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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE NINE LIVES OF BARBARA DANE  
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Bill Meyer
December 12, 2024
Hollywood Progressive
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_ An opening scene in the documentary shows Dane flipping through the
pages of a massive looseleaf binder that contains her entire FBI Red
Squad files. _

"The Nine Lives of Barbara Dane", Maureen Gosling

 

You’re probably asking “_who_ is Barbara Dane?” The most
overlooked ‘superwoman’ of progressive music culture has performed
onstage with the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Oaks, Joan Baez, Pete
Seeger, and Peter, Paul & Mary, toured the world with famed cultural
icons including Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Bonnie Raitt, Louis
Armstrong, and the Chamber Brothers, to name a few, and yet has
somehow managed to avoid the front page news.

This lack of much-deserved attention in history books is now being
corrected with the timely release of THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE,
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by the accomplished Maureen Gosling
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a veteran who cut her teeth with the likes of Werner Herzog (Burden of
Dreams) and Les Blank (Chulas Fronteras). She’s no stranger to
politics and music, as exemplified in This Ain’t No Mouse Music.
After years of fundraising and gathering priceless photos, video
clips, and interviews from the many places Dane performed in the
world, Gosling delivers this moving documentary framed with excerpts
from Dane’s final concert at the age of 95. The film is loaded with
reference to the many lives Dane has lived (presumably 9), spanning
her years in the 30s as a young folk guitarist/singer in her hometown
of Detroit, Michigan, singing the Blues in Chicago and New York while
eventually settling in California, performing traditional jazz along
with the many styles she mastered throughout her long and active
career.

So you might now be asking, “_Why_ is she relatively unknown?” It
might be that fame and attention was never her goal, rather preferring
to perform live for local peace and justice events than being on the
big stages around the world, although she ended up doing that also.
Another reason might be that it’s in the capitalist’s interest to
keep her revolutionary messages as far away from the masses as
possible. It wasn’t accidental that her big planned European State
tour with Louie Armstrong was canceled because of her political
activities. The provocatively titled _I Hate the Capitalist System_
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just one of her many progressive releases, also an album featuring her
and Lightning Hopkins
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broke racial barriers for being the first to show a Black male and
white woman holding arms on the cover.

Dane was involved in the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era and
traveled with the FTA Show (Free the Army) along with Fonda and
Sutherland, among others. She was quoted during those days about her
lack of fame: "I was too stubborn to hire one of the greed-head
managers, probably because I'm a woman who likes to speak for herself.
I always made my own deals and contracts, and after figuring out the
economics of it, I was free to choose when and where I worked, able to
spend lots more time with my three children and doing political work,
and even brought home more money in the end, by not going for the 'big
time.' I did make some really nice records, because I was able to
choose and work with wonderfully gifted musicians."

She traveled to places where our government didn’t want Americans to
go to, like North Vietnam and Cuba, where she became the first
American artist to perform after the victorious Cuban Revolution in
1959. She chose to send her son, Pablo Menéndez, to school there,
where he stayed and later became one of the country’s best-known
musical artists, leading the highly popular band Mezcla
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An opening scene in the doc shows Dane flipping through the pages of a
massive looseleaf binder that contains her entire FBI Red Squad files
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The many names she sported (thanks to having three husbands) was
considered by the FBI as using deceptive aliases! She was under
surveillance since her early days as a folk singer, and thanks to our
government, many of her political activities and accomplishments have
been recorded for history.

Her accomplishments are endless. In 1961, she opened her own
club, Sugar Hill: Home of the Blues
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on San Francisco's Broadway. In 1970, Dane and her writer husband
Irwin Silber, founded the record company, Paredon Records, which
produced over 50 amazing one-of-a-kind revolutionary titles, such as
Huey Newton Speaks, poetry from Ho Chi Minh, speeches from Che
Guevara, Fidel Castro, music from the Spanish Civil War, and so many
more, which are now all preserved, along with liner notes that you can
download, in the Smithsonian Folkways Collection.

I personally had the honor to work with Barbara Dane on several
occasions, including a 1999 Detroit concert
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guests including Motown’s Martha Reeve’s and folksinger Josh
White, Jr., featuring chronological samplings of the styles of music
she performed throughout her varied career – folk, blues, jazz,
Greek music, spirituals, and more. Reeve’s commended Dane (who left
Detroit before the Motown music phenomenon), for helping to set the
stage for the upcoming Black artists who went on to become world
famous.

Director and editor Maureen Gosling has pulled off an amazing task,
similar to herding cats (9 Lives), covering the life of a committed
woman activist with an open mind, a determined personality and the
desire to effect social change. It should also be noted that any film
associated with the venerable actor/director/producer Danny Glover
deserves serious attention from the progressive community. Dane’s
daughter, Nina Menéndez, Artistic Director of several Flamenco
festivals and producer on this film deserves tremendous credit for
monitoring her mother’s health and work schedule while assisting in
bringing her story to a larger audience.

The fact Dane chose to end her life
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the age of 97 through legal assisted suicide after years of
deteriorating health, is a final statement from a loving woman who
made serious choices in her life, who knew her purpose on earth and
was content knowing she gave everything in the struggle for a better
world for all. Now the world will have an opportunity to learn about
this extraordinary human being, thanks to this seminal film and the
efforts of those who knew and loved her.

The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect
the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive

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_BILL MEYER is a musician, writer and producer of progressive
multimedia events. He travels worldwide performing jazz with several
groups. A longtime political activist and aficionado of progressive
cinema, Meyer usually writes on the culture pages of the People's
World and other journals, and primarily reports on film festivals._

 

* Film
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* Film Review
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* Nine Lives of Barbara Dane
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* Barbara Dane
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* Maureen Gosling
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