Joy of Music: Feminist Revue

Feminist music expresses the pulse and range of our fascinating movement. Nothing demonstrates this better than the Feminist Music Extravaganza aired by Joy of Resistance Multicultural Feminist Radio on WBAI in New York on January 1, 2009. The show broadcast a splendid collection of music from the 1960s on.

Fortunately for those who couldn't or didn't tune in at the time, the show is archived online and can be downloaded (see links below).

Joy of Resistance, hosted by Fran Luck and Maretta Short, airs on the first Thursday of every month. Its hot new year's show offered a wide ranging musical chronicle of "feminist" or "proto-feminist" songs with many unexpected and surprising selections in rock to rhythm and blues, punk, pop, folk, rap and more.

"Starting in the sixties and seventies in the U.S., a torrent of songs poured forth from women, expressing their lives and their aspirations as the political momentum of the women's liberation movement opened up space for these expressions," says co-host Luck at the outset.

She later wrote in an email:

Fifty-five minutes is hardly enough time to do more than present a small sampling of feminist and feminist-inspired music, so we had to make some tough decisions. We chose songs that illustrated a) the broad range of styles in which women have written songs of our struggles against male supremacy (folk, rock, R & B, punk, calypso, show tunes and much more), b) the range of issues in women’s lives that have been subjects of such music, and c) the history of the movement itself. Some songs beat out others just because they were our favorites and we wanted to share them–and have them lift us and carry us into the new year with renewed energy.... We could have created at least three more shows of feminist music....

The exceptional chronology begins with an homage to the Civil Rights Movement and then it rolls on. The playlist goes like this:

Rutha Harris & the SNCC Freedom Singers - We Shall Not Be Moved

Leslie Gore - "You Don't Own Me"
Aretha Franklin - "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"
The New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band - “Abortion Song"
Sandy Rapp w/voice of Bella Abzug - "Remember Rose"
Dore Previn - "Did Jesus have a Baby Sister?"
Queen Latifah - "U.N.I.T.Y"
Rebel Voices - "Daycare"
Jolie Richman - "Suffer to be Beautiful"
Le Tigre - "FYR" (Fifty Years of Ridicule)
Nina Simone - "Pirate Jenny"
Sweet Honey in the Rock - "Soundbite from Beijing" (The Women are Rising).

Near the end of the show, co-host Short makes an especially appropriate comment: "All the movement in our country has always been met with music to go along with it ... So folks, start building a movement through your music."

To listen to or download the show, go HERE or HERE.

Posted by Cindy Cooper

pictured above: Cover of Nina Simone album with "Pirate Jenny"