Holly Near

By Alex Teitz

Holly Near is an icon. She has played for over thirty years, and done over twenty albums. She has been an active singer-songwriter, teacher, and activist for women’s rights. The National Organization for Women, and the ACLU have honored her work. Near has fought for human rights worldwide. Her latest CD Edge combines both originals and covers to create a tapestry of song and power. Near is touring extensively. For more information visit hollynear.com

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

HN: I cherish that it is a mystery. Will I allow myself to fall prey to a rhythm and an idea? Let it have its way with me? Once it has surprised me and taken me somewhere I might not have gone on my own, then I impose myself on it so that I am in the song.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Edge?

HN: My voice. I was having vocal troubles during most of the recording. I kept having to put off doing the vocals. I went on, being the producer, the songwriter, working with the musicians on the arrangements, the graphics, the finances, the administration, finding my way through all the other aspects of the recording. When it seemed I had some notes available to me, I would do a vocal. Finally, before the project was over, I found enough voice to record the whole thing to my satisfaction, meaning true and honest. My ego would have preferred high vocal craft. But in hind sight, if I had been in great voice I might have abused the songs just so I could show off. My voice and I have always had a complex relationship.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making Edge?

HN: The musicians I worked with. What a delight. I knew exactly who I was asking and why. They each brought such talent and humor and joy to the project. They weren’t just hired hands. They came to work with me. I loved it. I also really liked making a recording without there being any record company, any managers, any movements demanding and expecting. It was just me. I felt light headed and light hearted and grateful.

FEMMUSIC: What responsibility does an artist have to teach their craft?

HN: To teach their craft, hmm. Well I think that some artists are really not good teachers so I would not want to impose a responsibility of teaching on them. They’re really good at what they do and teaching is an art unto itself. Many of us who had a great teacher when we were growing up knew that it was a rare and wonderful thing. So people who are full time teachers I have a lot of respect for cause that’s what they do, and it’s different from being an artist. However, having said that, there are some artists who I think are great teachers and if and when they feel that they can take time away from their art to pass on what they know, their wisdom, I think that’s wonderful. For example, Bernice Reagon, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, she was the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, an extraordinary black singing organization, and she is an exquisite teacher and she does make it very central to her work that she pass on tradition. And I like to teach, and I think I’m a good teacher. I’m not sure that it’s a responsibility as much as it is if you can, do.

FEMMUSIC: What do you see as the biggest problems with the US today?

HN: Oh my. (pause) We have a systemic problem and I see it sort of as I look at medicine. Sometimes people try to give a quick fix to a deeper problem. Here take two aspirin and go to bed. When in fact maybe the patient needs to completely reorganize their life. I feel as if we are missing the deeper systemic problems…That was the problem with the election that we were forced the candidates to talk on such a shallow soundbyte level that we don’t really get to here the great minds of our country really work on these problems with any depth or sincerity.

So, having said that, I think one of the problems we’re going to face in the coming years is a cultural one. I feel we’re very divided in this country around how we believe humanity should proceed. Some people want more laws, more restriction, more tightly run, more aggressive control, build more prisons, punish children…that kind of way of looking at society and then there’s other people who feel that it needs to be approached completely the opposite. More tenderness, more love, more compassion, more understanding and it will be interesting to see those two philosophies knock heads. And I mean they’re knocking (laughing). They’re definitely knocking.

FEMMUSIC: What do you think are the biggest lessons you’ve learned being both a singer and an activist?

HN: Well very personally I learned that I’m a…I’m a slow learner. I’m quick to understand and slow to learn which is very frustrating. I hold myself extremely accountable and hate it when I keep making the same mistakes. I’m way more forgiving of other people than I am of myself.

I’m trying in this next set of years in my life..trying to embrace the gifts that come with heading towards being an elder to have a little bit more patience and really look at the practice of learning. It’s one thing to just know it in your head. It’s another thing to completely integrate it into one’s every behavior.

FEMMUSIC: Can you give an example?

HN: Well for example I get racism. I understand it in my head. Actually letting that information sink very deeply into one’s soul and being and history and culture and behavior is something else again. No, I actually think I’ve done a pretty good job on that one but not to my satisfaction. I hold myself accountable for practicing in my life that which I understand in my head and I catch myself constantly doing less well than I know in my head I could be doing. And it’s the same thing with sexism, or class, or homophobia or any of these things. When I understand it intellectually, but for me as a woman, for example, I know what it feels like. I’ve had moments in my life where I know what it feels like to not behave the way the system wants me to behave. I know what that kind of truth and honesty to myself feels like. I’ve had glimpses of that. However, in everyday life, holding onto that, and living honest and true to myself as a woman is a much more difficult task than just understanding sexism. We compromise and we adjust and we alter our true belief system every day in order to just get by and it comes from being tired. It comes from fear. It comes from all kinds of things, but I don’t like when I do it.

Now as an artist I have an opportunity in a very small framework within the context of a three-minute song or a two-hour concert to see if for that short period of time, I can remain true. And that’s one of the things that makes being an artist so exciting to me.

FEMMUSIC:  What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

HN: You mean that big business out there? I’m not much apart of it. Yes, change it. Change everything. Mixing music and money creates problems for expression. The patrons and the artists, the kings and the troubadours, the propaganda and the community. Now it is corporate in scope. I have always felt it to be a mean street out there. There are many well meaning people working in the music business but the most part I believe it is a dangerous place…hard on women, hard on black people, hard on honest people, hard on creativity.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry have you been discriminated against?

HN: Not so I could prove it in court. But when I was close to getting a record deal in the early 70’s, one man said to me he thought I wrote good melodies but my lyrics were too political. Another said he thought I would have a hard time making it as a pop singer because there was no element of submission in my voice. It seemed to me, women had to choose. They could be the helpless fragile female or the red hot mama. I found those choices confusing. Looking back, most of the women who are now known as the early mamas of women’s music had one foot in the door of the music industry just like me. We were good. Had we been able to alter ourselves on demand, we would have had commercially successful careers. I’m quite sure of it. But for one reason or another we were less good being “her” than being ourselves. This failure to adapt put us on a different path and our various paths lead to each other. It was a great gift to meet each other, beautifully intact. And as a result, we got a chance to stir things up. It would have been nice to have more money and fame but not if it meant I couldn’t write and sing a song like “Simply Love”

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

HN: Pay attention. Get a mental tool box. Put everything you learn into it, trusting you will know what to do with it when the time comes. Stay fascinated. Have great respect for the power of art, the power it has over you, like a surfer must have for the power of the wave. Dare to get worse before you get better. And then do what it is you love to do and do it and do it and do it. If you are a performing artist and the audience is a big part of what you do, pay attention to the audience response. They are part of the show and must be paid notice. Over time, know why you are doing what you do in front of people as oppose to in the privacy of your home. Once you know that, it will guide you. If you just want to be rich and famous, and you are a quick study, find a trend and hop on for the ride. But if you want to be an artist, be prepared to be lonely.

FEMMUSIC: What are your plans for the future?

HN: Wow. You did leave the hardest one for last. The last few years I’ve been trying to get a home for my past. I’m working with the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. They’re going to have all my papers, historical documents, ..they’re putting together a collection. So I’ve been going through things, and the next step of that is that there are a lot of tapes, and film, and video tapes that needs to go to similar homes and to kind of put the first thirty years of my career into a place where people can have access to it, and study it. Not to study me per se but to study the era that I had the good fortune of being a part of. So I’m hoping in this year to finish most of that up because I really don’t want to stay focused on the past and also if I leave this stuff around I’ll just start throwing it away. It’s all over my house. (laughs) So I see that really as a task to get through that.

And then I want to find some empty space to allow what’s going to come next to come in. If we stay busy there’s no room for a new idea and I’m quite sure that once I’m sort of done with some of these tasks that I want to be done with that creating some empty space will inform me as to what’s going to happen next. And I really don’t know.

I’m very pleased with Edge, the new recording. In the midst of taking care of some of these things in the past I’ve got to do something new. I went into the studio and I recorded a lot of new material. I like how it turned out a lot. And simultaneous to that I did a collection of women’s music which in many ways is a code for what was going on in the lesbian community along side of conscientious straight women and men. It was very lesbian driven. It started in the early Seventies, and I went back and gathered all the songs that I had sung that were women identified that kind of came from that energy that exploded onto the scene in the Seventies after Stonewall. Put together a 2 CD collection called Simply Love. And I wanted it to be there for people who had gone through that time, but also for younger people, particular women, and see what path they’re walking on. Those two projects came out this year and I was very busy with those along with archiving work so this year, while I’m archiving, I’m touring quite a bit. And hoping to bring those 2 CDs and the music to different cities around the United States.