5 Things We Learned From The Lilith Fair Documentary
Photo, Crystal Heald.
I may not have been old enough to actually attend a Lilith Fair tour date in its three-year run—I was 10 when the groundbreaking all-women music festival first launched in 1997—but I definitely felt its cultural influence. The first albums I bought for myself—Tuesday Night Music Club, Tracy Chapman, Relish—were by the same artists that made up its initial lineup. I understood the misogynist (and honestly, corny and lazy) jokes about the festival I’d hear on Letterman clips. I remember Paula Cole getting censored on photo shoots for having armpit hair. I remember, more than anything else, understanding that much of the culture around me, even as a ten-year-old girl, saw Lilith Fair as an anomaly at best, and at worst a joke.
Watching Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, Ally Pankiw’s recently released documentary about the creation and impact of this music festival felt like a corrective. Created from archival footage and new interviews with organizers and performers, and largely told through the eyes of Sarah McLachlan, the festival’s founder, the documentary revisits this moment in time to demonstrate just how groundbreaking Lilith Fair really was. It’s available to view on CBC Gem, and I’d recommend it to anyone—whether you lived through the Lilith Fair era or not.
Here’s five takeaways from the doc.
Lilith Fair changed radio and show bookings forever
It’s hard to imagine now, but as late as the mid-nineties booking a multi-act gig with more than two women on the bill was exceedingly difficult. It was the same for radio playlists—an industry reality that prompted Sarah McLachlan to start the music festival in the first place. After completing a successful tour with Paula Cole that, at the time, McLachlan was advised against, the Halifax-born singer-songwriter booked a multi-date series of shows in the summer of 1997 that included Cole, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Lisa Loeb and Fiona Apple, among others. By the end of the festival’s three-year run, most of the headlining artists had either been nominated for or won Grammys; today, the idea of lineup featuring multiple women isn’t just more common, it’s closer to the norm.
Even potential sponsors had a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea
One of the WTF moments in watching the documentary for me was listening to McLachlan’s then-agent Marty Diamond talk about how a deal for a water sponsor for the Fair fell through because, as he puts it “they were trying to push for a more male audience.” For…water? Immediately after follows footage of McLachlan tearing the label off the water bottle she was drinking from before a TV interview.
The festival was rightfully taken to task over its initial lack of diversity—and its organizers learned from the experience
Dubbed the “Lily White Fair” by some after a 1997 lineup that featured almost exclusively white artists, Lilith Fair did actively try to change its bookings after its first summer to try to include more racialized musicians. Archival footage and new interviews with Queen Latifah, Erykah Badu, and Missy Elliot (who famously had to hitch a ride to her first Lilith date in a red convertible when her tour bus broke down) get into what it was like to introduce their music to audience that, until then, was largely new to the genres they worked in.
The festival wasn’t just revolutionary for artists
Perhaps because the fair’s reputation became so mired in the misogynist joke culture of late ’90s media, it’s easy to miss just how much the festival was able to accomplish in three short summers. Portions of its ticket sales were donated to local non-profit organizations at each city Lilith Fair visited; it became the centre of an international scandal over its inclusion of Planned Parenthood representatives at tour dates in Texas; its crew staffing practices launched careers for many women in the touring industry, and their employment included health coverage and on-site childcare arrangements.
The festival tried a comeback
It’s a 30-second anecdote, but one I’ve been thinking about since: towards the end of the doc, McLachlan talks briefly about the attempt to bring the festival back into rotation in 2009/2010, an effort that ultimately ended in lagging ticket sales and a significant number of cancelled tour dates. Based on some of the lineup announced—OG performers including McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, and the Indigo Girls, along with Mary J. Blige, Ke$ha, Metric, even Rihanna at one point—this wasn’t for lack of star power. Was it relevance? The economy? Perhaps its moment for a resurrection hadn’t arrived yet. Maybe—hopefully?—it’s yet to come.
The very best of Chatelaine straight to your inbox.
Chantal Braganza is a writer and editor living in Toronto. She is deputy editor, food at Chatelaine, a cookbook nerd, lover of vintage dish ware, and currently training for yoga teacher certification. Her first book, Story of Your Mother, is out with Strange Light Press.
