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

Sweet Honey in the Rock Performance Photo

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Beginnings
“We had no role models” - June Millington¹

American feminists of the early 1970s built the women’s music movement to fulfill their need to express and see themselves outside of the confines of male-dominated and often misogynistic rock music. Recording contracts for female musicians were incredibly rare, and the presence of women in sound engineering, management, and production and distribution was practically unheard of.

Fanny was one of the few female rock bands with a recording contract, and the first to release an album on a major label (Warner Brothers). June Millington (who remains famous in Women's Music as both artist and producer) and her sister Jean Millington founded the band and were joined by Alice de Buhr and Nickey Barclay. They were a self-sustaining band and earned critical and commercial popularity in the United States and Europe.² The group formed in 1969, but broke up in 1975. Unlike many other women’s music groups of the era, they rejected ultra-feminine styles and expectations and instead emphasized their musical talent. Fanny inspired women across the country to pick up a guitar or some drumsticks and make their own music.

In 1970, Naomi Weisstein founded the Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band, an arm of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (CWLU), in response to the misogyny of male rock music.³ The band’s music envisioned a utopian world without hierarchy and oppression, fueled by CWLU’s principles of socialist feminism, service and direct action. They were defiantly political, interactive with their audiences, and a symbol of feminist power.⁴ Their first big release was the LP Mountain Moving Day, produced with the New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band in 1972, which featured anthems like “Mountain Moving Day,” “Sister Witch,” and “Abortion Song.” The same year, Jewish lesbian Maxine Feldman released her iconic single “Angry Atthis.” Feldmen described the detrimental emotional impact of the closet and asserted that she was “no longer afraid of being who I am.” Feldman's music still resonates with women today. In 2005 lesbian rhythm and blues artist Nedra Johnson recorded her own version of Amazon in honor of Feldman.⁵

In 1973 the growing women’s music movement coalesced, with the release of Alix Dobkin’s LP Lavender Jane Loves Women, the first performance of Sweet Honey in the Rock at Howard University, and the founding of Olivia Records in Washington D.C. Olivia was born from the Washington D.C based lesbian separatist Furies collective. Charlotte Bunch, Joan Biren, Rita Mae Brown, Meg Christian and Ginny Berson dared to create, produce and engineer their own music. They intended to “provide large numbers of women with access to the recording industry” because they believed “that women must become as independent as possible from the male-supremacist economic system, and in order to do that we must provide jobs for each other at living wages.” ⁶

Thus began a movement that fought oppression by creating economic stability, and empowering women to grow spiritually and creatively in a patriarchal, homophobic, and racist society.
[1] Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002.
[2] Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002.
[3] Bonnie Morris, “‘Anyone Can Be a Lesbian’ The Women’s Music Audience and Lesbian Politics,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 5:4, 95.
[4] Dee Mosbacher, Radical Harmonies, Documentary, 2002.
[5] Maxine Feldman, “Angry Atthis,” recorded 1972, Harrison and Tyler Productions. Hayes, Eileen M. (February 26, 2010). Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0252035142.
[6] Olivia Records, “Olivia,” Paid My Dues (1974), http://queermusicheritage.com/olivia7.html.