2021 – MARGIE ADAM

Two Strangers & A Unicorn

12th October 2021 Occasionally, I have an encounter so unexpected, so utterly entrancing, that I am left breathless with joy and wonder. Such was a recent experience I had on Zoom with a complete stranger from Hong Kong. What made it remarkable was that my song, “Best Friend — The Unicorn Song,” served as a portal into a surprisingly uninhibited interaction between us, grounded in music, magic and intention. Our conversation and an additional “playlist” with translations, and other artists’ versions of “Best Friend…” are available on my YouTube Channel. This story begins with Harold Leung, founder, CEO and editor of the Hong Kong-based POPA (Positive Parenting) Channel who went looking for… Read More

Take Hands: Singing & Speaking for Survival

22nd April 2021 Last week I listened to “Take Hands: Singing & Speaking for Survival” for the first time since 1984. This freshly digitized collaboration of music and spoken word features poet and memoirist Honor Moore (with music by guitarist and composer Janet Marlow), essayist and poet Susan Griffin and myself. Our intention was to give voice to a shared conviction — and grave concern — that we had entered into a moment of existential threat to humanity and the earth through the proliferation of nuclear weaponry and power. We were determined to convert our sense of powerlessness to action through art. My song, “Who Among Us?” opens the program,… Read More

Mrs. Schlafly vs. 10,000 women singing “We Shall Go Forth!”

5th March 2021 On March 8, 2021, we celebrate International Women’s Day. One hundred and ten years ago — in 1911 — one million women and men gathered at IWD rallies around the world, demanding equal rights for women to work, to vote, to hold office, and to be free of gender-based discrimination. This is a moment to consider how far we’ve come… and where we are today. And also to ask: what’s next? Visit my YouTube Channel for an audio-visual blaze of forward momentum, set to my song, “We Shall Go Forth!” In celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day, I share a memory from forty-four years ago… It… Read More

OMG! Dusty Springfield is singing a love song to another woman…

7th February 2021 What extraordinary nerve she had, risking her career to record my song, “Beautiful Soul,” in 1974. How was it that Dusty Springfield became acquainted with this lesbian love song? I performed the song for the first time in concert as part of a day-long event called “Woman-Made Day” at the Los Angeles Women’s Building, celebrating publication of Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie’s New Woman’s Survival Catalog. An audience member recorded my set on a small cassette recorder and shared it with her friend, Dusty Springfield. This is how things “happened” in the early Women’s Music movement: word of mouth — while passing bootleg cassette tapes from woman… Read More

Margie in Conversation with Phyllis Lyon ~ Lesbian/Woman

22nd January 2021 On June 6, 2010, Phyllis Lyon and I came together for an NPR StoryCorp program and, as always, our conversation shifted effortlessly between the personal and the political. We talked about The Daughters of Bilitis and The Ladder magazine, their revolutionary book, Lesbian/Woman, gay marriage, activist burn-out, changing one’s mind. While we were at it, we shared our “origin stories” with each other. Phyl’s recollections of her first encounters with Del Martin, the love of her life and comrade-in-arms, are vintage Lesbiana. That’s just the first ten minutes of our conversation, posted on my YouTube Channel. It was a remarkable gift to come out as a lesbian in… Read More

Category: 2021