Women's music is music by women, for women, and about women. The genre emerged as a musical expression of the second-wave feminist movement as well as the labor, civil rights, and peace movements. The movement (in the USA) was started by lesbian performers such as Cris Williamson, Meg Christian and Margie Adam, African-American musicians including Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins, Gwen Avery and activists such as Bernice Johnson Reagon and her group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and peace activist Holly Near. Women's music also refers to the wider industry of women's music that goes beyond the performing artists to include studio musicians, producers, sound engineers, technicians, cover artists, distributors, promoters, and festival organizers who are also women.
History
The genre, which first came to be known as "lesbian music," has its roots in certain musical contributions of the 1960s and is defined by the artists and labels in the 1970s who built upon this foundation in order to foster a lesbian-oriented musical movement.
In 1963, Lesley Gore came up with song "You Don't Own Me" expressing threatened emancipation, as the singer tells a lover that s/he does not own her, that they aren't to tell her what to do or what to say, and that they are not to put her on display. The song's lyrics became an inspiration for younger women and are sometimes cited as a factor in the second wave feminist movement. Lesley Gore was later criticized for the rest of her songs not matching feminist aspirations and expectations.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, some people perceived that there were few "positive women's images within popular music" and a "lack of opportunities for female performers". They viewed women as having a disadvantage in the field because of their difference in gender. At the time, major US record labels had only signed a few women's bands, including Fanny, Birtha, The Deadly Nightshade, Goldie and the Gingerbreads and the band that they evolved into, Isis. In reaction to this perceived lack of inclusion of women in the mainstream, some feminists decided it necessary for women to create a separate space for women to create music. Lesbian and feminist separatism was then used as a "tactic which focused women's energy and would give an enormous boost to the growth and development of women's music."
Out of the separatist movement came the first distributed examples of music created specifically for lesbians or feminists. In 1972, Maxine Feldman, who had been an "out" (openly gay) performer since 1964, recorded the first overtly lesbian record, "Angry Atthis" (Atthis was a lover of the Ancient Greek poet Sappho). Feldman had been performing the song since 1969, and its lyrics were specific to her feelings and experiences as a lesbian. In the same year the feminist all-woman bands The Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band and the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band released Mountain Moving Day. In 1973, Alix Dobkin, flautist Kay Gardner, and bassist Patches Attom created the group Lavender Jane, and recorded an album entitled Lavender Jane Loves Women, the first full-length album for and by lesbians. These early recordings relied on sales through mail order and in a few lesbian-feminist bookstores, like Lambda Rising in Washington, D.C., as well as promotion by word of mouth. In May 1974, the women who would go on to form the first European women's rock band performed at a women's music festival in Berlin. They formed the German women's rock band Flying Lesbians and released one self-titled album in 1975.
Goldenrod Music Distribution, founded by Terry Grant in 1975, has been credited by Lauron Kehrer as a major influence in the launch of the women's music movement. Kehrer noted that although the organization was founded on the basis of helping women and lesbians, it was unable to work around the contradictions surrounding the company's ethics and place in a capitalist society.
Lesbians additionally found ways to express themselves through musical composition. There are common European classical semiotic codes that have been used throughout centuries to express either masculinity or femininity. These musical gestures changed over time as the meaning of femininity changed, but they always kept to their purpose: truthful expressionism. Ethel Smyth, a composer, encoded her lesbian life experiences in her music. Genders of composers, writers, artists, and more have a lot to do with how music is perceived and interpreted. Cues such as tempo, articulation, and other dynamics signify many different types of meanings – they are not standard. Each musician uses these codes and cues to suit their music, and thus express themselves through song.