I often hear the question is women's music dead? The answer: yes, perhaps, and absolutely not. "Women's Music" is a movement that spanned the years between the early 1970s and the mid 1990s. The reason I mention women's music has everything to do with why MUSE exists. Many streams fed the women's choral movement, and one at the core is women's music. Significant movements for social change (abolition, labor, civil rights, women, and GLBT) are all accompanied by music.

Imagine the year is 1972: there are no cell phones, no internet, no voicemail or answering machines. Yet, a network of women across the nation hooked up via sheer will. Women wanting to sing their lives, women writing lyrics expressing the emotion and experience of their everyday lives, women performing for one another, producing concerts (doing all skilled and technical jobs including lights and sound), recording, learning to play instruments usually considered unfeminine (traps, trumpet, bass, electric guitar, saxophone, etc) all coalesced around this thing call Women's Music.

This heady period made-known influential musicians such as Cris Williamson, Meg Christian, Margie Adam, Holly Near, Sweet Honey, June Millington, Therese Edell, Maxine Feldman, and the late, Kay Gardner. The publications "Paid My Dues" and "Hot Wire" produced more networking, and recording companies cropped up (Olivia, Redwood, Sea Friends, Pleiades, Flying Fish, to name only a few) that supported the movement.

In 1974, I started Anna Crusis Women's Choir (a "play on words" of the musical term "Ana Crusis", meaning upbeat) in Madison, Wisconsin, followed by Anna Crusis Philadephia in 1975. Anna was the first feminist women's choir, and during the 1970's, many women's choirs began; mostly grass-roots choirs in the Midwest, but Anna Crusis (Philadelphia) and the LA Women's Community Chorus provided the impetus on the coasts.

When women's choirs began, their repertoire drew from their solo singers, and arrangements were commissioned to suit the needs of the choir. Women's choirs and glee clubs were popular in colleges and universities, but it was rare to find community women's choirs with any frequency. The selection of repertoire was limited, and the range did not challenge or enhance the sound of the women singing.

This new women's choral movement encouraged arrangements to include the full range of our voices, including the rich lower ranges. Many works which were written for women's voices before this new wave of feminism were frequently arranged for 3-part women's voices, lacked significant texts, and were especially deficient in low parts. These missing features, once added, highlighted the richness of the mature woman's voice.

Throughout the period, over 80 women's choirs blossomed across the USA, North America, and Europe, and in the early 1980s, the Sister Singers Network started up in the Midwest, and GALA Choruses began.

I believe that women's music is alive and well. You can more easily find women in every area of musical technology and production, more women conductors can be found in choral and instrumental positions, and women instrumentalists are no longer an anomaly. However, we cannot be lulled into believing there is equality across the board in all music-matters. The women's choral music still strives to be truly diverse and inclusive.

Last night I experienced a concert of women's music (including interviews with the artists) as I watched Light of Change--A Concert with Carrie Newcomer (new to me), Bernice Johnson Reagon and Holly Near. I recommend this concert for all to witness how musical artists unite deep activist cultural work. Their perceptive words highlight our connections as women; leading and creating a women's music that challenges us to act, and wake up to the light of change through justice with love.