Four decades have passed since a half million people gathered together on a New York dairy farm to celebrate peace, love and music. With Woodstock’s fortieth anniversary this August, the arts are celebrating a milestone summer, and included in that recognition are several commendable voices of women.
Music was the perfect draw in that summer of 1969, with much credit due to the legendary lineup of performers on that long weekend. Women had a place on that significant stage, too, from Melanie to Grace Slick, from Joan Baez to Janis Joplin. All four lent their distinct voices to the event. Whether they sang folk or blues or hard driving rock, each used the stage as their canvas, laying out their emotions, their message, their art, for the world to see. The contrasting variation of their voices lives on in the historical undertones of a weekend when music defined an entire era in its words, its message, in all its capacity.
Still to this day, forty years later, these women matter. Forty years later and forty years from now, Melanie, Baez, Slick and Joplin are necessary and relevant as they help shape the collective voice of women in the arts. With this fortieth Woodstock anniversary, remember these four women and take a little piece of inspiration from them. Lend your own pens, lenses, canvases, voices and become a part of artistic significance, artistic history.
Joanne DeMaio is a Connecticut writer whose music essays have appeared in The Hartford Courant, flashquake, Cezanne’s Carrot, and other print publications. Joanne maintains Whole Latte Life, a blog about living a choice life, at www.joannedemaio.blogspot.com. She supports fellow writers as a blog host on Wow! Women on Writing author blog tours.
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