He said in an interview he meant that line, “I can't go home though I'm not homeless,” in a very real sense, but as part of a narrative.

"Sometimes in life there is something wrong at home and you feel like you actually can't go back to your home at the moment because there's a situation there that makes you feel unsafe," he said. "So you have to stay out all day, maybe all night, because even though you have a home, you can't go there right now.

"That's the main thing I was thinking of. And then, in a certain kind of situation for a certain kind of person, the resultant mood spirals out of control into a sense of the world as a wilderness and of yourself as a 'savage' – as someone who is not and cannot be accustomed to society.

"Enough of these kind of experiences and it can start to feel like a line drawn in the sand: there are people who accept the world and have adapted to it, and there are people like us, who are permanently strangers in this world, which is what 'Restless Year' is about and essentially, what the whole record, 'Perpetual Motion People,' is about."

Furman has said "Perpetual Motion People" and an EP containing songs that didn't make it on that and an earlier album mark the end of a musical chapter in his life.

Coachella has been criticized for having a lack of female artists and headliners in the past. It began increasing its number of women in 2016 and this year booked its first female headliner since Bjork, who headlined Coachella twice in its first decade.

Coachella also booked an observant Jew who sang about his religion in 2006 with the appearance of Matisyahu.