Radical Harmonies -- The Women's Music Movement Documentary

June 1, 2023 4:54 AM

Happy Pride Month! The 2002 documentary Radical Harmonies [1h27m, Wikipedia, interlacing artifacts] is a thrilling historical document about women making music primarily for women and creating radically equalizing spaces in order to achieve their vision. Featuring a lot of familiar and not-so-familiar faces and voices from across a couple of generations of movers and shakers and musicians.

I'm working on featuring different Queer women in music across this month. There are a lot of people in this documentary that I will expand on later in the month, and a lot of people not in this I will be introducing. If you have suggestions for my topics this month, please go to my recent AskMe and add what you want there. Or upvote someone who's already been mentioned. Or provide more things you know about to share. I won't get to everything, but I'll do the best I can. Happy Pride! Thanks!

posted by hippybear (4 comments total)

One of the women interviewed in Radical Harmonies is June Millington, who was a member of Fanny, the first all-woman band to release an album on a major record label. They are the subject of the documentary Fanny: The Right to Rock, which is currently for a limited time streamable from PBS.

I was recently lucky to see a free outdoor live show by Fanny in San Francisco, under the auspices of the Center for Asian American Media (video of part of performance.). Here’s an article about Fanny on their website.
posted by larrybob at 6:53 AM on June 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thank you for posting this. A lot of memories flooding thru me this morning.
posted by elmay at 8:09 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thank you! A lot of those early pioneers formed the soundtrack to my college years.
posted by pangolin party at 8:32 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is wonderful hippybear. Thank you. Looking forward to more from you!
posted by Well I never at 9:09 AM on June 1, 2023