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Menstruation Blues by Robyn Archer
Title:
Menstruation Blues by Robyn Archer
NFSA ID
139169
Year
1977
Robyn Archer is a versatile Australian singer, writer, and stage and artistic director. One of her most prominent songs, ‘Menstruation Blues’, featured on her debut 1977 album, Take Your Partners for the Ladies' Choice.
The song uses a traditional blues style to sing about a generally taboo subject, and reflects the challenge made by women’s liberation to bring visibility to women’s rights to social and economic equality, the rights to contraception and birth control, as well as the right to speak about their bodies.
In addition to its groundbreaking subject, the album also broke ground as the first Australian record produced by women (Robyn Archer and Diana Manson).
The song remained a staple of Archer’s live sets, and it was included as part of her cabaret Pack of Women in 1981, which toured Australia in 1983. The soundtrack for the subsequent Pack of Women ABC TV special won the inaugural ARIA Award for Best Original Soundtrack or Cast Album.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.