Icons: Maxine Feldman

Maxine "Max" Feldman (1945-2007) was a folk singer-songwriter who made significant contributions to the women’s music movement through her unwavering commitment to living authentically and openly.

We're celebrating Pride Month with Icons: supreme queens of queer culture. Some are household names... others are a little more behind the scenes. All of them have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more.  Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. 

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Ale Tejeda, Sara Schleede, and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. 

Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So there were many things. Being thrown out of college,
always having to hide who you were. It got me
so damn angry that one night when I arrived in
Los Angeles, California. With the first night I arrived, I
wrote angry at it.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Wamanica. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons supreme queens
of queer culture. Some are household names, others are a
little more behind the scenes. All of these people have
defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be
unapologetically themselves. Today, we're talking about a folk singer songwriter

(00:40):
who made significant contributions to the women's music movement through
her unwavering commitment to living authentically and openly. Let's talk
about Maxine Feldman. Maxine also went by Max, and later
in life she used both masculine and feminine gender pronouns interchangeably,
so we'll be doing the same throughout this episode. Max

(01:04):
was born on December twenty sixth, nineteen forty four, in Brooklyn,
New York. When Max was about six years old, the
Feldman family moved to Manhattan and a couple of coincidences
destined Max to become a performer. It just so happened
Max's family moved to the same Manhattan apartment building. As
a child actor from a popular nineteen fifties TV show

(01:25):
that spawned an idea, Max begged her parents to let
her take acting lessons. They signed her up for classes
in the hopes that it would help get rid of
Max's stutter. Max spent the next couple of years learning
how to sing, act, and dance. These were some of
the happiest years of her life. She was eager to
perform at any opportunity. She even got a small part

(01:47):
as a girl scout on the TV show The Goldbergs.
The training paid off, Max earned an audition to attend
the High School of Performing Arts. By this point, Max's
family had relocated to Queen's, but Max commune from Queens
to Manhattan every day to pursue his passion. On the weekends,
he performed professionally in children's theater. After high school, Max

(02:09):
continued her performing arts career at Emerson College in Boston.
That came to a screeching halt when school administrators found
out about her sexuality. Max was a proudly out lesbian,
and when school administrators found out, they kicked her out
of school. They told her she couldn't return until she
went through a year of conversion therapy. Max's parents forced

(02:31):
her into electure shock therapy. Max obliged until he couldn't
take it anymore. This caused an irreparable rift between him
and his parents. Max sought refuge in Boston's folk music scene.
In nineteen sixty three, he joined the Boston coffeehouse circuit.
He performed at music clubs and coffee shops and mced
events around town. Once again, Max's sexuality was an issue.

(02:57):
When someone in the folk scene started telling venues Max's
life lesbian, she began losing gigs. Eventually, she was blackballed
from the circuit for fear of bringing around the wrong people.
For the next few years, Max supported herself by working
at a bookshop, a department store, and a local bar.
In May of nineteen sixty nine, Max got on a

(03:17):
plane destined for Los Angeles. On the night of his arrival,
Max wrote Angry Athis, the song that would become the
first anthem of the lesbian and gay liberation movement. Max
was filled with emotion, mostly rage, and the lyrics just
poured out of him. I hate not beyond able, Oh

(03:41):
my lovers time. Max was angry about the treatment of
queer people. He was sick of the police raids on
gay bars, tired of not being able to hold his
partner's hand in public. Pissed, he was thrown out of
college and was done living in the shadow of fear.

(04:02):
To finish her education, Max enrolled at El Camino College.
She helped found a women's center there. Around nineteen seventy,
feminist and lesbian comedy duo Robin Tyler and Patti Harrison
performed at the school. After the show, Max sang Angry
at This for them, the duo was so moved by
the song that exuded pride in being a lesbian that

(04:23):
they invited Max to join them on their tour. Audiences
full of lesbian women ate it up for the first
time they felt seen. In nineteen seventy two, Robin and
Patty helped Max produce and distribute the song Angry at This.
It was considered the first out lesbian record. Around the

(04:47):
same time, the public conversation was opening up to women's issues.
MS magazine put out its first edition in nineteen seventy two,
and Max's music helped kick off the women's music movement.
Seventy six, Max wrote the song Amazon. It became the
lesbian anthem that opens the Michigan Women's Music Festival every year.

(05:07):
Max also became a regular at the festival for fifteen years,
she emceed and greeted the crowd with a resounding welcome women.
In nineteen seventy nine, Max released her only full length album,
Closet Sale. She combined a sense of humor with her
anger towards society's treatment of queer people to create a
powerful record for gay and lesbian liberation. Despite Max's passion

(05:30):
for performing, it barely paid the bills. She supplemented her
income with stand up comedy. She loved to make people laugh.
Max found moderate success on the college and coffeehouse circuit,
but still being in out lesbian limited her as a performer.
According to Max's partner, Max wasn't deterred. Max's partner remembers

(05:50):
Max saying, to hell with that, I'm going to do
it anyway. It's important, and that's exactly what she did.
In the nineteen eighty when she wasn't performing, Max was
running the Oasis coffeehouse in Boston. She returned to the
place that had rejected her to create a safe haven
for those like her. She meant toward female performers and

(06:10):
embraced and empowered her lesbian clientele. Unfortunately, the same cannot
be said for the lesbian community toward Max. As a
self proclaimed big, loud Jewish butch lesbian, Max didn't always
feel the support of that community. He felt his masculinity
resonated more with gay men than lesbian women. Max also
struggled internally with his identity. He felt more gender fluid,

(06:34):
and in later years he identified as a transgender butch lesbian.
When Max embraced his transgender identity, his partner said he
found quote the validation and support for his masculinity that
had been missing all his life. It was a great
thing and a comfort. By the nineteen nineties, Max's health
problems meant she had to stop performing. In nineteen ninety nine,

(06:56):
she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and lived there for
the rest of her life. Max Feldman passed away on
August seventeenth, two thousand and seven, in Albuquerque. She was
sixty two years old. All month we're talking about icons
for more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at
Womanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister

(07:17):
and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow