Despite the deep-rooted trauma of their tumultuous coming-out journey, every lyric from nonbinary, queer, Nashville-based artist Becca Mancari (they/them) radiates authenticity and passion. Part Puerto Rican, growing up in a rural Pennsylvania town (home to around 900 people) as a person of color was already difficult. Add religion, which was entrenched in every aspect of their life—Mancari likens their childhood to being raised in a cult—from their local Christian school to their pastor father, and being queer was not even an option.
“That’s how I started finding music, was in a religious setting, but it was an escape for me,” Mancari says. “When I finally decided to move to Nashville and I actually had moved to Nashville, I’d gone back into the closet for a few years because I had such an intense separation from my family when I came out the first time. I went through a lot and I talk about that a lot in my music.”
Mancari knew they were queer from a young age, but discovered the word for their identity through a woman’s lit class they took in high school: lesbian. At 20 years old, Mancari, who was attending a very conservative college, came out to their friends and was eventually outed to their parents. Shunned, cut off, and left to be unhoused, they were forcibly separated from a family they never wanted to leave.
“In the song called ‘
Stay With Me,’ there’s a line—’ you’re one step above a child molester, can you handle it?’ And you know, that’s what my dad said to me when I came out,” they reflect. “We don’t want you around your younger siblings… you’re a deviant. You’re a pervert. You’re a person that’s in darkness. I think that would hurt anybody, but I think also as a creative, as a really sensitive person, I really ingested that into my body.”
On the brink of being unhoused, Mancari moved to India to live with their older sister before relocating to South Florida and picking up odd jobs as a janitor, teacher, and gigging musician. Burned by the recent crumbling of their family ties, Mancari retreated back into the closet and performed janitorial duties at a local church as a form of penance.
“I really tried to put my body into submission, it was really weird,” they say. “I remember being like, I knew that I could not be gay. Being gay is not a choice, but I think I was trying to survive.”
After a fortuitous run-in with a music manager at a wedding, Mancari made the (admittedly impulsive) decision to move to Nashville. In 2012 they packed up their car and chased their music dreams West.
The musician has had to work tirelessly to break into a historically heternormative, cis, and white music industry. “I’m working really hard to break through that barrier,” they say. “I really think that this music would touch a lot of people, and matter. I know that it does. And I know that people that come (to shows) say ‘Wow, for one night, I felt seen and loved and safe and enveloped in something that feels powerful.'”
But they’re making strides, and Mancari’s newest album,
“Left Hand,” dropped on August 25. Avant-pop swirled with folk, the album is sweet and nostalgic, a captivating tribute to Mancari’s therapeutic journey of self-love and acceptance after ten years of disassociation.
“The actual album title came from an image that I had seen that my grandmother found (that was) from Italy, where my grandfather is from,” they explain. “Our name, Mancari, means left hand in Italian, and I thought it was a really interesting take on queerness. Left-handed people, in a lot of cultures back in the day, were not allowed to write with their left hand. They were forced to use their right hand because it was seen as unnatural, as weird, as not normal.”
Mancari will be performing at Denver’s Lost Lake Lounge on Tuesday, October 31, with queer group
Bloomsday, followed by a Halloween DJ after-party with drag DJ
Ava Sparks.
“I’m so grateful and excited to be opening for one of my favorite artists, Becca Mancari, on their first headline tour,” Iris from Bloomsday says. “I reached out to Becca in a moment of admiration for nonbinary musicians that inspire me to keep making work. I was overjoyed when they asked me to support them on this tour.”
“My music has always been a place to allow others to experience safety in their own coming out stories and in their own feelings of being understood,” Mancari says. For them, creating a communal space of queer acceptance through shows is healing, and a reward in and of itself.
And for other young members of the LGBTQ+ community who have a family that is less than accepting, Mancari has some advice: “Please take care of yourself. Please find a resource… there’s not a lot of
free therapy or places for queer people, but if you have a center that is there for you, get the help that you can find in your local community. Get online, follow as many queer people as you can. See that your life can be better and be okay,” they emphasize. “Don’t allow the sadness to eat you. Don’t allow the sadness to take you. Because then it will take your life. And nobody deserves that.”
Becca Mancari plays at Lost Lake Lounge, 3602 East Colfax, on Tuesday, October 31, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $17 and available here. 
