Emma’s Revolution
"Fervent and heartfelt” ~ The New York Times. Known for fearless, truth-telling lyrics and melodies you can’t resist singing, Emma's Revolution is the dynamic, award-winning activist duo of Pat Humphries & Sandy O. The duo are in their 20th year performing together. Emma’s Revolution's songs have travelled around the world and have been sung for the Dalai Lama, praised by Pete Seeger and covered by Holly Near.
With one eye on the news, Emma’s Revolution consistently writes songs about critical issues happening in the world and enthusiastically lends their voices to the movements those issues inspire. “Our House is on Fire” was selected as the opening track for Hope Rises, a compilation CD from a national nonprofit co-founded by Noel (Paul) Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary. “Keep on Moving Forward” opened the UN’s Committee on the Status of Women’s Bejining+25 Conference. The song originally opened the NGO Forum of the 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, becoming its unofficial anthem. Emma’s Revolution are winners of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize and the first Phil Ochs Award. "Our work has always been about building connection, love and justice through song,” the duo says. "During this pandemic, we have moved much of our work online, creating opportunities for people to sing together (Zoom-style), use songwriting as a way to process emotions in an unsettled era, and attend concerts where they can have a sense of connectedness, solace and even joy in this challenging time.” As independent artists and queer and non-conforming women, Emma’s Revolution has a national presence among communities, organizations and venues that share the duo's vision of valuing people over profit, choosing compassion over violence, demanding accountability, and building a more just and sustainable world.
Swimming in this Stream Together: Songs in the Spirit of Justice
Activist musicians inherit a legacy of the indivisibility of truth-telling and soul-stirring. We sing stories wrapped in a taste of freedom, the triumph of overcoming, the grief of injustice. In Emma’s Revolution, we bring our unique experience as women to create a sense of belonging where the audience feels the urgency of the story, the need for change, the reward of achieving even incremental victories and the power of community action. And we emerge, together, with a greater experience of what’s possible in the world.
In this workshop, we’ll share songs and stories about our lives and work as social justice activists for the past 20 years. In a culture that largely still promotes and rewards the status quo, we’ve persevered as queer and non-conforming women and our songs have traveled through grassroots networks around the world. We persist as our ancestors persisted.