Wisconsin Union Directorate Music Friday will unleash FemFest on Friday — a night dedicated to music with feminist themes and consideration for women’s issues.
Madeline Carey, an assistant director of WUD Music and Coordinator for The Play Circle, organized the event and is particularly excited for it as well.
“I don’t think we’ve done it before like this, it really just came together,” Carey said. “We may have had something like this in past years, but this isn’t something that we do every year, but it should be.”
FemFest will feature five feminist bands: Gynosaur, Glamour Hotline, The Dowry, Gran and Not For You. Driving the creation of this line-up is an emphasis on local talent.
Gynosaur, The Dowry and Gran are all from Madison, while Glamour Hotline and Not For You are from Chicago. A staff member of WUD Music is even a member of Gynosaur, adding to the community vibe of the event.
“Madison has a really great scene for this kind of music so it wasn’t hard to come up with a lineup,” Carey said. “We definitely could have had more than five acts.”
These acts will range from harder, riot-gurl punk to softer acoustic-indie sounds.
Carey also said that FemFest was conceived in a greater context of awareness and tolerance. Partnering with the LGBT Campus Center, WUD Music has also dedicated the month of April to an LGBTQ+ series of artists. Carey and WUD Music Director Brian Edwards thought FemFest would be an excellent addition to this month’s events.
The duo instantly came up with the name FemFest and from there they got to work booking bands and turning their vision into a reality, Carey said.
In addition to the show’s local emphasis, concertgoers will also be able to look at the greater world feminist music, as copies of “She Shreds Magazine“ will also be distributed at the show.
A magazine for women guitarists and bassists, Carey was able to sit in on the “She Shreds” panel at South by Southwest in Austin last month.
“We [WUD Music] attended a panel with Fabi Reyna who started ‘She Shreds Magazine,’” Carey said. “It’s just a really cool thing that we were able to use the leftover money in the budget to order these copies to hand out to people.”
FemFest will take place 7 p.m. Friday at The Sett. Any feminists, music lovers or both should come out and see this incredible showcase of local talent and women in music.
