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Holly Near Superb at CWRU

By Judith Eckelineyer

It should be an easy task to comment on Holly Near's November 7 concert at CWRU's Allen Memorial Library. Her presentation was polished and smooth, the delivery clean, strong and sensitive,. the content a very nice mix of the old favorites ("Foolish Notion," "Imagine My Surprise," "We Are A Gentle Angry People," "I Have Dreamed on this Mountain," "Wrap the Sun Around You"), updated oldies (“Got Trouble," "Feeling Better") and appealing new items ("Dancing Bird," "Back Off,” "Emma,", etc., from Speed of Light), the commentary interesting, and the backup musicians-Carrie Burton on bass and Nina Golden on piano-nothing short of excellent.

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Ford Auditorium, packed to the limit of the fire. marshall's tolerance, offered, as Holly said, an “intimate" stage on which the musicians carefully clung

Suzione Britt

to a small appointed square footage to allow Susan Freudlich enough arm and leg room for disporting through beautiful choreographed interpretations for the hearing impaired; but never mind-the small hall -gave an unimpeded view of the stage to everyone and not a word or gesture was lost.

Even the mistakes were intriguing. Flubbed words in the opening “I Didn't Want to Do It" got a grin from Holly and Susan. The mixup on the wild keychange in "Room for Me" (caused when speaker feedback briefly obliterated the performance at the crucial moment, throwing Holly well off pitch) could only point up the tremendous security of Holly and the instrumentalists (especially pianist Golden, who had joined the tour only a short time before), who not only didn't fall apart but ended in reasonably calm waters. Said Holly, “Well, that was terrible! I guess we'll cut that out of the tape...." But Holly, maybe you should leave it on for the live-concert record you want to cut: remember, one of Ella's most fascinating records, made from a live performance in Berlin, is the one on which she forgets the English words to "Mack the Knife' and improvises on the memory slip. The audience loved it!

But once all the immediate delightful points of Holly Near's show are told, it gets more difficult to comment, so complex are the other issues. One begins to compare songs familiar in their recorded form with the live performance that inevitably has fewer resources. Certainly "Dancing Bird" and “Unity," for instance, took on a different kind of sound in the concert. But then, so did “I 'Have Dreamed on this Mountain," "Hay Una Mujer" and "Listen to the Voices," all unaccompanied, all without strict beat and almost recited abstract musings rather than the "songs" we know. Holly's rethinking is not only in musical style; it touches ideas and ideals, as it should, for any maturing per-

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son-but in Holly's case there is a specific record of her changed consciousness of strength and confidence in her uniqueness.

The crux of the Cleveland concert: Holly Near's willingness to integrate her own past and present, her unusual honesty in presenting "self," a compassionate sensitivity to the sometimes comic, sometimes overwhelmingly heroic responses to human trouble and fear. She moves from the silliest anxiety of the high school football queen to the frank politics of some 350 international world-class entertainers

whose September day-long concert for disarmament, in a heavily populated area in Germany before a crowd of 200,000, never saw daylight in our presses. She shares the depth and richness of our common concerns for the land, our freedom, our continuation on this earth, through an uncommon ability (who can forget the shimmering top-to-bottom-of-voice cadenza as the rainbow wrapped around us!) to make others smile, mourn, resolve, cheer-and say "it's my heart," too!

Oven Productions and River City Music-thanks!

Ideologues, Not People

Between Friends, by Gillian E. Harscombe. Alyson Publications, 1982. $5.95.

By Debbie Gross

Between Friends is a series of letters between four women during a year of their lives. Each of the four major characters represents a political ideology. Frances has a traditional marriage and cannot understand Meg's lesbian feminism. Amy has a nontraditional relationship with her male friend and considers herself a political lesbian, while Jane is a lesbian separatist.

The four women exchange constant discourses about politics, leaving you to wonder whether they think about anything but. It is perhaps because of this that the novel sounds so flat. The women don't seem to have any personality, and the book has no plot. It is like reading a philosophical debate on feminism. Each woman holds to her role completely. Frances refuses to question her marriage, fearing any

kind of change. Amy has met the perfect man, Tim, who is into Men's Liberation, childcare and sex without penetration. He even has a vasectomy. Jane, just as politically correct, lives in a collective, has withdrawn all her energy from men, and opposes boy children. Of all the arguments developed, the lesbian separatist argument is discussed the least, and Jane particularly does not come off as a believable character.

This novel or political-dialogue quickly becomes very predictable. It is hard to care about the people, because they don't act like people. Each woman holds the "politically correct" views for her philosophy. Women are already under pressure to conform to certain political views, and this book just reinforces that pressure.

On the front of Between Friends it says, "a novel about women loving women”. This creates a certain expectation that isn't met. If one accepts this book as a debate on politics, then, with the exception of the lesbian separatist position, it fares much better.

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December, 1982/What She Wants/Page 9

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