“Those white boys on the major labels would never give an inch to a Negro woman playing race music.”
It’s the late 1970s, and ex-Pentecostal Black female electric guitarist Rory Tharpe navigates the cutthroat world of corporate rock, dive bars and dusk-to-dawn recording sessions as she travels the nation in a dilapidated tour bus with her bickering, boozing all-male band. Much-imitated and little-credited, Rory is in a midlife tailspin when she’s asked to tour with international superstar Jude Justis, a white woman “blues” singer who built a turbulent mega-platinum career out of stealing from black musicians. Frustrated by the racism and sexism of the rock boys club, Rory warily joins forces with Jude then takes a detour through the painful past she shares with childhood nemesis Divinity Mason, an unorthodox pastor at the helm of budding mega church empire Revivals, Inc.
A homage to maverick guitarist Rosetta Tharpe, Rock ‘N’ Roll Heretic is a bracing look at the power politics, heartbreak and hypocrisy confronting a queer black woman visionary at the intersection of music and commerce, faith and heresy in a segregated music industry forged that eats its black artists.
