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• 1 media/MWMF_Map-1977.jpeg 2021-06-16T16:23:49-07:00 Festivals 64 image_header 2021-07-14T13:08:38-07:00
  Festival culture was particularly significant to the Women’s Music Movement because it allowed marginalized lesbians and feminists to build empowering spaces. Mainstream commentators associated women’s music with lesbian identity, although not all listeners were lesbians. Yet, this perception created significant obstacles to the genre’s success. Performers struggled to find venues, because while movement participants argued women-only concerts created safe spaces, mainstream venues claimed this practice was discriminatory. As a result, the movement built do-it-yourself music festivals which became an integral part of its legacy.
  
  
  
  Women’s music festivals became spaces where women, particularly closeted lesbians, could be themselves and meet their peers.  In 1974, Kristen Lems, outraged by the male exclusivity of local folk festivals, produced her own women’s folk festival, which became the National Women’s Music Festival. It was open to men, but largely lesbian, and was the first festival to be covered by mainstream press, from Rolling Stone to Ms. magazine. One year later, Lisa and Kristy Vogel,  brought the energy of women’s music events on the East Coast closer to home by producing the first Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Without prior experience in event producing, they turned a three-day event into an annual tradition that lasted for 40 years.¹
  
  
  Festivals were a safe haven where women could celebrate the music, their womanhood, and their feelings. Sharon Washington of the Washington Sisters argued that the purpose of these festivals and this movement was not to “get rich,”  but rather “the connection with women’s energy is what drew us to this industry and continues to fuel us emotionally.”²
  
  In the 1980s, festivals expanded across the country.In addition to their traditional locations, such as the West Coast Women’s Music and Cultural Festival in Northern California, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, or the National Women’s Music Festival at the University of Illinois, women’s music producers and fans wanted to take festivals to urban areas and the South. For example, Sisterfire (first held in 1982) was a family-oriented, accessible, and multi-cultural festival held in Washington D.C. In 1984, Robin Tyler’s Southern Women’s Music and Comedy Festival made space for 2000 women in White County, Georgia. Two women who attended that festival felt so affirmed and transformed by their experiences there that they started the Gulf Coast Women’s Festival in 1989. International artists such as Canadian singer songwriter Lucie Blue Tremblay performed at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and other events. Tremblay's 1986 hit So Lucky was released on Olivia Records.³
  
  
  
  Festivals both celebrated women’s music and prefigured a new women’s culture. Although the initial leaders of the Women’s Music Movement were largely folk or rock musicians, the movement soon included jazz, pop, classical, and blues artists. Festivals reflected this variety and also often included  comedy, dance, and other forms of theater in their setlists. For example, the West Coast Women’s Music and Cultural (later Comedy) Festival and the Southern Women’s Music and Comedy Festival both  included comedians like Robin Tyler, Linda Moakes, Danitra Vance, and Kate Clinton.⁴
  
  
  They were also spaces of incredible diversity, where women of numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, generations, and abilities congregated to play and listen to music. Festivals broke down barriers between women and often radicalized them. These spaces engendered consciousness raising, learning, and intersectional feminist organizing.⁵
  
  The festivals were also groundbreaking in setting the standard for accessibility and inclusion. Music festival founders Lisa and Kristy Vogel “didn’t want to exclude any women” and adopted the sliding scale for ticket purchases, ensured the inclusion of American Sign Language translators accompanying performers, and provided camping accommodations for those who needed assistance, and women with disabilities. They also provided childcare services, culture-centered sites like Shabbat dinners, Women of Color tents, and health care services. ⁶
  
  
  
  However, festivals also faced numerous physical and financial challenges. Landowners often refused to lend their land to festival organizers, citing discrimination against men. Organizers established groups of women sentinels to guard festival perimeters against homophobic and misogynistic local citizens and police.⁷ For example, at the first Southern Women’s Music and Comedy Festival, its organizers first warned the Sheriff’s office that if the local Klan chapter tried to interfere, the organizers would not control the armed women attending. Festivals are also inherently costly, and women often invested their entire life savings into festivals, usually barely breaking even or even going into debt despite the event's popularity.. For example, in 1982 Robin Tyler lost $50,000 when the third annual West Coast Women's Music and Comedy Festival was boycotted.
  
  Despite these obstacles, the determined movement built a prolific legacy of (largely) lesbian festival culture. Festivals have been central to the ongoing and enduring success of women’s music. By 1987, the resource directory Women’s Music Plus listed over 100 venues and producers and 14 women’s music festivals.⁸ Indeed, while much of the explosive growth of Women's Music occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, Women's Music and its festival culture continue to live on. The movement's most famous festival, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, lasted from 1975 to 2015, and the Midwest Wimmin’s Festival in the Ozarks of Missouri, the Ohio Lesbian Festival, and various others are still ongoing.
  Women's Music Festivals Across the U.S.
  The Sacramento Festival
  The Amazon Music Party
  Midwest Wimmin's Festival
  San Diego Women's Music Festival
  Boston Women's Music Festival
  The National Women's Music Festival
  The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
  Sisterspace Weekend
  The Pacific Northwest Women's Music Festival
  The Long Island Women's Music Festival
  West Coast Women's Music and Cultural Festival
  Sisterfire
  Southern Women's Music and Comedy Festival
  Campfest Festival in New Jersey (later in Pennsylvania)
  Ohio Lesbian Festival
  East Coast Lesbian Festival
  
  
   

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  1.  Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002
  2. Jamie Anderson, An Army of Lovers (Bella Books, 2019). 133. 
  3. Dresden-Rader, George (1 August 2006), "Lucie Blue Tremblay and the Breast Exam Project", Santa Fe Arts and Culture Magazine,
  4. Bonnie Morris, “Olivia Records: The Production of a Movement,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no. 3 (2015): 302.
  5. Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002; Jamie Anderson, An Army of Lovers (Bella Books, 2019). 116.
  6. Anderson, 122.
  7. Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002
  8. Anderson, 85.