 |
|
Bev Grant is a singer/songwriter/guitarist, cultural activist and former leader and cornerstone of the band, Human Condition. She was director for five years of a New Jersey women’s chorus called The Righteous Sisters, with whom she honed her skill as a director and arranger before forming the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus. Bev is also cultural director of the Northeast Regional University Association of Labor Educators (ULEA) Summer School for Union Women. She has recorded four albums.
She 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. One recent song 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 upcoming album by the Brooklyn Women's Chorus scheduled for release in the Spring of 2003. Bev’s work is described in Sing Out! Magazine as “unhesitatingly fervent, unflinchingly personal and reflecting the diversity of a real person’s musings.”
Bev’s songwriting and performance reflect a life of social activism that reaches back to the 1960’s. Her early bands, including THE HUMAN CONDITION, championed lives free from racial and gender oppression, and used music as an organizing tool for communities and unions. Nowhere did these themes echo with more resonance than in the pages of Broadside Magazine, which for twenty-six years published songs by all the great topical songwriters of the era, including Bev Grant. 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 the founder and director of the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus and has served for ten years as Cultural Director for the ULEA Northeast Summer Institute for Union Women. And she is still conducting “holy warfare” – one of her most recent songs, We Were There, has quickly become an anthem of the Women’s Movement
Bev Grant is a veteran social activist, feminist, labor singer/songwriter, “cultural worker” from Park Slope Brooklyn, where she has lived for the past 30 years. She is the co-creator of a women’s labor history multi-media presentation entitled “We Were There!” and has recorded four albums, including a companion cassette and songbook called “We Were There!”, a solo cd entitled “IN TUNE”, and two albums with her band “Human Condition”. She has appeared on numerous compilation recordings, including the recently released Grammy-nominated Smithsonian/Folkways “Best of Broadside” album and “Traditions – New Spirits & Holy Ground – Performers from the Good Coffeehouse, Park Slope Brooklyn”.
 |
Bev Grant performs with her partner, Bruce Markow, as a duo or with accompanying rhythm section. Bruce is a spirited singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who performs on guitar, mandolin, piano, keyboard, dulcimer and more. He brings passion, playfulness and well-honed craftsmanship to the duo’s repertoire and contributes captivating melodies and rousing lyrics that “renew the belief that love is ultimately the answer.” |
home / gigs
/ Brooklyn Women's Chorus / We
Were There / recordings / buy
stuff / bookings / mailing
list / reviews / press
releases / links
Site contents Copyright
Bev Grant, 2003.