The Herstory of SSN
In 1981, Echo (Linda Ray) of the Kansas City Women's Chorus and Linda Small of the St. Louis Women's Choir started the Sister Singers Network with a logo, letterhead, and a list of choruses. It was their vision to create a feminist network of women’s choruses that could learn from each other and come together to share music. The early SSN choral festivals were part of the Ozark Women's Festivals, until the SSN outgrew them. The first separate choral festival that was hosted by the SSN was in Kansas City in 1984.In 1988, a planning meeting was held to organize SSN beyond the mailing list stage. The Operations Matrix system was developed. This organizational structure continued to evolve over the years, with the structure being modified last at a planning meeting in 1996. The operations matrix included the following spokes: regional coordinators (contact persons for choruses in each region), a treasurer, an archivist, publications contact person, various ad hoc taskforces and consultants for specific projects (e.g. festival planning, 501c3, diversity caucuses, new chorus support, vital signs, e-mail, etc...) and then in the center of all of these spokes is the Hub (communication central).
The Sister Singers Network has hosted several international women’s choral festivals in various cities around the United States, including, Kansas City, St. Louis, Madison, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, and Cincinnati. The last festival was scheduled to be in Portland in 1996, but was unfortunately cancelled. After the festival was cancelled, the activity of the network dropped significantly for several years, and membership in the organization lapsed.
In 1999, however, there have been several gatherings of chorus women to discuss how to get this organization revitalized. At the National Women’s Music Festival last spring, there were several chorus women who met to begin discussing SSN and how much it meant to have a feminist organization like this for women’s choruses. Later that summer at the GALA conference in DC, still more chorus women met to find out a little about the history of SSN and what might need to happen to get the organization up and running again. Finally, a mailing went out to all the former SSN choruses, plus any new women’s choruses that were known, to invite everyone to a SSN planning meeting in Chicago in October.
At the SSN planning meeting in Chicago, a very exciting thing happened. The Grand Rapids Women’s Chorus with the help of Sistrum from Lansing, MI, offered to host the next Sister Singers Network Festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2001!!! A work group sprung out of this meeting to assist with planning. The Festival was held in May.
Home | Contacts | AlphaChor List | GeoChor List | Composers/Arrangers | Concerts | Festivals
Jobs | Herstory | Links | Meetings | Membership | Mission | Newsletter | Wheel Shop
Graphics from:
Please do not use without permission