It was July 5th 1997: Opening night of the groundbreaking all-female music festival Lilith Fair.
The lineup featured a who’s who of female alternative musicians of the moment: Sheryl Crow, Jewel, The Indigo Girls, Lisa Loeb, Fiona Apple, Shawn Colvin, Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant and more.
Lilith Fair was the culmination of a year of work by its founder, a Canadian singer-songwriter. Sarah McLachlan had been told by music and concert industry executives that putting more than one woman back-to-back on a lineup or radio playlist wouldn’t sell.
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So McLachlan started to fundraise and work with performers to join her on stage before launching Lilith in the summer of 1997.
In its first summer, Lilith easily outpaced the then-fading Lollapolooza festival, in both audience size and ticket sales. It returned for two more summers and went on to become the top-grossing music festival of the late 1990s, racking up $60 million in ticket sales over its three-year run.
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The addition of more artists of color opened the festival to a broader audience, and exposed its up-and-coming Black female artists to a new set of fans. Meshell Ndegeocello, a bassist and composer who joined the show in 1998, recalls the festival’s comforting atmosphere and the thrill of getting to see such powerful female artists — from Paula Cole to Erykah Badu to Natalie Merchant — performing together and supporting each other.
R&I – FS
FoundingFrog
Article URL : https://www.npr.org/2022/07/05/1108635464/25-years-on-lilith-fair-is-a-reminder-of-how-one-womans-radical-idea-changed-mus