Jackie Shane is finally getting the big moment she deserves and we wouldn't have it Any Other Way

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Pioneering transgender soul singer Jackie Shane made an extraordinary mark on the world as both a musical force and a beacon of Black queer visibility. And although she passed away on February 19, 2019, at the age of 78, her legacy lives on — and it's finally getting the mainstream attention it deserves.

On the heels of a Heritage Minute released in 2022 that centered on Shane, the new feature-length documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story is about to have its Canadian premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee (alongside executive producer Elliot Page), the film offers us Shane's full, extraordinary story, and will hopefully ensure as many people as possible are aware of just how monumental she was.

"I first heard of Jackie from a bootleg of Jackie Shane Live," Mabbott says. "And hearing this album that was recorded in Toronto in the 1960s, I couldn't believe this album was made here in my hometown. We're known for folk music and rock and roll music, but I didn't know that level of soul and R&B was being played here. And it blew my mind that I hadn't heard of this person before, because it was just so amazing. And then, to think this was a Black trans person in the mid-1960s recording this album was even more shocking to me."

Mabbott's co-director Rosenberg-Lee had not heard of Shane until he was pursued for this project. 

"I was really surprised because she's a Black trans person in the arts," Rosenberg-Lee says. "And I'm a Black trans person in the arts. And I think that's just indicative of the Jackie Shane story. And so, in many ways, it helped our partnership and this film for Michael to come in with the knowledge he had and then for me to come in totally clean."

Mabbott's knowledge in part came from remarkable access he gained to Shane right before she passed away in 2019.

"When I initially tried to find out more about her, there was nothing but rumours," Mabbott says. "In 1971, she had disappeared, and that was all that was known. And so, every few years, I would kind of poke around and see if there was anything on the internet."

After it was discovered that Shane was still very much alive and living in her hometown of Nashville, Mabbott spent a year trying to find a way to connect with her. Finally, though ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman, who is prominently featured in the documentary, Mabbott found a way.

"I finally was granted access to Jackie via the phone, and I spoke to her for well over 100 hours, and during what would end up being her last year alive," he says. "We spoke for, like, four to five hours on average, once a week. And so the story that I was dying to hear suddenly came out in a flood of a year-long conversation with her."

Mabbott initially intended to make a documentary with Shane, but after she suddenly passed away, he had to venture on without her, bringing Rosenberg-Lee on board. But Shane's spirit lived on through both of their processes.  

"One of her mottos was 'live and let live,'" Mabbott says. "And for a year and a half of talking with her, she kind of continually unpacked that in different ways. The nuance and the depth of that as a motto and seeing how she lived by it in her life was so eye-opening in how heavy it was and what it meant. Jackie was going to do what she was going to do, damn the consequences, you know?"

For Mabbott, part of the reason he wanted to tell this story was because he wanted to show people the example Shane set in the way she lived her life.

"That's something I need to hear as an artist or as anybody in the world," he says. "And the circumstances under which she did it were hard. But she just did it, and she did it without hurting other people, and the strength of that, then or now ... is something that I needed to hear, and, I think, something that the world could maybe hear."

Rosenberg-Lee says Shane's message is particularly important today, when there's so much political conflict. "I hope that audiences take this idea that there's enough space for everybody to be true to themselves as long as it's not hurting other people."

Rosenberg-Lee also hopes people see that Jackie's trans identity is only one facet of her story.

"We really hope, with this film, that people can see that trans people have many layers and they can be talented in many different ways. And that their stories go beyond just their gender or their gender expression."

As Rosenberg-Lee and Mabbott's documentary makes clear, Shane's story goes well beyond any element of her identity. And hopefully, that inspires its audience to walk out of the film a little more ready to "live and let live" in their own lives.

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story is screening at Hot Docs on April 27 & 28 and May 4.