Olivia on the Record
A Radical Experiment in Women's Music
Foreword INDIES 2020 Silver Award Winner in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction
Independent Press Awards 2021 Winner in LGBTQ nonfiction
Golden Crown Literary Awards 2021 Nonfiction Winner
The burgeoning lesbian and feminist movements of the '70s and '80s created an impetus to form more independent and equitable social and cultural institutions—bookstores, publishers, health clinics, and more—to support the unprecedented surge in women's arts of all kinds. Olivia Records was at the forefront of these models, not only recording and distributing women's music but also creating important new social spaces for previously isolated women and lesbians through concerts and festivals.
Ginny Z. Berson, one of Olivia's founding members and visionaries, kept copious records during those heady days—days also fraught with contradictions, conflicts, and economic pitfalls. With great honesty, Berson offers her personal take on what those times were like, revisiting the excitement and the hardships of creating a fair and equitable lesbian-feminist business model—one that had no precedent.
In a time when lesbians’ participation in mainstream culture and politics is often taken for granted, we need to recognize the miraculousness of what Olivia achieved. A few years after Stonewall, Olivia not only created the first women’s record label, but in the face of pervasive bigotry and repression carved out a vibrant political space for lesbian freedom. —Barbara Smith, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective
The women’s music movement was a revolution for rights and dignity, carving out a space where none existed before: for women to seize ownership of their own narrative, for lesbians who had never been reflected in popular music, for women to write love songs to other women. A small collective of idealistic women with absolutely no experience in the music business created a model that would change the landscape for all women, indeed, for all people. —Vicki Randle, musician
Ginny Berson’s important memoir of building Olivia Records into a beloved lesbian institution is a timely narrative from a founding organizer. Ginny walks us through the politics, radical self-discovery, aching romantic tension, and quirky community organizing that characterized an era. In these chapters, we gain a front row seat to the collective “processing” that produced and distributed lesbian records, and meet the first generation of fans to experience women’s music as lesbian liberation. —Bonnie J. Morris, PhD, author of Eden Built by Eves, The Disappearing L, and The Feminist Revolution
Ginny Z Berson is a long-time political activist driven by a longing for justice. She was a member of The Furies-- a radical lesbian feminist separatist collective in Washington, D.C. that lived and worked collectively to develop lesbian feminist political thought and philosophy. They produced a mostly monthly newspaper, The Furies, that was distributed nationally and had a significant impact on women’s groups all over the U.S. Ginny was a regular contributor and member of the editorial staff.
After The Furies broke up, Ginny pulled together a group of women in D.C. to begin visioning and planning what would become Olivia Records, the national women’s record company. She and her partner, the musician Meg Christian, were the initial driving force getting Olivia off the ground. Ginny stayed at Olivia for seven plus years, and during that time the
Olivia collective produced records by Meg, Cris Williamson, BeBe K’Roche, Linda Tillery, Teresa Trull, Mary Watkins, a poetry album by Pat Parker and Judy Grahn, and Lesbian Concentrate—a “lesbianthology” in response to a rising wave of homophobia. After leaving Olivia in 1980, Ginny worked for many years in community radio---at KPFA-FM, Pacifica Radio, and the
National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
She then spent 8 years as Director of Outreach for World Trust Educational Services, an anti-racist educational organization that produces documentary films, curricula, workshops and trainings.
She also does racial equity work in her neighborhood as part of Neighbors for Racial Justice.
