In this record review of the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective’s first album for WOMANSPIRIT magazine, Nancy Groschwitz includes a personal story about her first experience of women’s music — her memories of watching the Berkeley Women’s Music Collective perform their song “Gay and Proud.” It was a typical rowdy college audience but as soon as Debbie Lempke began to sing the audience fell silent and when it was over “it was hard to remember to clap.”

In the last verse of the song, sung collectively by the band in a madrigal style, Groschwitz heard an affirmation of the “power of women together.” She labeled their self-titled album as “throughly political,” carrying the message “our struggle is not over but our isolation is.”

***

Groschwitz later authored a significant essay, “Practical Economics for a Women’s Community,” included in the collection Lavender Culture (1978).