[img width=682.562px]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1727747455837x249461497557866180/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] Peggy Ward honors women. Feminist folksinger offers help in healing personal wounds By Alison Mayes Calgary Herald Peggy Ward says she's got proof that the title of her new album, Songs to Clean Your House By, is inspirational. Every morning when her daughter gets home from kindergarten, she puts the tape in her cassette player and makes her bed to it. Ward, a feminist folksinger who can be heard busking five days a week at Eau Claire Market, launches the independent, self-produced album tonight with a concert at the central library. Its title, she says, has several meanings. "First of all, we as women are the ones who do the bulk of the housework globally. It's on our shoulders still," says the 34-year-old musician, clad in an Emily Carr sweatshirt. "The album was sort of to help that process not be such a draggy thing. I also believe there's a lot of housecleaning politically and environ- mentally that needs to be done." The title, she says, also honors the individual work of cleaning one's internal house, healing personal wounds and working through private issues. Rather than printing her lyrics on the album sleeve, Ward prints an explanation of each song's genesis. One tune relates to chants heard at the annual Take Back the Night march, another to people living with AIDS, other songs to working for justice, which Ward has done through performances at rallies and grassroots political events. "I think everybody who gets up behind a microphone is political," she says. "They're either upholding the status quo, or working to change it. I'm an incredible optimist. Changing the world happens one heart at a time, and music has the power to do that." Ward, a graduate of the broadcasting program at SAIT, used to have a job with the Department of Education reading textbooks on tape for blind students. She left last spring, determined to make music her full-time occupation. She's been able to accomplish that by busking at Eau Claire during weekday lunch hours and on weekends. She peddles copies of her first album, We Are The Dance, and performs Joni Mitchell and Bruce Cockburn covers as well as her own tunes. Calgarians aren't too familiar with the busking tradition, she says, but they're catching on quickly. "I have signs in my guitar case that let people know what busking is, so that they understand I'm not begging. I'm offering my art to people, and if they want to sit and participate, then great." Some passers-by seem to sense from her music the fact that she lived in New Brunswick until the age of nine. "People will say, 'Are you from the Maritimes?' 'Did you ever spend any time in the Maritimes?... Maybe you can take the girl away from the sea, but you can't take the sea away from the girl." This is a busy weekend for Ward, who is "honored" to be performing at a benefit for the Lubicon Cree, Saturday at 3 p.m. at Rosedale United Church. She has been involved with the Lubicon land claim struggle since writing a song, People Belong to the Land, about it seven years ago. "It's five years since they did their first public awareness event that coincided with the Olympics. Since then nothing has happened in terms of any fair settlement of their land claim. The work still needs to be done." But Ward, who named her company Laughing Out Loud Music just to remind herself of life's lighter side, recognizes that activists need a break. She suggests sisters tune in to Women's Night In (a play on "boys' night out") her once-a-month CJSW radio show offering women's music and poetry.
