Cheeky Woman, Bev Grant & the Dissident Daughters

Grant led her band, The Human Condition, to national prominence in the early 1970s, after sharing the stage with such luminaries as Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, and others. The Human Condition was a protest band in the truest sense, albeit approaching the music in a unique manner. Strains of rock, Latin music, R&B, pop, fused with the essence of smoky folk clubs. Adding to her topical singer’s pedigree, Grant was on the bill of Ochs’s 1973 festival, “An Evening With Salvador Allende” at NYC’s Madison Square Garden, a benefit for refugees fleeing Chile after the U.S.-orchestrated coup. 

After recording a couple of major-label LPs (available through Grant’s website), the band split. Grant next performed both solo and in duet with guitarist/singer Bruce Markow and in a series of other groups. She developed a special fondness for the company of other female voices. As Grant explained, she began performing in a sister act as a child, so harmonizing with other women came naturally. After working with a women’s chorus in New Jersey, Grant created the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus and eventually her feminist politics came together with her next group, Bev Grant and the Dissident Daughters. This latest aggregation’s core sound doesn’t resemble the rock/folk of The Human Condition or the singer-songwriter genre one expects from a culture warrior brandishing an acoustic guitar. Instead Grant’s Dissident Daughters offers three-part soprano and alto harmonies bellowing out like the Andrew Sisters gone radical. One can hear a century’s worth of music in the confines of this CD. This ensemble swings, rocks, jumps, soothes, and kicks ass.  

Grant’s original line-up included Lynn Stabile and Valerie Andrew- levich, two strong vocalists who recorded the current disc with her. After about a year of performing together, the Daughters moved onto other projects, so two more, Angela Lockhart and Carolynn Murphy, have taken on the powerful roles. You can hear it all when they perform live, but their CD Cheeky Woman offers a brilliant document of this powerful trio. 

The CD opens with the Grant- penned number “Mama’s Leaving Home,” a beautiful account of the dilemma of the middle-aged wife/ mother who comes to learn that she has never really known herself. It’s presented as up-tempo swing that belies the emptiness of the title. The album is filled with gems like this, as well as Jolie Rickman’s “Emma Goldman,” Stephan Foster’s “Hard Times Come No More” (with a warm lead vocal by Stabile), and the immigrant-centered “In America,” written by Grant and Markow. This CD can appeal to many ages and cultures as it all sounds familiar while being edgy at the same time. Its pronounced feminist thread is pleasingly in your face. 

Some of the other cuts include “Where Women Rule,” the story of an African village led by a matriarchy, and “Tired of the Bastards,” which stylistically has much in common with the Almanac Singers, save for the contemporary lyrical frankness (“I’m tired of the bastards fucking over me”). Humor notwithstanding, the album’s closer, “America’s Dirty Little Secret,” offers both melodic beauty and devastatingly harsh lyrics about a struggling single mother. Not that Cheeky Woman pulls any punches, but this song speaks volumes about the sexism, racism, and classism of the Bush years. It’s a vital piece of music for young women to hear. But then, so is the whole album. It’s one to go out and buy for your teenagers as well as for the rest of us. 

Z 

John Pietaro is a musician, writer, and labor organizer from New York.