A tale of two festivals: the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and Ladyfest Midwest Chicago shared performers and goals but split on the issue of transgender participation.

Scene one, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival: The punk band Le Tigre, after rocking the night stage, dives out onto the welcome, willing hands of the young women below. The band is joined by women's music legend Cris Williamson, R&B singer Nedra Johnson, and spoken-word poet Alix Olson--and I Olson's 78-year-old grandmother.

Scene two, a week later, Ladyfest Midwest Chicago: The city's crumbling Congress Theater opens its doors, and hipsters in carpenter pants and multiple piercings pour out, energized after seeing Le Tigre. In the street, the Radical Cheerleaders line up in formation, yelling, "Sound off, 1-2-3-4! Shout it out: revolution!"

So similar and yet so different, these two major women's music festivals with grassroots origins drew women from across the country to the Midwest in August. The Michigan fest, offering five days of music, workshops, and performances, is one of the oldest continuous festivals for women. It began 25 years ago when Lisa Vogel, then 19, and her friends decided they didn't want to drive to Boston to hear women play. The first festival drew 2,000, about 1,000 more than they expected. This year, attendance was 5,600.

"It was a pretty exciting, radical time," says Vogel, still the festival's producer. "Nothing like that had happened for women, for dykes, and the spark just took." This year's musical lineup was typically diverse, ranging from the dancing rhythm of Ubaka Hill's Drumsong Orchestra to the punk anthems of Amy Ray and the Butchies (who also played Ladyfest) to the sweet, soulful songs of Dar Williams.

On 650 acres of private woods, the Michigan festival admits "womyn-born-womyn" only--a policy that excludes male-to-female transgendered people and has caused controversy since its introduction in 1978. The restriction caused a stir again this year when singer-song-writer Melissa Ferrick pulled out. "I didn't know about the policy when I played last year," Ferrick says. "I don't believe in separatist communities." In response to the policy, Chicago transgender activists have hosted an annual protest outside the festival's gates. This year Camp Trans organizers held gender workshops and put on a performance by the Chicago Drag Kings. "We don't want to close the festival down," says activist Dee Michell, 19, "but there's always room for change."

Inside the festival, workshops explored the ramifications of the policy as lesbians' acceptance of transgendered people grows. The chatter from the three stages, though, generally supported the festival's stance. The woman-born Animal, of funk duo Bitch and Animal, says she made it clear that "I identify as trans, and I don't think it's anti-trans for creatures with cunts to get together for a week."

Transgendered people were explicitly welcome at Ladyfest Midwest Chicago, which was inspired by last year's punk festival Ladyfest in Olympia, Wash. The Chicago festival (dubbed "The first! And last!" in the program) was started by Marf Wright, 35, an employee of a small private foundation, who had no event planning experience. "I really felt like I was part of a community at Olympia ... and I wanted to foster a community here that would showcase the work of women musicians and performers," Wright says. "At first I thought it would be pretty small and we'd have one or two venues. But I never, never thought it would get so big." With only nine months to plan, Wright and a core group of 25 women organized more than 50 workshops, screenings of 40 films, and appearances by almost 100 bands spread out over 25 venues. Attendees, mostly in their 20s and 30s, numbered 4,000. The festival's profits were split between Women in the Director's Chair and the Chicago Women's Health Center.

LMC had its share of controversy, including allegations that neither the committee nor the event was racially inclusive. Wright acknowledges that the festival wasn't perfect, adding that planners did the best they could within their time constraints. "They took culture in their hands and created something that really needed to happen," Le Tigre singer Kathleen Hanna says of LMC's organizers.

Wright has never been to the Michigan festival, though she hopes to go next year. Even so, she says, she owes the older festival a debt. "[LMC] was primarily a response to the original Ladyfest, but there's no way the original Ladyfest--or any Ladyfest--would have happened without Michigan," Wright says. "There's no way. It all was originally inspired from that."

Additional reporting by Jen Earls. Vanasco also writes for the Chicago Free Press and the Bay Area Reporter.

Find more on Ladyfest and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival at www.advocate.com