Rainbow Soul: A Chosen Lineage of Black Queer Music, Memory, and Becoming

Rainbow Soul: A Chosen Lineage of Black Queer Music, Memory, and Becoming is a memoir-driven exploration of Black queer music, cultural memory, resilience, and the communities we build to survive and thrive.

Author C. Aigner “Anye Elite” Ellis moves between cultural history and personal testimony to trace a chosen lineage connecting generations of Black queer artists, innovators, organizers, and dreamers. From Ma Rainey, Little Richard, Sylvester, Frankie Knuckles, and other cultural architects to Ellis’s own journey through Philadelphia, Daytona Beach, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs, Rainbow Soul asks what we inherit—and what we are responsible for building next.

Across three interconnected parts, the book explores:

• The Sound — Black Queer Music as Lineage: How Black queer artists helped shape blues, rock and roll, disco, house, hip-hop, nightlife, and American popular culture.
• The Soul — A Story of Resilience: A deeply personal memoir of family, faith, identity, trauma, music, survival, and becoming.
• The City — Building What Holds Us: Lessons about chosen family, mentorship, collaboration, cultural institutions, entrepreneurship, and creating structures that allow future generations to flourish.

Rainbow Soul is not simply a music history or a conventional memoir. Ellis describes it as a memoir-driven, “ethnomusicological-ish” exploration informed by research, cultural criticism, and lived experience. 

At its heart, the book is about inheritance: what travels through music, memory, chosen family, mentorship, struggle, faith, and example—and how those inheritances can become a foundation for something new.

For readers interested in Black history, LGBTQ+ history, music, memoir, cultural criticism, identity, faith, community building, and the power of chosen lineage.