Victor Jackson deserves your attention. Throughout much of the pandemic, the quadruple threat (singer, actor, choreographer, creative director) never stopped creating. Over the last year, Jackson has longed for the moment supporters of his latest EP, “Man. Muse. Magic.” could convene in the same space for a live performance absent the threat of COVID-19. On July 28, at Parlor, a Black-owned bar and performance space in downtown Atlanta, he partially got his wish. Jackson kicked off “Man. Muse. Magic. neat,” an intimate live performance residency scheduled to run once a month through November.
Backed by seven incredibly talented Black women musicians representing the inspiration behind his latest musical effort, including the three-piece Venus The Band, and four backup singers, aptly called The Muses. Jackson describes the EP and residency as a love letter to the Black women who have pushed his personal and professional journey forward. While celebrating the femininity, grace, and strength of Black women, Jackson, himself, is unafraid to exist as both masculine and feminine during a musical experience that has undoubtedly been in the making for over a year and was ferociously unleashed.
It’s almost impossible to believe after witnessing Jackson perform live that he feared the music he was creating wouldn’t resonate with listeners during the recording process of “Man. Muse. Magic.”
“I remember sitting in the studio and just being like, nobody is going to listen to this,” says Jackson. “It is years of trauma. It is years of not trusting yourself—not trusting your truest self. It was a lot of negative self-talk.”
Jackson says he quickly learned how wrong his initial assessment was after the EP release in December 2020.
“I went to sleep that night. I woke up the next morning and it was just messages and [social media] tags and text messages and phone calls and it hasn't stopped,” he says.
The music resonated, but so did Jackson’s audacity to stand in the truth of his intersecting identities as a Black gay man free from the restrictions historically placed on Black male R&B artists, and more in alignment with the current musical landscape that is embracing Black queer artists like Lil Nas X.
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