The Lilith Fair - Rock Music Research Paper

Name: Xiongjun Li

Institution: James Cauter

Course: MUSC 116

Date: 03/03/2017

Lilith Fair

The role that women play in the music industry that appears to be dominated by men is becoming vital topic for discussion especially because of the continual flourishing of female artists. During the early days, it was hard for women to flourish in this male-dominated industry, but great changes have so far been seen. The music industry is truly a male dominated field, but is would not be nothing without the female voice since it would be unrealistic to deny the role that women have played in the music world today. Like any other employment sector, women have gone through a hard time gaining success they deserve without being subjected to discrimination, an experience that is still going on today, thus they have a long way to go in terms of success and respect in the industry. It is because of these issues that Sarah McLachlan and Terry McBride saw it fit to organise an all-female show that rocked the world between 1997 and 1999 referred to as the Lilith Fair concert tour.  

The Lilith Fair concert obtained its name from the legendary Lilith from the bible who disobeyed Adam and exited the garden of Eden in search of the earth for the purpose of adventure. The years 1996 saw radio station and various concert promoters decline to allow two female artists, Paula Cole and Sarah McLachlan who were touring together simply because the corporate music society thought a couple of female musicians did not have the capability of convincing the public to purchase substantial concert tickets (Allen and Wilcken 132). This event angered Sarah McLachlan driving her to book her own tour in which she invited Paula Cole in her own backyard, which paved way to the birth of the first Lilith Fair concert a year later (Iannacci 58). According to Sarah McLachlan, the birth of Lilith Fair was based on a simple urge to play some shows and not to do it by herself, thus the presence of Paula Coke especially at a time when male artists dominated music. In that, it was a period when the unspoken policy at the radio stations was you cannot play the songs of two women back to back, thus one should certainly desist from putting a group of women together on the same bill. When Sarah McLachlan began to push up against the idea, it only powered the drive to prove those discriminating against women wrong. In 1997, the first Lilith Fair was established with the cooperation of Mary Diamond, a New York talent agent and Terry Mcbride’s and Dan Fraser’s Nettwerk Music Faction. Unexpected to many, the Lilith Fair tour emerged among the top tours that year as it ranked at number sixteen in addition to earning an unexpected gross income of sixteen million dollars. Even though the concert was not founded from the notion to serve for political interests, in its first three years, the concert raised ten million dollars for women charities across the United States (Lai, and Mok 122). Today, the concert is regarded as one of the biggest music festivals in history, which assisted in launching the careers of various famous female artists.