For The Gworls's Asanni Armon Wants You to Party With a Purpose

Asanni Armon remembers when queer parties for people of color, like the now defunct Femmepremacy, had sliding scale tickets. 

But things are different now, Armon said. "Prices for parties have gotten absurd," she said.

Armon, a rapper and organizer originally from Atlanta, moved to New York City in 2017. Today, the venues she would go to at that time for events catering to Black queer and trans partiers have either closed, as in the case of Basquiat's Bottle, or, she noted, now have largely a straight, cis crowd. 

But Armon is still committed to creating spaces for Black queer and trans New Yorkers. For The Gworls, a party-throwing collective and mutual aid group for Black trans femmes that Armon founded in 2019, when a friend of hers was threatened with eviction, is still going strong. (And tickets are still cheap.)

These days, Armon is also focused on making music, not just throwing parties. In 2022, Armon and Sergio Edgardo Rivera launched the record label Siren Empire, which released Armon's debut solo project in March, full of silky rapping over stomping beats.

Music, she said, has always been her first love: "I was always working on music behind the scenes, whether I was writing for myself or writing for someone else."

What unites all of Armon's various projects is a devotion to mutual aid. Later this year, she said she's planning to transition back to organizing mutual aid efforts and merge the operations of the record label with her work to keep Black trans New Yorkers housed. "I think that by virtue of who I am and the work that I do with both of them, they kind of always feed into one another," she said, referring to music and mutual aid. 

In her events, she's always trying to make accessibility for Black trans partygoers the priority. "If you sell tickets, and the venue takes the bar, that's just like every other party, right? I kind of don't like that model, especially for people who don't have the money," she told me. 

I asked Armon for their recommendations for parties she thinks are doing things right: