#088: A Tricky Time
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.
Today in the newsletter: Interviews with Daphne A. Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound; Amanda Cook, editor-in-chief of I CARE IF YOU LISTEN; Ralph Moore, music director of Mixmag; and Lesley Chow, author of You're History: The 12 Strangest Women in Music. Plus! Reading recommendations, TikToks to check out, and more! But first…
Terrifying Stuff
Reading List
Ira Madison III on embracing what scares you
Ella Alalade writes movingly about how opera helped her process her father’s death
Geeta Dayal explores the rich musical history of Mills College
Ryan Cooper makes the case for full communism for music
Nelson George says hip-hop is no country for middle-aged men
Sydney Urbanek rounds up some thoughts on videos from Solange, Lil Nas X, and more
Ray Philp on the potential impact of NFTs on electronic music
Country music radio hosts Kelly McCartney and Rissi Palmer have a chat
Alexis Petridis remembers Britfunk
Lukas Harnisch profiles YouTube music theorist Adam Neely
A Friendly Reminder
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Q&A: Daphne A. Brooks
Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Music at Yale University. She is also the author of the important new book Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. The book explores the work of various journalists, critics, artists, public historians, and more. In this excerpt from our interview, Daphne describes the book.
The quick way to describe Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound is to start by trying to answer this question: name one comprehensive history of Black women in popular music culture. This book is about the reason why you probably have a hard time doing that.
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound is the story of why and how Black women musicians across the 20th and 21st centuries have been and remain essential architects of popular music culture. It’s a book about why these artists—from blues queens like Bessie Smith to superstar icons like Beyonce fundamentally matter in the making of our modern world and in relation to how we navigate that world. It views them as artistic pathbreakers and innovators, as repositories of cultural memory, as bearers of complex and profound emotions and of course as activist voices of vision and social change in the long Black freedom struggle.
It also considers the reasons why these artists are both so passionately beloved and so often critically marginalized, disappeared from the historical record or oversimplified with regards to their enormous cultural value and worth. So it’s a book that’s as much about criticism and record collecting and the men who’ve dominated these worlds as it is about the women and girls—the artists and critics and fans—who valued Black women’s music when others wouldn’t.
Read the full interview with Daphne here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Daphne A. Brooks:
Beginning in the early ‘00s, I taught at and served on the board of the marvelous Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York City. This extraordinary organization is a non-profit music and mentoring program that empowers cisgender and trans girls, women and/or gender nonbinary youth and adults through music education, volunteerism, and activities that foster self-respect, leadership skills, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. Donate to Willie Mae today!
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Podcasts!
Brian “Z” Zisook talks DJBooth, Audiomack, and more on Trapital
Chris Ott chats about music gear and online/IRL communities on Fluxpod
For its latest episode, The Talks With TE hosted hip-hop journalist Jayson Buford
Let It Roll is currently tracing the history of electronic music
Art history podcast In The Foreground has a three-episode mini-series focused on sound, media, and art
Nate Chinen discusses his book Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century on New Books in Music
Perreo 101 explores innovations and recycling in reggaeton
Q&A: Amanda Cook
Amanda Cook is editor-in-chief of I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, an award-winning multimedia hub for living music creators, powered by American Composers Forum. I CARE IF YOU LISTEN’s partnership with the ACF came just last year, and our interview centered around the new arrangement. As Amanda puts it, “since ICIYL and ACF were so ideologically similar from the outset, this more or less means business as usual, but with an adjusted focus specifically on racial equity. This was already an important factor in my editorial decision-making, but in our partnership with ACF, it has become our top priority for coverage.” In this excerpt from our interview, Amanda describes how her approach to work has changed over the past few years.
One of the most beneficial processes I’ve taken part in recently has been the strategic planning work happening at American Composers Forum. The plan is very ambitious and centers a clear and measurable commitment to racial equity. That “measurable” component is what I think a lot of arts organizations are missing right now. Everyone has big ideas and bold statements of solidarity and support, but the actual follow through is often tenuous at best because there is no list of action steps and measurable goals.
For the past three or four years, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN has been prioritizing artists who have been historically underrepresented or marginalized in Western classical music. But with the help of ACF, this mission has really crystallized into a primary focus on racial equity. Honing our focus and continually returning to the impact of the strategic plan has radically changed how I approach my work. I now ask myself every day, with every content decision that I make, “Does this contribute to our racial equity goals?” Viewing everything through this lens and having this permanent filter on my decision-making has really encouraged me to take a step back and more carefully consider each project that is selected for coverage on our site.
Read the full interview with Amanda here.
Bits, Bobs
Gearslutz has taken on a new name: Gearspace
Stewart Smith is creating a digital archive of jazz and improvised music at Scotland’s The Third Eye Centre
Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf loved music
Holly George-Warren is hosting a Zoom discussion about her Janis Joplin book later this month
The Rubin Institute is funding another classical music critic at a daily newspaper
SPIN is creating NFTs based on its covers
Mine Does A Newsletter About Music Journalism
Jason Davis @davisjsn
Random thought: What did the most talented person in your high school graduating class end up doing?Q&A: Ralph Moore
Ralph Moore is the Music Director of Mixmag and Director of Acetate Management, an artist management company that focuses on electronic music artists. Ralph has been involved in the electronic music world for decades now, and has tons of experience in journalism and in working directly with artists. He’s also the host of an excellent Worldwide FM radio show. In this excerpt from our interview, Ralph explains what he’d like to see more of in music journalism right now.
It’s definitely a tricky time. I would love to see a space being created where paid-for music journalism can be created. But if that can’t be done—and while I’ve been enjoying The New Cue, I can’t see people paying for it—then as an industry we need to navigate the fact that people don’t really want to pay for stuff the way they used to, no matter how solid the music content.
Part of the problem is the old print world and its way of thinking has almost gone: the best 90s and 00s music magazines—Q, Select and The Word—were all wonderful reads but ran their course and those audiences either migrated to Mojo Magazine or grew up and out and now get instant teenage kicks from 6 Music.
Paid content of any form is obviously more than welcome but when you don’t need to pay for quality radio or podcasts, why pay for an interview with Everything Everything? The other issue is something The Guardian has experienced: if you’re reading online for free without a pay wall, what aside from guilt is going to make you pay for the content you’ve just read for gratis? A few years ago, The Observer Music Monthly was an editorial knockout once a month but even that fell by the wayside.
That’s the bit that’s missing: exciting six-page features from a writer like Sylvia Patterson with Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Stevie Nicks, preferably all under the same umbrella. Bespoke magazines are the future in this respect: I would pay £10 for a quality 100-page magazine, but not if it was presented on cheap paper like Time Out. People want something for the coffee table!
Read the full interview with Ralph here.
How Do You Do, Fellow TikTokers?
Skatune Network on why being Black in DIY is so draining
June Jissle puts Donkey Kong Country into different eras of hip-hop
Grady Smith goes behind the scenes of his country music YouTube channel
Dev Lemons breaks down sound waves
Secret Police remembers Freddie & The Dreamers
Luxxury on the origins of funk bass
Sensing A Theme Here
Q&A: Lesley Chow
Lesley Chow is an Australian writer focused on music and film, and author of the new book You're History: The 12 Strangest Women in Music. She is also associate editor of Bright Lights and freelances regularly at The Monthly, Quietus, and more. In this excerpt from our interview, Lesley explains how her new book came about.
Historically, the bulk of what tends to be regarded as great music consists of guitar-based rock with conventionally articulate lyrics, either serious or obviously sardonic. We hear the same names again and again—Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, you get the picture. The canon seems much harder to shift than in, say, film or visual art. I’m not denying the worth of that type of music, but what about all the other kinds? The ones that break the boundaries of good taste, that rely more on a singer’s enunciation of “oooh” or “uhh” than a clever, quotable line. I wanted to come up with a different value system, celebrating music which has a hot, immediate effect on your body—seizing your impulses as much as your conscious mind.
Read the full interview with Lesley here.
Academic Stuff
New journal issues out now: Popular Music History, Music Theory Online, Ethnomusicology Forum
Call for Papers: The International Symposium on Performance Science (Montreal, October 27-30)
Mediums and Media of Public Musicology Today (Online, April 17)
Call for Papers: The International Conference on Women’s Work in Music (Online, September 1-2); email wwm@bangor.ac.uk for more details
The 55th Annual Association for Recorded Sound Collections Conference (Online, May 12-15)
Call for Papers: The Motherland Resurrected: Manifestations of Nationalism in Music Since the End of the “Short Twentieth Century” (Online, July 22); email cam.musicandpolitics@gmail.com for more information
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The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! Full disclosure: My day job is at uDiscover Music, a branded content online magazine owned by Universal Music. This newsletter is not affiliated or sponsored in any way by Universal, and any links that relate to the work of my department will be clearly marked. Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time…