People from all walks of life will come together to celebrate and support women’s music at the third annual Lesbopalooza.
The UO Cultural Forum, the Women’s Center and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Alliance host Lesbopalooza, which begins 8 p.m. Friday at WOW Hall, with performances continuing on Saturday. Lesbopalooza will also host a free barbecue at Alton Baker Park, where there will be games, food and prizes. Festivities begin at noon.
This is the first feminist/queer music festival of its kind in the country, said LGBTQA Issues Coordinator Kristina Armenakis.
“This is an important event for music in the queer community,” Armenakis said. She said many independent female artists who identify as being “queer” are marginalized in the mainstream media, and Lesbopalooza gives them a safe space to promote their music. The festival will feature women’s folk music by Cris Williamson and riot-girl/punk rock artists Jordan Blumberg-Enge, Aisha Ayers, Tami Hart, New Shenanigans, Celestina Pearl, Tracy + the Plastics, and Infinite X’s.
“We are in the mainstream; you just don’t see us in the press,” said Williamson, who is a pioneer of the women’s music movement and co-founder of the first all-women recording company in the 1970s, Olivia Records.
Williamson said she has seen a change in this generation’s female artists, because they have more access to recording labels. But when she started in the music business in the 1970s, she said labels often turned female artists away saying, “we already have a woman.”

Other music companies had female artists, she said, but there were always men in the background, playing instruments or filling technical positions. She said even today, men’s money pushes women artists into the forefront.
“It’s a compromise (women) have had to pay,” she said.
During the last three decades, Williamson said she has tried to encourage women to take the risk to come out of the closet sexually.
“Women needed me to be really strong,” she said. “I give them the courage to be exactly who they are.”
Through her music, Williamson said she hopes she reaches the audience and makes a difference in their lives.
“Songs are spun through the air and passed through the body,” she said. “That’s when miracles can occur.”
In addition to music, Chicana Femme Dyke Celestina Pearl will perform poetry, spoken word and dance at Lesbopalooza.
Once a Eugene resident, Pearl co-founded and performed with the Fierce Pussy Posse Cabaret Theatre Company until she moved to San Francisco in January 2000.
Pearl will perform a unique strip dance with three other performers in which she begins dressed in a suit, peels the layers of clothing to reveal a little girl’s costume, then ends wrapped in one large scarf. Warning: There will be some nudity.
“It basically is a statement of the different aspects of myself,” she said. “They are a part of my personality and spirituality.”
Tickets are available at the EMU Ticket Office and Mother Kali’s Books. Tickets for one night are $11 for general admission and $9 for students. Tickets for both nights are $16 for general admission and $11 for students.
All ages are welcome.