Keyboard Fantasies

This tour documentary-cum-biography celebrates the remarkable life and career of cult musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

One of the most tragic casualties of homophobia, transphobia and racism is the art they’ve erased; too many artists have been partially or completely silenced by hostile environments. It makes a film like Keyboard Fantasies all the more important as a document. This little jewel of a film tells the story of Glenn Copeland’s musical odyssey and, as is the case with all the best documentaries, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Music was always part of Copeland’s life; his father was a classical pianist, unusual for a Black man in mid 20th-century America, and his mother sang gospel. By the time he went to study at McGill University in Canada in the late ’60s, Copeland already had a clear idea of the kind of music he wanted to make. But the world wasn’t ready for him – and vice versa.

Still presenting as a girl named Beverly, and one of only a few Black students on campus, Copeland felt alienated, and it began to impact his studies. He managed to record some music, but it made no impact and he dropped out of university. Musicians he worked with at the time interviewed here recall his singular talent – and comment that this very singularity was a stumbling block for him. Even in a period that encouraged the unusual, Copeland proved too far out. Undaunted, Copeland continued to create a broad range of music over the following decades, albeit completely outside of the music industry.

The film is made up mostly of interviews with Copeland himself, his voice the melodic thread that binds it together. There’s something of the holy man in his quiet dignity, his complete lack of bitterness at the difficult path he’s been forced to tread. Then there’s the music. Comparisons are bound to be made with other seminal music documentaries like The Devil and Daniel Johnston and Searching for Sugarman, which not only told a story, but also in both cases impacted the lives of their subjects, bringing their music to larger international audiences.

For decades Copeland sustained himself on his twin passions of nature and science fiction. His endless musical curiosity found an ally in the home computer, of which he was an early adopter. This all came together on his album ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ in 1984. Created on an Atari-powered home studio, he self-released it on a hundred cassette tapes, of which he only sold about fifty. Here’s the fairy tale element – one of these tapes somehow found its way to an influential rare music collector in Japan in 2016, who championed it. An international following quickly built.

Some of the most moving footage here is of the audience’s rapturous response to Copeland on his first world tour, mounted when he was 74. Perhaps it’s no surprise that his most fervent fans are in their twenties, as if the future Copeland has always been reaching for has finally arrived. And after all the vicissitudes he’s suffered, he still offers a utopian vision of what that could be. Watch it and spread the word.

Published 8 Nov 2021

Tags: Beverly Glenn-Copeland Keyboard Fantasies Posy Dixon