The 49th Annual National Women’s Music Festival

Photos by Susan Berston

Since 1974, the National Women’s Music Festival (NWMF) has celebrated and built a community of women who come together to share their talents, stories, energies, and knowledge all while enjoying music, art, comedy, and written/spoken word performances. The 49th NWMF took place from July 3–6 in Middleton, Wisconsin. Susan Berston, an author and Professor of Business at the City College of San Francisco, attended and reported on the festival for the San Francisco Bay Times and also presented the 2024 documentary Sally!, about the radical lesbian feminist Sally Gearhart. Berston is the Executive Producer of this award-winning film directed by Deborah Craig.

A panel discussion of the film Radical Harmonies included (left to right) women’s history professor Bonnie Morris, singer/songwriter Margie Adam, recording artist Linda Tillery, activist, university lecturer Boden Sandstrom and psychiatrist, activist, and filmmaker Dee Mosbacher. Mosbacher and Sandstrom received the 2025 Jeanine C. Rae Award.

Many artists from the Bay Area attended and performed at the NWMF, including legendary singer Linda Tillery, who was presented with The Lifetime Achievement Award on July 4. This San Francisco native whose career spans more than 55 years is an out lesbian recognized as a pioneer and national treasure in women’s music. She is a Grammy-nominated vocalist, percussionist, producer, and cultural historian who has collaborated with June Millington, Deidre McCalla, Barbara Higbie, Holly Near, Margie Adam, and many others. She was the featured guest of the San Francisco Bay Times Pride Parade contingent a few years ago.

Linda Tillery received the first NWMF Lifetime Achievement Award presented
by Linda Wilson

In 1975, Tillery began working with the lesbian feminist collective Olivia Records, producing, writing, and performing music that brought a soul and R&B sound to the label. Songs like her rendition of “Don’t Pray for Me” and “Freedom Time,” both collaborations with Mary Watkins, challenged homophobia head on and addressed feminism, racism, peace, and justice.

Another memorable moment was the screening of Radical Harmonies (2002), followed by a panel discussion featuring Dee Mosbacher, filmmaker, lesbian feminist activist, and psychiatrist; Boden Sandstrom, University of Maryland lecturer; Tillery; Adam; Bonnie Morris, women’s history professor and author; and Megan Metcalf-Joyce, a lesbian librarian, queer historian and Women’s, Gender & LGBTQIA+ Studies Librarian and Collections specialist at the Library of Congress. Radical Harmonies: Woodstock Meets Women’s Liberation, produced by Mosbacher, is a full-length documentary that chronicles the Women’s Music Cultural Movement and its evolution.

Author and lecturer Bonnie Morris, a nationally recognized expert on
the role of women’s music in lesbian culture, attended the 2025 NWMF.

A workshop entitled “Preserving Lesbian Herstory in Tough Times” featured Morris, who discussed information on archiving lesbian legacies and passing on personal festival collections. It is especially urgent as our community confronts new erasure by the Trump administration.

Plans are already underway for the milestone 50th annual NWMF.

https://nwmf.info/