Sunday (Oct. 11) was National Coming Day, and to commemorate the holiday, Vampire Weekend's eclectic keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij shared the story of how he publicly came out as gay to his fans via Instagram.
In the post, which mentions the 2009 Rolling Stone feature that had originally revealed the news of his orientation, he cites Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste as his inspiration for coming out, being that the singer had already made his own sexual preference public knowledge at the time and continues to be quite open about it.
Batmanglij not only discussed his personal experience with deciding to come out, despite his current lack of justification for doing so, as well as how he's pleased with the social progress that the gay community has made since then. If artists like Rostam continue to share their stories in a similar courageous fashion, there's only more progress to be made in that realm.
The photo's caption reads:
"Here is a pic of me and @edroste from 2009. I met Ed when our bands were both playing a festival somewhere in Europe earlier that year. At that point I was out to friends and family but not out yet in press. Ed was someone who had always been out. Before I ever heard Grizzly Bear’s music I had read a super-candid interview w him in Butt Magazine. I was like, “who is this guy, he JDGAF!” (And that is still true to this day.) But Ed’s candor inspired me. Having him as a friend bolstered my courage to come out in press—something I had always intended to do.
In October of 2009 Josh Eells profiled VW for Rolling Stone; it was the first time someone wanted to write an article about our lives. And it was also the first time someone had been able to hear Diplomat’s Son from Contra, —a song I had started on my own w the intention of telling a gay story. The timing felt right and I felt I could trust Josh, so in a phone interview with him I talked about being gay with a journalist for the first time.
The album and the article wouldn’t come out for another two and a half months and I’m pretty sure this picture was taken somewhere in that period. It was a strange time in my life.
looking back on things, it felt so important to have ‘reasons’ to come out. but in fact, what I’d really like to do is to work towards living in a world where people don’t feel they need ‘reasons’ to come out. and I think in the last six years I’ve felt this change in the world around me and I hope to feel more of it. all of which is to say #happycomingoutday"
A photo posted by Rostam Batmanglij (@matsor) on Oct 11, 2015 at 11:44pm PDT
Vampire Weekend's 2013 album Modern Vampires of the City won a Grammy in 2014 for Best Alternative Music Album. If you're looking for a new album, however, you're going to have to be pretty patient as frontman Ezra Koenig recently mentioned that the band has barely entered the studio.
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