When asked whether the upcoming first-ever San Diego Indie Music Fest has a political aspect to it, co-organizer and local rock powerhouse Danielle Lo Presti doesn’t hesitate.

“Ab. So. Lutely.”

Lo Presti is drinking herbal tea in the living room of a house in the City Heights area, taking time between festival work, radio appearances and live gigs to discuss her music, the festival and her friendship with co-organizer and fellow San Diego rocker Alicia Champion. Champion reclines in a chair near Lo Presti’s grand piano. She’s dressed in mostly black, sporting multiple piercings and a T-shirt that reads “Spear Britney” – but a quilt slung over her legs for warmth and a slightly bemused expression suggest a calm disposition underneath the rocker image.

“I could cry right now,” says Lo Presti of the election results, which on the morning of this conversation were still fresh. Lo Presti is dressed in flowing, slightly dramatic clothes, topped off by trademark waves of long hair that frame a continuously expressive face. “We’re in danger of losing everything,” she continues emotionally. “I think it is more important than ever in our lives, in all of our lives, to have events like this happen.”

The event Lo Presti is speaking of – the SDIMF – happens this Sunday, Nov. 14, from 12:00 noon to midnight, an all-day independent festival featuring more than 20 artists, including headliners Jonatha Brooke and Erika Luckett, and Lo Presti’s band, Danielle Lo Presti & The Masses, as well as Champion, Danny Peck, The Underground Railroad, Julie Wolf, of Ani Di Franco’s band, and others. The festival will include art, jewelry making, henna tattoos, massage and food and drink, and takes place at The Abbey, in Hillcrest.

Through in-your-face, political messages delivered with rock grooves that are equally uncompromising, Lo Presti has made a name for herself locally and in Los Angeles, where she lived for a decade until three months ago. The Los Angeles-based Champion, who counts Ani Di Franco and Melissa Etheridge as influences and delivers vocals and guitar playing that are equally indie-minded and hard-rock-oriented as those two, has become a fixture in the local music scene in the past two years. She identifies as gay, and was born in Singapore; just before her 10th birthday Champion’s family moved to Boston, where she began doing gigs as a teenager and started her own label at age 17. After attending the Berklee College of Music, Champion relocated to the West Coast and, at age 22, has released three full-length albums.

Lo Presti and Champion have been working “round the clock” to deliver a festival in San Diego that brings together a diverse, activist community of artists, musicians and citizens. They both insist that San Diego has pockets of an open, progressive community in spite of its conservative image – and they’re aiming to provide a forum for those elements to come together through music.

“San Diego is largely known as a white, Republican city,” says Lo Presti, whose sister, Gina Angelique, founded the innovative local Eveoke Dance Theatre, “but there is a huge diversity here. It just needs a stage and a light … I want to help get it a stage and a light.”

Much of what the festival is about is not only spotlighting progressive San Diego and independent artists, but also to provide a forum specifically for women artists, who Lo Presti says have an especially difficult time navigating their way through the image-obsessions and sexual innuendos of the major-label music industry.

In fact, Lo Presti speaks from experience. Her disappointing collision with several major record labels – none of which materialized into a contract – are chronicled in her 2001 release Dear Mr. Penis Head. Issues explored in the CD include domestic violence, racism and child molestation. The title song is written to a music attorney who suggested she emulate Sade or Britney Spears – or quit. Executives at places like Interscope, Hollywood Records and MCA found her a little like Alanis (actually, “Alanis with a message” is not an entirely inaccurate comparison, nor an unflattering one), but ultimately the songs were found “too risky”.

Lo Presti is still pissed.

On the morning she’s visited by the Gay & Lesbian Times, Lo Presti and Champion have just come off an evening appearance on “The Lounge, “ a KPBS (public radio) program hosted by Dirk Sutro. Lo Presti is still slightly dismayed by a question the night before from Sutro on whether female rockers are really “comfortable” rocking out.

“He goes, ‘Are all women comfortable rocking out?’ I wanted to go, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Have you ever seen our show?’”

Sutro, Lo Presti explains, had recently seen The Donnas, an all-girl rock band that signed to Atlantic Records, on “Jay Leno”, and Sutro had said he didn’t think the band looked entirely comfortable.

“They look uncomfortable rocking,” explains Champion “because, look, they have a whole new wardrobe that I don’t think they’re used to wearing … Their whole image [has been reconstructed].”

“Major Label Makeover!” shouts Lo Presti from the kitchen. “Of course they’re uncomfortable,” continues Champion.

All this brings them to the point of the SDIMF: “Guys thrashing are everywhere!” says Lo Presti. “There’s so much pressure on women – now’s your chance, prove it to us! … So many people do have [Sutro’s] question. … At Street Scenes, across the country, there are a sliver of women rocking compared to men. One of the points of the Indie Music Fest is diversity. Because … all contemporary styles of rock are overwhelmingly male dominated and that is wrong. … Why are we still having to suffer this patriarchal domination? Why is San Diego Street Scene still only one-tenth female artists on that bill? That is so absolutely wrong! I didn’t become a feminist by choice; I became a feminist because that is so absolutely wrong!”

Both Lo Presti and Champion make a living by doing weekly gigs at places like The Prado in Balboa Park. Lo Presti has an agent and has had some success in writing and supervising music for films (including writing and performing the end-title song for The Nutty Professor) as well as voicing for the edgy cartoon series “VH-1’s Ill-ustrated”, which features in one episode Christina Aguilera losing her vagina down a hole. But both Champion and Lo Presti maintain a simple goal: to be able to make their living by performing and recording their original material, without compromising their aesthetics or their messages.

The world doesn’t offer many venues for that – but if Lo Presti and Champion have anything to do with it, San Diego will provide one.

“I feel very supported here, very loved by the community,” says Champion, comparing the receptive vibe here to the comparatively competitive and pressured scene independent artists experience in Los Angeles. Lo Presti has also organized Indie by Design, a collective of independent musicians showcasing their music in monthly venues.

“Is it appropriate for a woman to be … angry about love, but not appropriate for a woman to be angry about what’s wrong in the world?” says Lo Presti. “There are – and this ties in with how this festival came to be – a plethora of artists who are absolutely excellent and who are barely making ends meet, but who are below the radar … and through believing in my own music and believing in Alicia’s music and by starting these … showcases, I’ve … had the honor of hearing more amazing independent music than I ever heard in my life. … My mission here, one of them, is not just to write songs about these issues that move me so much, but to fight for the right of other artists to be heard as well.”

For more information about the San Diego Indie Music Fest, visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com for a link to the website.