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 Grammy-Award
winners Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, the Indigo Girls, have
taken performing one step further to organizing and appearing
on several iconoclastic tours. The Honor the Earth Tour is
organized on behalf of Native environmental activists and
includes benefit shows and visits to indigenous reservations
throughout the US, while the 1998 Suffragette Sessions Tour
was a collective of women artists that Ray described as "a
socialist experiment in rock & roll." Later, a tour of free
shows in American high schools gave rise to much controversy
when some parents, principals and school board members cancelled
shows due to concerns over the Indigo Girls' sexual orientation.
It was Saliers' and Ray's connection to the students, however,
that prevailed in the end. The idea of a high school tour
came about after Emily and Amy were judges in a student lyric
writing contest sponsored by Scholastic Magazine. The words
they read, covering topics like political activism, love,
abuse and alienation, begged for the chance to be expressed.
Says Ray: "We were struck by the students' energy and willingness
to engage in and question life. A minority composed of homophobic,
narrow-minded parents, weak-kneed principals and school boards
have successfully enforced a policy of hate. Our public schools
should be a safe environment for an open exchange of ideas
and a chance to explore one's own individuality. The impossibility
and hypocrisy of a situation where kids are expected to be
honest but are judged and alienated from their community because
of it should not escape us." Ray and Saliers thank the kids
for standing by them.
Collaborating for well over a decade as the Indigo Girls,
Ray and Saliers have created not only gold and platinum albums
but an activist presence that crosses conventional boundaries
of the music industry into grassroots movements for gay and
lesbian rights, women's rights, environmental justice, the
rights of Indigenous peoples and beyond. They have been honored
by Ms. Magazine, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
Women's Actions for New Directions and the Native American
Music Association, among others. This personal commitment
to human rights activism is both a reason and a result of
the music they create. "The most natural thing in the world
for us is to marry social activism with our music because
our music is so deeply rooted in life issues," says Saliers.
http://www.ngltf.org
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