Susan Urban
Respected Elders, Not Old Bags!
Nothing Left to Lose: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin
Susan Urban has created and presented services combining music and the spoken word for Unitarian Universalist congregations for over 20 years. For the 2008 Benzie Area Women's History Project Education Day, Susan will present secular adaptations of two of her services that focus on women’s issues.
She is a Chicago area singer/songwriter—a writer of story songs and humorous "slice of life" songs—who collaborates regularly with several other artists. She accompanies her singing on guitar, six string banjo, mountain dulcimer, and hand percussion instruments.
Susan’s first presentation is entitled Respected Elders, Not Old Bags—Upgrading the Image of Older Women in Our Culture. Older women are the last social group that it is socially acceptable to disrespect and ridicule, and discrimination against older women in the arts is especially bad, at least if a woman artist is not already well known. This program will discuss the need for women of all ages to resist this cultural bias and to begin to move the rest of the world in the same direction, and will also explore ways to include the men in our lives, whether those men be friends, spouses, sons, or lovers.
For the afternoon, Susan will present Nothing Left to Lose: The Life and Times Of Janis Joplin. In the course of her short, tempestuous life (1943-1970), blues-rock singer Janis Joplin pushed back the boundaries that kept women "in their place" for hundreds of years. Without conventional beauty or "proper" feminine restraint, she sang from the depths of her soul, and showed women everywhere that they could be who they were and win. But she suffered from the self-doubt and loneliness often experienced by those who are light-years ahead of their time. This presentation will explore the musical and cultural legacy that this remarkable woman left for us.
For more information, see her website:
http://uuwisewoman.tripod.com/index.html
Return to Women's History Day 2008