COMING SOON! THIS IS A DRAFT VERSION OF THIS EXHIBIT FOR PREVIEW PURPOSES
Music has been important to the Monterey Bay Area for a long while now. When the Spanish established San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (the Carmel Mission), music was a centerpiece for its inauguration. Hymns such as Veni Creator Spiritus and Salve were sung to invoke the Holy Spirit. [1]
Music has also played a major role in the LGBT movement over the years. It has been used as a way to express some of the deepest pains and struggles and to show members of the community as distinctly human in eras where they may have been seen as something else. But as much as music has helped the LGBT community, the LGBT community has also contributed a lot to the history of music as a whole. As author Darryl W. Bullock states, “LGBT musicians have powered many of the most important stages in the development of music over the last century.” [2]
We have chosen to highlight various aspects of the Monterey Bay area music culture. We have chosen to highlight women musicians due to the fact lesbians and queer women are usually excluded when discussing LGBT movements. By highlighting women is music we feel it can add more to the discussion.
Roots
Monterey County has always been on the cutting edge of cultural movements, particularly when it comes to music. In 1967, approximately 75,000 people all gathered together, dressed in “peasant dresses” and “bell bottoms” and partaking of “a new batch of LSD called Monterey Purple” at the Monterey Pop Festival [3]. With artists like the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, Monterey Pop was considered to be the first major rock festival of the counterculture movement [3]. The counterculture movement of the 1960s has echoed throughout the years with its focus on social justice and free love, particularly with the LGBT movement throughout the years. In both cases, and in the case of many other movements, music and the arts have long been used as a way for people to express themselves and the LGBT movement in the Monterey and the surrounding area has been no exception.
Festivals
One such festival in Monterey was the Women’s Theater Festival starting in the 1980s. This festival promoted the theatrical works of women with the expressed purpose of “expand[ing] the public’s understanding of women’s lives and promot[ing] the continuing development of women’s theatre as a significant cultural movement” [4]. While traditional theater at the time had many more roles for men than it did for women, the Women’s Theater Festival sought to expose the public to more women in a traditionally male-dominated space, something that ran concurrent to the LGBT movement which showcased women breaking down barriers to what the public may have considered masculine roles [4]. Compare Monterey to SF with the Queer Arts Festival One of the biggest festivals for LGBT representation has been the San Francisco Queer Arts Festival. Started in 1998 by the Queer Cultural Center, the Harvey Milk Institute, and the South of Market Cultural Center, the SF Queer Arts Festival provided a space to showcase live music, theater, dance, film, and performance art [5]. Some notable artists at the inaugural festival included the San Francisco Lesbian / Gay Freedom Band and the Ballad Sopranos [5]. Queer Arts continued to expand into an LGBT culture-based website [6].
Concerts
Demeter was a feminist newspaper, which represented the Monterey Bay area, published between April 1978 and the summer of 1985. It addressed issues of sexuality, race, gender equality, sexism, gay rights, reproductive rights, and violence against women. Demeter wasn’t just a newspaper, but a concert promoter as well. In their publications they would advertise While there are many to name, three musicians have been chosen to highlight how important music is to not only the LGBTQ community, but also the Monterey Bay Area community. Robin Flower was quoted as being, “America’s most progressive ‘new acoustic’ musicians”. She was known for addressing sensitive issues, such as love, feminism, and US foreign policy.[7] Throughout her career, she earned many awards, including, California Arts Council Touring Grants, Frets Magazine's Best New Artist Award, and two National Association of Independent Recording Society Awards. Today, she teaches fiddle, mandolin, acoustic and electric guitar and leads a community stringband. She is also on the Board of the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, California. [8] The Fabulous Dyketones were a group that combined their strong musical talent with incisive humor and political awareness. The all-female band took on fifties personas, both male and females. The band was founded in 1977 and renamed the Fabulous Dyketones in 1984. [9] While members changed and rotated throughout the years, the only constant member of the band was Char Priolo, whose stage name was Chukki Linguini. As a band, they were one of the few all-women LGBTQ bands from the east coast of the United States.[10] Another prominent artist was Holly Near, a California native born in Ukiah in 1949. She began her career as an actress on shows such as The Partridge Family and All in the Family. After the Kent State shooting, Near took up political activism against the Vietnam war as violence. [11] Her music attacked difficult topics like “gay rights, feminism, pacifism, and racism.” [12] She is cited as a founder of the Women’s Music movement. Aly Kim described Near’s album, Fire in the Rain, as a “tight, professional sound” and “a total creative experience not to be missed”. [13]
ADD IMAGE CREDITS
References
[1] Craig H. Russell, "Serra and Sacred Song at the Founding of California's First Missions,” The Musical Quarterly 92, no. 3/4 (2009): 365-401. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27751866.
[2] 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). http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522584705/AONE?u=csumb_main&sid=AONE&xid=2647f760.
[3] 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.
[4] Demeter. “Women’s Theatre Festival,” Demeter: Women’s News of the Monterey Bay Area (Monterey), Vol. 7 no. 6, October 1984.
[5] Report, Chronicle Staff. "New Queer Festival Offers Diverse MenuDance, Music, Film, More at S.F. Venues." The San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 1998: E3. NewsBank. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&docref=news/0EB4F82576C48771.
[6] http://queer-arts.org/
[7] "Robin Flower in Concert Oct. 6," Demeter: Women's News of the Monterey Bay Area (Monterey),Vol 7, no 3. September 1984.
[8] Robin Flower, "Biography." Robin Flower. http://www.robinflower.net/biography.html.
[9] Char Priolo, "The Fabulous Dyketones," Hot Wire, July 1987.
[10] Demeter. "An Old-Fashion Sock Hop," Demeter: Women's News of the Monterey Bay Area (Monterey), Vol 8, no. 7 June 1985.
[11] Holly Near, "Biography." Holly Near. https://www.hollynear.com/biography/.
[12] Claude Summers, ed. The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater, Cleis Press Start, 2012.
[13] Aly Kim, "A Sure-Fire Success," Demeter: Women's News of the Monterey Bay Area (Monterey), Vol 4 no 1, April 1981. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/demeter/