Highlights from the Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection

Women's Music

Music has also played a major role in the LGBTQ movement over the years, a way to express pain and struggle as well as celebrate identities and communities. LGBT musicians, as Darryl W. Bullock suggests, also “powered many of the most important stages in the development of music over the last century.” [1] For this section of the exhibit, we have chosen to highlight the importance of women musicians in particular, especially those who identified as lesbian and/or queer, to the LGBTQ community in Monterey County. As the examples here illustrate, the Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection sheds light on the importance of women musicians to local queer culture.

Monterey County, despite its semi-rural location, has long been home to important concerts and festivals. The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, for example, included artists like the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, an early example of the counterculture of the 1960s in the U.S. [2]. For the LGBTQ community, the arts were just as significant. A Women’s Theater Festival in the 1980s, as detailed in Demeter, promoted the theatrical works of women, including lesbians, with the expressed purpose of “expand[ing] the public’s understanding of women’s lives and promot[ing] the continuing development of women’s theater as a significant cultural movement” [3]. And, the pages of The Paper and Manifesto illustrate various forms of artistic expression. The first issue of The Paper, for example, included several poems, including “This, Our Place of Light” by Deborah M. Aguayo-Delgado, which declared “Soy Lesbiana. I am a Lesbian/Not because of loss or fear/I am as I should be.”[4] And, Demeter, a feminist newspaper published in Monterey County between 1978 and 1985 that is also in the collection, included many arts-related items.

However, in terms of women’s music, Demeter stands out. Its newsletter gave extensive coverage to women’s music, including notices about concerts, album reviews, and interviews with artists. For example, Demeter covered a concert by lesbian folk artist Trish Nugent, who composed and performed music for the pioneering LGBT film, Word is Out [5]. The August, 1980 issue of Demeter, included an interview with women’s music pioneer June Millington of the rock band Fanny [6] And, the May 1981 issue included a profile of lesbian musician and early women’s music artist Teresa Trull who performed at Monterey Peninsula College.[7]

Coverage of the Nugent and Trull concerts illustrate also how Demeter sponsored women’s music concerts, many showcasing lesbians. One prominent example in the collection is a concert by Meg Christian at the Monterey Conference Center in November of 1980. The collection includes articles about the concert, as well as the program and a poster advertising the event. As the November, 1980 issue of Demeter noted, Christian was a “bold and joyous pioneer of women’s music” [8] Concerts like these increased lesbian visibility in Monterey County, but also created spaces where lesbians, bisexual women, and their allies, could gather and celebrate women’s music in community.

Image sources:

“Teresa Trull in Concert,” Demeter, Volume 4, Number 2. May, 1981. Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/27/.

Demeter Productions, "Demeter Productions Presents an Evening of Women's Music with Olivia Recording Artist Meg Christian" (1980). Demeter Productions: Posters and Programs. 4. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter_concerts/4.

References

[1] Colin Carman, "David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music," The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 25, no. 1 (2018): 41. Academic OneFile (accessed May 2, 2019).

[2] Russell Duncan, "The Summer of Love and Protest: Transatlantic Counterculture in the 1960s," in The Transatlantic Sixties: Europe and the United States in the Counterculture Decade, edited by Kosc Grzegorz, Juncker Clara, Monteith Sharon, and Waldschmidt-Nelson Britta, 144-73. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxt2b.9.

[3] Demeter. “Women’s Theatre Festival,” Demeter, Volume 7, Number 6, October 1984, Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/60/.

[4] Deborah M. Aguayo-Delgado, “This, Our Place of Light,” The Paper, Volume 1, Number 1, June 1994, Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/thepaper/2/.

[5] “Trish Nugent to Perform,” Demeter, Volume 2, Number 4, July 1979, Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/10/.

[6] “An Interview with June Millington,” Demeter, Volume 3, Number 5, August, 1980. Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/18/.

[7] “Teresa Trull in Concert,” Demeter, Volume 4, Number 2. May, 1981. Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/27/.

[8] “Meg Christian in Concert, Nov. 28,” Demeter, Volume 3, Number 8, November, 1980, Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/15/.