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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971
1971-06-04 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 10
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anybody know a female bass player? There's a record album that I'm waiting to hear--I'm imagining it cause it hasn't come out yet. It will be songs of love and revolutionary feminism by the best musical-lesbian group that ever was. It will be written, sung, played, arranged, recorded, engineered, produced and distributed by women. It will be dancing music; it will be a a total high for us; it will be incomprehensible to men. It will help bring all the women-identified musicians out of the woodwork. I feel it's coming; the direction is shown by women's music in the last few years... ...I'm thinking of what music brought me out of the woodwork to where I am with several other sisters, getting a band together. Where'd we get the idea that we could do it? ...There's music drifting through my head: "I can't go back there any more/you know my keys don't fit the door/ you know my thoughts don't fit the man/ they never can, they never can..." Joni Mitchell--her first album was an inspiration, a source of finding strength; she had it all together in herself--composer, arranger, performer--she even did the artwork on the jacket. Total effect. I though, sure, I knew women could do this and now they're being allowed to. That sense of being in control comes through the music of some really strong women...not all...like I really love the sound of Judy Collins' "Wildflowers", but I feel her being crowded by a dozen arrangers, instrumentalists, directors--she's being handled, put on a pedestal and it's not her show. Control...is Laura Nyro, stopping, starting, wailing and crashing on the piano as she feels like it...music follows the unsteady rhythm of her breathing. Sometimes I can't distinguish the words but her feeling comes through clearly and I don't miss the sense of it. From Nyro I've picked up on using a word for its sound more than just its meaning...in the course of a song she can change the meaning of a word. The powerful feeling: Nina Simone has really got it down. When she plays there is no wondering who runs it. I saw her once, years ago, but I know that feeling; no ambiguity, no explanations, like she's saying yeah, you heard me right, you have to handle how you feel about that. I do not think I'd ever felt a woman's consciousness of herself that strongly; her self-awareness as female, as black, as someone who would be listened to. Being listened to is this incredible breakthrough. Some people have a hard time getting those two things together: female musician--like you have to be one or the other. Some recognition. Like when I played blues harp in a coffeehouse jam session and a man came up to me with "uh, gee I never saw a chick who could play harmonica before." He was so impressed. I was so disgusted. Of course women can. The only big group I've heard with a female harp player, though, it Ten Wheel Drive: Genya Ravan, a strong-voiced woman hanging in there with nine male instrumentalists. What does a woman have to go through? The professional music world is so dehumanizing, and since women are dehumanized in so many contexts, it's doubly hard. Melanie spells it out in a song I really dig, called "Tuning My Guitar": "You stand behind my curtain and hope I'll be a star/ You say get out and sell them/ but selling's not my aim/ I'm gonna sing the life I'm living/ and try and ease the pain". Alot of Melanie's songs are written out of pain, especially her last album, "The Good Book"...the pain of saying goodbye, the pain of lost childhood, the pain of misunderstanding. Women sing about their feelings in real, unexaggerated images while men seem to look for stereotypes. I always felt those "my woman left so I'll kill my- [hand drawn figure - music cell?] self" songs to be phony--like men were saying how they thought they should feel, going to extremes. Some songs that really stay with me are those which question our feelings and reactions: this doesn't happen oftem in music because the tendency is to simplify ideas in short phrases. The questioning songs really make me think--you know how a line or two will run through your head all day. A big discovery in this was an album by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys called "Evergreen Vol. II". Remember "You and I travel to the beat of a different drum?" Instead of the usual romantic bullshit about lifelong love affairs, Linda ends it "So long I'll be leavin'/ and I see no sense in crying' and grievin'/ We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me." Another song centers around the line "Is it true that there's just one for one like I've been told?" The song "New Hard Times", which doesn't deal with love at all seems to be addressed to aging liberals: "When eating comes to easy/ Nothing makes you think/ There's too much time to sun yourself/ and too much wine to drink." Linda Ronstadt has a clear, really feeling voice. Her music is the country western sound with a rock rhythm. I used to hate country music; what turned me around was her record called "Hand Sown/Home Grown". (I'm not usually up for plugging records but Ronstadt isn't very well known and we need to hear more of her kind of vibrations.) Women's music is changing, women's music [words to right of hand drawn figure] Music cell is a refuge--complete refuge from all male music. The cell is into women's music. Everything we do seriously, is written by women, for women, and preferably, increasingly about women. Most established music is written about love and it is more important for us to deal with women we are loving, or trying to love, (including ourselves) than the man that "done us wrong" or that we're "going to get" (even not for any loving purpose). Blatant, harsh "cock rock" is not the only kind of male music. (Songs about the past...dealings with men....message songs directed to men...waste of time..) When we practice we do some songs that are written by men and some by women that do not deal with woman-identified-woman politics. This is a source of hassle and frustration, but as our skill improves and the number of worthwhile songs that we all know increases, this will change. Most of our best woman songs have been written by members of the cell. As I get more and more into making women's music my tolerance for other music decreases. I still listen to everything from Fanny to the Rolling Stones, but not without definitely increasing feelings of frustration and contradiction. Music cell is definitely involved in consciousness-raising--constant analyzation of our music. [hand drawn witting woman] has changed my head and my music. The latest in a series of highs are Carole King coming into full view--we heard her songs for years and now that she's recording it sort of brings it together; and the appearance of an all female rock band from Berkely, four women who call themselves "Fanny", have one album out and another coming soon. I feel these people are the beginning of a rush of women musicians whose presence will become regular, enduring force in our culture. Our voice is growing stronger. LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION
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anybody know a female bass player? There's a record album that I'm waiting to hear--I'm imagining it cause it hasn't come out yet. It will be songs of love and revolutionary feminism by the best musical-lesbian group that ever was. It will be written, sung, played, arranged, recorded, engineered, produced and distributed by women. It will be dancing music; it will be a a total high for us; it will be incomprehensible to men. It will help bring all the women-identified musicians out of the woodwork. I feel it's coming; the direction is shown by women's music in the last few years... ...I'm thinking of what music brought me out of the woodwork to where I am with several other sisters, getting a band together. Where'd we get the idea that we could do it? ...There's music drifting through my head: "I can't go back there any more/you know my keys don't fit the door/ you know my thoughts don't fit the man/ they never can, they never can..." Joni Mitchell--her first album was an inspiration, a source of finding strength; she had it all together in herself--composer, arranger, performer--she even did the artwork on the jacket. Total effect. I though, sure, I knew women could do this and now they're being allowed to. That sense of being in control comes through the music of some really strong women...not all...like I really love the sound of Judy Collins' "Wildflowers", but I feel her being crowded by a dozen arrangers, instrumentalists, directors--she's being handled, put on a pedestal and it's not her show. Control...is Laura Nyro, stopping, starting, wailing and crashing on the piano as she feels like it...music follows the unsteady rhythm of her breathing. Sometimes I can't distinguish the words but her feeling comes through clearly and I don't miss the sense of it. From Nyro I've picked up on using a word for its sound more than just its meaning...in the course of a song she can change the meaning of a word. The powerful feeling: Nina Simone has really got it down. When she plays there is no wondering who runs it. I saw her once, years ago, but I know that feeling; no ambiguity, no explanations, like she's saying yeah, you heard me right, you have to handle how you feel about that. I do not think I'd ever felt a woman's consciousness of herself that strongly; her self-awareness as female, as black, as someone who would be listened to. Being listened to is this incredible breakthrough. Some people have a hard time getting those two things together: female musician--like you have to be one or the other. Some recognition. Like when I played blues harp in a coffeehouse jam session and a man came up to me with "uh, gee I never saw a chick who could play harmonica before." He was so impressed. I was so disgusted. Of course women can. The only big group I've heard with a female harp player, though, it Ten Wheel Drive: Genya Ravan, a strong-voiced woman hanging in there with nine male instrumentalists. What does a woman have to go through? The professional music world is so dehumanizing, and since women are dehumanized in so many contexts, it's doubly hard. Melanie spells it out in a song I really dig, called "Tuning My Guitar": "You stand behind my curtain and hope I'll be a star/ You say get out and sell them/ but selling's not my aim/ I'm gonna sing the life I'm living/ and try and ease the pain". Alot of Melanie's songs are written out of pain, especially her last album, "The Good Book"...the pain of saying goodbye, the pain of lost childhood, the pain of misunderstanding. Women sing about their feelings in real, unexaggerated images while men seem to look for stereotypes. I always felt those "my woman left so I'll kill my- [hand drawn figure - music cell?] self" songs to be phony--like men were saying how they thought they should feel, going to extremes. Some songs that really stay with me are those which question our feelings and reactions: this doesn't happen oftem in music because the tendency is to simplify ideas in short phrases. The questioning songs really make me think--you know how a line or two will run through your head all day. A big discovery in this was an album by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys called "Evergreen Vol. II". Remember "You and I travel to the beat of a different drum?" Instead of the usual romantic bullshit about lifelong love affairs, Linda ends it "So long I'll be leavin'/ and I see no sense in crying' and grievin'/ We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me." Another song centers around the line "Is it true that there's just one for one like I've been told?" The song "New Hard Times", which doesn't deal with love at all seems to be addressed to aging liberals: "When eating comes to easy/ Nothing makes you think/ There's too much time to sun yourself/ and too much wine to drink." Linda Ronstadt has a clear, really feeling voice. Her music is the country western sound with a rock rhythm. I used to hate country music; what turned me around was her record called "Hand Sown/Home Grown". (I'm not usually up for plugging records but Ronstadt isn't very well known and we need to hear more of her kind of vibrations.) Women's music is changing, women's music [words to right of hand drawn figure] Music cell is a refuge--complete refuge from all male music. The cell is into women's music. Everything we do seriously, is written by women, for women, and preferably, increasingly about women. Most established music is written about love and it is more important for us to deal with women we are loving, or trying to love, (including ourselves) than the man that "done us wrong" or that we're "going to get" (even not for any loving purpose). Blatant, harsh "cock rock" is not the only kind of male music. (Songs about the past...dealings with men....message songs directed to men...waste of time..) When we practice we do some songs that are written by men and some by women that do not deal with woman-identified-woman politics. This is a source of hassle and frustration, but as our skill improves and the number of worthwhile songs that we all know increases, this will change. Most of our best woman songs have been written by members of the cell. As I get more and more into making women's music my tolerance for other music decreases. I still listen to everything from Fanny to the Rolling Stones, but not without definitely increasing feelings of frustration and contradiction. Music cell is definitely involved in consciousness-raising--constant analyzation of our music. [hand drawn witting woman] has changed my head and my music. The latest in a series of highs are Carole King coming into full view--we heard her songs for years and now that she's recording it sort of brings it together; and the appearance of an all female rock band from Berkely, four women who call themselves "Fanny", have one album out and another coming soon. I feel these people are the beginning of a rush of women musicians whose presence will become regular, enduring force in our culture. Our voice is growing stronger. LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION FEMALE CULTURE/ LESBIAN NATION
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