[ Cheers and applause ] She did a tour with Inti-Illimani, which is a Chilean group. -But it definitely defined my sexuality and my dating habits and my behavior all through high school and into the early part of my 20s. Backed by: The Lillian Armstrong Tribute Band. -♪ For to be hopeless -Would seem so strange. People who had seen me alone, Cris alone, Holly and Meg alone, or just the two of us or maybe the three of us, said, 'The four of them.' They both together were able to kind of bring these two movements together, the women's movement and the far left, and bring them all together and create kind of a multi-generational experience and situation for their music. So if it can send people off to war, it can turn people around and make them revolutionaries. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Any day now ♪ Any day now ♪ I shall be released -My mom and Holly's mom were twin sisters. 1983 Near goes on …

Her vocal coach in Ukiah was a woman named Connie Cox. -I think her career suffered because she became involved with the 'next potent movement.'

[ Cheers and applause ] She did a tour with Inti-Illimani, which is a Chilean group. -- 120,000 people or something. -If women can figure out how to use their music in a constructive and political way, it would be one of our greatest tools to work with. Near sings to one million people at the enormous Nuclear Freeze Anti-Nuke Rally in Central Park, which is featured in the documentary In Our Hands. -She has a gift for bringing radical, edgy ideas in a very all-American package to an audience, that changes them and inspires them as nobody else ever has. We were dealing with things like, why did girls have to wear dresses to school?
[ 'Water Come Down' plays ] -♪ Children in the pastures ♪ Where the water flows -♪ Sunshine turning shirtless backs to brown ♪ ♪ Oh, my daddy's hat tipped back to see ♪ ♪ All his kids go running wild ♪ It's summertime, and the water's coming down ♪ ♪♪ -And that mix of kind of primal, animal life and the primal beauty of growing up, and you see that in her songs, I think, all the time.

-♪ Desaparecida -There were prisons and torture centers, interrogation centers all over the country, and Villa Grimaldi was one of them. …

-And Jane and I were really certain that this was a plan to keep the war going in secret, and that only some kind of performance, some outcry from activists and intellectuals and artists and musicians could bring public attention to the secret escalation of the war.
I felt that I had -- that I could have a connection. Holly Near: American Masters Holly Near: American Masters Holly Near: American Masters. All of a sudden, she's in tears, and out comes this story, you know, 'I'm having a relationship with a woman.' She was still struggling with Redwood Records, sorting out the social stuff. ♪ ♪ Why don't you sing along? So she was very encouraging in the house when we were growing up, of creativity.

She joins a committee dedicated to changing the dress code and performs in a folk ensemble and various theater productions.The Near family gets their first TV and Holly witnesses news footage of the Civil Rights movement, which has a profound effect on her.Near protests military recruiters on campus at her high school.Near begins college at UCLA and becomes active in the theater department.Near continues to work in film and television, landing roles in shows like Near works as a receptionist for the Pentagon Paper trial and lands a role in the film Near starts Redwood Records to support the release of her first album, Near tours with Jeff Langley, singing at union halls, churches, prisons and universities throughout the U.S.She releases a live album dedicated to Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers.Near sings at “Building Women,” a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Women’s Building, with Lily Tomlin, Meg Christian, Cris Williamson, Margie Adam and the Alice Stone’s Ladies Society Orchestra.That year Near also does support work with United Farm Workers and records the album YNear performs in the groundbreaking “Women on Wheels” tour along with Meg Christian, Cris Williamson and Margie Adam. But while I was there, the students were killed at Kent State. -The idea of Redwood Records, of course, was quite new at that point.

So I was kind of encouraged to keep going.

We were the generation of women who laid every brick down before anybody could walk on it. -And that night, we all sang, 'We are gay and lesbian people,' and for many, it was the first time they'd said those words out loud about themselves. -Mostly B kinds of movies that were coming out.

The idea that you could walk into a statehouse or a Congress and expect to see women, that's feminism. THIRTEEN’s American Masters Presents the Story of Pioneering Feminist Singer-Activist Holly Near March 1 on PBS in Honor of Women’s History Month Documentary … -[ Singing in Xhosa ] -[ Singing in Xhosa ] -I learned about what was going on across the street from Patsy Cline.