Bev Grant — Bio
Bev Grant is a veteran social activist, feminist, labor singer/songwriter, "cultural worker" from Park Slope Brooklyn, where she has lived for over 30 years. She is the co-creator of a women's labor history multi-media presentation entitled "We Were There!" and has recorded five albums, including a companion cd and songbook for the show, called "We Were There!", a solo cd entitled "IN TUNE", a 7-song ep with her current group, Bev Grant & the Dissident Daughters, called “CHEEKY WOMAN”, and two albums with her former band, "Human Condition". She has appeared on numerous compilation recordings, including the recently released Grammy-nominated Smithsonian/Folkways "Best of Broadside" album. Rolling Stone Magazine calls THE BEST OF BROADSIDE "topical songwriting [as] holy warfare" and "a grand tribute to a stubborn ideal" (David Fricke, Rolling Stone, August 31, 2000). "Virtually every important singer/songwriter of the American folk revival is heard on the collection..." Billboard.
Bev is an award winning songwriter and has used her music as an organizing tool in both community and union organizing, often writing songs for specific issues or campaigns and facilitating the creation and use of music by others. The most recent example is a song called “Take A Walk In My shoes” written for a domestic violence survivor’s advocacy group called Voices of Women Organizing Project (VOW). (Link to song and website – www.vowbwrc.org/) Another example is called "No Sweat!" and was performed by Bev and co-writer, Pat Humphries, at the University Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) conference in the summer of '99. It can be found on Hands, released in 2001, by Pat Humphries, and on the 2003 album “Power of Song” by the Brooklyn Women's Chorus. Bev's work is described in Sing Out! Magazine as "unhesitatingly fervent, unflinchingly personal and reflecting the diversity of a real person's musings."
In 2006, Bev won the Honorary BAXten Arts and Artists in Progress Award. The BAXten award honors "individuals in the arts who have revealed and transformed our creative world by instigating enduring change deepening the definition of their field and paving the way for others."
Discography
Visit music to read more about individual albums, listen online or buy.
Bev Grant full–length cds and cd singles
- Cheeky Woman (with the Dissident Daughters)
- Where Women Rule (CD single)
- The Women Are Coming (CD single)
- We Were There! Songs of Women's Labor History
- In Tune
- The Power of Song (with the Brooklyn Women's Chorus)
- Kulonyaka, Year of Dedication (with The Human Condition)
- Working People Gonna Rise (with The Human Condition)
Compilation recordings including Bev Grant
- Grammy nominated "The Best of Broadside 1962-1988, Anthems of the American Underground From the Pages of Broadside Magazine," Smithsonian/Folkways — "Inez"
- WBAI Octoberfest 2005 — "Women Are Coming"
- Traditions, New Spirits and Holy Ground, BSEC Good Coffee House compilation CD — "Downsizing"
- Live from El Salvador. Redwood Records — "El Salvador"
- Fabric of Life, MAH Records — "Patchwork Quilt"
- What Now People, Vol. I, Paredon Records — "Inez"
Bev Grant songs on other artists' recordings
- Pat Humphries — Hands, Appleseed Recordings "We Were There" and "No Sweat"
- The Solidarity Singers - Solidarity, IUC Records — "No Sweat"
- Solidarity Notes Labour Choir - Solidarity Notes — "We Were There"
- The Whiteville Choir - Union Power, Hard Miles Music — "Together We Can Move Mountains"
Awards
Recipient of the 2006 Honorary BAXten Arts and Artists in Progress Award. The BAXten award honors "individuals in the arts who have revealed and transformed our creative world by instigating enduring change deepening the definition of their field and paving the way for others."
First place – Song of the Year in Historical Circumstances category of the International Narrative Music Contest Awards – 2005 (Women are Coming)
Top 10 in 10th Annual Unisong International Songwriting Contest – 2005
Honorable mention in 11th Annual Unisong L.U.N.C.H. category – 2006 (Sunshine of Recovery)
Honorable mention in the 2006 Singer/Songwriter Awards (Round II).
Top 40 in 2008 Public Domain Music to Life Songwriting Contest & Concert (Where Women Rule)
Top 20 in 12th Annual Unisong International Songwriting Contest – 2007 Social/Political category (Women are Coming)
Reviews
Bev sings what Woody Guthrie once called "hard-hitting songs for hard-hit people" (witness "They Lied," "I Can't Stand My Job," "Dollar a Dance"), yet she celebrates the joyful things in life with equal fervor ("Freedom Has Come," "I Do Love You So"), and balances them off with stoicism and strength in the face of adversity ("Mama Never Said a Word"). With a voice reminiscent of Marianne Faithfull and Buffy Sainte-Marie, you can never doubt the power of Bev Grant's music.
—Crow & Wolf Music
"We Were There... this is a song for the unsung women heroes of our past on whose shoulders we stand...Bev Grant is a new link in the chain of women's history."
— Elise Bryant, Allegro (Local 802 Musicians Union, March 2008), director of the D.C. Labor Chorus and faculty member of the National Labor College.
I've been a fan of your music and excellent politics since long before I myself got into doing music other than for my own entertainment. Thank you for all these years of good work, good music and keeping the faith.
— Si Kahn, 3/20/08
Bev Grant and her wonderful Dissident Daughters...ouch. Too hot to handle. Smokin'. I keep saying it, excuse the broken-record here, but this trio is the best you've had and the format is perfect for all that you bring to the stage. I have listened to the Human Condtion CDs and have seen you in other great settings, but the female trio kills. With all of this killing and smoking, it almost sounds like this is not music of pride, peace, and the story of humanity. But it is. "She's leavin', she's leavin', she's leavin' home". Thank you, thank you, thank you sooooo very much!
—John Pietaro