KGNU’s Indra Raj hosts DJ bad kitty to celebrate Pride Month. DJ bad kitty discusses the significance of Pride and presents a music set featuring LGBTQ+ artists and themes. Juan Moreno from Rocky Mountain Equality talks about upcoming events, including the Boulder Pride Festival and Bands on the Bricks. He invites the community to get involved with their programs and services. DJ bad kitty will be performing at Boulder’s Pride Festival on June 30th (Interview date: 6/26/2024)
Indra Raj: I am very pleased to welcome DJ bad kitty into the studio. Hello.
bad kitty: Hello. I’m so happy to be here.
Indra Raj: It’s so great to have you here. Thanks to Suze, who made this happen today. Suze is one of our beloved volunteers who does a lot behind the scenes here at KGNU, including convincing me that we needed to get bad kitty on the air.
It’s Pride Month and we’re doing a Pride-related set here today.Tell us a little bit about what you put together.
bad kitty: So first of all, thank you so much for having me. And also thank you so much to Rocky Mountain Equality for setting all this up with Suze. This is a huge honor for me because Pride is not just a month. Pride is a lifeline, and Pride is a representation of what we work for, what we strive for – the idea of resistance, but also the idea that in resistance there is celebration, that we see you, that we are seen. The set I put together today is artists who are from the community or who are bringing lyrics or beats that I felt really represent that idea.
There’s going to be a few artists that I highlight. We can talk about those at the break. And also at the break, we will hear from one of the fabulous representatives of Rocky Mountain Equality, Juan Moreno, who is here in the house with us today.
Indra Raj: Alright, so this is gonna be DJ bad kitty’s set here on the Morning Sound Alternative. We are celebrating Pride today. Let’s get into it.
DJ bad kitty in the house. It’s like Club Red Studio up in Boulder today. Do you want to tell us about the music in that last set?
bad kitty: Yeah. So first off we had Mon Rovia. “City on the Hill”. Appalachian folk music. Refugee from Africa. He’s amazing.
Indra Raj: Amazing.
bad kitty: After that, we heard Kaik. The artist is a really unique gentleman, Claudio PRC. Then after that, we had “WALLS”. All right. And that is Mild Minds featuring Boats.
Indra Raj: Alright, and the lyric was what? Walls are made for tearing down. Thank you for this Pride related set. We’re halfway through, we’re going to get into some more music, but we also are really happy to welcome in Juan Moreno. He is here from Rocky Mountain Equality.
He’s Director of Corporate and Community Relations. Welcome to the show, Juan.
Juan Moreno: Thank you so much for having me. And of course, thank you to DJ bad kitty for being here with us today. We love her.
Indra Raj: Yes, we do love her. So we have some exciting events coming up. You want to tell us about them?
Juan Moreno: We do. And I know first for all of you listening out there who have no idea what Rocky Mountain Equality is, we were formerly known as Out Boulder County. We just rebranded on June 2nd to provide responsive programs and services to ensure that LGBTQ+ communities thrive.We’re grateful for this, and grateful for this change. The big thing that we want to highlight is our Boulder Pride Festival, which is coming up here on Sunday, the 30th.
We’ve had an entire beautiful month of events going on throughout the county, but we’re very close to wrapping it up. The Boulder Festival will be at Boulder Central Park. Sunday, June 30th from 11:30 to five. And of course, our very own DJ bad kitty will be there on stage. Check her out. We have some fabulous entertainment planned for the event.
The band Betty will be there. We plan to have some amazing drag performances. I believe the Violet Wild Collective, CHEER Colorado and many more. So please be sure to check us out and we’ll be launching the full lineup and what times they’ll perform today.
Indra Raj: Great. And you mentioned there’s something happening on Bands on the Bricks?
Juan Moreno: Yes, so of course your very own Downtown Boulder Partnership hosts the amazing Bands on the Bricks every summer, and we are grateful to be involved in the one that is happening tonight. I believe it starts around six o’clock, but I’ll be there as your Spanish emcee. Rocky Mountain Equality will be there sharing the love. Please check out our table. Come grab a bite to eat and a Pride flag and have a good time.
Indra Raj: That’s great. And, for anyone out there who might be new to Boulder County or looking for a place like Rocky Mountain Equality to get involved, how do people get involved?
Juan Moreno: There are so many ways to get involved with us. Primarily, we’re a community center with an elevator in progress. Should be done here soon. Visit our community center at 3340 Mitchell Lane, or our Pride house which is on 15th and Spruce.
Walk in the door and tell us what you need. Whether you want to volunteer. Whether you want to sponsor one of our events, whether you just want to seek services, we’ll be there for you and make sure that you’re connected with the right resources. We love new faces.
Indra Raj: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Juan. And yeah, so what we’re doing here today on the Morning Sun Alternative, we’ve been walking through our top 30 albums, but also welcoming in DJ bad kitty, who’s totally throwing it down here, definitely giving us a danceable morning. It’s so bright and sunny outside. It’s the perfect morning for dancing. So tell us about this next set of music, this last one.
bad kitty: Coming up now, we’re going to hear from an artist out of LA that I love, Real X-Man. He is bringing it to the LGBTQIA community. He’s amazing. You will be able to check him out at San Diego Pride this upcoming weekend if you’re out in California. So we’ll be hearing a track from him that I’ll also be featuring this weekend called Pride and Joy. And we’ll hear from Noga Erez which is a really great female driven, huge sort of ensemble band that I’m really into these days, and a couple other sort of dance-y, house-y tracks in the middle.
Indra Raj: So we’re gonna get into that. Stay tuned. We’ll be finishing up our Top 30 after that, right here on the Morning Sound Alternative on KGNU.
All right, that was our final set from DJ bad kitty here in the KGNU studios during the Morning Sound Alternative. We’re doing Pride related programming. Thank you so much for that wonderful set of music.
bad kitty: Oh, thank you. It’s an honor to be here.
Indra Raj: It’s really wonderful to have you two. And you’re going to be at the Pride celebration happening here in Boulder on Sunday.
bad kitty: I am. Absolutely. I’ll be there all day DJing on stage. Come see us. It’s going to be great. There’ll be a million vendors. There’ll be some great drag performances. And you get to hang out with me and hopefully Indra will come and see us too.
Indra Raj: Yeah, I’m going to try and make it down there myself. That’s right. And it is the last day of Pride Month. So it’s a great way to finish off this wonderful month of celebration.
bad kitty: Saved the best for last!
Indra Raj: Yes, of course. And we’ve been doing a lot of that today here on KGNU. If you caught A Public Affair during our morning news block this morning, we had a really nice panel run by Jackie Sedley with some folks from Rocky Mountain Equality.
And then we had Juan and we had DJ bad kitty during the show today. Such a great set of music. And thank you so much for bringing your talents to the studio today.
bad kitty: Thank you so much for having me.
