Bev Grant | |
|---|---|
 Bev Grant at aPoor People's Campaign music event atInterference Archive in 2019 | |
| Born | (1942-03-22)22 March 1942 (age 83) |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, activist, photographer, and filmmaker |
Bev Grant (born 22 March 1942) is anAmerican musician, photographer, filmmaker, and activist based in New York City.[1]
Grant grew up inPortland, Oregon, and moved to New York with her husband in the 1960s.[2][1][3] She later separated from her husband, was radicalized through theAnti-War Movement, and became involved in theWomen's Movement as an activist, musician, and photographer.[3]
During her childhood in Portland, Grant sang and performed with her two older sisters. After moving to New York City in the 1960s, Grant began performing and writing music in social movements, composing her first parody song for the 1968Miss America protests in Atlantic City.[4] She was involved throughout the 1970s and 1980s with the band Human Condition, which she helped create in 1972.[4] They performed folk, rock, and world music and played a key role in New York City's underground music scene.[5][6] Their first album,The Working People Gonna Rise!, was recorded in 1974 withBarbara Dane atParedon Records.[4] Much of Grant's music writing has focused on the lives and labor conditions of the working poor.[4][7]
In 1991, Grant joined the United Association of Labor Education Northeast Union Women’s Summer School as cultural director.[4] She is founder and director of the Brooklyn Women's Chorus.[5][8] From 2006 to 2008, Grant performed with other female musicians as part of a group called Bev Grant and the Dissident Daughters which included singers Angela Lockhart and Carolynn Murphy.[9] After that, she performed with Ina May Wool as WOOL&GRANT until 2015.[4] She released the solo album,It's Personal, in 2017.[6]
Much of Grant's alternative-press photography documents political organizing events Grant attended, and occasionally participated in, from approximately 1968 until 1972, after which point she focused more extensively on her music career.[3] Included in her documentary photographs are images of theBlack Panther Free Breakfast Program, theJeannette Rankin Brigade March on Washington, the 1968Filmore East Takeover, and ofFidel Castro speaking on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of theCuban Revolution. Some of her early photographs were published in underground newspapers and distributed throughLiberation News Service;[15] many have been distributed byGetty Images[16] and were featured in a solo exhibition in 2018 atOsmos Gallery in New York City.[17][18]
Grant's photography depicts her own activism and her involvement with New York Radical Women.[19] Her documentation of the 1968 Miss America Protests was featured in her 2018 solo exhibition at Osmos; these photographs have become widely popular and are Grant's best known work.[20][21] Her press pass allowed her to take photographs inside the pageant itself, where protesters unfurled banners and released stink bombs.[2][1] Grant's photography was used in making the filmShe's Beautiful When She's Angry,[22] released in 2015.[23]
As a member ofNewsreel, Grant caught several important events on film, including the 1968 Miss America pageant for the Newsreel filmUp Against the Wall Ms. America.[24] Her work as an activist and filmmaker gave her contacts within, and filming access to, groups including theYoung Lords, theBlack Panther Party, and thePoor People's Campaign.[25] She contributed the theme song to the 1971 film,Janie's Janie, which is considered "an important early film of the women's movement."[26]
As an activist, Grant attended her first anti-war demonstrations in New York City and was radicalized at a meeting ofStudents for a Democratic Society at Princeton in 1967.[1] Grant was a member ofNew York Radical Women, and she participated in and photographed a wide range of related political events including the 1968 demonstrations against theMiss America pageant in Atlantic City and the October 31, 1968 hex onWall Street byFlorika Remetier,Peggy Dobbins, Susan Silverman, Judith Duffett, Ros Baxandall, and Cynthia Funk of W.I.T.C.H., theWomen’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.[25]
Grant has articulated the important connection between theCivil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement she took part in, noting that many women's liberation organizers had participated in Civil Rights organizing and brought valuable skills and knowledge from that work.[2] Her conceptualization of the way women's oppression as a result of larger oppressions led to her later activism as ananti-imperialist.[2]