This week, 75-year-old artist and scholar Kay Turner will take the stage at Brooklyn’s Branded Saloon with her feminist-lesbian punk band Kay Turn Her and the Pages in a “gray gay pride” celebration. Throughout the decades, Turner and her bandmates have donned and distributed merch including pins that read “More Madonna, Less Jesus” (one of her original songs) and t-shirts with the phrase “vintage lesbian.”

Turner formed her first band in 1972, but her performances extend beyond songwriting and often intersect with her other pursuit — the study of folklore. The artist, who holds a PhD in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, has worked as a professor, authored several books, and served as folklorist for the borough of Brooklyn and president of the American Folklore Society. Her varied and interconnected interests began to develop in childhood, when she discovered music, ritual, and writing as a means to understand the unshakeable feeling of being different. Over Zoom, Turner delved into one of her favorite songs, what it means to be a “reader of Madonna,” and the ever-changing world of academia. Below is a condensed version of our conversation.

Badass, indeed.