Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is Activist, singer, and songwriter Holly Near.

Holly Near was influential in the formation and promotion of the women's music movement and continues to influence and participate creating music that speaks out for change action and acceptance.

Near was born in rural Ukiah,California in 1949, growing up with two sisters in a supportive, liberal family environment led by her political activist parents. The entertainer in her began early, singing publicly at eight, leading to local talent shows and then later, theater productions.

After starting high school in 1963, she began singing with the Freedom Singers, a folk group modeled on The Weavers. In 1968, she enrolled in the Theater Arts program at UCLA; that year, she attended her first Vietnam War peace vigil and joined Another Mother for Peace. Her passionate commitment to social change became full blown, from those experiences she took her musical talents to primarily on politically-themed music.

But it wasn't just activism and music, while at UCLA at age 20, Near had broken into TV and movies, on All in the Family, Mod Squad, and The Partridge Family, and movies Cult of the Damned (1969), the John Cassavetes' Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), and Slaughterhouse Five (1972).

In 1970, Near was a cast member of the Broadway musical, Hair. Following the Kent State shootings, the entire cast staged a silent vigil in protest. Her song, "It Could Have Been Me", was her heartfelt response to the shootings. In 1971, she joined the FTA (Free The Army) Tour, an anti-Vietnam War road show of music, comedy and plays, organized by antiwar activist Fred Gardner and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.

Near began writing music and formed her label Redwood Records, which she created specifically to release her first album, Hang in There in 1973, and became a label for those ............ She created Redwood Records because major labels told her that her lyrics were simply too political straightforwardly addressing issues such as gay rights, feminism, pacifism, and racism.

Her work in helping to create women's music genre distinguishes her from other political singers of the time. She toured in support of the peace movement and other potical causes, but she quickly became especially associated with the Women's movement and the Women's music movement. She performed at the first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 1976; where she came out as a lesbian.

After coming out Redwood became a lesbian-feminist label. Near's parents had been helping to run Redwood in the beginning, but turned it over to her and the women who would become her business partners. Redwood "took its place alongside the legendary Olivia Records as one of the most important alternative record labels."

But her lesbian identification leaned more toward political rather than the completely personal, and "even then she never felt entirely comfortable with lesbian-feminist separatism." She had had relationship with men before coming, and when she had relationships with men later, it was met with some feelings of distrust by many in the women's music community.

Despite her reluctance to put a label on her sexuality, she worked to regain the trust of the women's music community by her commitment to lesbian issues and continuing to use lesbian themes in her work. "Except for the purpose of inviting people out of isolation or for the purpose of defense, "I try to avoid self-definition through group identity."

For Near, her idea of lesbianism is not a narrow one defined simply by sexual experience or preference. "My lesbianism is not linked to sexual preference," she writes. "For me, it is part of my world view, part of my passion for women and central in my objection to male domination."

Whatever her views on self-definition, her adamantly feminist views, with her continual promotion of gay and lesbian rights and culture, make her an important and accepted part of the movement.

Many of her songs are genderless to appeal across all sexual and gender lines, but she also writes songs that specifically celebrate lesbian love ("Simply Love") and lesbianism itself ("She").

It's no accident that her best known song is the inclusive anthem "Singing for Our Lives," which has the refrain "We are Gay and Straight together . . ./ We are old and young together . . . / We are a gentle loving people / And we are singing, singing for our lives." The song is a part of Singing the Living Tradition, the official hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist Association, under the title "We Are A Gentle, Angry People" (Hymn #170)

Her album Simply Love: The Women's Music Collection is a compilation from over the last 25 years of her career and inclues other classic women's music artists such as Alix Dobkin, Meg Christian, and Cris Williamson.

And add writing prose to her long list of talents, Near wrote a children's book, The Great Peace March in 1997 and her autobiography was in 1990.

She returned to acting in 1991, in the movie Dogfight and then in 1998 in Heartwood.

She has been recognized by the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the National Organization for Women, and was chosen as Ms. Magazine's 1985 Woman of the Year. Her pioneering work with lesbian and feminist music earned her the 2000 Legends of Women's Music Award.

During her long career in folk and protest music, with over 20 albums to her credit, she has worked with a wide array of musicians, including Ronnie Gilbert, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Mercedes Sosa, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Meg (Shambhavi) Christian, Cris Williamson, Linda Tillery, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Harry Belafonte, and many others, as well as the Chilean exile group, Inti-Illimani.

Near continues to tour, speaking out for change, for women rights, for peace, for all people. She also teach performance and songwriting classes passing on her gifts and talents on to new voices of change.

Holly Near Official Site