Alix Dobkin is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

.

Biography

Alix Dobkin was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and raised in Philadelphia and Kansas City. She graduated from Germantown High School

Germantown High School (Philadelphia)

Germantown High School is a secondary school located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.GHS, located in Germantown, is a part of the School District of Philadelphia....

 in 1958 and the Tyler School of Art

Tyler School of Art

The Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, usually just referred to as Tyler School of Art is Temple University's school of art, which confers BFA and MFA degrees. The school was originally founded by sculptors Stella Elkins Tyler and Boris Blai on a separate 14-acre estate in Elkins Park...

 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1962. She began performing on the Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

 coffeehouse

Coffeehouse

A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...

 scene in 1962 and three years later married Sam Hood who ran the Gaslight Cafe

The Gaslight Cafe

The Gaslight Cafe was an American coffee house located in the basement of 116 MacDougal Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York...

. They moved to Miami

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

 and opened The Gaslight South Cafe, but moved back to New York in 1968. Their daughter Adrian was born two years later, and the following year the marriage broke up. A few months later, Dobkin came out as a lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

, which was uncommon for a public personality to do at the time.

She has since released a number of albums as well as a songbook and has toured throughout the US, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 promoting lesbian culture and community through Womyn's music. Dobkin has been a highly vocal defender of women-only space. Her controversial analysis of postmodernism

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

, sadomasochism, transgenderism

Transgenderism

Transgenderism is a social movement seeking transgender rights and affirming transgender pride.-History:In her 1995 book Apartheid of Sex, biopolitical lawyer and writer Martine Rothblatt describes "transgenderism" as a grassroots social movement seeking transgender rights and affirming transgender...

 and other issues, including her piece "The Emperor's New Gender", have appeared in several of her written columns, "Minstrel Blood."

Dobkin has a small and devoted audience, has been called a "womyn's music legend" by Spin Magazine, "pithy" by The Village Voice

The Village Voice

The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

, "Biting...inventive... imaginative" by New Age Journal

New Age Journal

New Age Journal, or New Age: The Journal for Holistic Living was an American periodical prominent in the late 20th century, and defining itself as covering topics related to the period's "New Age"; it has been succeeded, in turn, by Body & Soul, and under new ownership by Body + Soul.It was founded...

, "uncompromising" in the New York Times Magazine, and "a troublemaker" by the FBI. She gained some unexpected but welcomed fame in the 1980s when comedian

Comedian

A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

s such as David Letterman

David Letterman

David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

 and Howard Stern

Howard Stern

Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...

 tracked down her landmark Lavender Jane Loves Women album, and began playing phrases from the song "View From Gay Head" on the air.

Dobkin is a member of the OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change

Old Lesbians Organizing for Change

Old Lesbians Organizing For Change is a national organization founded in 1989 that educates and empowers American lesbians over the age of 60 to oppose ageism in their lives and their communities....

) Steering Committee, and her memoirs have been published in October 2009 by Alyson Books. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley where she dotes on her two grandsons and granddaughter.

Albums

• Lavender Jane Loves Women (1973)
• Living with Lesbians (1975)
• Xx Alix (1980)
• These Women (1986)
• Yahoo Australia! Live from Sydney (1990)
• Love & Politics (compilation, 1992)
• Living with Lavender Jane (CD re-release of first two albums, 1998)

External links

• Webpage with FAQ
• 2002 Interview
• Papers of Alix Dobkin, 1973-2004 (inclusive), 1979-1995 (bulk): A Finding Aid. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch01217
• Audiotape collection of Alix Dobkin, 1975-1995: A Finding Aid. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch01243