Radical Harmonies: The Story of The Women’s Music Cultural Movement 1970-2000
Radical Harmonies (2002) is an 88-minute documentary produced and directed by Academy Award ® nominee Dee Mosbacher that chronicles the history of queer music by women (mostly lesbian). Through festival and performance footage, interviews, and archival material from the 1960s to the 1990s, RADICAL HARMONIES delves into a musical culture based on a commitment to feminism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In its heyday during the 1970s and 80s, the Women’s Music Cultural Movement offered a message that was different from the mainstream musical culture. For the first time ever, women made festivals accessible through sign language interpretation, differently abled accommodations, and sliding scale ticket prices. The movement also gave birth to an alternative industry that changed women and music forever. It opened doors for women producers, photographers, sound and light technicians, along with women-owned recording, sound, and distribution companies.
This groundbreaking documentary presents performance footage and interviews with legendary artists such as June Millington, Cris Williamson, Holly Near, and Linda Tillery, who recalled the triumphs of having their songs amplified and recorded by women sound engineers and other professionals in an otherwise male-dominated industry. Radical Harmonies features such early performers of Women’s Music as Fanny, Meg Christian, Margie Adam, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Judith Casselberry, Mary Watkins, and Vicki Randle as well as later artists including Ubaka Hill, Indigo Girls, Toshi Reagon, Ani DiFranco, Nedra Johnson, Bitch and Animal, Tribe 8, and Sexpod.
Director / Executive Producer: Dr. Dee Mosbacher
Co-Producer: Dr. Boden Sandstrom
Associate Producer: Margie Adam
Associate Director: June Millington
Project Consultant: Judith Casselberry
Editors: Lisa Ginsburg, Marla Leech, Dina Maria Munsch
Radical Harmonies Production Team:
Photo by Morgan Lieberman © 2023 All Rights Reserved
Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist and an Academy Award™ nominated documentary filmmaker. She was a producer/director of the documentaries Straight from the Heart, 1994 (Academy Award™ nomination); Out for a Change: Addressing Homophobia in Women’s Sports, 1995 (Apple Award, National Educational Media Network); and All God’s Children, 1996 (Best Documentary, National Black Arts Film Festival). Dr. Mosbacher executive produced De Colores, winner of the 2001 Audience Award at OUTFEST. Dr. Mosbacher’s other co-production credits include: No Secret Any More: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon; Closets Are Health Hazards: Gay and Lesbian Physicians Come Out; and Lesbian Physicians on Practice, Patients, and Power. Dr. Mosbacher is the founder and president of Woman Vision, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote social justice through the production of educational films and video.
Boden Sandstrom, Ph.D. Winner of the American Musicological Society Philip Brett Award for exceptional musicological research in the field of LGTBQ+ studies for her work on Radical Harmonies and a Community Pioneers Honoree, Rainbow History Project, Washington, D.C., Dr. Sandstrom was a leading sound engineer on the Women’s Music circuit. In 1975, she founded Woman Sound, a woman-owned sound company with singer Casse Culver. She toured with many performers, including Cris Williamson and Lily Tomlin, did sound for many Women’s Music festivals, along with technical production for the major LGTBQ+ and NOW rallies on the Washington Mall. She has a PhD in Ethnomusicology, MS in Audio Technology, and MLS in Library Science. Before retiring, Dr. Sandstrom was a Lecturer and Technical Coordinator in the School of Music at the University of Maryland. Boden’s major research and publications have been on Women’s Music including “Performance, Ritual, and Negotiation of Identity in the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival,” and “Women’s Music: Passing the Legacy.” Since retiring she has continued her archival work of Women’s Music including the herstory of Woman Sound and singer/songwriter Casse Culver, which are now housed at the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College.
Margie Adam is a singer/songwriter/activist who has been associated with Women’s Music since she attended the first National Women’s Music Festival at Champaign-Urbana, IL in 1974.
Her song We Shall Go Forth! is archived in the Political History Division of the Smithsonian Institution. Ms. Adam’s songwriting/recording credits include Beautiful Soul, found on Dusty Springfield’s Beautiful Soul—The ABC-Dunhill Collection, and Tender Lady on Cris Williamson’s The Changer and the Changed. She is a recipient of the National Women’s Music Festival’s Jane Schliessman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Women’s Music.
June Millington, described as “one of the hottest female guitarists in the industry,” by Guitar Player magazine, has been making music since she was a child playing ukulele in her native Philippines. June formed a succession of all-girl bands, culminating with her band Fanny, the first all-women’s rock band to be signed to a major label (Warner Brothers). As David Bowie said of Fanny in Rolling Stone magazine (2000): “They were extraordinary… They are as important as anyone else who’s ever been, ever…” By 1975, June was involved in the burgeoning Women’s Music movement, playing on Cris Williamson’s The Changer and the Changed. In 1987 June co-founded the Institute for the Musical Arts (IMA), which grew into an internationally known teaching, performing, and recording facility supporting women in music and music-related business. In 1996, the Audio Engineering Society honored Millington with its Lifetime Achievement award, and in 2007 she, along with the other members of Fanny, received the ROCKRGRL Women of Valor Award. Throughout her career, June documented Women’s Music on videotape. Her archival footage and interviews are key components of Radical Harmonies.
Judith Casselberry is the Geoffrey Canada Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College. As a vocalist and guitarist, Judith received international acclaim with Casselberry-DuPreé and JUCA. She has shared stages with Sweet Honey in the Rock, Odetta, Stevie Wonder, Etta James, and Elvis Costello, among others. She performs nationally and internationally with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely. Judith teaches courses on African American women’s religious lives, music and spirituality in popular culture, music and social movements, and issues in Black intellectual thought. She is the author of The Labor of Faith: Power in Black Apostolic
Pentecostalism.
Links to Film Trailer:
.mp4 link: https://vimeo.com/1037103473/b56c187d97
.mov link https://vimeo.com/1037102411/54a8615474