Holly Near talks to the GPC

by Rady Ananda

On January 31, Holly Near met with this paper, What She Wants and Oven Productions to discuss the controversy surrounding her last trip to Cleveland. Because Holly Near was so articulate in her political and philosophical values, we have included condensed excerpts from our interview with her:

GPC: You wanted to be with Belkin instead of Oven this time?

HOLLY: No, see, there's a couple things I need to do. I want to maintain a relationship with grassroots organizations. I always have and I always will. And I don't just mean women's groups. I mean from farm workers, prison projects, Viet Nam vets, lesbian groups. It's a very diverse group. So, I see my career as being one that works with grassroots communities on a global, antiimperialist, anti-war, peace, feminist level.

The second part of it is that I feel that there still continues to be hundreds of thousands of people who are potential listeners of progressive music and they don't even know it exists. There's always new people coming through the doors of their consciousness at different times. And, to me, to get stuck in the idea that the 'convinced' have already signed their membership cards and everybody else is out is an arrogant point of view.

At the same time, I love to do celebrations of people who are already part of the community. I think we need to have re-fuelings. I think we need to have events where we come together with the people who have been doing this work for so many years where nobody has to watch what they say and do. That's why I think Michigan's (Women's Festival) is a great thing. I feel like there's room for all of it. And, as an artist I want to be part of all of it.

What seems to happen is that if I go and do Michigan, people in the mainstream think that they shouldn't talk to me anymore. And if I go and do a mainstream gig, everybody in the movement thinks I've sold out. People have a very low level of flexibility around this

stuff. But, I believe that people's lives improve when they hear political music.

GPC: But, you never even asked Oven if they wanted to do a mainstream concert in Cleveland.

HOLLY: My understanding is that

none of this might have happened if there wasn't a series of miscommunications and mistakes that were made just in terms of letting Oven know that we wanted to do this. I don't think it was a huge deal.

GPC: When something as important as a Holly Near concert gets taken away from us, it is a big deal.

HOLLY: I know, but I think your feelings were hurt, you were disappointed, and you felt betrayed. And I think that's too bad because I don't think you gave me much slack. It just happened, you know, this just happened. And Oven's great. Oven's a great company. Cleveland's very lucky to have it. This is not a commentary on Oven. That's why I'm sorry it became such a big deal. Because it's just a night I'm playing in a nightclub and it happens to be in a town where there is a women's production company. It doesn't mean that I've pulled the rug out from under Oven.

I do a lot of concerts and there's not usually a struggle with the lesbian feminist community, the labor community and as well as having the god-damned Superbowl on the same night (laughter). How many things does an event have to have go wrong? This club, this event, definitely has its drawbacks.

GPC:

Do you believe that in order for feminist artists to succeed, they'll have to leave women's production companies?

HOLLY: You bet. Because they

cannot make a living in the women's music circuit. You're not living off of it. Women musicians are not living full time off of their music.

I have gone and played some mainstream festivals where I have gotten money that I couldn't

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believe they could afford to pay me. But, they sell alcohol. And, and fifty percent of their audience is men. You see, women's concert productions have half the audience that it might otherwise have because there's a whole lot of people who don't come. So, economically you're dealing with half a deck.

I'm probably the only person as well known as I am who sings lesbian songs in public, who takes the strongest stands about Central America and who does as many benefits as I do, and is out on every front. And, once in a while, I work with some commercial producer who puts me in a venue that I'm interested in. Here it was mistake. There's been other places where I've worked with commercial producers where it was not a mistake. They were going to write me a very big check at the end of the evening and you bet I take it. When I can get a lot of money from some guys who want to pay me a lot of money 'cause they sell beer, I sometimes have to take that.

I think that there's this hope that our feminist musicians will be these sunrises of purity. Other people who do work at night, folding letters for a battered wife shelter probably work for an oil company during the day. Nobody lives a pure life. A very fine lesbian singer I know is working for a travel agent in San Francisco because she can't go out as a soloist and women's productions can't afford to pay her enough money to bring her band. She does rhythm and blues, and you don't do rhythm and blues without a band. So, she hasn't got a career.

I think that the discussion of where women's music is at is a huge subject about the economics of it, the phenomenon in the seventies of women's music, the fact that we're living under fascism, you know, that some of the most homophobic stuff is going on in the world, and that there is terrible re is ter support of feminism in this administration. It's not just Oven and me and women's music, you know. It's much bigger than that. And so I feel that if there's going to be an investigation of it, that it would be good to be seen on a much bigger scale than one singer

who comes a does a gig with a commercial producer at a nightclub. I feel that the subject is much bigger and deserves a lot of attention.

You know how thrilled people get when they watch a mainstream TV show like Cagney and Lacey and they do something on lesbianism? Those shows do not get done by people like us who work in the alternatives. The reason they get done is because somebody works in the mainstream who has a level of consciousness. There really are human beings who work in the mainstream. Most human beings work in the mainstream. A lot of them are dykes; a lot of them are gay men and a lot of them are progressives. They can get fired if they take one step too many, too fast. I don't dismiss the mainstream because since most people are going to be home watching TV anyway, I'm really glad that somebody behind the scene in the mainstream has put their job on the line to put a little level of consciousness out on television.

See, I don't have this hate relationship to the mainstream. I wouldn't mind at all being successful there, but you can bet I'm not going to be. Going down and hanging out in those circles is not a major contradiction for me because I really do like human beings, even the ones who are conservative. I'm not a purist; I'm not a separatist and I'm not an isolationist. I really like living in the world. And, the world doesn't offend me as much as it does some people because I really do think that human beings, even at their worst, are doing the best they can.▼

= LETTERS

CLEVELAND Thank you! We are proud of you. They tell me that my lover (with the exception of a miracle) will need a panel someday. I hope it's handled with the same love and respect you showed at the Convention Center.

Best Wishes, Tom Tallmen, Dayton, Ohio