By Karen Bliss
Lilith Fair, the female-fronted, genre-diverse, outdoor summer music festival Sarah McLachlan created 26 years ago, in direct response to agents and promoters telling her she could not have a female opener on tour because it wouldn’t sell, is getting a deep-dive documentary on its impact, directed by Ally Pankiw for release in 2025/26 on CBC. The film is inspired by a 2019 Vanity Fair article, Building a Mystery: An Oral History of Lilith Fair,
Despite the backlash and outright hostility towards the concept by some, Lilith Fair was not only a massive financial success but gave visibility, opportunity, safety and camaraderie to dozens of artists for the period it ran, 1997-1999, and again for its one-off revival in 2010. It also helped launch the careers of Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado, Tegan and Sara, Dido and India.Aria.
“Lilith Fair was one of the first major events to highlight the need for more equality in festival programming,” says Robyn Stewart, executive director of Women In Music Canada. “It was an incredible initiative and important in starting a movement toward equity. It has been a conversational catalyst to a lot of programs since.”
In 1996, to test her belief that a female-dominated touring festival would work, McLachlan headlined a four-show experiment that included a Vancouver date, Sept. 14, at Nat Bailey Stadium — actually called Lilith Fair — for which she was joined by Emmylou Harris, Lisa Loeb, Paula Cole, Michelle McAdorey, Holly McNarland, and Camille & Her Bratty Sister Saffron. Armed with proof of concept, the Lilith Fair officially launched the following summer with 37 dates featuring 69 female-fronted acts on the main and side stages.
Over the festival’s history, performers included Sheryl Crow, Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Fiona Apple, Dido, Queen Latifah, Tracy Chapman, Christina Aguilera, Aimee Mann, Suzanne Vega, Morcheeba, Indigo Girls, Jewel, Liz Phair, Sinéad O’Connor, Meshell Ndegeocello, Aimee Mann, Missy Elliott, Pat Benatar, the Pretenders, Erykah Badu, Natalie Merchant. Among McLachlan’s fellow Canadians were Diana Krall, Nelly Furtado, Chantal Kreviazuk, Deborah Cox, Tegan and Sara, Bif Naked, Tara Maclean, Mudgirl, Wild Strawberries, Lhasa de Sela, Kinnie Starr, Dayna Manning, Oh Suzanna, Holy Cole, and Emm Gryner.
But, as massive as it was over those three summers, grossing a reported $60 million (USD), decades later many festivals are still significantly male-dominated. Photoshop-ready finger-pointers will highlight the inequity by removing the names of all the male acts on a festival poster, leaving just the scant female ones. “It is correct that we have not seen significant and sustained movement toward equitable programming,” notes Stewart.
For a number of years, 2014 until 2022 (except 2020 and 2021 due to covid), the volunteer-run web site Secret Frequency released a Canadian Festival Report Card “to point out to artistic directors and the community at large the dearth of women-identifying and non-binary artists on stages across the country and encourage everyone to do better and demand better.”
Over in the UK, in 2017, PRS Foundation, which helps fund new music and talent development, launched the Keychange, a global initiative encouraging festivals and music organizations to achieve a 50/50 gender balance by 2022, including women, transgender and non-binary people. A component is a gender-balance pledge, which, as of 2024, according to Keychange. Over 500 festivals and music companies have signed, including many in Canada.
Changes are evidently still slow to come. A report by the BBC in 2022 found that 13% of UK headliners at the top 50 festivals were female and half of those festivals had no female headliners in their lineups.
“I applaud and support the festivals and tours have made changes toward more equitable and diverse programming, and to initiatives like Keychange that promote and encourage this, but so many still struggle to see this change as an opportunity rather than an obstacle,” says Stewart.
“COVID was also a time of set back as more women left the music industry, a time when focus on survival of live festivals and touring became the focus,” she adds, “There didn’t seem to be space to keep equity in the conversation, as fear to ensure ticket sales became top of mind.
“It is important to say that we also have not seen significant change in equity in radio programming, a key indicator and driver of ticket sales potential for live shows, and other areas of the industry, which all are connected. We must work toward change across the whole ecosystem before we will see significant and sustainable change. We are not there yet but together change is possible.”
