Womyn's music (Long and _Bitchy_)

[katefans@world.std.com (Chris'n'Vickie of Kansas City)]

      (Vickie here. I posted this a week ago and it seems to have
       gone into La-La mode. Here it is again. If this appears
       twice please bestow big large huge amounts of forgivness
       upon my soul which will surely rot in hell.)

Vickie here. Catch up time:

In article something or other at some point in the recent past Ed writes:

>Never for Ever_     EMI 46360 (1980)  [Actually, both this album and
      _Lionheart_ were released in the United States in 1983 or 84, 
      despite the copyright dates.  Before then, these two albums were
      available only through import.]
>The Dreaming_       EMI 46361 (1982) [This album was released in the US
      in 1984.]
        ? ^^^^?

1984? This can't be right. I bought my EMI America copy shortly after it
was released in Nov. 1982 and I still have that worn, torn, well-used,
well-loved, well-listened to, much handled, much loaned (after buying
another, of course), much revered etc, etc, etc.....copy. It was the
first album to be released in the United States since The Kick Inside.
Lionheart & Never for Ever were released (FINALLY!!!!!!!) in 1984. The
promotional campaign "Looking Back To See Ahead" was all set up for
the release of those two albums.

                ----------------------------

>Umm...  Can someone enlighten me as to what "Womyn's Music" is?

>- Eo

Chris here, Vickie's letting me go first because everytime she thinks
about "Womyn's Music" she has a fit and can't type. Basically is it music
played, sung, written, produced, recorded, sold by, and sold to 
separatist feminists. Olivia Records is an example: it's artist roster
is exclusivly female and it's sold only in feminist bookstores, though
I've been told that they are looking to expand to gay men and regular
distribution. The theory at work here is that these "womyn" have been
rejected by the sexist record companies and had to form their own in
order to get their music out. Fact is, record companies sign, for better
or worse, what they think will sell. Most of the artists on Olivia are
more concerned with having the correct political view (i.e. porn. degrades
women except for lesbian "erotica", etc.) than with musical ability,
songwriting, singing or anything other than preaching to the converted.
Record companies do not care if you are gay, straight or morrisey of the
smiths, they just want to sell records. When Tracy Chapman had a surprise
hit every record company scurried around looking for sensitive female
singer-songwriters.

*************************** Flame on ***************************************
 The thing I have against separatist feminists is that I believe the are are
anti-equality. One _cannot_ be both separate _and_ equal, one negates the
other. I take as a personal affront _anyone_ making assumptions about
me based on my sex, color of skin, habits, etc.
 My system to determine if a statement is sexist or racist is simple:
  If "A" say's a thing about "B", reverse the statement. If the reverse
sounds sexist or racist, than the original statement must be sexist or racist. 
  A woman saying all men are bastards is the same as a man saying all women
are bitches.
  A black calling all whites evil (Louis Farrakahan) is the same as a 
white calling all blacks evil (David Duke).
  I used to consider myself a feminist until that word was taken over by
separatists. 

            ********************************************

Vickie here: ditto....                IMHO  IMHO  IMHO what follows:
                                              
          Reading what Chris just wrote has got me going

   I agree with all that. Also, "Womyn's music" is just plain bad. Nothing
is as important as the "message". I've heard major large amounts of womyn's
music and there are no artists that stand out as being original, innovative,
imaginative, artistic, clever, fanciful, poetical, creative, inventive,
or talented (I got out my thesaurus for that one). Some womyn musicians are
better than others but even they aren't any better than competent. The 
womyn who ARE good start getting attention from a non-womyn segment of
the population and, once that happens, they aren't "womyn" anymore. Get it?
Uh...Well, for instance, Phranc used to be a Womyn but once she started
selling to regular kind of folks like you & me, they disowned her and
she's so cool, she doesn't give a damn! She bills herself as a "typical
all-american jewish lesbian folk singer" and anyone who wants to listen
in on any of her stories as she sings them--well, it's OK by her. She's
a human being first and a jewish lesbian folk singer second. Phranc was
interviewed by a local feminist newsletter and was taken to task for
changing record companies, from a womyn's label to a major label (Island).
Phranc was honest and said that she wanted a broader audience to listen
to her music and decide if they would enjoy it or not. Womyn's record
labels only want to sell to womyn. Phranc is too good to moulder in a 
seperatist ghetto. More power to her.
 
                     --------------------------   
                     
    Some strange things & exceptions:

Womyn are usually, but not always, lesbians. One of my best friends
is a lesbian and she hates womyn's music and the womyn's philosophy.
She has GREAT taste in music and probably has more records *by females*
than I do (and I have hundreds-at least seven hundred plus a few 
hundred cassettes & over two hundred CDs.) Uh, well, maybe she doesn't have
more, but she has a LOT too, and nary a feminist musician in the bunch.
We both went through a phase where we really, REALLY tried to understand
and like womyn's music. Sometimes repeated listenings of a certain type
of music will have postitive effect once the music becomes familiar and
we get more in tune with it. Kate, bluegrass, opera, Bulgarian,
Albanian, whatever, can be an aquired taste, it just takes getting used
to. Well, repeated listenings of womyn's music just gets more and more
nauseating. There's simply nothing there. The music is bland, and the
lyrics are simply musical billboards. Placards with instrumentation.
That's harsh, but so's their music. I hate mediocrity in any type of 
music and lord knows there's too much of it everywhere, but Womyn's music
as a genre encourages mediocrity so outsiders won't poke their ears
in where they're NOT wanted! 
   My listeners are very sensitive people who, like me, would consider
themselves feminists in the pre-separatist meaning of the word. They
have good taste in music and are open to different forms of music and
expression. They have open ears, hearts and minds. Very. very few of 
my listeners would like womyn's music. On the other hand, I had had
hopes that the womyn's community in Kansas City would pick up on my
show and like it. Boy, was I naive! Womyn don't like my show because:

1> I don't agree with their philosophy. I rarely discuss "women's
   issues", I don't blast men as dirty, rotten sexists. My show is a *MUSIC*
show. If the music is all by women (or female vocalists) and the music
is all excellent, then that is *MY* "feminist" statement. The best
compliments I ever had were from people who listened, not knowing in
advance what the format was, and said that they'd been listening for
quite a while before they realized that I was playing all women. They
were enjoying the music so much that it didn't occur to them right 
away. Yee Hah! That's what I strive for. I'm not hitting them over the
head with "THESE ARE WOMEN DAMMIT AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!!!". I come
in from another angle with "wow, listen to this, this is really great
music isn't it? have you ever heard this? or this? oh i'm so glad you
like it, if you like that you'd probably enjoy this too". I've had lots
of people tell me that they had very few albums by women until they
started listening to my show on a regular basis.   

2> The majority of my listeners are male. 
   You see, officially, womyn's music is BY women, ABOUT women and FOR
women. Species with penises are not welcome to listen.
   My show is for anyone who has a heart.

                           --------------------

   One night, on Women's Equality Day, I did my regular show from
10:00pm to midnight, then kept on playing music by women 'till
3:00am, when the "Womyn's music" producer came in to take over.
(Normally we go off the air at midnight) Knowing that I'd have to
fill up 5 hours of programming by myself, I brought along nearly
80 CDs (ALL women, mind you). When Linda got to the station, she
had about ten minutes before she had to go on. In that time she
DID NOT EVEN GLANCE at ANY of the CDs I had brought from home.
She was not the slightest bit interested because she knew that
none of them were by womyn. So go figure.

                           -------------------- 

Liberal womyn have embraced the Indigo Girls even though the Indigo Girls
are NOT womyn and they don't sing womyn's music. Ditto Tracy Chapman. 
I heard a story where conservative & hard-core womyn booed a liberal
womyn musician off the stage because she was espousing a "one species-
human species" philosophy.

Womyn have not picked up on people that I would think would interest
them.
1> k.d. lang--KKFI's "Womyn's show" won't touch her with a ten-foot pole.
   (Of course, until recently, neither would Nashville)

2> Two Nice Girls--they're actually three very nice women who are talented
   and have a great sense of humor (one song's about a disastrous experiment
   with heterosexuality called "I Spent My Last $10.00 on Birth Control &
   Beer", it's very funny). I gave KKFI's womyn's show's producer TNG's
   album months ago and I'm pretty sure nothing has been played from it 
   yet. I can't figure it out. 
   I like Two Nice Girls and besides, anyone who does a deadpan, country-
   flavored cover version of JANE SIBERRY'S "Follow Me" is OK in my book.

                     -------------------------

Gee Eo, I know you didn't ask for all this, but you got us to write down
our thoughts and, if it doesn't exactly answer your question, at least
it's good for a starting point. When I first read your question, my
first thought was:

    1> You don't want to know

My second thought was:

    2> You REALLY don't want to know

My third thought was:

    3> If you don't know what womyn's music is then you obviously have
       never heard it and therefore you have been blessed by the gods
       and shouldn't push your luck

193 lines to answer a simple question and I could go on and on.
Enough's enough though.

****************************FLAME OFF**********************************

                   Vickie'n'Chris or Chris'n'Vickie