Dazzling Sounds and Colors (continued from page 8)

of accuracy in describing package contents, if not logic itself.

Holly's Speed of Light offers enormous variety-in pacing, metrical and structural effects, musical style and special effects. A few cuts are worth mentioning in particular. The first is the opener, "Dancing Bird," which achieves a superb energy build-up, gradually, almost imperceptibly, until by the bridge into the last chorus there is a bonemelting sense of exaltation rhythmically, instrumentally, vocally. Another is the last cut on Side 1, "Emma," dedicated to the "anarchist/teacher" Emma Goldman (1869-1940); this tribute could have been a model for the maenads, so awesome is its psychic pull toward orgiastic dance, mesmeric frenzy that leaves one stunned, drained. Following this with the first cut on Side 2, "I Really Didn't Want To," one experiences another kind of shock: the stark simplicity of unaccompanied voice punctuated with off-beat hand clap in a song of great exuberance. Then, for a change of pace, try the third cut on Side 3, "Coming Home". It's hard to know if Holly had had a good dose of Gilbert and Sullivan before coming up with this one; it has all the breathlessness of their patter songs (remember the Major General's self-introduction in The Pirates of Penzance?) and captures the comedy of our anxieties around "returning". The final song, "Unity," is the source of the album's title; it includes a trio of performers called Afrikan Dreamland, and with augmented instrumental forces and some extraordinary vocal recording by Holly creates some heart-stopping effects.

An unqualified success? I don't think so. Strong as the album is, especially in terms of those songs I've already indicated, and as creatively rich as Holly's

imagination has been to arrive at these powerful and whimsical and beautiful sounds, there's a kind of distance here that cools a lot of the material, brings it away from the interior world of Holly Near that made Imagine My Surprise and Fire in the Rain, for instance, sort of glow in the dark. There's a significant proportion (five of eleven) of songs that are pure political statement; several of these are by and large the heaviest instrumental works using enormous personnel resources, but without necessarily having musical content of memorable substance. The repetitive catch phrases don't seem to catch. The message is generally lost in overstatement, and the exception, "Family Promise," proves the rule.

On the subject of politics in music I have to consider both albums, Blue Rider and Speed of Light, as coming closer to unproductive rhetoric. The problem exists in Holly's work to a greater extent than in Cris', I believe, and neither the timeliness of the topic ("El Salvador") nor the musical interest ("Emma") appears to relieve it.

There is a curious model among classical com-

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posers in that master, Beethoven. The last movement of his Ninth Symphony contains a text (in itself a radical innovation) focusing on the idea that "all people become brothers" (never mind the women) when they are united by "joy". In the shadow of the expanded French Empire, the history of Napoleon's tyranny, and the persistence of "government by blood line," there could hardly have been a more political statement from a German. Curiously, this is the very symphony that epitomized for the anti-hero of A Clockwork Orange Beethoven's expression of power which the character then equated with violence. It is also this symphony which Adrienne Rich considered, in her poetry collection Diving Into the Wreck, a "sexual message" of "the entirely/isolated soul/yelling at Joy from the tunnel of the ega/music without the ghost/of another person in it...." and worse. (This unhappy paradigm is even surpassed in banality and fatuity by the composer's instrumental accolade to Napoleon's defeat at the hands of Wellington.)

Is it possible to make a successful political statement in the arts? The great models are there: Picasso's Guernica and Beaumarchais' and Mozart's views of The Marriage of Figaro, for openers. Holly herself and other women have made real contribu-

Cris at Oberlin (continued from page 8)

firmly committed to social and ecological subjects, and uses not only the songs but her introductory remarks to amplify her position for the audience, that it might be worth her trouble to break a bit from the casual chatty style of an intimate group discussion in a small room to literally speaking, clearly and with precise diction, to her very willing and interested audiences.

What didn't work was the amplification system for speaking, and occasionally sung words were affected as well. Like all halls designed (as chapels are) for resonance for the speaking voice, anything other than speaking gets strange results. Singing, for instance, is a joy in such halls because an easilyproduced tone carries well and sounds "big" even to the singer; instrumental sounds even gently produced can sound imposing because of the lively reverberation. When Cris commented on what a wonderful hall she found Finney Chapel to perform in, to sing in, she could barely be understood; her spoken comments were not picked up clearly by the microphone at the piano and were often frustratingly indistinct to most of the audience throughout the evening. One ought not be deprived of this vital part of Cris' concerts, for this is where the rationale for all her composition-poetic, especially-is revealed to the audience, who will not remember that "Leviathan" is really a song explaining that "when the women lose heart, the culture dies," and that the beached whales were female.

Correction: The article in last month's WSW entitled "Reagan Backs Off on EEOC" erroneously stated that the Reagan Administration has proposed changes to the EEOC. The EEOC, established by an Act of Congress, can only be changed by amending that act. In fact, Reagan's proposed changes are. directed at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP), the jurisdiction of which is restricted to businesses which have federal contracts. The OFCCP was established by executive order, and is therefore subject to administrative whim.

tions to the genre in earlier albums. The difference between the successes and the failures may be in the degree of personalization and humanization of the message. I feel this is the borderland that both Cris and Holly approach in these albums. Certainly both women are intelligently adamant about the issues they address. But creating endlessly repeated catch phrases or words in the relatively low-stimulus medium of the popular musical language is not the key to "selling" their personal commitment. I hope their next albums with their political and humanitarian ideals will reflect their "coming in from the cold".

Illusions (continued from page 9)

conformity rules. Some learn to cope, others retreat. One commit suicide.

Through all their discoveries, disillusionments and successes, the eight rely on one another; the network of friends has replaced the traditional family in providing moral support, a practice court for ideas and a place to go when someone no longer feels like coping. Rule doesn't espouse a preference for this new sort of family life. She does however, document a way of life that is growing more and more common as the proportion of nuclear families shrinks.

That points to Rule's greatest strength. She deals with unorthodox people and shows their lives as normal for them as the conformists' lives are for the conformists. She creates memorable and realistic characters.

It is even better to find them in so well-written and well-crafted a novel. There are points where Rule's language soars, and the entire novel is intricately and neatly balanced.

Through the novel, Carlotta has been painting portraits of the others. The novel ends with a gallery show of Carlotta's paintings. All the subjects are there, and Carlotta looks at them, "survivors who had already grown far beyond her fixed idea of them. Because they were all here now together, their lives would change again in ways she couldn't imagine". Power (continued from page 7)

glorify and justify the traditional female role, thereby delegitimizing the powerful working woman even more. As a result she is not taken seriously as a leader by her female employees, and perhaps is even pitied if she has not had children or been married. This judgment makes identification and support for the female superior difficult.

Hoffman has offered an analysis that describes several reasons why collective action among contemporary working women has been sporadic. She believes that the feminist movement can definitely help change women's attitudes toward each other, but sex role conflicts and expectations cannot be resolved overnight. Women must be able to support women as leaders and not constantly demand proof or credentials. Hoffman's last, and perhaps most interesting, comment on women and power is that "The Top" and the behavior and values necessary to reach it need to be redefined.

Merie Hoffman is also co-founder of the National Association of Abortion Facilities and the National Abortion Federation. If you would like to read the full-length version of Hoffman's analysis, it is on file at the Cleveland Feminist Lending Library, or write to Merle Hoffman, c/o Choices, 97-77 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, NY 11374.