‘Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery’ Director Looks Back On Groundbreaking ’90s Fest
The popularity of the female-led ’90s-era musical festival Lilith Fair was enough to tell the story behind its origins, Ally Pankiw, director of the Hulu documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, explained at Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary panel, but even more importantly, “it was also the first time that someone had really stood up to some of the myths and lies that were being told to women and diverse artists in the music industry.”
Female artists, even some of the most successful ones of that decade were told “if we play two women back-to-back on the radio, they’ll change the channel,” Pankiw revealed, describing how some of the leading women in the era’s music industry banded together set out to disprove the narrative they were being told. “Even if you’re Sheryl Crow, you can’t decide to have a female opener because of the tour promoters and people funding the tours and people wouldn’t buy tickets. And Sarah [McLachlan] just realized, because she’s a remarkable person, ‘I think that’s a lie. I just think that’s untrue.’ And so she set out to prove it wrong. And I think anytime a power-system structure is proven wrong, it’s an important thing to document.”
Pankiw felt a personal investment in the story of Lilith Fair as well. “A big reason I wanted to make this doc was because I was doing a lot of unlearning in my own life about what that specific era of misogyny and homophobia and racism of the ’90s and early 2000s kind of taught me about myself. And this doc was a large part of that and an important part of continuing that unlearning.”
She added: “Looking back at that time, it was, I think, actually very similar to a moment that we’re in right now, where progress that was being made by women was very threatening. It was contradictory because it was hugely successful, Lilith Fair – it sold out all of its tour stops. It made an enormous amount of money. It made an enormous amount of money for charity. So the people that went and were involved and knew how cool it was, loved it and saw it for what it was, which was like basically a miracle. But then other people saw it as a threat, too.”
Pankiw explained: “And so it was in the way that a lot of things made for and by young women, it was mocked. It was trivialized. It was sort of swept under the rug, especially as we headed into the early 2000s of pop culture. And a lot of the comedy and prevalent conversation at that time was like, ‘You’re too earnest. It’s lame.’ And I just think we are kind of in a moment like that right now, too, in a contraction period in our industry where people are thinking again, it’s like a silly risk to invest in women’s stories and diverse stories. And we think this doc is just a reminder that that’s not true. It’s an opportunity.”
Pankiw said in that respect, she thinks the moment might be primed for a Lilith Fair revival. “I think there’s space for it,” she said. “You might not be able to align the schedules of a Taylor Swift, a Beyoncé and a Blackpink and a Katseye, but you might be able to align the schedules of Taylor Swift and then a bunch of other incredible female artists who are maybe one level below.
“I think what was so beautiful about the original Lilith was there were these massive headliners, sure, but there were so many amazing discoveries that got their first chance to perform at Lilith,” she added. Pankiw noted that a young, largely unknown Christina Aguilera made an early live performance at Lilith Fair on a side stage “by the porta potties and everyone’s walkies crackle to life and were like, “’You have to come hear this woman’s voice! It’s crazy!’ And everyone just didn’t know who she was and ran to watch her. So Lilith broke a lot of talent too, or if not broke talent, gave talent their first opportunity to perform in front of a live audience. So I think it could 100% do that again.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
