Iconic cellist Yo-Yo Ma worked with drag queen & trans singer on a new song to give hope

Environmentalist, outdoor equity activist, and drag performer Pattie Gonia has teamed with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and trans singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson for her new song about climate justice.

Released on Monday, “Won’t Give Up” features vocals from both Pattie Gonia and Christopherson, with Ma playing cello. The trio shot a video for the song in Alaska, featuring footage of melting glaciers and sheets of ice falling into the sea. According to a note accompanying the video on YouTube, the three artists came together to co-write a song “about not giving up on this planet and not giving up on each other.”

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“Yo-Yo reached out to me to collaborate on his ongoing environmental project ‘Our Common Nature,’” Pattie Gonia told Broadway World. “One of Yo-Yo Ma’s planned activations was in Alaska where I had been planning this environmental song project. We decided to collaborate on each other’s projects and reached out to Quinn as well as they’re a queer musician and native to Alaska and the rest is history.”

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“While us three come from different artistic spaces, we all share a common love for people and the planet,” she added.

Christopherson, who is of Iñupiaq and Ahtna Athabascan descent, explained that the song started out as a goodbye to glaciers threatened by climate change but quickly evolved. “Creating this work activated more of a fight in me immediately, and that feels powerful,” he said.

“Alaska is an incredible part of the planet and an amazing community. I was deeply moved by my time there,” Ma said. “I felt grief when I saw our glaciers receding and when I heard about the effects of melting permafrost — but I also left Alaska full of hope.”

Pattie Gonia, Ma, and Christopherson previewed “Won’t Give Up” in September, performing the song live during a climate change workshop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As Alaska Public Media reported last month, the program was presented in partnership with Ma’s Our Common Nature initiative. Ma’s website describes the initiative as “a cultural journey, a celebration of the ways nature can reinvigorate the human experiment, reuniting us in pursuit of a common future.”

Pattie Gonia made headlines earlier this year after her Pride Month partnership with outdoor brand The North Face drew attacks from anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused the brand of “sexually targeting children,” while Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) described LGBTQ+ people as “degenerates” in a social media post slamming the collaboration.

The North Face defended Pattie Gonia and the brand’s “Summer of Pride” campaign, writing in a statement that it “has always believed the outdoors should be a welcoming, equitable, and safe place for all.”

“We are honored and grateful to support partners like Pattie Gonia who help make this vision a reality,” the statement continued. “Creating community and belonging in the outdoors is a core part of our values and is needed now more than ever. We stand with those who support our vision for a more inclusive outdoor industry.”

Making outdoor pursuits accessible to queer and BIPOC people and creating a more diverse environmentalist movement is key to Pattie Gonia’s persona and mission. “Growing up, I loved nature. I loved being a little queer kid exploring the outdoors,” she told ABC News in September. “I think that queerness is everywhere in nature.”

“I think, actually, there’s a lot of queer people that are running to the environmental movement,” she said. “I want a climate movement that’s more diverse.”

Last year, she co-founded Outdoorist Oath, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering inclusion for underrepresented groups in the outdoor community. And in September, she produced an environmentalist-themed drag showcase in New York City during Climate Week.

Back in 2021, she explained her work and activism to Atomos. “The common goal for all of my collaborators or the Pattie community is to get outside and get connected to nature,” she said. “’Cause if you can’t get connected to it, how are you going to advocate for it? Oftentimes, we find ourselves saying, We must act on climate now. No, we have to connect to climate now so that we can act on it from a place of connection and love—because we fight for what we love.”