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No one would have been more pleased with the Rebel Women’s Voices series than vocalist Barbara Dane. During her long, eventful journey she held her own with era-defining artists across the musical landscape, from Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan to Lightnin’ Hopkins and Pete Seeger. By every measure, the longtime Oakland resident, who died in October 2024 at the age of 97, lived an epic life, combining mastery of blues and traditional jazz with a passion for civil rights and leftist politics. Veteran filmmaker Maureen Gosling shoehorned her myriad adventures into the 2023 documentary “The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane,” which plays Nov. 5 at Grand Lake Theater. The hometown screening, a benefit for radio station KPFA-FM 94.1, is also the latest edition of Rebel Women’s Voices, a program that pairs “9 Lives” with performers carrying on Dane’s legacy. Following the film and a Q&A with Gosling and producer Jed Rife, The Nov. 5 event features a concert by Miko Marks, the Oakland vocalist who’s been at the forefront of a wave of Black women earning renown in country music. “A friend turned me on to her song ‘Ancestors,’ and it’s just incredible,” said Gosling, referring to the 2021 gospel-country anthem that Marks recorded with her band the Resurrectors (who’ll join her at Grand Lake). “It’s political but not hit-you-over-the-head, talking about standing on the shoulders of the ancestors.” Marks wasn’t familiar with Dane’s music before she connected with Gosling, but after seeing “9 Lives” she felt a deep kinship with her. Dane often referred scornfully to her “so-called career,” as she walked away from opportunities for fame and lucrative gigs in favor of lending her voice to struggles for racial equality, peace, and improved labor conditions. In the 1950s, Dane turned down gigs and television appearances when presenters pressured her to alter her integrated band by dropping the great Creole bassist Wellman Braud, who’d anchored the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the 1920s and ‘30s. Marks has spent years building a profile in Nashville, a struggle that she relates to Dane’s path. “I feel like I’m one of those who took the road less traveled,” she said. “She’s from Detroit, I’m from Flint. She could have been this huge commercial artist, but wanted to sing about meaningful subjects.” Beyond Dane’s politics, what stood out for Marks was the power of her voice. At a time when the classic 1920s blues sound of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey had largely disappeared, Dane brought such authority to the idiom that she was hailed by Black colleagues like Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. “This is the anointing we talk about in the Black community,” Marks said. “She had this raw, deep, rich, soulful contralto kind of voice. For her to be mentioned by Dizzy Gillespie and Lightnin’ Hopkins spoke to her skill and the power of her voice.” Rebel Women’s Voices isn’t Gosling’s first rodeo when it comes to combining film and live music. She got her start in the documentary world in the mid-1970s as a protégé of Academy Award-winning Berkeley filmmaker Les Blank, whose intimate portraits of American roots musicians encompassed bluesman Mance Lipscomb, Cajun revivalists Mark and Ann Savoy, Mardi Gras Indians, polka aficionados, and the recently departed norteño accordion maestro Flaco Jiménez. Adding live music to film premieres “made it a much bigger deal, and it is always really fun,” Gosling recalled. “More than one time at the Telluride Film Festival we had Cajun music and dance and food with the Savoys.” “9 Lives” premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2023 in conjunction with a sold-out concert at Sweetwater Music Hall featuring Dane’s son, Cuban rocker Pablo Menendez, with Dane’s band led by pianist Tammy Hall. The guest artists included Holly Near and the Chambers Brothers’ Willie Chambers (with whom Dane recorded a classic album gospel album). The Grand Lake screening is a tribute to Dane’s daughter Nina Menendez, who died 10 months after her mother in August at the age of 69. A respected flamenco singer who founded the Bay Area Flamenco Festival, Menendez launched the Barbara Dane Legacy Project in the late aughts, seeking to share the wealth of material Dane had gathered over the years. Starting with the 2018 double album “Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs,” an anthology released by Smithsonian Folkways spanning six decades of Dane’s music-making, Menendez also oversaw her mother’s 2022 autobiography “This Bell Still Rings: My Life of Defiance and Song.” “She really had the fantasy of having a film about her mom,” said Gosling, who knew Dane casually from parties thrown by Arhoolie Records’ Chris Strachwitz, “when she’d show up and jam with the musicians.” Looking for a new project, Gosling got a sense of Dane’s depth and breadth when Menendez “introduced us to the archives, with all the recordings, posters, photos, and letters from Ella Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, and Marcel Marceau. Whoa, she’s got a story!” With Rebel Women’s Voices, Dane’s story continues to resonate. Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com. ‘9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE’ Film screening featuring live performance by Miko Marks When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 5 Where: Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland
