It’s 6:15 pm on an unseasonably warm Saturday night in October. The server in charge of the bustling back room of the Branded Saloon, a Brooklyn-based western-themed LGBTQ+ bar and popular venue for indie musicians and drag performances, has emerged to inform a gathering crowd outside that extra chairs have been added so nobody would need to stand during the show. On this night, the majority of the bar’s patrons are there to see the feminist-lesbian rock punk band Kay Turn Her and the Pages, led by 75-year-old Dr. Kay Turner, which she founded in 2023 as “her last band,” playing songs that span her four-decade songwriting career.
Kay is an artist, scholar, musician, author, and folklorist. For 14 years she was the regional folklorist for Brooklyn, NY, based at the Brooklyn Arts Council, and charged to serve culturally specific traditional artists throughout the borough. She is a Past President of the American Folklore Society (2015-2018) and is widely published in the folklore field. Following full retirement in 2022, or what she calls “Rewirement”, she tours with her band while working on her own writing and performance projects. “I don’t consider this my second life. I have always integrated my art life with my life as a professional folklorist. They influence each other. But, at this late point in my time on earth, I am doing more music and performance art than folklore work,” she explains.
Her folklore background is present in all her music. For example, one of her classics, "More Madonna, Less Jesus,” is an homage to Madonna, both the pop music icon, and the mother of God. With quirky lyrics about crafting, missed love connections on the subway, and queer theory set in song, audiences walk away humming a melody or two and Kay hopes learning a thing or two as well.
In an interview with the online art and culture magazine Hyperallergic, Kay spoke of her concerns around the term elder; she says, “My gripe with the idea of being an elder as it’s put into the public realm — not just for queers — is that it tends to categorize older people and lock us in a silo that says elderliness has to have certain qualities. It has to have a certain vaunted purpose. I think that’s a bit problematic. It smacks of AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) and is just a way of trying to recast the aging process in a more palatable light, but the aging process has a lot of positive and a lot of negative. The term “elder” doesn’t cover it well. For me, I prefer ‘magnificent hag’. I think hags have a certain degree of anger that we’ve carried with us from the very beginning of our adult years, from being activists in the LGBTQIA+ world out of which we came.”
Why did you retire or why are you still working?
Why did you retire?
Why are you still working?
I followed a family tradition! I was born in Detroit and I come from a working-class background. My mother eventually became a nurse, and my father, a tool and dye worker in the auto industry. My aunt (my mother’s sister) was a secretary. She lived with us part-time and was deeply influential in my life. In working-class Detroit, in that era, you retired at 65. That was the number. When I was 63, I was still working away at the Brooklyn Arts Council and as a professor in the NYU Performance Studies Department. I was talking on the phone with my aunt, and she said, “You know, Kay, when you get to be 65, we Turners/Halseys retire. I insist that you retire at 65.” She didn’t insist on much so I said, “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Then I called my brother Jim, who is a few years older than me, and learned that auntie had the same conversation with him. I had to follow the family rule! I did. I retired at 65. And it was great. I wish I retired sooner.
Life expectancy 2023
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