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Making Our Own Kind of Music: The History and Legacy of the Women’s Music Movement

Song About Georgia

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Impact
“Women’s music in general didn’t set out to accomplish something. It was the expression of the culture we were creating … It was our sustenance. We didn’t do that for the outside world. We did it for ourselves. It was our creativity. It was sharing with each other. What the world got was to see that women could perform on a level that was high quality, exciting and fun.” - Kristan Aspen¹

Women’s music artists, producers, record labels, and fans built a unique lesbian feminist culture that sustained women economically, emotionally, and spiritually within a discriminatory society for decades. The movement preserved a lesbian feminist movement in decline throughout the 1980s, by making lesbian voices visible and raising funds for rape crisis centers, the women’s health movement, and women’s bookstores. In the 1990s, women were still recording lesbian feminist anthems such as Jamie Anderson's "When They Know Who We Are" and Judy Fjell's "Where Are You Standing," recorded in protest of repressive legislation advocated by the Oregon Citizens Alliance. ²

By the 1990s, festival attendance declined as lesbian artists like Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls became mainstream stars, and young lesbians both saw themselves in mainstream pop culture and created their own music through the burgeoning riot grrrl movement, which reflected their “third wave” queer feminist politics.³ Women’s music provided the foundations for this new movement, by making women musicians visible and valuable.⁴ The riot grrrl movement emphasized disrupting the status quo through do-it-yourself music, art, and activism. As a music movement that was largely middle class white women, this punk feminist movement also struggled with issues of racism and lack of inclusion.⁵ Yet women of color were quite active in riot grrrl performing in bands and producing zines such as GUNK and Bamboo Girl. Just as many Women’s Music Movement leaders were eager to address bigotry through workshops, so too did riot grrrl organizers address racism in their lyrics, host anti-racism workshops, and protest imperialist policies. While criticism by young feminists of their foremothers is necessary to grow, their accomplishments and interventions nevertheless illustrate a long tradition of musical opposition to patriarchy, homophobia, and injustice. Meanwhile, women's music artists featured throughout this exhibit, from Cris Williamson to Dianne Davidson continue to write new songs and perform today.

1 Bonnie Morris, “Olivia Records: The Production of a Movement,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no. 3 (2015): 233.
2 Ibid. 11. Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Women's Culture and Lesbian Feminist Activism: A Reconsideration of Cultural Feminism. Signs 19 (autumn 1993) 32-61. Judy Fjell, Email to author, July 12, 2021.
3 Jamie Anderson, An Army of Lovers (Bella Books, 2019). 228.
4 Bonnie Morris, “Olivia Records: The Production of a Movement,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19, no. 3 (2015): 232.
5. Nguyen, Mimi Thi. “Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 22, no. 2–3 (2012): 174-180.