New Books in Music

Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music – challenges the Eurocentric biases underpinning Western media. At the same time, his works generate various contradictions and tensions because they are themselves products situated within an economic framework of neoliberal capitalism, at once offering alternative ways of being while, simultaneously, participating in and thereby sustaining the social structures that they otherwise seek to subvert and dismantle.

Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic (Bloomsbury, 2024) generates ground-breaking new dialogues between a range of audial and visual theories that are shaped by Paul Gilroy's conceptualisation of The Black Atlantic (1993). The book analyzes Joseph's work through intersections of emergent music video and new media concepts as well as film theories from African, American and European perspectives. Vitally, it argues that such an interdisciplinary and transcontinental approach to film, music and new media scholarship enriches the possibilities of their respective and, simultaneously, entwined branches of knowledge

In the episode, we discuss Joe Jackson's pathway into studying Joseph's scholarship, his work's dialogue with Paul Gilroy (alongside a host of other vital scholars of the audiovisual and race) - and make the case for greater focus on the music video as a distinctive field of study.

Follow this link for a sample of Joseph's work here

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Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life" (Yale UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s guest, Christopher Freeburg, is the author of Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life (Yale University Press, 2026). This book explores the US history of black cultural life as a history of soul – a spiritual lived practice rooted in communally fostered music, religion, and politics. It makes the case that soul is forged through black community connections and that it’s sustained by moral principles, or pillars, which define how it is lived. The book’s four chapters are organized around four of these pillars: resonance, revelation, resilience, and transcendence. A number of black individuals are foregrounded in these discussions: they include Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nina Simone, Jewel Thais-Williams, Barack Obama, and others.

By telling their stories, and by honoring the weight of the trauma and violence that has long befallen the black community, Christopher Freeburg’s Soul invites its readers to commune with the soul power of people who brought about transformation in the face of seeming impossibility.

Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Professor English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) and Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh UP, 2012). She is also a co-editor of the academic journal English Literary Renaissance.

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Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.
Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of “township jive”—the street music of South Africa—kept him company. Lent to him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove, and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and with economic and cultural boycotts in place, such an undertaking was risky. He grew determined to find the right conditions to allow for a collaboration.
Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph, winning multiple Grammys, selling 16 million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.
Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland (Atria Books, 2026) is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland, offering windows into Simon’s creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised—and which remain today. It sheds light on a period when America opened its doors to the sounds and styles of Africa and other faraway lands.
This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon’s magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection.

Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award–winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana’s autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.

Ashley Kahn’s website and Instagram.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Erin Osmon, "Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling alleys, flea markets, chain restaurants, drug stores, and political rallies--heartland rock, while beloved by some and derided by others, is inescapable even today. As rollicking as the music it describes, acclaimed music critic Erin Osmon's Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America (W. W. Norton & Company, 2026) tells the story of the origins, chart-topping development, and tangled legacy of heartland rock, the music that ruled the airwaves of the 1980s and remains instantly recognizable to millions.

Spinning an entertaining and eye-opening account, Osmon delves into the complicated afterlife of heartland rock's classic albums and songs, including Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," John Mellencamp's "Small Town," and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." She demonstrates the centrality of often-overlooked women like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams--explaining how some of the most popular music of the time was made beyond its white-male stereotypes. She traces the genre's connections to country and Americana, and reveals how legendary figures like Prince were inspired by and expanded heartland rock. And she shows how its success revitalized the careers of figures like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Through it all, she explores the '80s cultural developments that fostered the genre--such as the rise of MTV and the switch to CDs--and argues that the music played a vital role in opposition to '80s conservatism and in support of LGBTQ rights, labor issues, and the environmental movement.

A fair-minded critic with an ear for a great behind-the-scenes story, Osmon makes clear that at its best, heartland rock connected with millions of overlooked people longing to be heard.

Erin Osmon is a music journalist, critic, and author of books on John Prine and Jason Molina. Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, and others. She won the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award for album notes in 2023 and several LA Press Club Southern California Journalism awards. She lives in Nashville.

Erin Osmon’s website and Instagram.

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Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The first large number of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, and Chinese opera troupes were not far behind. In Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond (U Illinois Press, 2025), Nancy Yunhwa Rao writes the story of the flourishing and resiliency of Chinese opera in America. Chinese opera troupes brought with them an important cultural reminder of China that helped immigrants to build community and maintain connections with their old home in their new one. At the same time, anti-Chinese violence, legislation, and prejudice was a constant and growing threat to Chinese immigrants and Chinese theater. As Chinese theater became part of California and San Francisco culture, popular Chinese actors advocated for their art alongside appeals for civil rights. Rao draws on personal accounts and artifacts to place theater within the everyday lives of Chinese people. She also describes the costumes, singing, staging, and storytelling that impacted mainstream reception and influenced how Chinese communities saw themselves. Rao makes a convincing argument that more attention to the transpacific connections between the US and Asia is vital to telling the true story of America.

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Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Robyn Hitchcock's second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books, 2026), explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output. Stranded in the Future is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behavior. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met. On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.

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Musical Pripetshik: Lyrics and Melodies of Traditional Yiddish Folksongs

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Most of the Yiddish songs we know today were created in the first half of the 20th century and distributed through commercial channels such as sheet music, concerts, radio broadcasts, records and CDs, theater stages, and more recently through songbooks produced in educational settings around the world. Our discussion focuses on lesser-known songs – Eastern Yiddish musical folklore, which emerged over a period of approximately four hundred years preceding the formation of the “popular” repertoire. Although we lack transcriptions of melodies or lyrics from before the end of the 19th century, a comparative study of documentation collected from then until the middle of the 20th century reveals that older layers of this musical-poetic creativity had been preserved over long periods of time. I refer to this older repertoire as the "musical pripetshik." Similar to the traditional combined home-heat-generating cooking oven known as the pripetshik, this old song repertoire was an integral part of Jewish culture, evolving in meaning and function over time. While for many, the image of the pripetshik corresponds to the nostalgic song by Mark Varshavski of 1901, this lecture will explore the earlier history of this and other poetic and musical images to offer an appreciation of their significance.

This lecture originally took place on July 23, 2024.

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Mhoze Chikowero, "The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe" (MIT Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Mhoze Chikowero is the story of the making of post-independence Zimbabwe from the sounds and songs born of the country’s armed liberation wars, waged against British Rhodesian white settler rule since the 1890s.
The war from 1896 through the twentieth century to resist the initial colonization, as well as the one waged to reclaim land from the colonial farmers in the 2000s, is known as Chimurenga, and the music it produced is thus called Chimurenga music. The sounds and music were Afrosonic—that is, deeply grounded in the ideology of the 1960s–70s war, spawning the cultural liberation of a people whose self-expression the colonial system had criminalized and oppressed for close to a century.
The living labs of the liberation war, Chimurenga, powered not just military but also cultural rearmament, thereby producing cultural blueprints for a confident, regenerative public consciousness and expressiveness as independence. The open-access title captures the sounds of self-liberation, framing a state of militant audibility in public cultural expressiveness, public policy propagation, and contestation. It invites readers to imagine, see, hear, and feel self-liberation war redeployed as popular entertainment in the service of state making.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Scott Peeples, "How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan" (Reaktion, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Scott Peeple's How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan (Reaktion, 2026) chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise from apprenticeships in Minneapolis cafés and Greenwich Village folk clubs to international stardom as a breathtakingly original songwriter and singer. Scott Peeples follows Dylan through decades of radical shifts in his writing, recording and performing styles, from the intimate lo-fi Basement Tapes to the musical collage art and apocalyptic blues of the twenty-first century. Spanning Dylan’s entire career, How Many Roads illuminates Dylan’s deep respect for tradition alongside his artistic restlessness, a combination that extends into his prose writing, filmmaking and visual art. Weaving lucid analyses of Dylan’s major albums and live performances into a briskly paced biographical narrative, Peeples offers newcomers and Dylan die-hards alike a fresh perspective on the most compelling and challenging popular performer of our time

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Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with writer and researcher, Jehnie I. Burns about her book, Mixtape Nostalgia: Culture, Memory, and Representation (Lexington, 2023). This conversation builds on earlier ones on music and technology, especially our earlier episode with Anthony Kwame Harrison about the ethnography of hiphop. Vinsel and Burns chat about the rise of mixtape culture, how it played out in different subcultures, and how it was wrapped up in and transformed by technological change. We also announce some big news at the beginning of the episode.

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Christopher Campo-Bowen, "Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera" (Oxford UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. In Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and nationalist identity. He follows this conception of Czech identity and its entanglement with opera through the political changes in the years when the Czech lands were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the upheaval that followed when the Empire collapsed in 1918 and the First Czechoslovak Republic was founded. In addition to composers and their operas, Campo-Bowen investigates the output of critics, administrators, and other urban intellectuals to understand the impact of village operas on public discourse. By setting his analysis within a discussion of how race was understood in nineteenth-century Europe, Campo-Bowen shows that this seemingly straightforward nationalist discourse was shot through with racialized essentialism and ideas about gender that were connected with larger political realities. He ends the book with a discussion of the resonances of this nineteenth-century conception of Czech identity in the current Czech Republic.

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Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Rock 'n' roll appeared in the 1950s as the high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners, first in the United States and then around the globe, and from the beginning it symbolized more than music. First popularized as a marketing rubric to sell African-American rhythm and blues to white teenagers, it stood for racial integration, sexual freedom, youthful rebellion, and for change and modernity. It was never a single kind of music, and historians disagree about when it began and which artists or records should be included in its canon--but it was always a flashpoint, whether condemned as an assault on cultural standards or hailed as the most exciting movement of the twentieth century.

Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores the complex musical styles and evolutions of the genre and also examines it as product, symbol, and vehicle of societal change. The introduction seamlessly integrates the genre with elements of 1955-1965's mass influence including the rise of television and niche radio formats, the civil rights movement, a new concept of "teenagers" as a unique age group, and a sexual revolution. Rock 'n' Roll traces the rise and trajectories of the styles and musicians grouped as rock 'n' roll and their journey to becoming emblems of much more

Elijah Wald is a Grammy winning writer, musician, and historian. His books include Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues; How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music; Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories; The Mayor of MacDougal Street (source for the movie Inside Llewyn Davis); and Dylan Goes Electric! (source for the movie A Complete Unknown). He has taught at various universities and holds a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics.

Elijah Wald’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Stacey Copeland, "Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about⁠ Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork⁠ (University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into lesbian radio history and its evolution into queer feminist podcasting today, exploring the politics, aesthetics, and cultural activism embedded in queer feminist soundwork. Through deeply personal and archival explorations, Stacey Copeland traces the emergence of queer feminist soundwork—a unique blend of community-led storytelling, political resistance, and creative expression rooted in feminist and LGBTQ+ activism. At the heart of the book lies a powerful idea: sound is not just heard but felt, connecting generations through shared voices and struggles. In conversation with award-winning and cutting-edge queer and feminist podcast producers from across Canada and the U.S., Lavender Sounds invites us to turn a feminist embodied ear to the past to uncover the ways gender, race, and sexual orientations are embedded in our everyday media listening practices. From pioneering Canadian radio shows like Vancouver's The Lesbian Show and Montreal's Dykes on Mykes to today's queer chumcasts and audio documentary, Lavender Sounds is a journey through auditory landscapes where joy, protest, intimacy, and identity intersect. This book opens a vibrant conversation about how radio and podcasting are vital tools for marginalized communities to connect, create, and claim space in the media world.

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Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pioneer in children’s music and an innovative educator, Jenkins recorded forty albums and influenced countless children and adults over a sixty-year career. Gayle Wald places Jenkins’s life and work within the larger contexts of the civil rights movement, the folk revival, and the changing worlds of children’s education and entertainment in This is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2025). Committed to civil rights, Jenkins infused her beliefs in social justice and our shared humanity into her work with children and her compositions. She viewed music as a way for children to come together and establish connections with each other rather than as a gateway to musical achievement or literacy. Based on dozens of interviews including with Jenkins and her life partner Bernadelle Richter, Wald traces Jenkins’s life from her childhood in segregated Chicago, her involvement with the integrated folk music scene, and her successful career as a music educator. This is Rhythm was given special recognition by the 2026 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award.

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Yiddish Tangos and Klezmer Mambos

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This panel discussion will explore the remarkable influence of Latin American music and dance on the culture of Yiddish speaking communities in the United States. Ronald Robboy will discuss Latin American musical influences upon Yiddish theater composers, including Sholom Secunda, Abraham Ellstein, and Alexander Olshanetsky; Sonia Gollance will discuss the popularity of dances like the Tango and Mambo in the Borscht Belt, as exemplified by movies like Dirty Dancing and Mamboniks; and Josh Kun will discuss the influence of Latin American music on post-war Jewish music and the influence of Jewish music on U.S. Latino/a artists.

This event forms part of Carnegie Hall’s Nuestros sonidos festival.

This panel discussion originally took place on March 10, 2025.

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Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill, "Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story" (Da Capo, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero as he glided through six decades of musical trends with nary a lapse in taste. Not to say he ever played it safe. What other guitarist can lay claim to performing with opera star Luciano Pavarotti, mainstream television personality Kelly Clarkson, and professional degenerates like Guns N’ Roses with equal grace and wit? Or as Beck himself once quipped, “I’m an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected.”

In Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story (Da Capo, 2026), Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill return to chart the unexplored life of rock’s greatest and perhaps most enigmatic instrumentalist. Culled from approximately 30 hours of interviews with the late guitarist himself, numerous conversations with those closest to him, and extensive research, the book sheds new light on the genius that Jimmy Page once said, “shifted the whole sound and face of electric guitar music.”

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George Grella, "Minimalist Music" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Minimalist Music (Bloomsbury, 2026) looks critically into the music's past, shows how the genre thrives across styles, and points the way toward minimalism's ongoing future.

Minimalism as a genre is best defined not by any style or flavor but by its means. Certain rhythms and chords in other music may identify things like jazz or bossa nova or reggae; take those same elements and put them through the processes of minimalism and you have minimalism with the hues of other musics.

A still young genre with ancient roots, minimalism is much less any kind of style than a practice, a manner of making music. Reviving those means and applying them to contemporary sounds and experiences, the pioneers of minimalism created a new and avant-garde music that immediately communicated its power to listeners of all kinds. The global appeal of minimalism and the way the methods adapt to myriad styles open up a view into how music actually works as an art and an experience, how through time it connects in a fundamental way to how we as humans listen.

George Grella, Jr. has written about music and culture for over thirty years for print and online publications, and has contributed to the Grove Dictionary of Music and the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. He is Music Editor at The Brooklyn Rail, publishes the Kill Yr Idols newsletter, and is the author of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (Bloomsbury, 2015). He has played jazz, classical, and improvised music from CBGB to Carnegie Hall.

George Grella on Bluesky and Kill Yr Idols newsletter.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Alexandre Frenette, "Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy" (Princeton UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Who gets to be a creative worker? In Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy, (Princeton University Press, 2026) Alexandre Frenette, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, examines the relationship between work and education in the difficult moment of the early career transition from university to industry. Drawing on a detailed case study of the music industry, the book explains and critiques the way internships have come to dominate routes into many careers in contemporary society. An accessible yet theoretically rich read, the book will be of interest to creative workers at any point in their career, as well as sociologists and humanities scholars, along with any reader interested in how and why our workplaces are so unequal.

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A.D. Carson, "Owning My Masters (Mastered): The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Owning My Masters (Mastered) is a digital archive of original rap music and spoken word poetry containing two volumes of music, an annotated timeline, videos, and a digital book. In this project, A.D. Carson exposes the artificial boundaries imposed on understood ideas about knowledge production in academia by employing hip-hop creative and compositional practices to interrogate ideas of citizenship, history, historical imagination, race, home, and humanness. Using sampled and live instrumentation and repurposed music, film, and news clips, an introductory video, and original rap lyrics, heoffers a new examination of how to create theory through hip-hop.

The unmastered album was originally submitted to Clemson University in South Carolina as the author’s dissertation, composed against the backdrop of the growing unrest across the U.S. and the world in response to the public attention to the deaths of Black people, many at the hands of police and vigilantes. As such, the songs highlight outlooks on Black life in America—on campuses and in communities across the country—and how they fit with geographic and temporal place and space. For this publication, the tracks have been mastered, and Carson has written a new introduction to contextualize and reflect on the moment in which the songs were written. It is a 2026 ACLS Open Access Multimodal Book Prize Finalist.

Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

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Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This episode features a conversation with Carnatic vocalist, T.M. Krishna, who is also the author of two books on this musical tradition. We began with his first book’s account of the modernization of Carnatic music through a set of social, technical, and spatial processes that transformed it from a more socially diverse practice into a predominantly Brahmin performative genre. We moved on to discuss a figure who is at the heart of his second book: the maker of the Carnatic percussion instrument, the mrdangam. This took us into an extended discussion of the changing relationship between mrdangam makers, who are predominantly Dalit, and mrdangam players, who are predominantly Brahmin, and what the complex mix of inequality, stigma, artistry, and pride suggests about the specificity of this inter-caste relationship. The episode ended with Krishna fleshing out his distinction between classical music and art music and the reasons why he rejects the former in favor of the latter.

Read the transcript

Guest

T.M. Krishna is a vocalist in the Carnatic tradition and the author of two books and numerous articles.

References

T.M. Krishna, A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story (Harper Collins, 2016).

T.M. Krishna, Sebastian and Sons: A Brief History of Mrdangam Makers (Westland, 2023).

Devadasi: refers to a historical practice of “marrying” girls to a temple deity. In the pre-colonial period, Devadasis held a respected place in society as literate, land owning women who were highly trained in music and dance. During colonialism, their sexual relations with male patrons came to be seen as a threat to householder society and they became targets of moral reform. The Devadasi system was abolished in 1947.

Sadir: a dance form historically performed by the Devadasi community that was the precursor to modern Bharatanatyam.

Bharatanatyam: a modern dance form now widely performed by upper castes.

Khayal: vocal genre of North Indian music.

ICS: Indian Civil Service, the higher tier of colonial administration in British India that became the basis of the post-independence Indian Administrative Service.

The Music Academy: the main performance space for Carnatic music in Madras (now Chennai), India.

Kutcheri: term for the venue where Carnatic music is performed.

Thanjavur: city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu known for its art and architecture.

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Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles" (Da Capo Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Philip Norman's latest biography, Mr. Moonlight (DaCapo Press, 2026) is the definitive, comprehensive biography of Brian Epstein--the man who built the Beatles. There will never be another pop manager like Brian Epstein, the young record-retailer from Liverpool behind the 20th century's greatest romance. Having achieved his much-derided aim of making the Beatles "bigger than Elvis," Brian went on to make them bigger than any earthly instrument could measure. Only a handful of years older, he nonetheless referred them as "the Boys," protecting and pampering them like the children he could never hope to have. Due to his homosexuality--and possibly his Jewishness--Brian received no public honor (or even thanks) for this incalculable contribution to Britain's exports, let alone the national morale. He may not have been the best dealmaker for the Beatles, but in his hands, their guiding principles were always good taste, niceness to their fans, and value for money. Yet his only tangible memorials are a blue plaque marking his former office in London's theatreland and a modest bronze statue near the site of his family's electrical goods store in Liverpool. Mr. Moonlight draws on a cache of never-before-heard audio interviews to tell the story of this hugely complex, self-contradictory, and ultimately tragic character. From his Pre-Beatles years--the eight different expensive private schools at which he failed to shine, his problematic career as an army National Serviceman, his vague ambitions to be a couturier--through his management of the Beatles, where he turned a quartet of unruly young musicians in cracked black leather into a worldwide religion, up to his supposedly "incautious" overdoses in 1967 at aged 32, and the calamity that followed. As John Lennon said upon hearing the news, "Then we're fucked!"--and they were.

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Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:48:00 +0000

1. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals

2. Clare E. B. Cannon; Advancing sustainable transitions: A spatial analysis of socio-environmental dynamics of landfills across the United States. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 12 January 2024; 12 (1): 00101: Link

3. Morrison, Matthew D. Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. Available at: UC Press Bookstore

4. Matthew D. Morrison; Race, Blacksound, and the (Re)Making of Musicological Discourse. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 December 2019; 72 (3): 781–823: Link

6. Jennifer Lynn Peterson; Scenes of Destruction and Beauty: Sponsored Film, Women Reformers, and the Save-the-Redwoods League. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2023; 9 (2): 43–75: Link

If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation. To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit UC Press Website.

David Famiano is the Journals Director at the University of California Press

Jessica Chesnutt is the Journals Manager at the University of California Press.

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Hamsa Stainton and Anna Lee White, "Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras" (Routledge, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotra/stuti/stava) have been popular and influential within multiple religious traditions for thousands of years. Sanskrit hymns remain lively, meaningful parts of the religious lives of countless Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains today, and new stotras continue to be composed and recited around the world. The academic study of these hymns has made notable progress in recent decades as scholars have paid increasing attention to such compositions. A valuable pedagogical resource for educators teaching about Asian religions and literature, especially in comparative contexts, Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras (Routledge, 2026) also establishes the foundation for future research and scholarship on a genre of religious poetry popular across South Asian religious traditions.

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Street Level: HUD at 60

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) marked its 60th anniversary. Created amid the optimism and urgency of the civil rights era, HUD embodied a bipartisan commitment to building stronger, more integrated, and equitable cities. How did that vision unfold alongside the music, culture, and politics that shaped urban life?

Street Level, a special audio documentary episode of Soundscapes NYC, explores the intertwined histories of urban policy, housing, and popular culture in the years following HUD’s establishment. Through archival recordings, immersive sound design, and music drawn from the neighborhoods most affected by federal housing decisions, the documentary traces how government policies shaped city life—and how residents responded through creativity, resilience, and community.

Featuring insights from historian and author Bench Ansfield, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Born In Flames, senior career HUD staff members Kent Watkins and John Finch, and public history scholar Kristin Sylvian, Street Level connects policy decisions to lived experience, revealing how federal housing initiatives shaped the urban landscape—and how music and culture helped sustain joy, identity, and perseverance when city life grew more difficult. Part history, part cultural exploration, and part sonic journey, Street Level offers a powerful new perspective on the forces that have shaped America’s cities.

HOST/PRODUCER: Ryan Purcell

WRITER/PRODUCER: Shelagh Little

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Olivia Rodrigo Blends Past and Present in Her New Album

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to Olivia Rodrigo's new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. We analyze the lyrics and the aesthetics of the album, including the notable influence of The Cure and 80s British New Wave in particular. We offer an appreciation of Rodrigo's commitment to song craft and to live performance. And we note with pleasure that, perhaps unusually for a contemporary pop release, this album works as a coherent set of songs placed in an intentional order and with a defined narrative.

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James O'Leary, "The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The premiere of Oklahoma! in 1943 is commonly called a “turning point” in the history of the Broadway musical. Often characterized as the first integrated musical―meaning that the songs and other elements of the show are integrated into the story―James O’Leary offers a different interpretation of Oklahoma! and other musicals at the beginning of Broadway’s Golden Age in The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America (Oxford University Press, 2025). Contextualizing his discussion within debates among US critics, O’Leary argues that the negotiation between operatic and popular music, and between frothy comedy and more serious themes mark the musicals he analyzes as examples of the middlebrow. Through detailed archival work, O’Leary uncovers the crucial critical networks that originally theorized a middlebrow approach to culture, beginning in the literary circles of Van Wyck Brooks and Archibald MacLeish, and radiating outward to major theater and music critics including Brooks Atkinson and Olin Downes. These writers believed American culture had splintered into factions, which in turn divided American audiences: highbrow art, which they regarded as obscure and elitist; folk art, which they found provincial and alienating; and popular culture, which they considered merely commercial. Blending these kinds of art, they argued, could draw together a fractured society into mutual understanding (if not necessarily agreement) by situating the most sophisticated ideas within longstanding expressive traditions, accessible to all. O’Leary finds in Oklahoma!, Beggar’s Holiday, and Street Scene a new kind of musical comedy that embraced American politics and weighty stories in ways not seen before 1943.

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Anna Harwell Celenza, "On the Record: Music that Changed America (Norton, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

There is no shortage of books on music and politics, but Anna Harwell Celenza explores an interesting premise in her book On the Record: Music that Changed America (Norton, 2026). Each of the twelve chapters discusses a different instance when music, as Celenza writes, “sparked debates in the halls of Congress.” Arranged basically chronologically, Celenza tackles some of the most powerful and contentious issues in twentieth and twenty-first century American politics. From censorship to copyright law; from the Civil Rights Movement, to foreign policy during Apartheid, Celenza traces the extraordinary moments when music moved Congress, challenged power, and united people around shared ideals. The stories Celenza tells are just as much about music including the intertwined histories of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” or the making of Paul Simon’s album Graceland, as they are about US legislation or American politics. She offers readers a history of America heard through the songs and compositions that changed its course.

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Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment.

Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and reception of the voices of singing stars—notably Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle—Jhingan situates the singing voice as a cinematic object with limitless possibilities of distribution and dispersal. She employs the perspectives of a diverse range of listeners across a vast media landscape to illustrate how the affective charge of the female playback voice, combined with developments in audio technology, has led to a gradual expansion of opportunities for women in film, popular music, and media and audio production. With nuanced exploration of the way the human voice becomes intertwined with devices such as the microphone, radio, cassettes, and digital technologies, Jhingan argues for the sonic excess of the female voice beyond the narrative and visual. The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema is an authoritative addition to the field of sound studies with implications for gender studies, performance studies, and cinema studies.

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Ginger Dellenbaugh, "Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

More than 40 years after her death, the legend of Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta," remains unsurpassed. Much has been written about her sensational opera career and fraught private life, from her definitive mastery of iconic opera roles to her love affairs and tantrums. The prototype for the 20th century celebrity diva, Callas emblematizes the cliche of tormented talent - genius in the ring with catastrophe.

Her extraordinary voice, in particular, has become an object of cult-like adoration and cultural significance almost with a life of its own: as fetish object, as sophisticated sonic signifier, and most recently, as the lifeblood for a Callas hologram. Such adoration is not without consequences. When Callas is transformed into a vessel for such transcendent magic, it overshadows what is perhaps her most superhuman ability - the masterful technique she deployed to shape and craft her astounding instrument. Singing bodies are working bodies, enacting an intimate and complex form of artistic labor and cultural signification.

Using one of Callas's first recital recordings from 1954, Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias (Bloomsbury, 2021) envisions each aria as a lens to examine various aspects of vocalization and cultural reception of the feminized voice in both classical and pop culture, from Homer's Sirens to Star Trek. With references to works by Marina Abramovic, Charles Baudelaire, Michel Chion, Wayne Koestenbaum, Greil Marcus, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, as well as films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonathan Demme, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, each chapter explores phenomena unique to the singing voice, including the operatic screaming point, the politics of listening, and the singing simulacrum.

Ginger Dellenbaugh is a musician and historian who has written and lectured on music and politics, vernacular notation systems, and the cultural history of the voice. A trained opera singer, she performed for over a decade in Europe and the United States. Ginger is currently a lecturer at The New School in New York, USA and completing a PhD in musicology at Yale University, USA. She lives in New York City and Vienna, Austria.

Ginger Dellenbaugh’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Mary R. Lanni, "Using Nursery Rhymes with Today’s Kids: Their Legacy and Evolution" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this illuminating conversation with librarian-author Mary R. Lanni, we celebrate her brand new book, Using Nursery Rhymes with Today’s Kids: Their Legacy and Evolution (Bloomsbury, 2026). Mary is a professional librarian in Denver, Colorado, USA. She is also co-author of Early Learning Through Play: Library Programming for Diverse Communities (Libraries Unlimited, 2019). We talk about the potentially sordid history of famous nursery rhymes, and the possibility of supplanting problematic ancient poems with new, inclusive songs.

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Andrea Zarafshon Moore, "Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory" (Fordham UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

It is a compulsion of the human race to find a way to memorialize those we have lost and why we have lost them, from a gravestone of a loved one to war monuments that honor thousands who died in battle. In Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory (Fordham UP, 2025), Andrea Zarafshon Moore examines how contemporary music has been used to memorialize three recent crises in the United States: the AIDS crisis, 9-11, and ongoing anti-Black violence. Moore reads these crises and the music that memorializes them to reveal the ways the are methodologically and ideologically similar to and different from each other. She explores the broader debates and discourses through which commemoration is always filtered and the ways interpretive consensus has been constructed and articulated in both musical and other memorial forms. Moore weaves close musical analysis with a wide-ranging discussion of how Americans memorialize, who Americans memorialize, and what memorials are meant to accomplish.

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Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Breaux examines musical variety clowns and the broad array of racial and ethnic impersonations they performed on four distinct touring circuits and apparatuses: the African American Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the Chinese American so-called Chop Suey Circuit, the Mexican and Mexican American carpas tours, and Country American barn dances.

This book explores the overlooked history of touring clown performers in early twentieth-century musical variety shows, addressing both their historical marginalization and their significant impact on popular entertainment. By examining these performers' widespread presences both on and off stage, the work challenges traditional historical narratives that have excluded diverse voices, particularly women and non-white performers. The research corrects a common misconception that racial impersonation in musical variety was exclusively the domain of white male performers. Instead, it reveals how performers and managers from various backgrounds actively challenged prevailing ideas about American identity, whiteness, and cultural inclusion. Through this lens, the book demonstrates that musical comedy performance and management were not exclusively white privileges, but rather spaces where diverse artists contributed significantly to early twentieth-century entertainment culture and beyond.

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Samuel Markind, "Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain" (JHU Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Explores the profound power of music to influence brain function and well-being.

IPA 2026 Distinguished Favorite in the Music Category

Why does music influence how we feel so deeply--and what are the scientific mechanisms behind this phenomenon? In Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain (JHU Press, 2025) Dr. Samuel Markind explores the intriguing relationship between music and brain function. Using evolutionary theory, he illuminates the pivotal role that music plays in human survival and procreation. From communication and caregiving to social bonding and partner selection, music has molded the human species and continues to shape our lives in remarkable ways.

This book combines insights from neuroscience and psychology with helpful drawings and vivid examples to present compelling evidence for music's life-enhancing potential. Dr. Markind highlights the brain's instinctive capacity for music: from newborns' natural affinity for rhythm and melody to the effect that music has on brain development throughout the lifespan. Music also helps people learn at any age and in any condition, so it can improve speech, movement, and memory in both healthy individuals and those suffering from illness or injury. Dr. Markind encourages readers to engage actively with music. Whether through singing, dancing, or instrument playing, the benefits of active participation are profound and accessible to everyone, regardless of musical background. This book, filled with straightforward and practical suggestions, is an inspiring guide for anyone seeking to enrich their life through music.

Music Between Your Ears shows how the act of engaging with music can profoundly impact your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. And the benefits of music go far beyond entertainment--they're essential to the very fabric of what makes us human.

Samuel Markind's website here.

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The YIVO Sound Archive at 40: A Celebration

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The YIVO Sound Archive houses over 20,000 recordings (including 78, 45, and 33rpm discs, open-reel and cassette tapes, piano rolls, and compact discs and other digital formats) as well as various artifacts related to sound recordings. It is is one of the most extensive and frequently consulted Jewish music collections in the world, embracing Yiddish and Hebrew folk, pop and theater music, Holocaust songs, liturgical, choral and instrumental compositions and, of course, klezmer music, as well as spoken word, oral histories, interviews, and radio programs. In addition to serving researchers, the Sound Archive maintains a special link to the Yiddish cultural world, and has close relationships with many musicians who utilize its resources in creating their art. It serves anyone seeking to include Yiddish music in their life or work, including teachers, journalists, camp counselors, and radio producers, among others.

Join us for a fascinating insider discussion of the history of the YIVO Sound Archive, important areas of its collections, projects it has facilitated, and other stories of the past 40 years. Moderated by Hankus Netsky, this event will, for the very first time, bring together the founder of YIVO's Sound Archive, Henry Sapoznik, current YIVO Sound Archivists Lorin Sklamberg and Eléonore Biezunski, and former YIVO Sound Archivist Jenny Romaine.

Learn more about the YIVO Sound Archive: https://www.yivo.org/Sound

This panel discussion originally took place on September 13, 2022.

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Mary Lucia, " What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (U Minnesota Press, 2025) an iconic rock DJ of the Twin Cities tells her harrowing story of being stalked while living her very public life What's it like to be in the public spotlight when it just might get you killed? For Mary Lucia, becoming a wildly popular rock DJ meant connecting with a multitude of fans through a shared love of music and deep cuts. But for one listener, that connection became a dangerous obsession, catapulting Lucia into the terrifying three-year nightmare that she chronicles in this raw, wry, and profoundly courageous memoir. With electrifying wit and anger, Lucia shares her experience of navigating constant terror while life absurdly goes on: interview rock stars, curate a radio show song list, judge high school battles of the band, kick a drug addiction cold turkey . . . all while fearing what might be waiting in her mailbox or who might be waiting on her front step or at her back door. Lucia was no stranger to inappropriate or weird contact from fans, but things turned sinister when ten pounds of raw meat were delivered to her at work, followed by a steady stream of ominous letters, cards, packages, and messages. When the letters included threats to her dogs' safety, she tried to get help, but without a name and return address on these communications there was nothing she could do. As the stalker's actions escalated, Lucia felt more and more isolated. Police responding to her 911 calls were insensitive and dismissive, and even her friends implied that being stalked was just a hazard of her high-profile job and her high-energy personality. No one seemed to take seriously the danger she faced. Inseparable from this ordeal is the story of how Mary Lucia became the notorious radio malcontent known by so many avid listeners. From the good, bad, and weird of growing up in her eccentric family to drugs, death, and dogs, Lucia finally shares her life on her own terms in What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To. Applying her signature dark humor to her own traumatic experiences, Lucia's memoir is idiosyncratic, bold, and--ironically--relatable

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Nicholas Tochka, "The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also gives larger insight into Sixties counterculture.

Failed singer-songwriter. Devious cult leader. A rock Pied Piper. The product of a sick society. Just another dime-a-dozen singing hippy mystic. Did the guitar-playing guru personify the violence that the rock counterculture inflicted on America? Or did his music diagnose the dehumanizing effects of that society's broken institutions?

For over five decades, commentators have debated the meaning of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca killings. Rock music links their narratives: from the acid drenched singalongs at the Spahn Movie Ranch, to a bizarre theology centered on Beatles songs, to his commune's alleged links with Hollywood's elite, to an album, LIE: The Love and Terror Cult (1970). In this first comprehensive examination of the Manson Family's music, Nicholas Tochka writes with, against, and alongside the many authors-true-crime hacks, gonzo journalists, conspiracy theorists, and rock critics alike-who have told and retold the story of "the Manson murders." Playing the truth games that these postwar Americans helped invent, The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties (Bloomsbury, 2026) presents a new take on the story of the commune-and on rock's role in fracturing the possibility of writing trustworthy histories after the Sixties.

"They are afraid of it, because it tells the truth," Manson once claimed, describing his music. Just what truths did the Manson Family's music-making tell?

Nicholas Tochka is Associate Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the author of several books including Rocking In the Free World: Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America and Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania. His work examines the politics of music-making in the postwar world.

Nicholas on the University of Melbourne’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson, "The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments" (Reaktion, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Deirdre Loughridge & Dr. Thomas Patteson is a guided tour through centuries of instruments that never existed. From ancient myths to futuristic media, these imagined devices appear in literature, theory, video games and art, at times echoing real instruments, other times pushing far beyond the bounds of technology. This book presents a wide-ranging collection of such creations, showing how they reflect changing ideas about sound, invention and the limits of the possible. At once a cultural history and a study of creative thought, it uncovers unexpected links between music, design and the human urge to make meaning through sound. These are not just fictional artefacts – they are windows into what music might mean, even when it cannot be played.

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The Lost World of African American Cantors 1915–1953

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Histories of Black-Jewish cultural interaction often focus on how Jews adopted and adapted Black vernacular music—ragtime, jazz, swing, R&B, blues—as performers, promoters, managers, club owners, and record labels. The phenomenon of African American musicians who performed Yiddish and cantorial music in and for the Jewish community in theaters, on record, on radio, and in concert between the World Wars deserves such scholarly inquiry. This talk will honor the memory of now forgotten Black cantors – Mendele der Shvartser Khazn, Reb Dovid Kalistrita, Abraham Ben Benjamin Franklin, Thomas LaRue Jones, and Goldye di Shvartse Khaznte, the first known Black woman cantor. This talk by award winning producer, author, and ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik will feature dozens of historic graphics, translations of period Yiddish newspaper previews, ads, and reviews, and the playing of the one known 1923 Yiddish and Hebrew recording of Thomas Jones LaRue.

This lecture originally took place on June 15, 2021.

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Brook Flagg, "I Go There with You: The U2 Sites of Southern California, from Significant to Sacred" (Nine Criteria, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

U2 is a band from the north side of Dublin that became a global phenomenon-and while its four members have traveled the world over for almost fifty years, some of the most critical points on their journey have been in Southern California.

The Joshua Tree is the best-known example of U2's artistic immersion in the Golden State, but the band began drawing inspiration from California's landscape as early as 1981 during their first arrival in the U.S. for the Boy tour.

From deserts to beaches to urban streets, Southern California features dozens of sites that are both sacred and significant to U2 history. For the first time, these sites are documented and categorized in a single resource to inform and support the Southern California pilgrimages of U2 fans. I Go There With You (2026) provides the information U2 fans need before embarking on such a quest, whether individually or in groups. Each site has a story, and this book tells those stories-along with must-have details for trips that require extra planning and foresight.

In addition to essential information on each site's place in U2 history, author Brook W. Flagg aims to inspire U2's most devoted followers with anecdotes and scrapbooked images. Just as Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. traveled through Southern California along the road from innocence to experience, their fans can find catharsis and healing by going into the mystic portals of the past-places where, over the decades, U2 found pieces of what they were looking for.

Brook Flagg on Twitter.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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The Barton Brothers, Mickey Katz, and Others: Yiddish-English Bilingual Parody Songs

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In the years immediately following the Second World War, the Barton Brothers, an anarchic Catskill comedy duo, began recording humorous macaronic (that is, bilingual) parody songs that relied in no small part on Yiddish theater and radio for raw material. The Bartons’ unexpected success—their send-up of Yiddish radio, “Joe & Paul,” was a bona fide hit, however improbable—inspired clarinetist Mickey Katz, based in Los Angeles and working with first-rate studio players, to begin recording his own exceedingly funny Yiddish-mixed-with-English lyrics set to the melodies of current Hit Parade songs. Capitol Records issued (possibly to their own amazement) a steady stream of these Yinglish albums by Katz all through the 1950s and into the ‘60s. These in turn inspired Allan Sherman, a TV gameshow writer/producer, to begin recording his own parodies of standards and folk songs. Though hardly any of Sherman’s lyrics had actual Yiddish content, many still had a clearly Jewish inflection that often alluded—phonetically, grammatically, or syntactically—to Yiddish beginnings.

Close readings of selected tracks by the Bartons, by Katz, and by Sherman will focus on their language, their music, their delivery, and what made them so influential and so very funny.

This lecture originally took place on July 9, 2020.

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Daphne A. Brooks, "Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince" (Duke UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince (Duke UP, 2026) is the first critical anthology dedicated to exploring the legacies of the pop music icons David Bowie and Prince. Daphne A. Brooks brings together an extraordinary array of writers, artists, and scholars, including Greg Tate, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Eric Lott, and Ann Powers, to offer fresh insight into how Bowie and Prince each fundamentally changed pop culture as musicians who emerged at the intersections of modern movements surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and art. Featured alongside these pieces are interviews with trusted collaborators of Bowie and Prince such as D. A. Pennebaker, Sheila E., and Marie France, giving vital insider context to the impact both artists had on pop culture and the complexities of their repertoires, politics, and private lives. This work is essential reading for any fan of two of the most formidable and eminent figures in pop culture history.
Contributors: Christine Bacareza Balance, Emma Balázs, Victoria Broackes, Daphne A. Brooks, Daphne Carr, Andreana Clay, Ashon Crawley, Jonathan Flatley, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Lynell George, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Jack Halberstam, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Kara Keeling, Jason King, Josh Kun, Kathryn Lofton, Emily J. Lordi, Eric Lott, Maureen Mahon, Greil Marcus, Geoffrey Marsh, Michaelangelo Matos, Tiffany Naiman, Tavia Nyong'o, Ann Powers, Sonnet Retman, Morgan Rhodes, Francesca T. Royster, Gustavus Stadler, Jacqueline Stewart, Greg Tate, Karen Tongson, Van My Truong, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Michael E. Veal, Shane Vogel, Gayle Wald, Oliver Wang, Alexander G. Weheliye, Richard Yarborough, Kristen Zschomler

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David Arditi, "Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok" (Anthem Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Who makes a living from the music industry? In Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok (Anthem Press, 2026) David Arditi, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the history of technology in the music industry. This history illustrates the way the industry continues to profit even as artists struggle to make money. The book charts the development and evolution of listeners’ uses of formats and technologies, from cassette tapes and CDs through sharing to streaming, demonstrating how the record industry has initiated moral panics to stop threats to their profits. This is in a context where listeners and independent labels have found new ways to engage with music because of these same formats and technologies. An engaging and accessible overview of issues central to creative industries, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary culture.

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Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine" (U California Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Rolling Stone's first decade was truly rock and roll: chaotic, wild, and unpredictable. Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine (U California Press, 2026) by Peter Richardson charts the origins and evolution of the magazine during its formative early years in San Francisco. Founded in 1967 by a 21-year-old college dropout, Rolling Stone and its editors were steeped in the Bay Area's counterculture and viewed rock and roll as the animating spirit of a social revolution. Reaching beyond music, the magazine delved into the tempestuous culture and politics of the time.
Acclaimed author Peter Richardson takes readers inside the iconic magazine during an era of legendary events, major cultural figures, and unforgettable music. Showing how Rolling Stone became a journalistic juggernaut—nurturing music-focused writers like Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus as well as New Journalism giants Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe—this book reveals how Rolling Stone both exemplified and critiqued the counterculture. Always more than the definitive rock magazine, Rolling Stone leveraged the power of popular music to deliver groundbreaking coverage of historic events, setting a new standard for the next generation of American journalism.

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Daniel Rachel, "This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich" (Akashic Books, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Over the last seven decades, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious brandishing swastikas in the pomp of punk, generations of performers have associated themselves in troubling ways with the aesthetics, mass hysteria, and even ideology of Nazism. Whether shock factor, stupidity, or crass attempts at subversion, rock 'n' roll has indulged these associations in a way not accepted in any other art form. But how accountable should fans, the media, and the music industry be for what has often seemed a sleazy fascination with the eroticized perversions of a fascist regime?

In This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich (Akashic Books, 2026), award-winning music historian Daniel Rachel navigates these turbulent waters with extraordinary delicacy and care, asking us to look anew at the artists who have defined us, inspired us, and given us joy--and consider why so many have been drawn to the imagery of a movement responsible for some of the twentieth century's worst atrocities. Rachel asks essential questions of actions often overlooked or underplayed, while neither casting sweeping judgment nor offering easy answers. In doing so, he asks us to reassess the history of rock 'n' roll, and he sheds new light on the grim echoes of the Third Reich in popular culture and the legacy of twentieth (and twenty-first) century history as it defines us today and sheds new light on the grim echoes of the Third Reich in popular culture--and the legacy of twentieth (and twenty-first)-century history as it defines us today.

Daniel Rachel is a former musician turned award-winning and best-selling author. His previous books include Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story; Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters; and The Lost Album of the Beatles: What If the Beatles Hadn't Split Up? He has also written sleeve notes for many artists including the Kinks, Madness, Ocean Colour Scene, Ray Davies, and Bryan Ferry. He lives in London.

Daniel Rachel’s website and Instagram.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Marty Friedman with Jon Wiederhorn, "Dreaming Japanese" (Permuted Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Marty Friedman is a multi-platinum recording artist and government-appointed Ambassador to Japan Heritage. He has written three books in Japanese and had long running columns in the Asahi Weekly, Nikkei Entertainment, Cyzo, Big Comic, Young Guitar, Guitar World and Burrn.

The show opens with a moving tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, formerly of Black Sabbath, who passed away on July 25, 2025. Friedman then turns to the reason for writing his book, co-authored with Jon Wiederhorn. He talks about the co-writing process and describes it as “putting his musical abilities into words.” His latest solo release, Drama, he calls his best and most romantic work to date — a largely orchestral album that stretches beyond his usual style.

He also reflects on the Japanese entertainment industry, the uniquely Japanese idea of heta-uma, idol music, and the role of “cuteness” in J-Pop. Producers such as Tsunku and Komuro Tetsuya play a key role in drawing out this unique appeal. J-Pop carries deeper cultural nuance than outsiders might assume. In addition, Friedman reflects on scandals, music managers ,and his first rehearsal with a J-Pop band.

Read our book review of Dreaming Japanese (Permuted Press, 2024) as reviewed by Stephen Mansfield. Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast, and the Books on Asia newsletter featuring new releases, book reviews and the latest podcast episodes.

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Melissa Auf der Maur, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir" (DaCapo, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir(DaCapo, 2026) is a remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins Even the Good Girls Will Cry begins with Auf der Maur's bohemian upbringing in Montreal, where her early, deep connection to art and music gave her entry to the colorful and thriving local creative scene. Working as a cassette DJ and ticket girl, she would see (and sometimes meet) the luminaries who'd pass through town--Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a long-shot fan letter to a PO Box, her band Tinker scored a life-changing opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and, sensing her natural talent on bass, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love, just one of the many uncanny threads that weaves destiny throughout this riveting memoir. Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band's 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay. That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock 'n' roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

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The 50th Anniversary Tour of Patti Smith's Horses: A Conversation with Caryn Rose

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Caryn Rose's Three Chords and Blessed Noise (2026) is an ode to the lost art of the tour diary. In November of 2025, Patti Smith and her band embarked on a short tour in the United States and Europe to commemorate this auspicious occasion and to allow us, the children of this particular revolution, to celebrate this achievement, these songs and these people.

Rose headed off for a week of shows: Chicago, New York City, and Boston. One more time. Maybe one last time. As someone whose writing career has focused on rock and roll in its live form, and who spent several years researching and writing a book about Patti Smith (Why Patti Smith Matters, University of Texas Press, 2022), she felt this anniversary outing needed to be captured for posterity.

Rose didn’t want to write yet something else that would get lost on the World Wide Web, she didn’t want to be limited by word count, and she wanted something tangible. This is the end result. Less than a book, more than a zine.

Caryn Rose is a music journalist and writer.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Martha Feldman, "Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome" (Zone Books, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last of them, Alessandro Moreschi. In Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome (Zone Books, 2026), musicologist Professor Martha Feldman declines to accept these deep-seated mysteries and concealments. After a decade and more of digging through archives and family histories comes her exciting transdisciplinary and quasi-cinematic account of Moreschi, whose recordings preserve the only sonic trace of a solo castrato.
Yet Moreschi’s story extends far beyond him. It opens up intrigues, politics, and histories of the Vatican, everyday histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Rome, the world of Roman opera, the city’s unique mélange of sacred and vernacular tropes, and representations of Rome by iconic film director Federico Fellini. Moreschi and Fellini turn out to have been related by marriage, but also to share synergies grounded in Rome’s persistent inclination to vernacularize the sacred. Far from telling of one anomalous figure, Professor Feldman’s gripping history convinces readers that Moreschi, like Fellini, can be read as an improbable index of Roman consciousness, both during his own life and well beyond.

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Mike Huguenor, "Elvis Is Dead, I'm Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records" (Clash, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records tells the singular story of Asian Man Records.

In its first thirty years, Asian Man Records released over 400 albums, all from the garage at Mike Park’s parents’ house. Founded when Park was in his early twenties, the label has started and supported the careers of musicians across many generations, all free from the pressures of the larger music industry. It seemed things could even stay that way forever, until an unexpected email arrived…

Spanning early releases by breakout artists like Less Than Jake and Alkaline Trio, to albums that went viral on TikTok, every record has its own story. All of them connect back to Mike Park, the record label founder, who went from struggling with racism as a Korean American in an overwhelmingly white town, to his current status as international underground inspiration.

Written by Mike Huguenor, a musician who has seen the label from inside and out, this music biography documents thirty years in the life of a record label unlike any other—the one and only Asian Man Records.

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Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

With his fake beard, putty nose, and thick Yiddish accent, the “stage Jew” was once a common character in vaudeville, part of a genre that mocked immigrants and minorities. Essentially a variant of blackface minstrelsy, the music that accompanied these “Jewface” performances was not only performed on stage, but also published as colorfully illustrated sheet music so fans could play them at home. Outrageous and offensive by today’s standards, these “Yiddish” dialect songs exploited a variety of unpleasant stereotypes about Jews.

Based in part on the sheet music collection of The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine Critic-at-large Jody Rosen, YIVO presents its latest exhibition, Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley. Join Eddy Portnoy (Senior Researcher & Exhibition Curator, YIVO), the curator of Jewface, and Jody Rosen for a discussion with Tablet Magazine editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse about this form of early 20th-century entertainment, how it mocked Jews, engaged Jews, and developed Yiddish-accented English for comic effect. Allen Rickman, Yelena Shmulenson, and Steve Sterner will be performing selections from the exhibit, as well as a number of classic Yiddish/English comedy routines.

This exhibition opening took place on November 24, 2015.

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Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #1 with Benjamen Walker and Fanny Gribenski

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research.

In the first panel, podcaster Benjamen Walker discusses his work with NYU media studies professor Mara Mills as they produce Tuning Time, a podcast about the politics of time stretching technology. Professor Mills is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of disability studies, Science and Technology Studies, and sound studies. She teaches in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and is Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Her work on “disability and media” spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media. Benjamen Walker is a radio writer and producer. He is one of the co-founders of the podcast network Radiotopia from PRX, and for a decade hosted and produced his award winning program Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything.

The first panel concluded with a presentation by NYU musicologist Fanny Gribenski in which she discusses her current project, The Elephant in the Piano: Music, Ecology, Empire. The book, and podcast, is an investigation of the 19th century piano through a material history of its primary components: ivory, wood, felt, and metal. Professor Gribenski is a historical musicologist who specializes in the history of musical and sonic practices. Her first book, L'Église comme lieu de concert. Pratiques musicales et usages de l'espace (Paris, 1830–1905) analyzes the role of music in the production of sacred spaces. Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago, 2023) traces the rocky path towards international pitch standardization.

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Austin McCoy, "Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made" (Atria/One Signal, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they changed the look, sound, and feel of Black America.

Music artists and trends come and go, but every once in a while, a moment arrives that genuinely changes everything. In 1988, De La Soul, three young men from Amityville, Long Island, did exactly that. Their always innovative work pulled inspiration from artists of the past and popularized cutting-edge music sampling techniques to blend jazz, R&B, and rap as they created a sound unlike any the world had heard before.

But the De La Soul experience didn’t end there. These weren’t just musicians—they were game-changers in so many ways. From the way they dressed, to the words they spoke, to the day-glo colors of their breakout 3 Feet and Rising, De La Soul rejected convention, refused to be talked back into the box, and left the door open for everyone behind them.

Now, in Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made (Atria/One Signal, 2026), West Virginia University history professor Austin McCoy explores how De La Soul not only defined a new era of hip-hop, but also American and Black culture at the same time. Through his eyes, ears, and well-studied recall of ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s America, McCoy takes us on a journey through the world this innovative musical act made.

One of the few hip-hop groups of their era to stay together long term, De La Soul lived astonishing highs and lows, from forming the Native Tongues collective to influential fights with their publishers to assert the artist’s right to control their creations. And after a lifetime left out of music’s digital revolution, in 2023 they finally hit streaming services just as it lost founding member David Jolicoeur too soon to see his work reach a brand-new generation of fans.

Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age will connect with DLS fans, ‘80s babies, and students of the rap game alike, in a beautifully rendered and deeply researched tome that places this group atop the pedestal it deserves.

Guest: Austin McCoy is an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University, specializing in African American History, labor history, social movements, and hip-hop culture. His work has appeared in numerous outlets including CNN, The Baffler, The Washington Post, Black Perspectives, and Truthout. He lives in West Virginia.

Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

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Ani DiFranco and Lauren Coyle Rosen, "The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom" (Akashic Books, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Rebekah Buchanan talks with Ani DiFranco about her latest collaborative work The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music and Freedom (Akashic Books, 2026). In this powerful collaborative work, the legendary folk-rock star and feminist icon is in conversation with author, artist, and cultural anthropologist Lauren Coyle Rosen. In these exchanges, Ani is remarkably open about her creativity, spirituality, personal experiences, and evolving consciousness. She is vulnerable and unapologetic, offering an unprecedented window into her fiercely prolific journeys. Rebekah

Expanding on themes from her best-selling memoir, Ani also offers fascinating reflections on contemporary popular culture—ranging from gender and queer politics, to the music industry in the virtual age, to climate change. The book includes previously unpublished photographs and journal entries, song-birth sheets, paintings, and the lyrics for some of her most treasured songs. The coauthors explore how Ani’s music and art are profoundly tied to her experiences of the interconnectedness of all consciousness and tuning in to receive creative inspiration. Ani’s striking openness produces a book that is both meditative and activating. This is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the dedication, intuition, and vision that drive Ani’s lifelong journey of creating art that not only reflects, but also empowers, transforms, and heals.

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Ailbhe Kenny, "Music Refuge: Living Asylum through Music" (Oxford UP, Press 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How can music change people’s lives? In Music Refuge: Living Asylum Through Music (Oxford UP, Press 2025) Ailbhe Kenny, an Associate Professor in Music Education at Mary Immaculate College Ireland, explores music programmes for, with and by people seeking asylum in Ireland and Germany. In doing so, the book offers new understandings of the use, practice and meaning of music in people’s lives, whether as musicians or as listeners. Exploring a range of settings for music, from listening on phones and shared music making experiences, to parties and performances, the book demonstrates music’s profound impact. Filled with stories of refugees’ experiences, alongside rich and deep analysis, the book is essential reading across the arts and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music’s place in promoting our shared and common humanity.

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Maurice Rafael Magaña, "Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico" (U California Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico (U California Press, 2020), based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, Maurice Magaña considers how urban and migrant youth in Oaxaca embrace subcultures from hip-hop to punk and adopt creative organizing practices to create meaningful channels of participation in local social and political life. In the process, young people remake urban space and construct new identities in ways that directly challenge elite visions of their city and essentialist notions of what it means to be indigenous in the contemporary era. Cartographies of Youth Resistance is essential reading for students and scholars interested in youth politics and culture in Mexico, social movements, urban studies, and migration.

Dr. Magaña is sociocultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Mexican American studies at the university of Arizona.

Sneha Annavarapu is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago.

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Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A deep dive into one of the most overlooked -- and fascinating -- sides of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner: Bob Dylan, the filmmaker. While his music and lyrics have been studied endlessly, his work behind (and in front of) the camera remains largely unexplored. No other book has taken this angle, and with Dylan's legend still growing, the audience is more than ready for a bold new take.

Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think (McNidder and Grace, 2026), the first book of its kind, opens up exciting new ways to think about the artistry of Bob Dylan. It offers a captivating exploration into movies that, according to Michael, showcase Bob Dylan not just as a subject, but as the primary author. These include Eat the Document--a short, experimental television film shot in 1966 and released in 1972; the sprawling, genre-blurring epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), both directed by Dylan himself; and the darkly surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003), directed by Larry Charles but co-written by and starring Dylan. Bob Dylan as Filmmaker explores what these movies reveal about "how it feels" to be Bob Dylan during three defining eras of his career: the revolutionary 1960s, the introspective 1970s, and the enigmatic early 2000s. Just as crucially, they illuminate Dylan's remarkable instinct for using film not merely as a medium, but as a deeply personal mode of expression.

The book also provides an essential survey of Dylan's most recent movie projects, including those by other directors, in which Dylan's influence is less overt but no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of "invisible co-author" in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; Alma Har'el's haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestream performance; and James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (2024), the Timothée Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylan's behind-the-scenes "script approval."

Michael Glover Smith is a Chicago-based filmmaker, author and teacher. Michael's most recent movie, Hekla, starring Elizabeth Stam, will have it’s festival premiere in early 2026. Michael is also the director of four award-winning feature films, the most recent of which, Relative, stars Wendy Robie (Twin Peaks) and is distributed by Music Box Films. His previous book, Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry (co-written with Adam Selzer), was published by Columbia University Press to acclaim in 2015. He has seen Bob Dylan 100 times in concert.

Michael on Twitter and Bluesky.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

What happened to freedom singing after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination? Stephen Stacks considers this question in The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968 (U Illinois Press, 2025). He argues that the cultural myths around the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968, which are partially supported by the appeal of Freedom Songs, have hindered and inspired later activists as they grappled with the shadow of a simplistic and sanitized memory of what it takes to create political change. Stacks’s analysis shifts the focus of attention from genre—freedom song—to process and practice—freedom singing. In a wide-ranging book, he contemplates the role of nostalgia in political advocacy, investigates the work of one of the movement’s great singers, Bernice Johnson Reagon after 1968, and explains how the media and crucial musical figures shaped and sometimes complicated the collective memory of the Civil Rights movement and its music. The Resounding Revolution examines sixty years of Black music to challenge and reshape the entrenched story of the Civil Rights Movement.

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Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape" (UNC Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities.

High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape (UNC Press, 2023) charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for "killing music," the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn't control. For so many, tapes meant freedom--to create, to invent, to connect.

Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.

Marc Masters is a music journalist whose work has appeared on NPR and in the Washington Post, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Bandcamp Daily. He is also the author of No Wave. Marc Masters on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM, serves as a co-chair of the associate board at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and volunteers in the music archive at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Paul Rees, "Raised on Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine and Payola - the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986" (De Capo, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Paul Rees' Raised on Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine and Payola - the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986 (De Capo, 2026) is a massively entertaining oral biography of the golden era of critically derided yet monumentally popular radio rock, when Journey, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Toto, and more ruled the airwaves Paul Rees' Raised on Radio is, remarkably, the first biography of the (at the time) critically derided and yet massively popular AOR (album-oriented rock) bands whose heyday was 1976-1986, when groups like Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Toto, and REO Speedwagon sold many millions of albums, toured stadiums, and whose songs continue to stream in record numbers. Many of them still tour. And sure, they were punching bags for the elitist rock critics more interested in covering punk and new wave, terminally uncool, and never fashionably cutting edge, but their music was, and is, the soundtrack to so many people's lives. Who among music fans (of a certain age) didn't pump their fist to "Don't Stop Believin'" (long before The Sopranos), play air guitar to "More Than a Feeling," bellow along with Toto's "Africa," or have their heart broken to the strains of "Can't Fight This Feeling"? Even better: their tour stories and the tales of making the music are as entertaining and eye-opening as any of the antics from the annals of rock and roll history. Cocaine use was rampant, intra-band fighting was par for the course, and for better or worse, the groups' members lived life to excess. In so many ways, it was these artists' music (they are responsible for the power ballad) and lifestyles that led directly to the soon-to-follow hair metal scene. And in spite of what the critical establishment wrote, it turns out the music has aged . . . rather well! Raised on Radio is a stadium-sized, massively entertaining oral history in the bestselling tradition of Meet Me in the Bathroom, Nothin' But A Good Time, and Please Kill Me, capturing a time and a place that was as big and booming and as unabashed as the music that provided its soundtrack.

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Ian Gittins, "The Cure: A Perfect Dream" (Gemini Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The story of The Cure: a tall tale of a truly unique British band.

The Cure's story is a fantastical pop fable, but their trajectory has not been one of unbroken success. Along the way, their uneven, uneasy pop odyssey has taken in fierce intra-band tensions and fall-outs, numerous line-up changes and even a bitter court case that saw original group members feuding over payments and ownership of the band's name.

There has been alcoholism, substance abuse and countless long, dark nights of the soul, many of which have been translated into luscious dark-rock symphonies.

From gawky teenage art-punks in Crawley to gnomic, venerable rock royalty with 30 million record sales to their name, their journey has been a scarcely believable, vivid pop hallucination. The Cure: A Perfect Dream (Gemini Books, 2025) is the tall tale of a truly unique British band. It's the story of The Cure.

This fully updated edition includes a deep dive into the band's long-awaited 14th studio album released in 2024: Songs of a Lost World.

Ian Gittins has interviewed and reviewed The Cure during a 30-year career as a music writer on titles such as Melody Maker, Time Out, Q and the Guardian. He is the co-author with Motley Crew's Nikki Sixx of the 2007 New York Times best-seller The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star. He lives in London.

Ian Gittin’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Areum Jeong, "K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today (U Michigan Press, 2026) insists that K-pop fan practices and activities constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop’s explosive global popularity, but also K-pop’s cultural impacts, politics, and horizons of possibility. Over the past three decades, the K-pop fandom and its activities have expanded, intensified, and diversified along myriad dimensions, assuming novel social, technological, and economic forms, some of which are unique to K-pop, and some of which reflect broader cultural and industrial logics of globalized mass entertainment culture. Areum Jeong argues that K-pop fans, in performing deokhu—a Korean term connoting an “avid fan”—perform a materialization of affective labor that also seeks to produce good relationships between asymmetrically positioned actors in the K-pop ecosystem.

Through an autoethnography of becoming a K-pop deokhu, Jeong connects their experiences to generations of K-pop fans, showing simultaneously how fandom practices have shifted over time and the intricacies of fan labor participation. This personal connection paved the way for participant-observation and co-performer witnessing methodologies in the study, which crucially allowed for collaborating with fans whose communal pursuits have been stigmatized by dominant discourses that denigrate their activities as solely addictive, uncritical, and wasteful. Jeong’s genre-spanning corpus of fan activities and analyzing its contexts and contents represents an important contribution to the making of a fan archive that is also an archive of affective labor.

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Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen. He had announced that he was abandoning his music career, but he instead returned to Hydra and to his family, had a second child, and released one of the best albums of his career.

In Who by Fire, journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen’s previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, formative moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.

Matti Friedman is an award-winning journalist and author. Born in Toronto and based in Jerusalem, his work has appeared regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Tablet, and elsewhere. Friedman's last book, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, won the 2019 Natan Prize and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history. Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War was chosen in 2016 as a New York Times Notable Book and one of Amazon's 10 best books of the year. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize and the ALA's Sophie Brody Medal.

Matti Friedman on Twitter.

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Hilary French, "Ballroom: A People’s History of Dancing" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian tango fuelled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for dancing. The new English style, defined in the 1920s and followed by the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular British pastime until the 1960s, rivalled only by cinema.

Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion, 2022) by Dr. Hilary French explores the vibrant history of ballroom and Latin dancing: the dances, lavish venues, competitions and influential instructors. It also traces the decline of couple dancing and its resurgence in recent years with the hugely popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing with the Stars.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Bill Kopp, "What's the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums" (Hozac, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

As long as there has been music, the form has been used as a vehicle for storytelling. Artists who have something to say often find that putting it into music is the ideal means of communicating thoughts and feelings to others. And the concept-album form is a logical extension of that storytelling impulse, often writ large. It allows the writer to tackle bigger themes, more involved story lines, more finely textured characters and ideas.

In the pages of What’s the Big Idea? (Hozac, 2025), author Bill Kopp explores 30 remarkable concept albums, drawing on new, firsthand interviews with the artists behind their creation.

Author of the critically acclaimed Disturbing the Peace, Kopp turns us down the darkest road of musical blind-spots yet, the concept album, a previously shunned genre, now worthy of your curiosity. And then you hear something like Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, and The Turtles Present Battle of the Bands, or S.F. Sorrow, and you’re really second-guessing yourself now, right? As it turns out, there’s something genuinely interesting about this “concept” in itself, and it lends us a look into a world when musical creativity really had been unleashed in its full glory. Yes, those extravagances produced much audio garbage, but very few people even get that chance anymore, despite the ease of home recording. Even Captain Sensible and The Church committed this ‘big ideas’ into noteworthy efforts, along with Hawkwind, William Shatner, Ghostface Killa, and of course, Pete Townshend, who graciously offers an exclusive interview here.

Bill Kopp is a freelance journalist and the author of Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon and Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave.

Bill Kopp’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for understanding global security culture from the Reagan administration to the present. Drawing on black feminist, critical race, and queer of color theoretical traditions, Justin L. Mann posits that world-breaking is an ethical and aesthetic orientation to the dangerous, worldmaking process of securitization--the process by which state and parastate agents augment and build up the tools, techniques, and infrastructures intended to make people safer. World-breaking appears in the fiction of Octavia E. Butler, Colson Whitehead, N.K. Jemisin, in the music and video work of Janelle Monae, as well as unexpected places such as the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes. Breaking the World charts the difference between securitization and "Black insecurity." Linking securitization to mass incarceration and the militarization of policing, Mann contributes to Black feminist and abolitionist conversations that seek an end to institutional and structural violence. Breaking the World emphasizes that world-breaking is an important aspect of the Black radical imagination, showing that speculation is an essential response to the dangerous worlds of securitization"-- Provided by publisher.

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163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

As Oscar Season rolls around, Recall This Book looks back to John's 2019 discussion with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus about The Drama of Celebrity, her tour-de-force account of how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans.

They tackle a question at least as old as Sarah Bernhardt: who or what makes a star? Rather than crediting star making to the culture industry, to fans, or to star themselves, Sharon makes the case that all three forces together constitute a celebrity creation machine.

After discussing her archival work on theatrical scrapbooking in Indiana, Sharon pulls from the vaults a marvelous Hollywood memoir, Brooke Haywood’s Haywired. That triggers discussion of the studio system and how its models of celebrity are and are not with us today.

Sharon’s two Recallable Books also capitalize on mid-century notions of celebrity: Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford and Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein and George Plimpton. John’s choice, The Entertainer by Margaret Talbot, another biographical account written by a star’s daughter, gives a slightly rosier perspective on the family memoir.

Discussed in this episode:

Sharon Marcus, The Drama of Celebrity
Daniel Boorstin, The Image (“a person who is known for his well-knownness”)
Theodor Adorno and Theodore Horkheimer, “Culture Industry” in Dialectic of Enlightenment
Henry Jenkins, “Textual Poachers“
Dick Herbdige, “Subculture: The Meaning of Style“
Mark Twain, Patented Scrapbook Innovator
Brooke Hayward, Haywire
Christina Crawford, Mommie Dearest
Jean Stein, George Plimpton, Edie, American Girl
Margaret Talbot, The Entertainer

Read the episode here.

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M. Hinds and J. Silverman, "Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black" (U Iowa Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), Michael Hinds and Jonathan Silverman examine transnational and translocal fandoms and the legacy of Johnny Cash beyond the United States. Hinds and Silverman explore Cash fandom through YouTube comments, fan pilgrimages to the American South, and other unique relationships to the Man in Black. Hinds and Silverman use ethnography, documentary, and fieldwork and discover the ways Cash transcends race, class, geography, and politics. Cash’s identity as an American performer finds a way to inspire fans worldwide. Starting with their experiences with Cash fans in Norway and Northern Ireland, Hinds and Silverman expand their exploration into the legacy of Johnny Cash to show the ways fans use modern technology and real-world fan communities to create global fan sites and cultures. Hinds and Silverman’s Johnny Cash International is a unique and thoughtful book into why fans love the Man in Black.

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Kay Dickinson, "Fernando: A Song by ABBA" (Duke UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Since its release in 1976, ABBA's song "Fernando" has been loved by fans around the globe both for its sing-along chorus and its revolutionary spirit.

In Fernando: A Song by ABBA (Duke UP, 2025), Kay Dickinson takes readers from Sweden and Chile to Australia and Poland, tracing the complicated ways the song could express support with anticapitalist and Third World liberation struggles while remaining an unrepentant commodity.

A song about freedom fighters was unlikely to become a pop mega-hit, yet as Dickinson demonstrates, ABBA's lucrative, longstanding appeal rests on their ability to bridge contradictions within everyday life.

Five decades later, "Fernando's" rousing calls for freedom continue to resonate with gay liberation movements and other social struggles, demonstrating how a song can be both revolutionary and an envoy for global capital.

Kay Dickinson is Programme Convenor for Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Glasgow and author of Supply Chain Cinema: Producing Global Film Workers.

Kay on the University of Glasgow’s website.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Ben Ratliff, "Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening" (Graywolf Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Ben Ratliff is the author of Every Song Ever and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening (Graywolf Press, 2025) was longlisted for the National Book Award, and the 2026 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A former music critic for the New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at NYU.

Listening Recommendations:

Cara Lise Coverdale, A Series of Actions in A Sphere of Forever
Ishmael Rivera, Lo Ultimo in La Avenida

Book Recommendations:

Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume 1-3
Samuel R Delaney, The Motion of Light and Water

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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Christopher Lynch, "Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth" (Oxford UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Stephen C. Foster (1826–1864) was a prolific song composer. A few of his minstrel tunes have become so enmeshed in American musical culture that they are often thought to be folk songs. Although he died in poverty and most of his music was quickly forgotten, by the early twentieth century he was hailed as the “Father of American Music” and had become a symbol of US democracy. In Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth (Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Lynch examines the reception of Foster and his music between the composer’s death and the 1930s. It is an unusual book—part biography, part sourcebook, part scholarly reflection, part reception history, part myth buster. Lynch divides the book into three sections which each contain anywhere from ten to eighteen primary sources that provide evidence for how Foster’s American reception changed over time. He frames these primary documents with five essays that examine the ever-changing myths around Foster, why those myths developed, and how the collecting practices and biases of Foster devotees and his family members influenced the national memory about the composer and his most famous songs.

Christopher Lynch, PhD, is a musicologist and Head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library in the University of Pittsburgh Library System, where he helps curate the Stephen Foster Memorial museum and archive. His research examines minstrelsy, popular song, and music theater as sites for contesting American ideals. He is co-editor of Listening Across Borders: Musicology in the Global Classroom and his work has been published in numerous journals.

Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Lukas Foss: A "New American Music Series" Gallatin Lecture, April 15, 1982

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit a 1982 lecture by the composer Lukas Foss, a leader of the American musical avant garde of the 1960s and 70s. In this lecture, a part of the “New American Music Series” of Gallatin Lectures at NYU, Foss discusses the state of American contemporary music, musical minimalism, and his own approach of combining serial elements with spontaneous composition.

Foss was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, on August 15, 1922, the son of a lawyer and a painter. He began studying piano and music theory when he was 7, and sketched out an opera when he was 11. His family fled to Paris in 1933, and arrived in the U.S. in 1937. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale.

In 1953, Foss succeeded Arnold Schoenberg as the head of the composition department at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1962, “Time Cycle,” a four-movement vocal setting of texts by Auden, Housman, Kafka and Nietzsche, premiered with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. From 1971 to 1988 Foss was music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. After he left the Brooklyn Philharmonic, in 1990, Foss appeared as a guest conductor and pianist with orchestras around the world. He died in New York City on February 1, 2009.

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Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke UP, 2026) explores the work of Puerto Rican musical superstar Bad Bunny (Benito A. Martinez Ocasio), focusing on his cultural and political significance.Global superstar Bad Bunny, like many other Puerto Ricans, has lived a life marked by public crises—blackouts, hurricanes, political corruption and oppression, among others—that have exposed the ongoing impacts of colonialism in Puerto Rico. Offering a portrait of the past and future of Puerto Rican resistance through one of its loudest and proudest voices, P FKN R draws on interviews with musicians, politicians, and journalists as well as ethnographic research to set Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican resistance in a historical, political, and cultural context. Authors Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau—creators of the “Bad Bunny Syllabus”—demonstrate Bad Bunny’s place in a long tradition of infusing both joy and protest into music and honor the many evolving forms of daily resistance to oppression and colonialism that are part of Puerto Rican life.

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"Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg" (Akashic Books, Ltd., 2016)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Rick Fröberg was an accomplished artist and musician born in Southern California who spent most of his early creative years in San Diego before moving to New York, and then back to San Diego toward the end of his life. While juggling both of his creative outlets, he established a meaningful, urgent, vital, and powerful platform. Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg (Akashic Books, 2026) represents the many chapters and layers of his visual art practice. All of the different bodies of work he made are examined in detail—presenting the viewer with a well-rounded survey of his life’s work, mostly in chronological order.

One of the most compelling and fascinating aspects of this volume is the physical progression of Fröberg’s line work and brushstroke, and his eventual adaptation to digital means. His artwork was often featured on the record covers of his own bands, as well as other groups he met on the road, and much of his early work also appeared on posters, flyers, ads, skateboard graphics, logos, and T-shirt designs, before eventually progressing to illustrations in magazines, books, and newspapers. Fröberg’s paintings, drawings, etchings, and prints were also shown at art exhibitions throughout his career.

Plenty for All is the first look at his visual artwork in book form. It will be of great interest across the globe to his many fans (he played in a range of popular bands, including Pitchfork, Drive like Jehu, Hot Snakes, and Obits). Fröberg’s work has become very influential, and an inspiration to quite a large group of people in both the art and music worlds. He is sadly missed and mourned, but this volume will no doubt further his creative legacy. It includes short essays by curator Rich Jacobs and musician/artist Sohrab Habibion.

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Rob Harvilla, "60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (Twelve, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes listeners through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade.

The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 Songs That Explain The 90s (Twelve, 2023), Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.

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Caitlin Vincent, "Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How can cultural industries survive in the twenty-first century? In Opera Wars Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future Caitlin Vincent, a Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries at the University of Melbourne, examines the past, present and future of Opera to understand how music, performance, institutions and audiences battle to support this artform. Drawing on a wealth of research, as well as personal experience as a performer, librettist and entrepreneur, the book discusses key controversies over scores and staging, demands for changes to casting and working conditions, as well as companies’ and audiences’ resistance to change. Engaging and witty, the book is essential reading for arts, humanities and social science scholars, as well as for anyone interested in the future of arts and music.

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Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that Brubeck leveraged his fame as a jazz musician and status as a composer for social justice causes, and in doing so, held to a belief system that, during the civil rights movement, modeled a progressive approach to race and race relations. It is also true that it took Brubeck, like others, some time to understand the full spectrum of racial power dynamics at play in post-WWII, early Cold War, and civil rights-era America.

Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness (Oxford UP, 2023) uses Brubeck's performances of whiteness across his professional, private, and political lives as a starting point to understand the ways in which whiteness, privilege, and white supremacy more fully manifested in mid-century America. How is whiteness performed and re-performed? How do particular traits become inscribed with whiteness, and further, how do those traits, now racialized in a listener's mind, filter the sounds a listener hears? To what extent was Brubeck's whiteness made by others? How did audiences and critics use Brubeck to craft their own identities centered in whiteness? Drawing on archival records, recordings, and previously conducted interviews, Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness listens closely for the complex and shifting frames of mid-century whiteness, and how they shaped the experiences of Brubeck's critics, audiences, and Brubeck himself. Throughout, author Kelsey Klotz asks what happens when a musician tries to intervene, using his privilege as a tool with which to disrupt structures of white supremacy, even as whiteness continues to retain its hold on its beneficiaries.

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Andy Cowan, "B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop" (Headpress, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In his new book B-Sides: A Flipsided History of Pop (Headpress, 2023), Andy Cowan explores a century of music b-sides. Pop music would be a different beast without the B-Side. Music history is riven with songs deemed throwaway that revolted against their lowly status and refused to be denied. Be it rock'n'roll's national anthem ('Rock Around The Clock'), disco's enduring game-changer ('I Feel Love') or hip-hop's most notorious dis track ('Hit 'Em Up'), all three started life as the so-called 'lesser' track on releases primed for maximum chart impact. But the B-side has done much more than make stars of Bill Haley, Donna Summer and 2Pac. Whether it was the Beatles, the Kinks and the Yardbirds in the 60s, Elton John, the Who and Queen in the 70s, Depeche Mode, the Cure and Prince in the 80s, or Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead in the 90s, the B-side allowed many of the world's greatest artists freedom to experiment with no commercial constraints in an age where physical product ruled the roost. A quickfire A-Z of 500+ flips, B-SIDE is the first serious examination of the format's covert role in pushing the musical envelope. Best read with one eye on YouTube and one ear on a streaming service, its revelations will prick up the ears of music fans of all persuasions.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Jane Eisner, "Carole King: She Made the Earth Move" (Yale UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Jane Eisner is a widely published journalist who held leadership positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Forward. She is the author of Taking Back the Vote. Eisner lives in New York City. In our wonderful interview we discuss her new book, Carole King: She Made the Earth, (Yale UP, 2025), and her thoughts on what made Carole King the start that she is.

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Max Brzezinski, "Under Pressure: A Song by David Bowie and Queen" (Duke UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In 1981, David Bowie and Queen both happened to be in Switzerland: They met and made "Under Pressure." Recorded on a lark, the song broke the path for subsequent pop anthems. In Under Pressure (Duke University Press, 2025), Max Brzezinski tells the classic track's story, charting the relationship between pop music, collective politics, and dominant institutions of state, corporations, and civil society. Brzezinski shows that, like all great pop anthems, "Under Pressure" harnesses collective sentiments in order to model new ways of thinking and acting. As we continue to live under the sign of the global oppressive power the song names, analyzes, and attempts to move beyond, we remain, in Bowie and Freddie Mercury's phrase, under pressure.

Max Brzezinski is the author of Vinyl Age: A Guide to Record Collecting Now.

Max on Instragram

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Renee Lapp Norris, "Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrels (1844–1860)" (A-R Editions, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Minstrelsy is often called the first American popular entertainment form. Minstrel shows presented musical, dance, and entertainment styles that continue to resonate in US culture and they also reflected the complex, contradictory, deeply prejudiced attitudes towards race that characterized antebellum America, which are still part of American political and cultural discourses. Despite the voluminous scholarship on minstrel shows, there is relatively little work that deeply investigates the music of minstrelsy. Renee Lapp Norris’s critical edition called Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrelsy (1844–1860) (A-R Editions, 2025) published as part of the Music of the United States of America series (A-R Editions, 2025) aims to help remedy this absence. In this volume, Norris gathers forty opera parody songs originally published as sheet music that illustrate different approaches to opera parodies taken by minstrel performers. She analyzes how minstrels parodied opera, what political and cultural agendas the music supported, and contextualizes the parodies within the history of antebellum minstrel shows.

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Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery, "Fela: Music Is the Weapon" (Amistad Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A spectacular graphic novel about the life and times of the legendary Fela Kuti—the Pan-African frontman, multi-instrumentalist, sociopolitical powerhouse, and father of Afrobeat.

In Fela: Music Is the Weapon (Amistad, 2025), artist Jibola Fagbamiye and writer Conor McCreery team up to tell the remarkable origin story of one of Nigeria’s most famous sons, the King of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, who rose to superstardom with his band Africa 70 in the 1970s, during a charged political period for his nation.

A once-in-a-lifetime musical talent who innovated the musical genre Afrobeat, Fela was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian military regime. Fela focuses on a pivotal moment in his life, when he and his mother Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the renowned Nigerian suffrage activist, were ruthlessly attacked in their own home by soldiers who suffered no repercussions for their violence. It also explores Fela’s complex relationship with women, including his mother and Sandra Izsadore, the American singer and activist who revitalize and inspired him. Over the course of his life, Fela married 27 women, fathered numerous children, and founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, where he and his band lived, declaring themselves independent from military rule.

As rich and original as its subject, Fela complements the historical with the surreal, featuring parallel dream world sequences, set between this realm and the next, in which Fela receives visions about his future and the dangerous path he will have to walk.

Chronicling Fela’s perilous journey to capture his destiny—to become the King of Afrobeat, and to advocate for Pan-African unity in the face of European imperialism and white supremacy—this masterful biographical graphic novel celebrates this enduring legend and his legacy, offering inspiration for our own troubled time.

Jibola Fagbamiye is a visual artist based in Toronto. His work draws inspiration from his two great loves: African history and North American pop culture. Jibola has exhibited in galleries in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Lagos, and his work has been featured on AfroPunk, Toronto Life, ByBlacks, and BlogTO.

Jibola’s website and Bluesky.

Conor McCreery is a former journalist turned comics scribe. He has written Assassin’s Creed, Sherlock Holmes vs Harry Houdini, Adventure Time, Regular Show, and has worked for many of the industry's top publishers including DC, IDW, BOOM!, Titan, and Dark Horse. He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Conor on Facebook and Bluesky.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the story of a war, and the saga of downtrodden young people and three pop culture superstars. Reggae idol Bob Marley, rap legend Tupac Shakur, and the John Rambo movie character all portrayed an upside-down world, where those in the right are blamed while the powerful attack them. Their collective example found fertile ground in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, where youth were entrapped, inequality was blatant, and dissent was impossible.
When warfare spotlighting diamonds, marijuana, and extreme terror began in 1991, military leaders exploited the trio’s transcendent power over their young fighters and captives. Once the war expired, youth again turned to Marley for inspiration and Tupac for friendship.
Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, We the Young Fighters probes terror-based warfare and how Tupac, Rambo, and—especially—Bob Marley wove their way into the fabric of alienation, resistance, and hope in Sierra Leone. The tale of pop culture heroes radicalizing warfare and shaping peacetime underscores the need to engage with alienated youth and reform predatory governments. The book ends with a framework for customizing the international response to these twin challenges.

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Sharon White Rewires Disco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:49:00 +0000

At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer Black woman on the turntables: Sharon White. With a sound she describes as "edgy, deep, aggressive, tech, synthy, percussive and lush," White became the first woman resident DJ at the Saint and the only woman to ever play Paradise Garage, breaking barriers in spaces where women were told they didn't belong. Her five-decade career didn't just challenge disco's male-dominated DJ culture; it redefined it, paving the way for future generations of women behind the decks. In this season finale, we explore how one visionary artist carved out space in disco's inner sanctum and what her trailblazing journey reveals about women—especially queer Black women—who shaped the sound and culture of an era from behind the booth.

In the Season 2 Finale, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with legendary DJ Sharon White. Born in West Babylon, New York, White studied music at the New York School of Music before becoming a radio disc jockey. In 1975, she transitioned to club DJing, finding near-instant success at legendary venues including Studio 54, the Saint, Paradise Garage, Sahara, Limelight, and the Warehouse. She has been credited by several other women DJs, including Lizzz Krizer and Wendy Hunt, for helping them break onto the scene. White is still DJing today, and you can find her mixes on SoundCloud and Mixcloud.

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Michael Brown, "Eyeliner’s Buy Now" (Bloomsbury 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Michael Brown undertakes a thorough study of Eyeliner's Eyeliner's Buy Now (Bloomsbury 2025) a vaporwave homage to the kitsch electronic sounds of the 1980s and 1990s.

Eyeliner's BUY NOW (2015) belongs to a new genre for our times: vaporwave. Emerging in the early 2010s on the internet, vaporwave originated with a cohort of millennial artists who reimagined the musical soundtracks of 1980s-1990s consumerism with an adroit mixture of irony and sincerity. One of these was Eyeliner, the alias of New Zealand computer musician Luke Rowell (a.k.a. Disasteradio). For his vaporwave masterpiece, Rowell harnessed computer software to craft a unique album, a catchy, funky, and witty tour through the utopias of advertising at "the end of history." BUY NOW epitomizes a new kind of album for the internet age: made DIY-style, all digital, free, licensed under Creative Commons, and released to a "virtual" community, an online scene without geographic center.

Drawing on original interviews and the album's production archive, Eyeliner’s BUY NOW (Bloomsbury 2025) uses BUY NOW's story to investigate what it means to create, distribute, and consume independent music in an era of global networks and digital technology. It places the album in both the real-world and online contexts of Rowell's life and career, from early websites to the Spotify era, from Lower Hutt to the world.

Michael Brown on Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Lucy Caplan, "Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera" (Harvard UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Recently, musicologists and others have started writing about Black participation in opera. Lucy Caplan’s Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera (Harvard UP, 2025) is a major new publication on this topic. Caplan examines what she calls a Black operatic counterculture in the US dating from the performance of H. Lawrence Freeman’s first opera, The Martyr, in 1893 until the 1950s. Rather than centering her analysis on opera as a symbol of uplift or on the ways that the operatic establishment excluded Black participation, Caplan thinks about how opera was part of a project of self-fashioning in Black communities. She argues that opera could be one way to answer the question, in the words of Black librettist Karen Chilton, “How do we become ourselves?” Focusing on institutions and networks, while also not ignoring influential figures, Caplan delves into the rich history of Black opera through numerous points of entry. This is not a strictly chronological retelling of a few, already well-known operatic “firsts.” Instead, Caplan writes about everything from critics to short-lived opera companies, from celebrities to supernumeraries, and recreates this previously untold complex and multifaceted operatic legacy.

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James Brown's War on Disco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 23:26:00 +0000

In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with acclaimed historian Alice Echols, author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. Echols—who holds the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California—unpacks how disco not only mirrored but actively shaped the social, racial, and sexual revolutions of 1970s New York City. Echols is the author of several books that have framed the way we understand the history of the 1960s and 1970s, and particularly the way music has shaped society at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race.

The conversation begins with Echols’ newest research, drawn from her forthcoming book Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, which reexamines interracial activism and allyship during the Black Freedom Movement. From the Angela Davis trial to the alliances formed within SNCC and the Black Panther Party, Echols traces how solidarity both flourished and fractured across the era.

Turning to disco, she considers disco’s uneasy place in Black and queer cultural history. She notes how disco was created by and for Black audiences, while also being rejected by many in the Black music industry, like James Brown, for being “politically empty.” Through figures like Nile Rodgers, Grace Jones, and Sylvester, Echols argues that disco’s lush orchestration and sensual performances reflected radical redefinitions of gender, sexuality, and Black masculinity.

With musical excerpts woven throughout, Purcell and Soares guide listeners through the sonic textures of disco—its roots in funk and soul, its resistance to genre boundaries, and its capacity to move bodies and politics alike.

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Strings of Identity: The Horse-Head Fiddle and Mongolian Identity in China (with Ying Song)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we trace how the horse-head fiddle has evolved in the People’s Republic of China — from a traditional steppe instrument to a cultural symbol reshaped through state representation and modern performance. We discuss how it is made, taught, and performed in China, how it is portrayed in Chinese institutions, and how young Mongols today engage with the instrument as a way to express identity, creativity, and belonging in contemporary China.

Our guest, Ying Song from Zhejiang University, is a PhD candidate in sociology whose research focuses on the horse-head fiddle and its role in shaping Mongolian identity. Beyond academia, she has also curated cultural exhibitions and organized numerous Mongolian music-sharing events, which you can find in the link below.

Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols.

Episode producer: Ning Ao

Ying Song’s Rednote Page

Ying Song’s Email: songying182@163.com

Swedish physician and missionary Joel Eriksson in Inner Mongolia

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners:

Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia)
Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania)
Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden)
Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland)
Norwegian Network for Asian Studies

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Springsteen’s "Nebraska" as a Political, Sonic, and Personal Document

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we consider Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska as personal and political document. With the release of the Nebraska 82 box set, and Deliver Me From Nowhere – about the making of the album – we take up the musical and social importance of Springsteen’s lo-fi lament. One of us has been listening to Nebraska for their whole adult life, the other had never heard of it until a week ago.

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Anand, "The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire" (India Viking, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Kabir is the most alive of all dead poets. He is a fabric without stitches. No centres, no edges. Anand threads his way in. Over the years, as a publisher and editor, Anand immerses himself in the works of Babasaheb Ambedkar and other anticaste thinkers. He gives up his practice of music and poetry, blaming his disenchantment on caste. One day in Delhi, Anand starts looking for Kabir. He finds him here, there, everywhere. He begins to pay attention to the many ways in which Kabir’s words are sung, and translates them. Soon, Kabir starts looking out for Anand. The songs of Kabir sung by a range of singers—Prahlad Tipaniya, Fariduddin Ayaz, Mukhtiyar Ali, Kumar Gandharva, Kaluram Bamaniya, Mahesha Ram and other wayfarers—make Anand return to music and poetry. Anand translates songs seldom found in books. Along the way, he witnesses Kabir drawing on the Buddha, often restating ancient suttas in joyous ways. The Notbook of Kabir is the result of this pursuit with no end in sight. This is the story of how Anand loses himself trying to find Kabir.

You can check out the YouTube list of relevant Kabir's songs curated by S. Anand here.

For readers interested in the paradoxical, downside-up language in Kabiri and its resonances with Daoist language (e.g. this translation of Daodejing), especially the mysthical atheist aspects, check out appendix B to this book by Brook Ziporyn.

Feel free to check out Anand's Navayana Publishing, and his insightful blog posts here.

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Cosima Clara Gillhammer, "Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

With implications for the history of religion and art alike, an exploration of the lasting influence of Christian liturgy across a range of media.

Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy (Reaktion Books, 2025) offers a captivating journey through the history of religious rituals in Western Europe, showcasing the profound impact of Christian liturgy on art, literature, music, and architecture. Through ten evocative stories, it explores medieval rituals and their cultural influence up to the present day, providing fresh insights into the enduring legacy of the liturgy as an expression of human emotion and religious experience. Accessible to all, this guide provides translations and explanations to uncover the hidden treasures of ancient rites and their lasting significance, appealing to those seeking a deeper understanding of Western liturgical traditions.

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Disco's Revenge

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 19:59:00 +0000

In the wake of Disco Demolition Night in 1979—a cultural bonfire that seemed to signal the end of disco—something unexpected began to rise from Chicago’s underground. This episode traces the story of Frankie Knuckles, the Bronx-born DJ who became known as the “Godfather of House.” After the backlash against disco pushed the genre out of the mainstream, Knuckles found refuge in Chicago’s Black, Latinx, and queer nightlife scenes, most famously at a club called the Warehouse. There, he pioneered a new sound: blending disco’s heartbeat with gospel, soul, electronic drum machines, and experimental edits. What emerged was “house music,” named after the Warehouse itself, a genre that spoke directly to marginalized communities while later exploding into a global phenomenon. We’ll explore how Knuckles’s artistry and innovation not only kept dance floors alive after disco’s so-called death but also transformed music history. By tracing the arc from the ruins of Disco Demolition to the rise of house, this episode reveals how moments of cultural rejection can spark radical creativity. Frankie Knuckles didn’t just keep the party going—he built a new world of sound that would change the way the world dances.

In this eighth episode of season two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares discuss the life and work of Frankie Knuckles with Micah Salkind, author of Do You Remember House?: Chicago’s Queer of Color Undergrounds (Oxford University Press, 2018). Micah Salkind is the Director of Civic and Cultural Life at the Rhode Island Foundation. Prior, in his roles as Deputy Director and Special Projects Manager at the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism, he managed large grants and strategic artist initiatives for the City, collaborating with non-profit cultural institutions as well as its emerging artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs.

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A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the steppe with a complicated web of apocalypses. A Song for the Horses by K. G. Hutchins examines cases in which people respond to the pressures of climate change by drawing on cultural heritage to foster social resiliency. In this episode, K. G. joins me to discuss his research on the morin khuur, or “horse fiddle,” in Mongolia, and how Mongolians use the traditional instrument to express and envision human and more-than-human futures against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change.

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Greg Soden, "Unscripted Moments: Conversations with Propagandhi (2020-2025)" (Earth Island Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Propagandhi formed in 1986 in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada and are now based in Winnipeg. Their outspoken influence and consistency in anti-fascist, animal-friendly, gay-positive, and pro-feminist ideas have inspired thousands of hardcore, thrash metal and punk rock music fans across four decades.

Unscripted Moments: A Podcast About Propagandhi began in 2020 as a fan-made song-by-song podcast exploring each release by the band. The podcast also features bonus episodes about touring, recording and more with friends, fans and collaborators from throughout the bands musical career.

Among the hundreds of episodes about the band's music are more than fifteen hours of candid interviews with past and present members of Propagandhi recorded between 2020 and 2025. The conversations vary widely in topic and discuss songwriting, touring stories, favourite cover songs and side projects, as well as personal hobbies and interests of the band members. These edited interviews with Chris Hannah, Jord Samolesky, John Samson Fellows, Todd Kowalski, David Guillas, and Sulynn Hago span the career of the band from their earliest demos through to the recording of their eighth album, At Peace, released in May 2025.

Propagandhi has released music with G7 Welcoming Committee, Recess Records, Fat Wreck Chords, and Epitaph Records. The 200+ episodes of Unscripted Moments: A Podcast About Propagandhi have been downloaded more than half a million times and are available to stream everywhere podcasts are available.

Greg Soden is the host of 'Unscripted Moments: A Podcast About Propagandhi' and a super-fan of the band, with whom he worked to put together this book of candid conversations over the last five years.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Delia Casadei, "Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound" (U California Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound (University of California Press, 2024) explores the forgotten history of laughter, from ancient Greece to the sitcom stages of Hollywood. Delia Casadei approaches laughter not as a phenomenon that can be accounted for by studies of humor and theories of comedy but rather as a technique of the human body, knowable by its repetitive, clipped, and proliferating sound and its enduring links to the capacity for language and reproduction. This buried genealogy of laughter re-emerges with explosive force thanks to the binding of laughter to sound reproduction technology in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing case studies ranging from the early global market for phonographic laughing songs to the McCarthy-era rise of prerecorded laugh tracks, Casadei convincingly demonstrates how laughter was central to the twentieth century’s development of the very category of sound as not-quite-human, unintelligible, reproductive, reproducible, and contagious.

A free e-book version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit here to learn more.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

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Peter C. Zimmerman, "The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Peter Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way the musicians do at concerts and in recording sessions. Topics range from their early days, their struggles and victories, to the impact the music has had on their own lives. The interviews have been carefully edited for sense and clarity, without changing any of the musicians’ actual words.

Peter Zimmerman tirelessly sought virtuosi whose lives span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is rewarded with an intimate look into the past century’s extraordinary period of creative productivity. The oldest two interview subjects were born in 1920 and all are professional musicians who worked in jazz for at least five decades, with a few enjoying careers as long as seventy-five years. These voices reflect some seventeen hundred years of accumulated experience yielding a chronicle of incredible depth and scope.

The focus on musicians who are now emeritus figures is deliberate. Some of them are now in their nineties; six have passed since 2012, when Zimmerman began researching The Jazz Masters. Five of them have already received the NEA’s prestigious Jazz Masters award: Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Owens, and most recently, Dick Hyman. More undoubtedly will one day, and the balance are likewise of compelling interest. Artists such as David Amram, Charles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Valery Ponomarev, and Sandy Stewart, to name a few, open their hearts and memories and reveal who they are as people.

This book is a labor of love celebrating the vibrant style of music that Dizzy Gillespie once described as “our native art form.” Zimmerman’s deeply knowledgeable, unabashed passion for jazz brings out the best in the musicians. Filled with personal recollections and detailed accounts of their careers and everyday lives, this highly readable, lively work succeeds in capturing their stories for present and future generations. An important addition to the literature of music, The Jazz Masters goes a long way toward “setting the record straight.”

Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com.

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Bradley Morgan, "U2: Until the End of the World" (Weldon Owen, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Bradley Morgan’s U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025) celebrates fifty years of U2 with a career-spanning retrospective featuring more than 150 images that trace the band’s journey from Dublin pubs to sold-out arena tours.

Morgan delves into the history of U2, offering an intimate look at their formation and the evolution of their unique sound. From Boy and The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby and beyond, the book captures how each album marked a creative turning point and cemented U2’s place as musical pioneers. Through vivid photography and thoughtful storytelling, Morgan highlights the band’s artistic growth and commitment to social activism. From Live Aid to Amnesty International, U2’s impact on global causes is as significant as their musical legacy. Readers also gain a rare glimpse into the lives of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., as individuals, collaborators, and lifelong friends behind one of the most influential bands in the world.

A music journalist and media arts professional, Bradley Morgan is the director of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM’s music film festival, manages partnerships for the station, and serves on the associate board of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center. He also interviews authors of music and pop culture books for the New Books Network.

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Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen, "Icelandic Pop: Then, Today, Tomorrow, Next Week" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Iceland punches well above its weight in the world of music, producing global icons like Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men, and Laufey, while at the same time nurturing a vibrant local scene. Icelandic Pop: Then, Today, Tomorrow, Next Week (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen explores how Iceland’s unique social habits, institutions and everyday practices contribute to its thriving music culture.

Tracing the development of Icelandic popular music since the rock ’n’ roll era, it examines key influences shaping the scene, from Reykjavík’s musicians to national institutions like radio and concert venues. With engaging explanations of sociological factors, the book sheds light on why Iceland has become a powerhouse in music. An illuminating journey through Iceland’s music history, this is a celebration of the artistry and cultural forces behind its global impact.

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Nancy Newman, "Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region engaged in organized protest throughout the 1840s to contest monopoly ownership of the land they worked. Arguing their cause in newspapers, on broadsides, and at rallies, their aspirations also took shape in poetry and song. More than twenty sets of lyrics (and one instrumental composition) were written at various stages of the conflict. Some of their musical sources, such as "Old Dan Tucker" and "Bruce's Address," are still well known. Each fully contextualized song offers insight into the role vernacular music played in one of the nineteenth century's major social reform movements.

Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes (SUNY Press, 2025) by Dr. Nancy Newman is the first book to gather the poetry and corresponding tunes into one publication (you can find recordings of some of the songs here). It provides detailed analysis of the repertory, followed by new musical scores of the songs, reconstructed from contemporary historical sources for study and performance. It also examines the movement's later dramatization in novels, film, and public commemorations as successive generations grapple with its meaning.

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Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Southern History Remixed: On Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race (UP Florida, 2024) spotlights the key role of popular music in the shaping of the United States South from the late nineteenth century to the era of rock ’n’ roll in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. While musical activities are often sidelined in historical narratives of the region, Michael Bertrand shows that they can reveal much about social history and culture change as he connects the rise of rock ’n’ roll to the civil rights movement for racial equality.

In this book, Bertrand traces a long-term culture war in which white southerners struggled over the region’s cultural complexion with music serving as an engine that both sustained and challenged white supremacy. He shows how rock ’n’ roll emerged as a working-class genre with biracial sources that stoked white racial anxieties and engaged the region’s color and culture lines. This book discusses the conflict over southern identity that played out in responses to jazz, barn dance radio, Pentecostal and gospel music, Black radio programming, and rhythm and blues, concluding with a close look at the popularity of Elvis Presley within a racially segregated society.

Southern History Remixed suggests that both Black and white southerners have used music as a tool to resist or negotiate a rigid regional hierarchy. Urging readers and scholars to take the study of popular music seriously, Bertrand argues that what occurs in the music world affects and reflects what happens in politics and history.

Guest: Michael T. Bertrand is a historian of the American South and the modern United States.

Host: Caroline Alt (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Georgia. She studies the hauntings of the American South from the 19th through the 21st centuries.

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Signal Award Re-Release: Lost Women of Disco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 16:45:00 +0000

We're thrilled to announce that our episode “S2.E2. Lost Women of Disco” has been named a finalist in the Best Indie Podcast category at the 2025 Signal Awards! This powerful episode dives deep into the untold stories of the trailblazing women who shaped the culture we now call “disco”, but were overshadowed by history. We are re-releasing this episode, which originally aired on July 22, 2025, to highlight this recognition and to celebrate the forgotten legacy of these groundbreaking artists. Thank you to our listeners and the Signal Awards for this incredible honor. If you haven't tuned in yet, now’s the perfect time to discover the voices that helped define a generation.

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Women have been central to the evolution of dance music culture since its earliest days, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. From Régine Zylberberg's pioneering work in creating the modern discotheque in 1950s Paris to Sharon White's trailblazing presence at New York's legendary venues in the 1970s, female DJs have shaped dance floors worldwide. Sharon White broke barriers as a Black queer radio DJ, finding her way into the booth at the Paradise Garage in 1975. She became the first female DJ to play at the revered Saint club and spun records at Studio 54. Her influence can be seen in later pioneers like London's Smokin' Jo, who emerged from the British acid house scene to become one of England's most celebrated DJs and the only woman to be awarded DJ of the Year in DJ Magazine's Top 100.

In the second episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares welcome DJ, academic, and journalist Lulu Le Vay to explore the often-untold stories of women in dance music culture. Le Vay, who holds a PhD in Sociology from Goldsmiths and performs as DJ Lulu Levan, represents a new generation of "PhDJs" combining academic inquiry with dance floor experience. From writing for publications like The Face, i-D, and The Guardian to spinning at festivals like Lovebox and Bestival, she documents club culture from multiple perspectives. Currently working on a documentary about women DJs with director Sonja Phillips, Le Vay is also part of Love Underground, a new collaboration with producer Tommy D whose new single "The Journey Part 1" is out on Chillifunk records. Through her podcast Where Love Lives and her work preserving dance music history, Le Vay continues to celebrate the women who built the foundations of club culture.

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Darren Mueller, "At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz" (Duke UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s. The LP’s increased fidelity and playback capacity allowed lengthy compositions and extended improvisations to fit onto a single record, ushering in a period of artistic exploration. Despite these innovations, LP production became another site of negotiating the uneven power relations of a heavily segregated music industry. Exploring how musicians, producers, and other industry professionals navigated these dynamics, Mueller contends that the practice of making LPs significantly changed how jazz was created, heard, and understood in the 1950s and beyond. By attending to the details of audio production, he reveals how Black musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus worked to redefine prevailing notions of race and cultural difference within the United States. Mueller demonstrates that the LP emerges as a medium of sound and culture that maps onto the more expansive sonic terrain of Black modernity in the 1950s.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

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Jason Schneider, "That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of Hey Joe' and Popular Music's History of Violence" (Anvil Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This is the story of a song. Yet, it is a song that binds nearly every strand of 20th-century American popular music. “Hey Joe” was written sometime in the early 1960s by a man named Billy Roberts, an obscure singer and guitarist from South Carolina who moved to New York City, drawn by the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village. It was a time when new, original material was scarce, leading other singers to quickly adapt songs of quality in the spirit of folk music’s oral traditions. Thus began the long journey of “Hey Joe” from New York coffeehouses to the bars on L.A.’s Sunset Strip to the ears of a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix who launched his career with his radical, electrified interpretation.

Extensively researched, That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence (Anvil Press, 2025) also presents previously unpublished information about the life of Billy Roberts, a shadowy figure whose 2017 death went unreported by all news outlets.

With a Foreword by Lenny Kaye.

Jason Schneider has written for Exclaim!, The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, Paste, American Songwriter, Relix, Shindig and many other media outlets. He is the co-author of Have Not Been The Same: the CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995, and his other books include Whispering Pines: the Northern Roots of American Music, and the novel 3,000 Miles. He currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Jason Schneider on Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Chris Dalla Riva, "Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Popular music history collides with data analytics, charts, and numbers in this insightful and surprising look at the greatest hits and musicians, fads, forgotten artists, and much more. Data analyst and musician Chris Dalla Riva reframes everything you thought you knew about music.

Did you know that hit songs in the late 1950s were regularly about gruesome death? That a US vice president wrote a number one hit? That while TikTok has spawned countless hits, it's made artists more anonymous than ever before? That pop songs have shaped race relations in the United States? That the key change died around 2003? And that's just the beginning.

Coupling hard data with engaging anecdotes, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves (Bloomsbury, 2025) is both a takedown and celebration of popular music and provides new ways to think about your favorite songs, genres, and artists from the last 6 decades using unexpected statistics and playful visualizations. This entertaining history is filled with the most popular musicians of all time from The Beatles and The Bee Gees to Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and beyond. Whether you danced the twist or the dougie at your senior prom, you're sure to never listen to music again in the same way.

Chris Dalla Riva lives at the intersection of music and data. Playing in bands and recording music since his teenage years, Dalla Riva is currently a Senior Product Manager at Audiomack where he focuses on data analytics and personalization.

Gregory McNiff is a Managing Director in the New York office of the Blueshirt Group, an IR firm focused on technology. Greg holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an M. Litt. in Shakespeare Studies from the University of St. Andrews and a B.A. in Classical Languages from Columbia University.

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John R. Davis, "Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

John R. Davis's Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Georgetown University Press, 2025) is the first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, DC's highly influential punk community DIY culture has always been at the heart of DC's thriving punk community. As Washington, DC's punk scene emerged in the mid-1970s, so did the periodicals--"fanzines"--that celebrated it. Before the rise of the internet, fanzines were a potent way for fans to communicate and to revel in the joy of fandom. These zines were more than just publications; they were a distillation of punk's allure, connecting the city to the broader punk community. Fanzines remain a meaningful, tactile, creative medium for punk fans to connect with like-minded people outside the corporate-controlled world. In Keep Your Ear to the Ground, the archivist and musician John R. Davis unveils the development of punk fanzines and their role in supporting DC's hardcore and punk scene from the 1970s into the twenty-first century. He sheds new light on DC's scene and highlights some of its key personalities, including many who are often left out of punk history, with high-quality images of rare zines and insights from numerous interviews with zine creators and musicians. This book vividly weaves together the origin of zines and their importance in underground communities. For punk enthusiasts, zine creators, American studies scholars, and anyone who has ever felt like an outsider, Keep Your Ear to the Ground traces how the unique environment of Washington, DC, helped zines thrive.

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John Minton, "Folk Music and Song in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the late 1930s, fieldworkers with the Works Progress Administration interviewed about 3,500 formerly enslaved people resulting in approximately 20,000 pages of unedited typescripts. This collection of oral histories is arguably the single greatest body of African American folklore extant, and a significant portion is devoted to folk music and song. John Minton’s Folk Music and Song in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives (UP of Mississippi, 2024) examines the musical references in these narratives. A combination of reference information and analysis, Minton contextualizes and scrutinizes the vocal and instrumental music the narrators talked about, explains the various musical and cultural influences on Black folk music, and discusses the place of music and dance in the lives of enslaved people. He covers instrumental music and social dancing, spirituals and hymns, singing games and lullabies, ring plays and reels, worksongs, minstrel songs, ballads, war songs, slavery laments, and more. In the course of this exhaustive book, Minton helps his readers understand the lives of the narrators and the conditions in which they lived before and after emancipation.

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In The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift Addresses Love, Glamour, and Grit

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we review Taylor Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl.” We consider the album’s themes: love, nostalgia, how hard it is to be famous, and how the internet is bad. We set the songs in the context of Taylor’s wider career and public persona.

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Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music.

In Iceland in the 1930s, classical music was only beginning to be seriously practiced, at the same time when musicians of Jewish heritage were fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Despite the country's strict immigration policy, three outstanding young musicians were allowed to settle there: Robert Abraham, Heinz Edelstein, and Victor Urbancic. Their influence on Iceland's music scene as conductors, instrumentalists, teachers, and scholars proved invaluable. In Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland (SUNY Press, 2025) the first in-depth study of the lives and careers of these three musicians, musicologist Árni Ingólfsson examines their formative years in Germany and Austria, their dramatic escapes from the Nazi regime, and their triumphs and frustrating setbacks in their new homeland, a country in which Jews were virtually unknown. This fascinating case study is a valuable addition to studies of musical exile during World War II and beyond.

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Audrey Golden, "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats" (Da Capo Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats (Da Capo Press, 2025) Audrey Golden traces the history of the iconic band The Raincoats staring of the founding by Art students Gina Birch and Ana da Silva in 1977. Since the release of their seminal early records, the band has been revered by punk, queer, feminist, and indie pop artists alike.The Raincoats reimagined the nature of experimental music and DIY design, and went on to inspire Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and an entire generation of Riot Grrrl and queercore musicians. Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats tells this story, which resonates at the heart of late twentieth century radical art, in three distinct lives of the band. In The Raincoats' first life, they recorded three full-length albums now regarded as classics and were the first punk band to play behind the Iron Curtain in Warsaw. Nearly a decade later in 1992, the band's second life took off when Kurt Cobain's love of the band catalyzed their renaissance, and The Raincoats became renowned as 'godmothers of grunge and Riot Grrrl' only to go on hiatus again in 1996. In 2001, The Raincoats reemerged in a third and ongoing iteration marked by performances in art museums such as New York's MoMA, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and London's National Portrait Gallery. The Raincoats have and continue to be a singular phenomenon and influence for so many. Featuring exclusive interviews and never-before-seen images from The Raincoats' archive, Shouting Out Loud is the first biography of this pioneering group of women who paved the way for hundreds of artists who have followed in their footsteps and the must-have account of a legendary band that holds a vital place in twentieth and twenty-first century sonic history.

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Emília Barna, "Working in Music on the Semi-Periphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism" (CEU Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism (CEU Press, 2025). We talked about the changes and continuities that the Hungarian music industry underwent from the communist to the post-communist era, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Barna’s research, and the gendered aspects of the music industry.

Working in Music on the Semiperiphery is available in Open Access, through CEU Press’ Opening the Future initiative. You can download the book free here.

You can find out more about Opening the Future here.

You can purchase a physical copy here.

The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.

Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.

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Disco Sucks

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 17:02:00 +0000

On July 12, 1979, Chicago’s Comiskey Park erupted into chaos during what was supposed to be a quirky baseball promotion. Shock radio jock Steve Dahl’s “Disco Demolition Night” incentivized listeners to bring disco records to a White Socks doubleheader, where, between games Dahl promised to blow them up in center field. Instead, the event descended into a riot, forcing the team to forfeit. On the surface, the incendiary event looked like a wild publicity stunt gone wrong — but in hindsight, it was tantamount to a book burning. In retrospect, the destruction of thousands of disco records was a symbolic rejection of the social meanings the sounds held, particularly for queer communities of color. The night marked not just the literal destruction of vinyl but a cultural turning point when disco’s dazzling reign collapsed under backlash. Or did it? In this episode, we explore how a stadium stunt revealed the deeper racial, sexual, and generational tensions shaping American music at the dawn of the 1980s.

In episode seven, host Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with Gillian Frank is a historian of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics in the twentieth-century United States at Trinity College, Dublin. He is a managing editor of NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality and co-host of the podcast Sexing History, which explores how the past shapes contemporary debates about sex. Frank’s scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes, and he has held research fellowships at Princeton and other institutions. His current book project examines the history of child adoption and foster care in the U.S., tracing how religion, race, and politics shaped family formation in modern America.

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Árni Heimir Ingólfsson , "Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland" (Indiana UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (Indiana University Press, 2019), Árni Heimir Ingólfsson provides a striking account of the dramatic career of Iceland's iconic composer. Leifs (1899–1968) was the first Icelander to devote himself fully to composition at a time when a local music scene was only beginning to take form. He was a fervent nationalist in his art, fashioning an idiosyncratic and uncompromising 'Icelandic' sound from traditions of vernacular music with the aim to legitimize Iceland as an independent, culturally empowered nation.

In addition to exploring Leifs's career, Ingólfsson provides detailed descriptions of Leifs's major works and their cultural contexts. Leifs's music was inspired by the Icelandic landscape and includes auditory depictions of volcanos, geysers, and waterfalls. The raw quality of his orchestral music is frequently enhanced by an expansive percussion section, including anvils, stones, sirens, bells, ships' chains, shotguns, and cannons.

Largely neglected in his own lifetime, Leifs's music has been rediscovered in recent years and hailed as a singular and deeply original contribution to twentieth-century music. Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland enriches our understanding and appreciation of Leifs and his music by exploring the political, literary and environmental contexts that influenced his work.

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Christa Anne Bentley et al, eds., "Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans" (Routledge, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Only 35 years old, Taylor Swift has already had a long career and is a pop culture icon. Her music and career are reported on by the world’s press, and her most devoted fans dissect her every move looking for hidden meanings and clues about her next album and her life. Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans (Routledge, 2025) edited by Christa Anne Bentley, Kate Galloway, and Paula Clare Harper positions Swift as a prismatic figure for the musical world of the 21st century. Necessarily a first look at Swift’s career and songs since she presumably has many more years to make music, the authors in this collection analyze Swift’s songs and vocal choices, how she negotiates the fraught politics around her identity, and how fans and others understand her and her music. Including contributions by scholars, practitioners, and journalists, this book offers a serious consideration of one of today’s most popular music stars that shows why and how she matters.

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Sahan Jayasuriya, "Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen" (Feral House, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen (Feral House, 2025), Sahan Jayasuriya brings readers into the world of 1980s hardcore in the Midwest. Amidst this explosion of American punk and experimental music, a band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, emerged with a groundbreaking sound. Die Kreuzen, a group that defied genre boundaries, fused punk and metal influences to create something entirely new. Were they punk? Were they metal? Die Kreuzen recorded what fans and critics hail as a defining album of hardcore punk, only to reinvent their sound with each subsequent release. They toured the world, made little money, and eventually broke up. Yet, this seemingly brief stint in music history has rendered Die Kreuzen legendary. But why? For the first time, band members Keith Brammer, Brian Egeness, Dan Kubinski, and Eric Tunison--alongside their friends, collaborators, and famous fans--reveal the inside story of Die Kreuzen. This book features rare images and artwork, with contributions from music icons like Thurston Moore, Steve Albini, Neko Case, Lou Barlow, and more.

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Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists, but according to Mary Beth Willard, it’s hard to find good reasons to do so. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists (Routledge, 2021), she contends that because most boycotts of artists won’t succeed, there’s no ethical reason to do so most of the time. She then argues that canceling artists is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding.

In this interview, Allison Leigh talks to Mary Beth Willard about the differences between enjoyment and engagement when it comes to immoral artists, as well as whether we should enjoy artworks that have immoral outlooks and behaviors embedded in them. Their conversation ranges from the problems associated with collective versus individual actions, the positive effects that giving up the work of immoral artists may have for shifting cultural norms, and the distinction between public and private enjoyment.

Allison Leigh is Associate Professor of Art History and the SLEMCO/LEQSF Regents Endowed Professor in Art & Architecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research explores masculinity in European and Russian art of the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries.

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James Campion, "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era" (Backbeat Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era (Backbeat Books, 2025) is a detailed exploration into the era of Prince's most prolific and groundbreaking music made with considerable inspiration and performed by a unique cadre of musicians he gathered and relentlessly drove to be the sonic, visual, and ideological reflection of his evolving vision. Although being the most self-contained, versatile, and prolific artist of his era, Prince reveled in the band, a multi-racial, intergender unit that acted as both family and loyal acolytes that embodied his ethos, expressed his pathos, and lifted him to rarified heights of pop dominance. This is the story of the genre-shifting, multi-media, trailblazing Prince & the Revolution from their humble inception to their precipitous rise in celebrated hit singles, albums, films, and tours to their controversial and shocking demise.

James Campion is a columnist, essayist, and associate editor for the pop culture magazine The Aquarian Weekly, where he's reported on and interviewed rock stars and reviewed concerts and albums for thirty years. He has also authored three previous books on music: Shout It Out Loud: The Story of KISS's Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon (2015), Accidentally Like a Martyr: The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon (2018), and Take a Sad Song: The Emotional Currency of Hey Jude (2022).

James Campion’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021) and Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming book is U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Night at the Baths

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Disco didn't just happen—it emerged from the vibrant gay club scene of 1970s New York City. In this episode, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares explore how iconic venues like the Continental Baths, the Mineshaft sex club, and the legendary Paradise Garage became part of a musical revolution that transformed popular culture.

Joining them is Lucas Hilderbrand, Professor and Chair of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine and author of the groundbreaking book The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After (Duke University Press, 2023). Together, they trace the fascinating connections between New York's underground gay scene and the rise of legendary DJs like Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, while uncovering how these same spaces launched the careers of mainstream superstars, including Bette Midler and Barry Manilow.

From intimate bathhouses to pulsing dance floors, discover how gay culture didn't just influence disco—it created it. The conversation also touches on Hilderbrand's companion archival project, The Bars Are Archived: Primary Sources for Gay Bars in America, which is available through Alexander Street's Queer Pasts collection.

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From Stonewall to Studio 54

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:56:00 +0000

In the fifth episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with the legendary DJ Nicky Siano. The history of dance music in 1970s New York is synonymous with the life and work of Siano. He was among the early attendees of David Mancuso’s Loft dances, where he learned to organize parties and DJ for an audience. Siano transposed Mancuso’s informal gatherings to a proper discotheque called The Gallery (1972-1977,) which he co-owned and DJed. At The Gallery, Siano pioneered techniques such as beatmatching, EQing, and using three turntables to fashion a proto-disco sound through his preferred selection of funky soul and R&B records, inspiring a host of celebrated figures like Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles. The Gallery was a seminal 1970s nightclub that laid a blueprint for iconic New York clubs like the Paradise Garage and Studio 54. Siano is perhaps most well-known for DJing and being fired from Studio 54 for his unconventional methods.

For Siano, music was more than pleasure. It was a source of empowerment, a refuge, and spiritual salve that has enabled him to persevere and thrive as a DJ in New York during the Seventies and beyond. In this conversation, Siano illustrates the power of music that animated his involvement as an activist in the Stonewall riots. As a DJ, Siano has maintained his belief in the capacity of music to bring people together, despite social differences, and as a healing force during the AIDs era. In this conversation, Siano traces his evolving romance with music, echoing his enduring salvo: Love is the Message.

The title of this episode draws from a memoir that Nicky Siano is currently authoring, I, DJ: Stonewall to Studio 54.

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Joelle Kidd, "Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture" (ECW Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Jesusland (ECW Press, 2025) Joelle Kidd uses a blend of cultural criticism, humor, and personal memoir akin to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror or Grace Perry’s The 2000s Made Me Gay, Kidd writes about her evangelical adolescence through the lens of Christian pop culture of the early 2000s, giving readers a peek into this odd subculture and insight into how evangelicalism’s growing popularity around the turn of the millennium has shaped culture and politics — including today’s far right. An empathetic, funny, and sharply critical collection of essays exploring the Christian pop culture of the 2000s and its influence on today’s politically powerful evangelicalism In 1999, after three years of secular living in Eastern Europe, Kidd moved back to Canada and was enrolled in the strange world of an evangelical Christian school. In Jesusland, Kidd writes about the Christian pop culture that she was suddenly immersed in, from perky girl bands to modest styling tips, and draws connections between this evangelical subculture and the mainstream, a tense yet reciprocal relationship that both disavows the secular while employing its media markers. But none of this was just about catchy songs: every abstinence quiz in a teen magazine was laying the foundation for what would become a conservative Christian movement that threatens women’s healthcare, attacks queer and trans rights, and drives present-day political division. Through nine incisive, honest, and emotional essays, Jesusland exposes the pop cultural machinations of evangelicalism, while giving voice to aughts-era Christian children and teens who are now adults looking back at their time, measuring the length of their skirts, and asking each other if their celebrity crush was Christian enough. With care and generosity, Jesusland shows us how the conservative evangelical movement became the global power it is today by exploring the pop culture that both reflected and shaped an entire generation of young people.

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Cary Baker, "Down On The Corner: Adventures in Busking & Street Music" (Jawbone Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This is the story of music performed on the streets, in subways, in parks, in schoolyards, on the back of flatbed trucks, and beyond, from the 1920s to the present day.

Drawing on years of interviews and eyewitness accounts, Down On The Corner (Jawbone Press, 2025) introduces readers to a wide range of locations and a myriad of musical genres, from folk to rock'n'roll, the blues to bluegrass, doo-wop to indie rock. Some of the performers he features--Lucinda Williams, Billy Bragg, The Violent Femmes--went on to become international stars; others settled into the curbs, sidewalks, and Tube stations as their workplace for the duration of their careers. Anyone who has lived in or travelled through a city will have encountered street musicians of one kind or another. For the first time, veteran journalist and music-industry publicist Cary Baker tells the complete history of these musicians and the music they play, from tin cups and toonies to QR codes and PayPal.

Born on Chicago's South Side, Cary Baker began his writing career at sixteen with an on-spec feature about Chicago street singer Blind Arvella Gray for the Chicago Reader. His return to writing follows a forty-two-year hiatus during which time he directed publicity for six record labels (including Capitol and IRS) and two of his own companies, working with acclaimed artists such as R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, The Smithereens, James McMurtry, The Mavericks, Bobby Rush, Willie Nile, and more. Prior to his PR years, Baker wrote for the Chicago Reader, Creem, Trouser Press, Bomp!, Goldmine, Billboard, Mix, Illinois Entertainer, and Record magazine. He has also written liner notes for historical reissues from Universal, Capitol/EMI, Numero Group, and Omnivore. He has been a voting member of the Recording Academy since 1979. He lives in Southern California.

Cary Baker’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming book is U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Disco's "Latin Tinge"

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 18:08:00 +0000

In the 1930s, musical Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton identified the influence of Latin American rhythms like the habanera in jazz, as a sonic “tinge” that fundamentally shaped his style as a stride pianist. In the Seventies, disco presented its own Latin tinge. The Latin American and Latino influence on 1970s New York disco extended far beyond the familiar narratives of the Paradise Garage and Studio 54, creating vibrant spaces that celebrated cultural fusion and community. Clubs like the Ipanema Discotheque, Copacabana, and Roseland Ballroom became crucial venues where Latin rhythms, Brazilian beats, and Caribbean sounds mixed with emerging disco to create something entirely new. These spaces, often overlooked in mainstream disco histories, were essential to the genre's evolution—places where the infectious energy of Latin music met the innovative production techniques of American dance music. The DJs who commanded these dance floors brought not just technical skill but cultural knowledge, understanding how to weave together the musical traditions of their homelands with the cutting-edge sounds emerging from New York's studios and clubs.

In the fourth episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares welcome DJs Ronnie Soares and Luis Mario Orellana Rizzo to explore the Latin American contributions to New York's disco revolution. Soares, born in Brazil and arriving in New York as a teenager, became a DJ by accident in 1974 when asked to spin a Brazilian night at the French club Directoire. Though initially a dancer, he quickly became resident DJ at the famed Ipanema Discotheque and went on to create "Midnight Disco" at Roseland Ballroom—the first club in the city to hold 5,000 people. Rizzo began his career at the very inception of club culture in 1969-70, learning from DJ Francis Grasso before working at legendary venues including Cork & Bottle and Copacabana. As the first DJ to tour nationally and internationally, Rizzo helped spread dance music globally while founding Legends of Vinyl, an archival project celebrating the art of DJing.

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Christopher M. Reali, "Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination. Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (University of Illinois Press, 2022) reveals the people, places, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history.

Dr. Christopher Reali is an assistant professor of music at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama's carnival.

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Inna Faliks, "Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage" (Backbeat Books, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic artists of her generation. She has made a name for herself through commanding performances of standard piano repertoire, as well genre-bending, interdisciplinary projects, and inquisitive work with contemporary composers.

This season, she gave the world premiere of Clarice Assad’s “Lilith” concerto, composed for her. Ljova’s “Voices” for piano and historical recording was composed for her and commissioned by the Milken Center of American Jewish Music in 2020.Faliks created a one-woman show “Polonaise-Fantasie, Story of a Pianist”, an autobiographical monologue for pianist and actress, premiered in New York’s Symphony Space and performed worldwide. A committed chamber musician, she has had notable collaborations with Rachel Barton Pine, Gilbert Kalish, Ron Leonard, Fred Sherry, Ilya Kaler, Colin Carr, Wendy Warner, Clive Greensmith, and Antonio Lysy, among many others.Inna Faliks has been featured on radio and television throughout the world. She co-starred with Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nicol in “Admission – One Shilling,” a play for pianist and actor based on the life of the great British pianist, Dame Myra Hess.Her CD releases, Reimagine: Beethoven and Ravel on Navona Records and The Schumann Project Volume 1, on MSR Classics, received rave reviews, and were named to several “best of 2021” lists. With her all-Beethoven CD release on MSR, WTTW called Faliks “High priestess of the piano, concert pianist of the highest order, as dramatic and subtle as a great stage actor.”

Sound of Verse, was released in 2009, featuring music of Boris Pasternak, Rachmaninoff and Ravel. “Polonaise-Fantasie, Story of a Pianist” on Delos captures her autobiographical monologue-recital with short piano works from Bach to Carter.Faliks is founder and curator of Music/Words, an award-winning poetry-music series: performances in collaboration with distinguished poets. Her long-standing relationship with Chicago’s WFMT radio has led to multiple broadcasts of Music/Words, which she produced alongside some of the nation’s most recognized poets in performances throughout the United States.A past winner of many prestigious competitions, Inna Faliks is currently Professor of Piano and Head of Piano at UCLA.

In Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage (Backbeat Books, 2023) Faliks provides a globe-trotting account of her upbringing as a child prodigy in the Soviet Union, the perils of immigration, and the struggle to assimilate as an American. She chronicles years of training with teachers and her steady rise in the world of classical music. With a warm and playful style, Faliks helps non-musicians understand the experience of becoming a world-renowned concert pianist. The places she grew up, the books she read, and the poems she memorized as a child all connect to her sound at the piano. The way she hears and shapes a musical phrase illuminates both classical music and elite performance. She explores how a person’s humanity makes their art honest and voice unique, and how the lifelong challenge of retaining that voice is fueled by balancing the demands of musicianship and being human. Throughout, Faliks provides powerful insights into the role of music in a world of conflict, change, and hope for a better tomorrow.

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Richard Mainwaring, "What the Ear Hears (And Doesn't): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency" (Sourcebooks, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What do the world's loneliest whale, a black hole, and twenty-three people doing Tae Bo all have in common?

In 2011, a skyscraper in South Korea began to shake uncontrollably without warning and was immediately evacuated. Was it an earthquake? An attack? No one seemed quite sure. The actual cause emerged later and is utterly fascinating: Twenty-three middle-aged folks were having a Tae Bo fitness class in the office gym on the twelfth floor. Their beats had inadvertently matched the building's natural frequency, and this coincidence--harnessing a basic principle of physics--caused the building to shake at an alarming rate for ten minutes. Frequency is all around us, but little understood.

Musician, composer, TV presenter, and educator Richard Mainwaring uses the concept of the Infinite Piano to reveal the extraordinary world of frequency in a multitude of arenas--from medicine to religion to the environment to the paranormal--through the universality of music and a range of memorable human (and animal) stories laced with dry humor. Whether you're science curious, musically inclined, or just want to know what a Szechuan pepper has to do with physics, What the Ear Hears (and Doesn't): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency (Sourcebooks, 2022) is an immensely enjoyable read filled with "did you know?" trivia you'll love to share with friends.

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"Swiz" (Akashic Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Swiz (Akashic Books, 2025). Swiz was a Washington DC hardcore punk band that existed from April of 1987 through August of 1990, cutting their teeth and carving their place in the scene that birthed trailblazers and contemporaries like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Dag Nasty, Fugazi, Ian MacKaye, Dave Grohl, and Henry Rollins. Featuring original Dag Nasty singer Shawn Brown, Swiz’s faster, darker, and more aggressive take on the D.C. sound ran counter to the melodic, experimental, and poppy direction the scene had been leaning toward in the years before Nirvana broke the underground.

In the thirty-five years since their demise, Swiz’s popularity and infamy have only grown. This first in-depth look into the band is timed perfectly to coincide with the 2025 release of their remastered musical catalog by Dischord Records.

The volume is penned by all of the band members, combining historical interviews and personal journals, with present-day conversations, anecdotes, recollections, and reflections yielding new poetry and prose. The writing is complemented by over one hundred unpublished images. This mix of styles touches on band facts and timelines while also spotlighting the negative space around the band: personal and interpersonal moments of its members and the broader community and culture in which they were immersed. Swiz is a deep dive into the band and its members, a celebration of warped memory, and a unique snapshot of a time and scene that continues to inspire musicians, artists, and fans alike.

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Robert Fitzgerald, "Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan: The Lyrical Lashing of an American Presidency" (UNC Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Few politicians produced the musical reaction that Ronald Reagan did. His California-branded conservatism inspired countless young people to pick up guitars and thrash out their political angst. Punk bands across the United States took aim at the man, his presidency, and the idea of America he was selling to voters nationwide. Small yet vibrant scenes across the country emerged to challenge the communal norms and social values projected on them by the popular media and consumer culture. Punk enthusiast Robert Fitzgerald argues that these songs' lyrics aren't just catchy and fun to scream along with; they also reveal the thoughts and feelings of artists reacting to their political environment in real, forthright, and uncensored time.
In Hardcore Punk in the Age of Reagan (UNC Press, 2025), Fitzgerald shows how these lyrics illustrated what young adults felt and how they reacted to one of the most influential and divisive leaders of the era. Punk lyrics are seemingly simple, the author argues, but they sketch out a complex, musically inspired countermovement that is as canonical in the American songbook as the folk and rock protest music that came before.

Robert Fitzgerald is a laboratory school administrator and a lifelong punk fan.

Robert Fitzgerald on UNC Press’s website.

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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A Spatial History of Disco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the third episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares take you on an immersive journey through the hot nights and wild streets of Lower Manhattan during the Seventies. For this episode, Jesse Rifkin, a New York-based music historian and the owner and sole operator of Walk on the Wild Side Tours NYC, designed a specialized tour for Soundscapes NYC that explores key venues in the history of disco. Clubs like Paradise Garage, Nicky Siano’s Gallery, and repurposed residential spaces like David Mancuso’s Loft were all critical incubators of the sound and culture we call disco today. This is dense cultural geography, hardly more than one square mile, within and around a neighborhood known today as “Soho”. But in the Seventies it was sometimes known as “Hell’s Hundred Acres” do to the propensity of building collapses and fires among the old hotels and loft builds that constellated the area.

Soundscapes NYC welcomes back Jesse Rifkin, who appeared on Season One on the queer history of punk culture (S1.E4. Sounds of the City Collapsing). Rifkin is the author of This Must Be the Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City (Hanover Square Press, 2023), and his work has been celebrated in the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller, among others. His Substack (Walk on the Wild Side NYC) is a trove of incisive music criticism and revealing interviews with dynamic artists from the Seventies to today.

Contact Soundscapes NYC Here

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Julia Sneeringer, "A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69" (Bloomsbury, 2018)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Beatles’ sojourn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg during the early 1960s is part of music legend. As Julia Sneeringer reveals in A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956-69 (Bloomsbury, 2018), though, this was just the most famous episode in the neighborhood’s momentous engagement with rock ‘n’ roll during that period, one of importance not just to music history but to the history of modern Germany. Located as it was outside the walls of the medieval city, St. Pauli was known for centuries as the entertainment quarter of Hamburg. The neighborhood had only recently recovered from the hardships of the postwar era when German club owners began booking English bands to play the new style of music that had just been introduced in Europe. The performances quickly proved a hit among teenage Germans, who flocked to out-of-the-way venues to watch the acts perform. As Sneeringer details, the encounters changed everyone involved, giving the musicians the chance to hone their skills and develop their style while through their participation the young men and women in the audience pushed against the conservative social boundaries imposed on them by their families and their society.

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Bradley Morgan, "Frank Zappa's America" (LSU Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with a blend of genres in innovative and unheard-of ways. Not only did his exploratory styles challenge the expectations of what popular music could sound like, but his prolific creative endeavors also shaped how audiences thought about the freedom of artistic expression.

In Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), Bradley Morgan casts the artist as an often-misunderstood figure who critiqued the actions of religious and political groups promoting a predominantly white, Christian vision of the United States. A controversial and provocative satirist, often criticized for the shocking subject matter of his songs, Zappa provided social commentary throughout his career that spoke truth to power about the nefarious institutions operating in the lives of everyday Americans. Beginning in the late 1970s, his music frequently addressed the rise of extremist religious influence in American politics, specifically white Christian nationalism.

Despite commercial and critical pressure, Zappa refused to waver in his support for free speech during the era of Reagan and MTV, including his pointed testimony before the U.S. Senate at the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) hearings. Throughout the 1980s, and until his death in 1993, Zappa crafted his art form to advocate for political engagement, the security of individual liberties, and the advancement of education. Music became his platform to convey progressive views promoting the rights of marginalized communities most at risk in a society governed by the principles of what he perceived as Christian radicalism.

Frank Zappa's Americexamines the musician's messaging through song, tracing the means by which Zappa created passionate, at times troubling, art that combats conservativism in its many manifestations. For readers in the twenty-first century, his music and public advocacy demonstrate the need to preserve democracy and the voices that uphold it.

Bradley Morgan, a media arts professional based in Chicago, is the author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships for CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and directs the station's music film festival. Morgan also interviews authors of music and pop culture books for the New Books Network podcast.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait of this format.
Spun at seventy-eight revolutions per minute, the shellac disc rapidly became an industrial standard even while the gramophone itself remained a novelty. The very basis of this early sound reproduction technology was friction, an elemental materiality of sound shaped through cultural practice. Using friction as a lens, Gavin Williams illuminates the environments plundered, the materials seized, and the ears entangled in the making of a sound format. Bringing together material, political, and music history, Format Friction decenters the story of a beloved medium, and so explores new ways of understanding listening in technological culture more broadly.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

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Jess Reia, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years, but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art, this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection, archives, regulatory frameworks, and urban planning. Busking also responds to underlying questions on the boundaries of the rights to the city, and who has a voice in shaping how our cities are planned and governed.
A transnational exploration of street performance, Urban Music Governance examines the intricate limits of legality, data visibility, and resistance from the perspective of those working at the social and regulatory margins of society. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and Montreal, this book offers a lively account of why such an often-overlooked practice matters today.
By investigating the role of busking in contemporary society, Urban Music Governance presents an original interdisciplinary study that exposes how power dynamics in policymaking decide issues of access—and exclusion—around us, above and below ground.

Jess Reia is an Assistant Professor of Data Science at the University of Virginia, USA, working on data justice, technology policy, and urban governance.

Alex Hallbom is a Registered Professional Planner in British Columbia, Canada. He sits on the editorial board of Plan Canada, the professional publication for planners in Canada.

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Charlotte Bentley, "New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859" (U of Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Jazz is the music that many people associate with New Orleans. But before there was jazz in New Orleans there was opera. It was the only city in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century with a resident opera company that produced the latest European works. In New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Charlotte Bentley considers the thriving operatic life of New Orleans, drawing out the international connections that animated it. She explores the process of bringing opera to the stage, taking a detailed look at the management of New Orleans’s Francophone theater, the Théâtre d’Orléans, as well as the performers who came to the city and the reception they received. Opera’s role was not confined to the theater, however, and Bentley demonstrates that opera permeated everyday life in New Orleans and examines literary works to understand the genre’s significance to the city. Bentley examines the complicated transatlantic dance that brought operas and performers to New Orleans forever influencing the city, and ultimately, American culture.

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Turning the Page, Tuning the Dial

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the tenth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell expands upon previous episodes to consider the various musical styles that emerged in New York City during the Seventies alongside punk rock. In dialogue with music critic Will Hermes, author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), and Lou Reed: King of New York (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2023) we contextualize cultural creators in the city during the decade who spurred a tide of experimental music including hip-hop, salsa, techno, and new styles of jazz within the context of New York City’s fiscal crisis.

Will Hermes is a senior critic for Rolling Stone and a longtime contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His work turns up periodically in The New York Times; he has also written for Spin, Slate, Salon, The Believer, the Village Voice, City Pages, The Windy City Times, and other publications. He co-edited SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (Crown/Three Rivers, 2006) with Sia Michel, and his work has appeared in the Da Capo Best Music Writing series.

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Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-expanding lineup of niche music channels and exclusive celebrity-hosted programming. Brian Fauteux's Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (University of California Press, 2025) is the first book to explore how satellite radio bridges legacy broadcast music radio and streaming platforms, serving as both precursor and integral player in today's streaming media environment. Arguing for the ongoing significance of radio in the digital age and the pernicious effects of monopoly power on the vibrancy of contemporary music industries, Music in Orbit offers essential context for the serious problems now facing working musicians, music consumers, and music communities.

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Lost Women of Disco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the second episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares welcome DJ, academic, and journalist Lulu Le Vay to explore the often-untold stories of women in dance music culture. Le Vay, who holds a PhD in Sociology from Goldsmiths and performs as DJ Lulu Levan, represents a new generation of "PhDJs" combining academic inquiry with dance floor experience. From writing for publications like The Face, i-D, and The Guardian to spinning at festivals like Lovebox and Bestival, she documents club culture from multiple perspectives. Currently working on a documentary about women DJs with director Sonja Phillips, Le Vay is also part of Love Underground, a new collaboration with producer Tommy D whose new single "The Journey Part 1" is out on Chillifunk records. Through her podcast Where Love Lives and her work preserving dance music history, Le Vay continues celebrating the women who built the foundations of club culture.

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Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a pop music critic at the New York Times from 2000-2008, and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since then. His first book, just released on Penguin, is called Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. The book refracts the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years through the big genres that have defined and dominated it—rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which.

Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. His first book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar, was named a "Season's Best Travel Book" by The New York Times. Buzzfeed called his second book, Someone Should Pay for Your Pain, "a knockout fiction debut." He teaches at Bard College.

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Jubilee (1978)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the ninth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell traces the trans-Atlantic movement of artists associated with punk culture in New York and London. In conversation with British cultural historian Matt Worley, we follow New York-based artists like Jayne (née Wayne) County, Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, and others to the U.K. where they embedded themselves in a growing music-based subculture. As the punk aesthetic expanded internationally it diversified in form incorporating elements of fashion, literature, and cinema like Derek Jarman’s apocalyptic masterpiece JUBILEE (1978).

Matt Worley is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading and author of numerous books that cover modern British history with a special focus on music and the British Labor movement. His book No Future: Punk, Politics and British Your Culture, 1976-1984 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) explores the evolution of punk as a fashion, a musical form, an attitude, and an overall aesthetic. Setting punk culture against a backdrop of social fragmentation, violence, high unemployment, and socio-economic change, Worley recaptures punk's anarchic force as a medium through which the frustrated and the disaffected could reject, revolt, and re-invent.

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Triauna Carey, "The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2024) investigates the rhetorical strategies present in mainstream popular music and how those strategies are implemented to empower resistance. Case studies across the genres of popular music in the West are surveyed throughout the book to consider the power of music as a rhetorical tool during cultural flashpoints and times of crisis. Carey analyzes songs such as “This is America” by Childish Gambino, “Alien Superstar” by Beyoncé, “Thought Contagion” by Muse, and more to consider the impact of contemporary music on culture and social justice movements. Scholars of rhetoric and composition, communication, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology will find this book particularly interesting.

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Megan Volpert, "Why Alanis Morissette Matters" (University of Texas Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The first critical biography of iconic musician Alanis Morissette, creator of Jagged Little Pill.

The 1990s hardly saw a bigger hit than Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette's defining album won Grammys, dominated the Billboard charts, and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. It left a deep mark on the psyches of countless listeners. Three decades later, Megan Volpert checks in with Morissette, probing her rich and varied post-JLP career and bearing feminist witness to the existential anger that ties her recent work to enduring classics like "You Oughta Know," "One Hand in My Pocket," and "Ironic."

Why Alanis Morissette Matters (UT Press, 2025) builds a bridge from Jagged Little Pill to the fascinating life and subtle intellect of its creator, exploring how the artist's philosophical interests and personal journey are reflected in each track. Morissette's struggles with censorship, mental health challenges, and Catholicism; her queer allyship, spiritual skepticism, zealous fandom, and philanthropic passions--all are carefully observed by a critic whose own life was touched by Jagged Little Pill. In the album's wake, Morissette has evolved as an artist and global citizen. With sensitivity and a profound love for the music, Volpert guides readers through the case for Morissette's enduring cultural relevance and creative impact.

Megan Volpert is the author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. She is the author of Straight Into Darkness: Tom Petty as Rock Mystic and she won Georgia Author of the Year for Boss Broad. She teaches at Kennesaw State and Reinhardt Universities.

Megan Volpert on Facebook.

Bradley Morgan on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Rock 'N' Roll Resurrection

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the eighth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell talks with music history professor Steve Waksman about the social and stylistic transformation of the New York rock scene during the mid-1970s. The introduction of new bands clashed with the old guard, culminating with a violent altercation between artists in CBGB in March 1976.

In 2024, Waksman accepted the Leverhulme International Professorship in Music in the Department of Media, Humanities, and the Arts at the University of Huddersfield (UK) where for the next five years he will conduct a comprehensive study of how music and culture have developed since the invention of sound amplification. Waksman is the former Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music and American Studies at Smith College, and the author of numerous books on music history including Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Harvard University Press, 1999), This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (University of California Press, 2009), and Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé (Oxford University Press, 2022).

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Neil Gregor, "The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A new history of how the musical worlds of German towns and cities were transformed during the Nazi era.

In the years after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and through the war years all aspects of life in Germany changed. However, despite the social and political upheaval, gentile citizens were able to continue leisure activities such as attending concerts. In this book, historian Neil Gregor surveys the classical concert scene in Nazi Germany from the perspective of the audience, rather than institutions or performers. Gregor delves into the cultural lives of ordinary Germans under conditions of dictatorship. Did the ways in which Germans heard music in the period change? Did a Nazi way of listening emerge?

For audiences, Gregor shows, changes to the concert experience were small and often took place around the edges. This, combined with the preserved idea of the concert hall as a space of imagined civility and cultivation, led many concertgoers and music lovers to claim after the war that their field and their practice had been innocent--a place to retreat from the vicious violence and racism of the Nazi regime. Drawing on untapped archival sources, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany reveals that the true history was one of disruption but also of near effortless adaptation. Through countless small acts, the symphony concert was reframed within the languages of strident nationalism, racism, and militarism to ensure its place inside the cultural cosmos of National Socialist Germany.

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Shain Shapiro, "This Must Be the Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better" (Watkins Media Limited, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

This Must Be the Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better (Watkins Media Limited, 2023) explores how music can make cities better. This Must Be the Place introduces and examines music's relationship to cities. Not the influence cities have on music, but the powerful impact music can have on how cities are developed, built, managed, and governed. Told in an accessible way through personal stories from cities around the world--including London, Melbourne, Nashville, Austin, and Zurich--This Must Be the Place takes a truly global perspective on the ways music is integral to everyday life but neglected in public policy. Arguing for the transformative role of artists and musicians in a post-pandemic world, This Must Be The Place not only examines the powerful impact music can have on our cities, but also serves as a how-to guide and toolkit for music-lovers, artists, and activists everywhere to begin the process of reinventing the communities they live in.

Shain Shapiro is one of the world’s leading music and cultural policy thinkers. He is the founder and chairman of economics consultancy Sound Diplomacy, founder and director of the global nonprofit Center for Music Ecosystems and author of This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better. Shain has pioneered the work of music cities and music ecosystem policy, where music is written into how cities and places plan and invest in their future.

Alex Hallbom is a Registered Professional Planner in British Columbia, Canada. He sits on the editorial board of Plan Canada, the professional publication for planners in Canada.

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Andrew S. Berish, "Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Andrew S. Berish. 2025. Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse. (U of Chicago Press, 2025)

Some good words from the inside flap:

“

A deep dive into the meaning behind the hatred of jazz.
A rock guitarist plays four notes in front of one thousand people, while a jazz guitarist plays one thousand notes in front of four people. You might laugh or groan at this jazz joke, but what is it about jazz that makes people want to disparage it in the first place?
Andrew S. Berish’s Hating Jazz listens to the voices who have denounced, disparaged, and mocked the music. By focusing on the rejection of the music, Berish says, we see more holistically jazz’s complicated place in American cultural life. Jazz is a display of Black creativity and genius, an art form that is deeply embedded in African American life. Though the explicit racial tenor of jazz jokes has become muted over time, making fun of jazz, either in a lighthearted or aggressive way, is also an engagement with the place of Blackness in America. An individual’s taste in music may seem personal, but Berish’s analysis of jazz hatred demonstrates that musical preferences and trends are a social phenomenon. Criticism of jazz has become inextricable from the ways we understand race in America, past and present. In addition to this form of criticism, Berish also considers jazz hate as a form of taste discrimination and as a conflict over genre boundaries within different jazz cultures.
Both enlightening and original, Hating Jazz shows that our response to music can be a social act, unique to our historical moment and cultural context—we react to music in certain ways because of who we are, where we are, and when we are.

“

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

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Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, "Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests" (West Virginia UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

2023 Weatherford Award Finalist, Nonfiction

How can the craft of musical instrument making help reconnect people to place and reenchant work in Appalachia? How does the sonic search for musical tone change relationships with trees and forests? Following three craftspeople in the mountain forests of Appalachia through their processes of making instruments, Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests (West Virginia UP, 2023) considers the meanings of work, place, and creative expression in drawing music from wood.

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth explores the complexities and contradictions of instrument-making labor, which is deeply rooted in mountain forests and expressive traditions but also engaged with global processes of production and consumption. Using historical narratives and sensory ethnography, among other approaches, he finds that the craft of lutherie speaks to the past, present, and future of the region’s work and nature.

From West Virginia University Press

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth PhD is Director and Curator of the Gordon Art Galleries at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He earned a PhD and MA in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky and a BA in Anthropology and History from the University of Virginia. He has held research, teaching, and administrative positions in Anthropology and Folklore Studies through his work with the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Cultural History Program, the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology and Appalachian Center, and The Ohio State University Department of Comparative Studies and Center for Folklore Studies.

Rachel Hopkin PhD is a folklorist and audio producer.

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Love Saves the Day: On the 1970s New York Club Scene

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Loft was a dance party series organized by DJ David Mancuso in his Manhattan warehouse apartment at 647 Broadway from Valentine’s Day 1970 to June 1974. The parties offered an alternative to New York’s commercial nightclub scene. The invitation-only events featured an egalitarian space for music and dance with a top-of-the-line sound system, eclectic musical selections, and a racially inclusive and gay-friendly mix of guests. Attendees included the city’s leading disc jockeys such as Larry Levan, Nicky Siano, and Frankie Knuckles, who launched their careers in next generation clubs like the Paradise Garage, The Gallery, Chicago’s Warehouse, and The Saint— all influenced by the Loft.

In the premiere episode of Season Two of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell introduces co-host Kristie Soares, in conversation with music and dance historian Tim Lawrence, to contextualize David Mancuso’s Loft. Lawrence is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London’s School of Arts and Digital Industries. He is the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79 (Duke University Press, 2003), Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92 (Duke University Press, 2009) and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-83 (Duke University Press, 2016). Outside of academia, Lawrence hosts his own dance party series called All Our Friends, as well as a podcast about music history called Love Is The Message.

The opening anecdote draws from Tim Lawrence's Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79 (Duke University Press, 2003).

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Rhythm, Exorcism, and Confrontation with Lexi Eikelboom

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Lexi Eikelboom.

Dr Lexi Eikelboom is both a visual artist and a scholar of philosophical theology. Her academic work analyses aesthetic concepts such as rhythm and form as way to illuminate the human implications of the philosophical arguments in which the concepts appear. She also leads collaborative projects investigating art as a form of thinking and the effects of engagement with art on theoretical work.

They discuss rhythm and time in cubist painting, letting the shapes of art speak for themselves, and art as confrontation and incitement to change.

A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website (www.conceptart.fm).

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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S1.E7. Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Bruce Springsteen was keenly aware and excited by the sounds of the CBGBs scene during the Seventies. With his own bands, the Boss performed in the same venues associated with punk rock and ultimately wrote songs for Patti Smith and the Ramones. Yet Springsteen’s sound has remained distinct from punk rock as it emanated from New York. In the seventh episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell talks with Bruce Springsteen biographer Jim Cullen and Melissa Ziobro the head curator of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University about Springsteen’s complicated relationship with punk rock in 1970s New York. As an NJ native, the Boss was a so-called “Bridge-and-Tunnel-Boy” but that socio-cultural infrastructure worked both ways. By the end of the Seventies, Springsteen did not need to travel to New York to engage with the punk sound. Punk culture was traveling to Asbury Park, NJ.

Jim Cullen is a historian of American popular culture and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Harvard, Brown, and Sarah Lawrence College. He was a longtime faculty member and History Department chair at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York before moving to the recently founded Greenwich Country Day School in 2020. Cullen is the author of multiple award-winning book books on music including Born in the USA: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition (Harper Collins, 1997). His latest book, Bridge and Tunnel Boys: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Metropolitan Sound of the American Century (Rutgers University, 2023), compares the musical careers of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

Melissa Ziobro is a Professor of Public History at Monmouth University where she is currently the Head Curator for the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music. Former editor of New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Ziobro is deeply committed to documenting New Jersey history with the broader context of the American story. She curated a traveling exhibition called Music America: Iconic Objects from America’s Music History which is now on display at the Grammy Museum in Mississippi and is expected to return to Monmouth University for the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music in Spring 2026.

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A Queer Etymology of Punk

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the fifth episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with British music critic Jon Savage about how LGBTQ resistance shaped American popular music from the 1950s to the 1980s. Savage discusses the curious and queer roots of the word punk stretching back to the time of Shakespeare when it was used to connote ambiguous and transgressive gender and sexuality. Those meanings carried through to the 1970s though their origins may have been obscured by popular culture.

Jon Savage is the award-winning author of England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (1991) and Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875-1945 (2007) and his latest book, The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture, 1955-1979 (2024). He is the writer of the award-winning film documentaries The Brian Epstein Story (1988) and Joy Division (2007), as well as the feature film Teenage (2013). His compilations include Meridian 1970 (Heavenly/EMI 2005) and Queer Noises: From the Closet to the Charts, 1961-1976 (Trikont 2006).

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Gotham Center for NYC History - CUNY GC

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Sounds of the City Collapsing

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the fourth episode of Soundscapes NYC, host Ryan Purcell and music historian Jesse Rifkin tour a constellation of seedy bars and venues in the 1970s that nurtured bands during the early days of punk rock. These spaces include well-known clubs like CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City and lesser-known haunts like the Mercer Arts Center and Mother’s that shed light on hidden meanings behind punk rock. These stories illuminate echoes of the trans liberation struggle, and how punk rock embodied the sounds of the city collapsing in a literal sense.

Jesse Rifkin is the owner and operator of Walk on the Wild Side Tours NYC, a music history walking tour company in New York City, and consults as a pop music historian for the Association for Cultural Equity. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller, and Vice among other venues. Before his work as a historian, he spent twelve years touring the country as a working musician, playing at CBGB, Lincoln Center, and venues of every size and shape in between. In 2023, Rifkin published his debut book, This Must be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City (Harper Collins, 2023).

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How Punk Broke the Binary

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When singer Debbie Harry helped form Blondie in 1974 she developed a unique stage persona to front the band. Though she may have appeared to fans as a hyper-femme caricature, Harry recalls her role as androgynous or "transexual" in her 2019 memoir Face It. In the third episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with Cornell University professor of music Judith Peraino, and University of Iowa cultural studies professor Kembrew McLeod about the stylistic and social forces that shaped gender-bending bands like Blondie and others in the early “punk” scene in 1970s New York.

Judith Peraino is the author of multiple publications on rock music and constructions of gender. This includes We’re Having Much More Fun: Punk Archives for the Present from CBGB to Gilman and Beyond (Cornell University Press, 2025) co-edited with Tom McEnaney, professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Berkley.

McLeod is a cultural critic and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of Parallel Lines in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 Series (2016) and the critically acclaimed history The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punks, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, and Rock ’N’ Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture. (Abrams Press, 2018)

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S1.E2. Wayne County at the Trucks (1974)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the second episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with Tony Zanetta. In the late 1960s, Zanetta worked in Off-Off-Broadway theater and ultimately landed a role playing the Andy Warhol character in Pork, an absurdist play based on Warhol’s phone recordings. Zanetta followed the cast to London where he befriended David Bowie who subsequently appointed him president of his management company, Main Man, and Bowie’s direct point of contact in America for the Ziggy Stardust tour (1972).

With his involvement with Bowie, Zanetta was responsible for developing acts under the Main Man umbrella. This included a proto-punk band called Queen Elizabeth fronted by Jayne (formerly Wayne) County. With Bowie’s financial backing, Zanetta produced a gender-bending spectacle of drag, sex, and rock ’n’ roll: Wayne County at the Trucks! (1974). It may be the most spectacular rock show you have never heard of … till now.

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Gender Crisis N.Y.C.

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the premiere episode of Soundscapes N.Y.C., host Ryan Purcell talks with celebrated writer Lucy Sante about the landscape of gender logics within the New York rock scene. It was a nebulous soundscape of counterculture formed around gender explorations and social upheaval set to the soundtrack of an aggressive style of rock ’n’ roll that critics would identify as punk rock by the end of the seventies.

Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and Nineteen Reservoirs. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy Award (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She recently retired after twenty-four years of teaching at Bard College.

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Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of being Syrian in the 21st century

Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research, Shayna M. Silverstein shows how dabke dance music embodies the fraught dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state. Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria (Wesleyan UP, 2024) situates dabke politically, economically, and historically in a broader account of expressive culture in Syria's recent (and ongoing) turmoil. Silverstein shows how people imagine the Syrian nation through dabke, how the state has coopted it, how performances of masculinity reveal--and play with--the tensions and complexities of the broader social imaginary, how forces opposed to the state have used it resistively, and how migrants and refugees have reimagined it in their new homes in Europe and the United States. She offers deeply thoughtful reflections on the ethnographer's ethical and political dilemmas on fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Silverstein's study ultimately questions the limits of authoritarian power, considering the pleasure and play intrinsic to dabke circles as evidence for how performance cultures sustain social life and solidify group bonds while reproducing the societal divides endemic to Syrian authoritarianism.

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Maya J. Berry, "Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons" (Duke UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and spiritual dimensions of Black political imagination in post-Fidel Cuba. Historically a Black working-class popular dance, rumba, Berry contends, is a method of Black Cuban struggle that provides the community, accountability, sustenance, and dignity that neither the state nor the expanding private market can. Berry’s feminist theorization builds on the notion of the undercommons to show how rumba creates a space in which its practitioners enact deeply felt and dedicatedly defended choreographies of reciprocity, refusal, sovereignty, devotion, and pleasure, both on stage and in their daily lives. Berry demonstrates that this Black corporeal undercommons emphasizes mutual aid and refuses neoliberal development logics, favoring instead a collective self-determination rooted in African diasporic spiritual practices through which material compensation and gendered power dynamics are negotiated. By centering rumba to analyze how poor Black Cubans navigate gendered and racialized life, Berry helps readers better understand the constraints and yearnings that move diasporic Black struggles to seek refuge beyond the bounds of the nation-state.

Maya J. Berry is Assistant Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Michael Broyles, "Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades That Changed a Country and Its Sounds" (Norton, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Michael Broyles examines a wide variety of musical, technological, and social currents that helped to shape American music in Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades that Changed a Country and Its Sounds (Norton, 2024), but he accomplishes this by focusing on just thirty years. Broyles discusses three pivotal decades in US musical history: the 1840s, the 1920s, and the 1950s. He argues that these decades fundamentally remade the American cultural landscape in enduring ways. Although Revolutions in American Music describes the ruptures caused by new musical and technological innovations such as the development of jazz or rock 'n roll, Broyles also revisits deep cultural and social fissures that affected America and American music in all three time periods. Throughout the book, Broyles introduces important figures who have been overlooked and tells stories that illuminate the messy, complex, sometimes dark, but always fascinating history of music in the United States.

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Frederick Reece, "Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon" (Oxford University Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We all know about art forgeries, but why write fake classical music? In Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon (Oxford University Press, 2025), Dr. Frederick Reece investigates the methods and motives of mysterious musicians who sign famous historical names like Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert to their own original works. Analyzing a series of genuinely fake sonatas, concertos, and symphonies in detail, Dr. Reece's study exposes the shadowy roles that forgeries have played in shaping perceptions of authenticity, creativity, and the self within classical music culture from the 1790s to the 1990s.
Holding a magnifying glass to a wide array of phony works, Forgery in Musical Composition explains how skillful fakers have succeeded in the past while also proposing active steps that scholars and musicians can take to better identify deceptive compositions in the future. Pursuing his topic from case to case, Dr. Reece observes that fake historical masterpieces have often seduced listeners not simply by imitating old works, but rather by mirroring modern cultural beliefs about innovation, identity, and meaning in music. Here forged compositions have important truths to tell us about knowing and valuing works of art precisely because they are not what they appear.

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Leah Lax, "Not From Here: the Song of America" (Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When Leah Lax was asked to write an opera to celebrate local immigrants, she began by spending a year listening to accounts of upheaval, migration, and arrival told her in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered America, found its great beating heart.

In interludes between the astounding and powerful stories in Not From Here: the Song of America (Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie, 2024), Leah uncovers the lost history of her Jewish family and finds a larger context for her own story. "In a way," she writes, "we Americans are all immigrants."

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Niko Stratis, "The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman" (University of Texas Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A memoir-in-essays on transness, dad rock, and the music that saves us.

When Wilco's 2007 album Sky Blue Sky was infamously criticized as "dad rock," Niko Stratis was a twenty-five-year-old closeted trans woman working in her dad's glass shop in the Yukon Territory. As she sought escape from her hypermasculine environment, Stratis found an unlikely lifeline amid dad rock's emotionally open and honest music. Listening to dad rock, Stratis could access worlds beyond her own and imagine a path forward.

In taut, searing essays rendered in propulsive and unguarded prose, Stratis delves into the emotional core of bands like Wilco and The National, telling her story through the dad rock that accompanied her along the way. She found footing in Michael Stipe's allusions to queer longing, Radiohead's embrace of unknowability, and Bruce Springsteen's very trans desire to "change my clothes my hair my face"--and she found in artists like Neko Case and Sharon Van Etten that the label transcends gender. A love letter to the music that saves us and a tribute to dads like Stratis's own who embody the tenderness at the genre's heart, The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman (University of Texas Press, 2025) rejoices in music unafraid to bare its soul.

Niko Stratis is an award-winning writer from Toronto by way of the Yukon, where she spent years working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as trans in her thirties and being forced to abandon her previous line of work. Her writing has appeared in publications like Catapult, Spin, Paste and more. She's a Cancer, and a former smoker.

Niko Stratis on Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books is U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Bluesky.

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antonio c. cuyler, "Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector" (Routledge, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How can cultural organisations better support diversity? In Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector antonio c. cuyler, Professor of Music in Entrepreneurship & Leadership and Faculty Associate in Voice & Opera in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), and Faculty Associate in the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan, explores a series of practical interventions that can shape creative institutions implementation of access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) policy and practices. The book is framed by the call for creative justice, against a backdrop of threats to both civil rights and cultural freedoms across the world. Rich with case studies, as well as detailed research and theory, the book is a must read text for both academics and arts practitioners. The book is available open access here

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Gwynne Kuhner Brown, "William L. Dawson" (University of Illinois Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

William L. Dawson (University of Illinois Press, 2024) by Gwynne Kuhner Brown is a biography of the Black American composer, conductor and pedagogue. She gives equal weight to the different aspects of Dawson’s career from his early training at Tuskegee Institute (now University) to his twenty-five years as director of choirs and composer at the same school and ending with his thirty years as a free-lance conductor. Dawson was part of the same generation of Black classical musicians that produced Florence Price and William Grant Still. His most famous composition is probably the Negro Folk Symphony, but he wrote other music including choral arrangements of spirituals that are a staple of college choral programs. Recently, in part because of work by people like Gwynne Kuhner Brown, Dawson’s other compositions are beginning to be heard in concert halls once again.

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Snotty Punk Bands and Ancient Aliens with Timothy Deane-Freeman

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Timothy Deane-Freeman.

Dr Timothy Deane-Freeman works as a teacher and researcher in philosophy in Naarm/Melbourne. His work is primarily focussed on the intersection of politics and art, and the ways in which sensible materials can be combined to produce different forms of thought. He is currently co-editing a book on philosophical accounts of artistic agency.

They discuss bourgeoise culture, shock, chronopolitics, and Afrofuturism as the place of the new.

A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website (www.conceptart.fm).

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Colleen Renihan, John Spilker, and Trudi Wright eds., "Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music" (University of Illinois Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music (University of Illinois Press, 2024) is a collected edition about Pedagogies of Care edited by Colleen Renihan, John Spilker-Beed, and Trudi Wright are experienced music history educators working in the United States and Canada. They have curated a collection of essays that explore what it means to prioritize care when teaching, interacting with students, developing course syllabi, and curricula. Far more than simply treating students with dignity and compassion, pedagogies of care can infiltrate every aspect of teaching and higher education by centering the interests of students, instructors, and the larger communities to which they belong. As the essays in Sound Pedagogy show, the structural aspects of music study in higher education present obstacles to caring and kindness. The contributors draw from personal experience to address issues including radical kindness through universal design; public musicology as a forum for social justice discourse; and radical approaches to teaching about race through music. The premise of the book is that care-based approaches to pedagogy can facilitate the systemic transformation that remains both possible and necessary for musicology, other disciplines, and institutions of higher education.

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Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and their DJs on musical culture since the 1970s was anything but inevitable. As media deregulation and political conflict over obscenity and censorship transformed the business and politics of culture, students and community DJs turned to college radio to defy the mainstream—and they ended up disrupting popular music and commercial radio in the process. In this first history of US college radio, Katherine Rye Jewell reveals that these eclectic stations in major cities and college towns across the United States owed their collective cultural power to the politics of higher education as much as they did to upstart bohemian music scenes coast to coast. Dr. Jewell uncovers how battles to control college radio were about more than music—they were an influential, if unexpected, front in the nation’s culture wars. These battles created unintended consequences and overlooked contributions to popular culture that students, DJs, and listeners never anticipated. More than an ode to beloved stations, this book will resonate with both music fans and observers of the politics of culture.

Our guest is: Dr. Katherine Rye Jewell, who is a historian and a professor at Fitchburg State University. She writes about the intersection of business, politics, and culture, and is the author of Live From the Underground: A History of College Radio (University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a freelance book editor and dissertation coach. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

100 Years of Radio in South Africa

Interview with NPR host Celeste Headlee

A Conversation with Marshall Poe about founding the NBN

A conversation with tuba professor Richard A. White

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Matthew Restall, "On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Elton John is not only "still standing," he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry. Yet few of his numerous biographies and song guides take him as a historical subject worthy of scholarly study.
In contrast, On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide (Oxford University Press, 2025) approaches the artist seriously and analytically, while still couched in a highly accessible style. Author Matthew Restall offers a new way to explore Sir Elton's career and music within the contexts of other artists and of sweeping shifts in popular culture during his lifetime. Each of the ten chapters is anchored to an Elton song, rooted in its pop culture history, and advances a clear argument, pairing him with figures ranging from Bernie (Bernie Taupin, his lyricist) to Bennie (of the Jets), from "frenemy" David Bowie to artists like Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin, and Dua Lipa, from Diana (the princess) to Jesus (yes, that one). Restall contends that Sir Elton's career offers us a novel way to see and understand the last half century of pop music and culture history--whether we call the era that of the album, of rock, of postmodernism, or of something else. The yellow brick road of Sir Elton's career has been long, winding, and bumpy, but, as Restall argues, his success has come not just despite but because of those challenges. The artist's transformations from Reg to Elton to Sir Elton to Uncle Elton, from ugly duckling to bedazzled swan, from the world's biggest rock star to creator of the world's largest AIDS fundraising organization, from tabloid punching bag to pop royalty, have all served as survival strategies that illuminate the era he has thereby navigated.

Matthew Restall teaches at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History, Anthropology, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Director of Latin American Studies.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Annie Zaleski, "I Got You Babe: A Celebration of Cher" (Running Press Adult, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Covering her life and sixty-year career from Sonny & Cher to show-stopping solo performer, award-winning actress, fashion icon, and beyond, this is a glorious retrospective of one of the world's most enduring entertainers, Cher. Featuring a foreword by Cyndi Lauper!

Commemorating six decades since her first #1 hit in 1965, I Got You Babe (Running Press, 2025) captures Cher's one-of-a-kind life. Written by award-winning writer and editor Annie Zaleski, this celebration of the fearless, down-to-earth "Goddess of Pop" explores key moments in her life and career in words and photos.

Amid these moments are photo after photo of some of the most eye-popping outfits ever worn in life and on stage. As an avid clothes horse who wasn't afraid to wear a see-through dress to the Met Gala in 1974, Cher's many looks will be given their due in this engaging, career-spanning retrospective.

Annie Zaleski is an award-winning writer and editor who's contributed to NPR Music, Salon, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. She's also the author of multiple books, including an extensive look at Duran Duran's Rio for Bloomsbury's prestigious 33 1/3 series, and biographies of pop stars Lady Gaga and P!nk. She interviewed Cher ahead of her 2016 Las Vegas residency and praised the icon in a career-spanning 2021 Salon piece; additionally, she wrote about the intriguing backstory of Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" in Running Press's forthcoming book We Found Love, Song by Song.

Annie Zaleski on Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, October 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Bluesky.

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Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power," "Through It All," "My Tribute (To God be the Glory)," "Jesus is the Answer," "Soon and Very Soon," and others--remain staples in modern hymnals, and he is often spoken of in the same "genius" pantheon as Mahalia Jackson, Thomas Dorsey and the Rev. James Cleveland. As the definitive biography of Crouch published to date, Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch (Oxford University Press, 2025) celebrates the many ways that his legacy indelibly changed the course of gospel and popular music.

10 Songs chosen by the authors:

The Blood (Will Never Lose Its Power)
I’ve Got Confidence
My Tribute (to God be the Glory)
Satisfied
Bless His Holy Name
Take Me Back
Soon and Very Soon
Bless His Holy Name
Jesus is the Answer
Just Like He Said He Would

Robert F. Darden is Emeritus Professor of Journalism at Baylor University and the founder of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project. He is the author of more than two dozen books and former Gospel Music Editor for Billboard magazine.

Stephen M. Newby holds the Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship as Professor of Music and serves as Ambassador for Black Gospel Music Preservation at Baylor University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Mike Miley, "David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How are David Lynch's films as much in dialogue with literary and musical traditions as they are cinematic ones?

By interrogating this question, David Lynch’s American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2025) broadens the interpretive horizons of Lynch's filmography, calling for a new approach to Lynch's films that goes beyond cinema and visual art to explore how Lynch's work engages with literary and musical works that have shaped the American imagination. As much as Lynch stands as a singular artistic voice, his work arises from and taps into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that illuminates not only his approach to creativity but also the way works interact with each other in an age of mass media. From children's literature to teen tragedy ballads, Nathanael West and Cormac McCarthy to folk music and mixtapes, David Lynch's American Dreamscape investigates the cultural frequencies Lynch's films tune into and positions Lynch's work as a conduit for American popular culture, a medium or channel through which the subconscious of American life finds its way into full view.

The book expands upon this approach by discussing how artists such as David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey graft Lynch's affiliative, cinematic sensibility onto their own projects. Reading their work as intertextual engagements with Lynch's films further illustrates the versatile interactions among creators and audiences to generate more works, readers, and readings.

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Samuel Jay Keyser, "Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts" (MIT Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures, extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists' refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril.

In Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts (MIT Press, 2025), Samuel Jay Keyser explores in detail the way repetition works in poetry, music, and painting. He argues, for example, that the same cognitive function underlies both how poets write rhyme in metrical verse and the way songwriters like Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (“Satin Doll”) and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (“My Funny Valentine”) construct their iconic melodies. Furthermore, the repetition found in these tunes can also be found in such classical compositions as Mozart's Rondo alla Turca and his German Dances, as well as in galant music in general.
The author also looks at repetition in paintings like Gustave Caillebotte's Rainy Day in Paris, Andy Warhol’s Campbell's Soup Cans, and Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings. Finally, the photography of Lee Friedlander, Roni Horn, and Osmond Giglia—Giglia's Girls in the Windows is one of the highest-grossing photographs in history—are all shown to be built on repetition in the form of visual rhyme.
The book ends with a cognitive conjecture on why repetition has been so prominent in the arts from the Homeric epics through Duke Ellington and beyond. Artists have exploited repetition throughout the ages. The reason why is straightforward: the brain finds the detection of repetition innately pleasurable. Play It Again, Sam offers experimental evidence to support this claim.

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John Lee Hooker Jr., "From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction, and Redemption (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) is powerful memoir of redemption from the son of blues legend John Lee Hooker.

Born in Detroit and exposed to the music world from an early age, John Lee Hooker Jr. began singing as a featured attraction in his father's shows as a teenager. His father was a sharecropper's son who became known for hit songs like "Boogie Chillin," "I'm in the Mood," and "Boom Boom," and in 1972, he and his father performed live and recorded an album in Soledad Prison. Junior seemed to have a golden ticket to a successful music career as a child, but trouble brewed as his father's marriage was in trouble and ripped apart the family.
Drug addiction and a series of related crimes, including as a con player, landed Junior in and out of jails & prisons for several decades. An early brush with the law led to a sentence at Synanon, the infamous drug rehabilitation program turned religious cult. Later arrests resulted in time served in prisons including at Soledad, San Quentin, and Avenal.
Shot, stabbed, and convicted multiple times, Junior was at his lowest point doing time at a Santa Rita jail, but it was at that moment that he found the Lord. He emerged clean and sober and began a successful career as a blues singer, earning two Grammy nominations as well as the Bobby "Blue" Bland Lifetime Achievement Award. He eventually devoted himself fully to his faith. Reverend John Lee Hooker Jr. testifies, preaches, and performs gospel music in churches and prisons in both Germany and America.

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Liz Pelly, "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist" (Atria, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Liz Pelly has been closely following the evolution of Spotify and other music streaming services and the effect they have had on the music sector and musicians themselves for several years. Her book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Atria, 2025), paints a depressing picture of how the company has exploited the popularity of playlists to grab a larger share of the money we spend on recorded music. Along with the record companies, Spotify has done this at the expense of musicians themselves and especially those is less popular areas like jazz and classical.

I spoke to Liz at an event in Brussels organised by music venue Ancienne Belgique. Later we were joined by Jozefien Vanharpe of Leuven university, professor of intellectual property law, and Nick Yule of AEPO Artis, an association for collecting societies for performing artists.

This is Simon Taylor with a podcast for New Books Network.

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Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison, "Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katie Milestone & Dr. Simon A. Morrison explores the emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onwards. It traces the rhythmic journey of dance music, following the pulse as it bounced between Europe, North America and the Caribbean. Music, dance styles and nightclub spaces are not created in isolation; they are shaped by collective influences and shared experiences. This book uncovers the interconnected story of dance music, taking in hotspots such as New York, Detroit, London, Manchester, Chicago, Düsseldorf and Ibiza. Transatlantic Drift offers an engaging exploration of how people have come together to share melodies and rhythms, forming a global conversation through electronic music.

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Ford to City: Drop Dead

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 May 2025 19:00:00 +0000

On October 30, 1975, the New York Daily News printed the most famous headline in its history: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The previous day, President Gerald Ford had delivered a speech at the National Press Club in Washington on the looming bankruptcy of New York City. In the speech, Ford publicly denied the near-bankrupt New York City a federal bailout. The next morning, the streets of Manhattan were littered with the incendiary headline.

It has been fifty years since the publication of the headline, which presents an opportunity to reconsider this historical period. In this special edition episode, host Ryan Purcell talks with Benjamin Holtzman, Assistant Professor of History at Lehman College (CUNY), about the soundtracks behind New York’s fiscal crisis. Holtzman is the author of The Long Crisis: New York and the Path to Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2023), a volume that returns to this turbulent period to explore the origins and implications of the diminished faith in government as capable of solving public problems. In the wake of the fiscal crisis of 1975, Holtzman argues, local people and officials rebuilt the city from the ground up, creating a system that would both exacerbate old racial and economic inequalities and produce new ones that continue to shape metropolitan areas today.

Contact Soundscapes NYC Here

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Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze, "Electronic Body Music" (Mionaetti, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Mixing the spirit and energy of punk with synths. electronic body music (or EBM) took off in the early 80s in Germany, Belgium, and the UK – with bands like DAF, Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb.

In their new book - Electronic Body Music (published by Mionaetti) - Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze chronicle how this hybrid of heavy beats and basslines, shouted vocals, and militaristic imagery developed. They talked to me in late April at a live event at Tropicall Records in Brussels. I'm Simon Taylor and this is a podcast for the New Books Network.

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Alexandra Birch, "Hitler’s Twilight of the Gods: Music and the Orchestration of War and Genocide in Europe" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Music was an integral part of statecraft and identity formation in the Third Reich. Structured thematically and semiotically around the Wagnerian tetralogy of the Ring cycle, Hitler’s Twilight of the Gods: Music and the Orchestration of War and Genocide in Europe (U Toronto Press, 2025) provides a sonic read of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Alexandra Birch sheds light on the specific type of music promoted under Nazism, linked to larger Teutonic mythologies and histories espoused in rhetoric and personal styling. The book explores the musical fixation of the command as it was extended to the ordinary troops of the Wehrmacht and SS in instances of musical sadism and destruction during the Holocaust. It reveals how, in constructing what was "German," this process also intentionally fashioned a subaltern other with an assigned set of music and aesthetics.

The book draws on analysis of testimony and perpetrator documents to reveal the execution of this binary identity and the inclusion of music even in extreme genocidal conditions. From drinking games in the interwar period, to musical sadism in the Holocaust, to the final delusions of the command in collapse, Hitler's Twilight of the Gods illuminates how music was a component of camaraderie, identity, masculinity, and warfare.

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Maurice Jackson, "Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the Nation's Capital, music and sports have played a central role in the lives of African Americans, often serving as a barometer of social conflict and social progress―for sports clubs and ball games, jam sessions and concerts, offered entertainment, enlightenment, and encouragement. At times, they have also offered a means of escape from the harsh realities of everyday life.

Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience (Georgetown UP, 2025) tells the story of these musicians and athletes who have used their skills and their determination to achieve success in the face of discrimination. Jackson begins with pioneers such as James Reese Europe, who formed the first musicians' union and fought as a member of the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I, and ends with giants of the twentieth century, such as Duke Ellington and Georgetown University basketball coaching legend John Thompson Jr.

Readers interested in the history of Washington, DC, the civil rights movement, racial justice, music, and sports will draw important lessons from these stories of the Black men and women who found in sports and music spaces to combat racial prejudice and bring people in the District of Columbia together.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

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Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been written on the interaction of missionaries with local culture.

Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago (U California Press, 2025) represents the first attempt to concentrate on the musical dimension of missionary activities in Indonesia. In fourteen essays, a group of distinguished scholars show the complexity of the topic: while some missionaries did important scholarship on local music, making recordings and attempting to use local music in services, others tried to suppress whatever they found. Many were collaborating closely with anthropologists who admitted freely that they could not have done their work without them. And both parties brought colonial biases into their work. By grappling with these realities and records, this book is a collective effort to decolonize the project of making music histories.

Byung Ho Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Ecumenics program at Princeton Theological Seminary, concentrating in World Christianity and history of religions. His research focuses on the indigenous expressions of Christianities found in Southeast Asia, particularly Christianity that is practiced in the Muslim-dominant archipelagic nation of Indonesia. More broadly, he is interested in history and the anthropology of Christianity, complexities of religious conversion and social identity, inter-religious dialogue, ecumenism, and World Christianity.

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Mark Doyle, "John Cale's Paris 1919" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate hearings and the oil crisis, and Cale was at a crossroads. The white-hot rage of his Velvet Underground days was nearly spent; now he was living in Los Angeles, working for a record company and making music when time allowed. He needed to lay to rest some ghosts, but he couldn't do that without scaring up others. Paris 1919 was the result.

In John Cale’s Paris 1919 (Bloomsbury, 2025), Mark Doyle hunts down the ghosts haunting Cale's most enduring solo album. There are the ghosts of New York - of the Velvets, Nico, and Warhol - that he smuggled into Los Angeles in his luggage. There is the ghost of Dylan Thomas, a fellow Welshman who haunts not just Paris 1919 but much of Cale's life and art. There are the ghosts of history, of a failed peace and the artists who sought the truth in dreams. And there are the ghosts of Christmas, surprising visitors who bring a nostalgic warmth and a touch of wintry dread. With erudition and wit, Doyle offers new ways to listen to an old album whose mysteries will never fully be resolved.

Mark Doyle is a Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. He is the author of The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached (2020), Communal Violence in the British Empire (Bloomsbury 2016), and Fighting Like the Devil for the Sake of God (2009).

Mark Doyle on Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, Fall 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Bluesky.

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Warren Zanes: Rockstar Biographer

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Warren Zanes is a “rockstar biographer” in more ways than one: he has experienced life as a rockstar, a biographer, and a biographer of rockstars. When Mack first met Warren in New Orleans sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, Zanes was then emerging from the wreckage of meteoric success. He’d been the teenage guitarist in critically acclaimed band The Del Fuegos, who briefly broke into the national popular consciousness—and then just plain broke up. But in the years since, Zanes remade himself into one of our most erudite and entertaining public scholars of popular music. Among other things, he’s been Vice President of Education and Public Programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a consulting producer on the Oscar-winning film Twenty Feet from Stardom, a producer on the Grammy-nominated PBS/Soundbreaking series, and he conducted interviews for Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary. All while keeping up a solo recording career with collaborators such as the Dust Brothers.

Warren’s books include the first volume in the celebrated 33 1/3 Series, Dusty in Memphis; Petty: The Biography and Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records. His latest book is called Deliver Me from Nowhere. On its face, it’s a book about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s classic lo-fi album Nebraska. But it’s also about sound technology, musicianship teetering in a moment between the analog and digital eras, what it means to be in a band, and the relationship between the four-track cassette recorder and social alienation in Reagan era.

In this interview, Warren talks about his journey, the recent book, his craft as a writer, and—as part of our mini-theme this season on audiobooks—the process of narrating his own audiobooks and why he does so.

And for our Patrons we’ll have Warren’s What’s Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower.

Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan

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Julie Malnig, "Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Dancing Black, Dancing White: Rock 'n' Roll, Race, and Youth Culture of the 1950s and Early 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a new look at the highly popular phenomenon of the televised teen dance program. These teen shows were incubators of new styles of social and popular dance and both reflected and shaped pressing social issues of the day. Often referred to as "dance parties," the televised teen dance shows helped cultivate a nascent youth culture in the post-World War II era. The youth culture depicted on the shows, however, was primarily white. Black teenagers certainly had a youth culture of their own, but the injustice was glaring: Black culture was not always in evident display on the airwaves, as television, like the nation at large, was deeply segregated and appealed to a primarily white, homogenous audience.

The crux of the book, then, is twofold: to explore how social and popular dance styles were created and disseminated within the new technology of television and to investigate how the shows both reflected and re-affirmed the racial politics and attitudes of the time. The story of televised teen dance told here is about Black and white teenagers wanting to dance to rock 'n' roll music despite the barriers placed on their ability to do so. It is also a story that fuses issues of race, morality, and sexuality. Dancing Black, Dancing White weaves together these elements to tell two stories: that of the different experiences of Black and white adolescents and their desires to have a space of their own where they could be seen, heard, appreciated, and understood.

Julie Malnig is Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

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Liz William, "Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain" (Reaktion, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklore and customs from ancient Britain to the present day. From Bonfire Night to Wassail, Morris dancing, Mari Lwyd and Twelfth Night, along with events like street football and the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, Liz Williams reveals the roots and roles of violence, mockery, protest and public shaming. She also looks at alternative culture and modern protests, such as the Battle of the Beanfield and the Stonehenge Free Festival, as well as interaction between racism and traditions involving blackface, alongside the emergence of all-female Morris sides.This engaging book offers an entertaining and revealing look at British folklore and culture.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Koen Galle, "Fuse, Thirty Years of Making Noise" (AfterClub, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In 1994, Fuse opened its doors on the Rue Blaes in downtown Brussels.

From early on, this nightclub attracted Detroit techno pioneers Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, and Juan Atkins and cutting-edge French innovators like Laurent Garnier and Daft Punk.

Over time, Fuse became one of the most important clubs on the European techno scene and, to celebrate its 30th birthday last year, Koen Galle published Fuse: 30yrs Of Making Noise (AfterClub, 2024).

In this recording of a live event, Galle talks to Simon Taylor about the glory days of Fuse and what has made it one of the longest-surviving clubs in Europe – outlasting and predating more famous venues like Trezor and Bergheim in Berlin.

Formerly a DJ, Koen Galle founded publishing house AfterClub to uncover stories about Belgium's rich electronic music culture and nightlife.

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Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth A. Wells, "The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.

Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Simon Morrison, "Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer" (Yale UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage.

In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated author Simon Morrison re-creates Tchaikovsky's complex world. His life and art were framed by Russian national ambition, and his work was the emanation of an imperial subject: kaleidoscopic, capacious, cosmopolitan, decentred.

Morrison reexamines the relationship between Tchaikovsky's music, personal life, and politics; his support of Tsars Alexander II and III; and his engagement with the cultures of the imperial margins, in Ukraine, Poland, and the Caucasus. Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer (Yale UP, 2024) unsettles everything we thought we knew--and gives us a vivid new appreciation of Russia's most popular composer.

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Radha Kapuria and Vebhuti Duggal, "Punjab Sounds: In and Beyond the Region" (Routledge, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Punjab Sounds (Routledge, 2024) nuances our understanding of the region's imbrications with sound. It argues that rather than being territorially bounded, the region only emerges in 'regioning', i.e., in words, gestures, objects, and techniques that do the region. Regioning sound reveals the relationship between sound and the region in three interlinked ways: in doing, knowing, and feeling the region through sound.

The volume covers several musical genres of the Punjab region, including within its geographical remit the Punjabi diaspora and east and west Punjab. It also provides new understandings of the role that ephemeral cultural expressions, especially music and sound, play in the formulation of Punjabi identity. Featuring contributions from scholars across North America, South Asia, Europe, and the UK, it brings together diverse perspectives. The chapters use a range of different methods, ranging from computational analysis and ethnography to close textual analysis, demonstrating some of the ways in which research on music and sound can be carried out.

The chapters will be relevant for anyone working on Punjab's music, including the Punjabi diaspora, music, and sound in the Global South. Moreover, it will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the following areas: ethnomusicology, cultural studies, film studies, music studies, South Asian studies, Punjab studies, history, and sound studies, among others.

Radha Kapuria is Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Durham University, UK, and the author of Music in Colonial Punjab: Courtesans, Bards, and Connoisseurs, 1800–1947.

Vebhuti Duggal is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi, and Associate Editor of the journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies.

Khadeeja Amenda is PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies in Asia programme at the Department of Communication and New Media, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

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Lauren E. Osborne, "Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition" (Routledge, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Hearing Islam: The Sounds of a Global Religious Tradition, Lauren Osborne delves into the sonic dimensions of Islam, exploring how the tradition’s rich soundscape offers deep insights into culture, identity, and spirituality. In this innovative work, Osborne shifts the focus from the written word to the auditory, asking, "What can we learn about Islam when we enter through its sounds, instead of books?" This approach provides a unique lens through which to study the intersections of modernity, belonging, and pluralism in Muslim-majority cultures.

The book explores the centrality of sound within Islam, from the recitation of the Qur’an to the daily practices of prayer, the call to prayer (adhaan), and the sonic expressions found in Islamic chantings, nasheeds, qawwalis, and even contemporary genres like hip-hop. Osborne also tackles the underexplored intersection of deafness and Islam, shedding light on how the experience of deafness intersects with a traditionally "hearing" religion.

In today’s interview, Osborne discusses the core themes of the book, including the debates around music’s role in Islam, the relationship between Sufism and music, and the significant cultural conversations surrounding hip-hop’s place within the Islamic world. This book is an essential resource for students of Islam, religious studies, world music, and anyone interested in the profound role of sound in shaping human experiences across diverse cultures.

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John Cage: Echoes of the Anechoic

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we explore the mythology around John Cage’s visit to the anechoic chamber. The chamber was designed to completely eliminate echoes. Ironically, the tale of Cage’s experience in that space has echoed through history, affecting our understanding of silence, sound, and the self. But what do we really know about what happened there? And what could we ever know about such an event? In this audio essay, based on a piece that first appeared in the Australian Humanities Review, Mack Hagood explores the relationship between sound, self, and meaning-making. To use a term Cage loved, the truth is indeterminate.

For our Patreon members we have bonus content: Mack’s “What’s Good” segment. Join at patreon.com/phantompower.

Writing and media content featured in this episode:

Mack’s essay “Cage’s Echoes of the Anechoic,” in AHR Issue 70 (2022).
Nam June Paik’s 1973 video Global Groove
John Cage’s 1959 album with David Tudor, Indeterminacy
John Cage’s book Silence (Wesleyan, 1961).
The video Can Silence Actually Drive you Crazy by Veritasium
Terry Gross’s 2014 Fresh Air interview with Trevor Cox
The album Naxi Live by Jang San and the Dayan Naxi orchestra
Shani Diluka’s performance of “Glassworks: Opening” by Philip Glass
Amit Pinchevsky’s book Echo (MIT, 2022)
Helen Rees’ book Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China (Oxford, 2011)

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood.

Original music and sound design by Mack Hagood.

Special thanks to Monique Rooney and Australian Humanities Review

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Ariane Sherine, "The Real Sinéad O'Connor" (White Owl, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social justice.

O'Connor achieved worldwide success as an angel-voiced, shaven-headed Irish singer of heartfelt songs, but she was far more than just a pop star - she was also an activist and a survivor. Reeling from a troubled childhood at the hands of her violent mother, she spent 18 months living in a former Magdalene Laundry due to her truancy and shoplifting, and suffered her mother's death in a car crash - all by the age of 18.

Her pain, anger and compassion would turn her into one of the world's greatest protest singers and activists. She would release ten studio albums during her 36-year music career - the second of which (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got) would reach number 1 across the world and earn her ten million pounds, half of which she gave to charity. During this time, she would also advocate for survivors of child abuse and racism, and stand up for the LGBT community and women's reproductive rights.

Most notably, she would tear up a picture of Pope John Paul II during an episode of Saturday Night Live in order to protest at child sex abuse within the Catholic church, creating headlines around the world and derailing her career.

The Real Sinéad O'Connor (White Owl, 2024) features six exclusive interviews with friends and peers who knew her, this is the true story of her extraordinary and courageous journey.

Ariane Sherine’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Bluesky.

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Richard Heppner, "Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars" (SUNY Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York—although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long before the 1969 Woodstock festival put the town on the map, it had been a center for artists and free thinkers who found refuge in its rural setting. Longtime citizens were often shocked by the arrival of these newcomers who brought new values and attitudes to their once-isolated village. From the transformative arrival of artists in the early twentieth century to the influx of musicians and young people in the 1960s, Woodstockers worked and struggled to balance everyday life in a small, rural community with the attention and notoriety the outside world brought to it.

Presented chronologically, Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars (SUNY Press, 2024) examines the nature of change within Woodstock's uncommon story as it emerges from the Great Depression, confronts the realty of World War II, moves through the 1950s and into an unimagined and unintended future with the arrival of the Sixties through today. At its core, this is a story of how Woodstock's cultural and political institutions, its citizens, and its physical landscape met the ever-changing challenges of changing times. It is a story of community, resilience, conflict, and transition into a world its early settlers could not have imagined.

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Elizabeth T. Craft, "Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

George M. Cohan was one of those rare Broadway figures who was a composer, lyricist, playwright, performer, director, theater owner, and star actor. He could, quite literally, do it all. In his day, he was famous as the "Yankee Doodle Boy" from his hit song and as the "Man Who Owned Broadway" from his musical of the same name. Cohan's songs and shows captured the spirit of an era when staggering social change gave new urgency to efforts to define Americanism.

Elizabeth Craft’s Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage (Oxford University Press, 2024) is not a conventional biography. Each chapter explores a different aspect of his life and career including Cohan’s approach to American nationalism, Irish American identity, celebrity, and the entertainment business along with defining what made Cohan’s shows unique. Craft finds songs and shows that serve as exemplars for each theme she highlights. The book ends with an examination of the 1942 biopic on Cohan and his enduring legacy. Yankee Doodle Dandy offers not only a fuller understanding of Cohan’s shows and career, but also new perspectives on fundamental debates about American identity and the performing arts in the early twentieth-century United States.

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Simona Valeriani, "The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences" (Brepols, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was originally intended to be a ‘Central Hall of Arts and Sciences’. Prince Albert’s overarching vision was to promote technological and industrial progress to a wider audience, and in so doing increase its cultural and economic reach.

Lighting, ventilation, fireproofing, ‘ascending rooms’, cements, acoustics, the organ, the record-breaking iron dome, and the organisation of internal spaces were all attempts to attain progress - and subject to intense public scrutiny. From iron structures to terracotta, from the education of women to the abolition of slavery, in the making of the Royal Albert Hall scientific knowledge and socio-cultural reform were intertwined.

This book shows, for the first time, how the Royal Albert Hall’s building was itself a crucible for innovation. Illustrious techniques from antiquity were reimagined for the new mechanical age, placing the building at the heart of a process of collecting, describing, and systematising arts and practices. At the same time, the Royal Albert Hall was conceived as a ‘manifesto’ of what the Victorians thought Britain ought to be, at a crucial moment of its socio-economic history: a symbolic cultural hub for the Empire’s metropole.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Paul Lisicky, "Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell" (HarperOne, 2025)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Paul Lisicky remembers when he first heard Joni Mitchell on the radio, and when he found one of her records in a bin at Korvettes. He was inspired by her musicality, her poetry, and her willingness to defy musical conventions. Nearly every one of her songs spoke to him in some way. As a budding songwriter whose music was widely performed in churches around the country, he was motivated by her superb tunings, phrasing, and melodies. Later, he focused more on lyrics and prose, hers and his own, eventually earning a master’s in creative fiction and working in the world of professional writing. He continued to follow Joni’s career and never got tired of her music, which helped him navigate the ups and downs of his life. Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell (HarperOne, 2025) is a beautiful memoir about the struggle of a gay writer intertwined with the life and career of the magnificent Joni Mitchell.

Paul Lisicky grew up in southern New Jersey but has lived most of his adult life in Massachusetts and New York City. He earned bachelor's and master’s degrees in English from Rutgers University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1990). He authored seven books, including Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, The Burning House, Famous Builder, Later, The Narrow Door, and Lawn Boy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, The Cut, Fence, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Tin House, and in many other magazines and anthologies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently a professor of English in the Creative Writing MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, where he is the editor of StoryQuarterly. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and is passionate about music, animals, and travel.

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Sonic AI

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which provides AI-created custom voices for people with vocal disabilities. Hussein Boon contemplates the future of AI in music via some very short and thought-provoking fiction tales. And we start off the show with Mack reflecting on how hard the post-shutdown adjustment has been for many of us and how that might be feeding into the current AI hype.

For our Patreon members we have “What’s Good” recommendations from Steph and Hussein on what to read, listen to, and do. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower.

About our guests:

Steph Ceraso is Associate Professor of Digital Writing & Rhetoric in the English Department at the University of Virginia. She’s one of Mack’s go-to folks when trying to figure out how to use audio production in the classroom as a form of student composition. Steph’s research and teaching interests include multimodal composition, sound studies, pedagogy, digital rhetoric, disability studies, sensory rhetorics, music, and pop culture.

Hussein Boon is Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, session musician, composer, modular synth researcher, and AI researcher. He also has a vibrant YouTube presence with tutorials on things like Ableton Live production.

Pieces featured in this episode:

“Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity” by Steph Ceraso in Sounding Out (2022).

“In the Future” by Hussein Boon in Riffs (2022).

Mack also mentioned in his rant:

“Embodied meaning in a neural theory of language” by Jerome Feldman and Srinivas Narayanan (2003).

“The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” by George Lakoff (1992).

Today’s show was produced and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami

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Tiziano Manca, "Before Sound: Re-Composing Material, Time, and Bodies in Music" (Transcript Verlag, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Before Sound: Re-Composing Material, Time, and Bodies in Music (Transcript Verlag, 2023), composer Tiziano Manca investigates the premises for and consequences of a major change in his compositional practice: this change emphasizes the temporality of sound and, more recently, the relationship between sounding body and musician. It calls into question the traditional conception of composition and its relation to sound material. Accordingly, Manca examines the theoretical and aesthetic reasons for this shift by interweaving aesthetic reflection on his work with historical research on the notion of musical material and the theory of sound production.

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The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham brings us “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology.

We first came across Maya’s work last year as part of The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, an online initiative from Ms. magazine honoring the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth in 1822. It’s a remarkable package that adds many dimensions of understanding of the underground railroad conductor and feminist icon: Her experience of disability due to a blow to the head by a white overseer; her creation of a home for the aged; her love of the natural world; and much more. And to us, the richest of these essays was Maya’s the “Sound World of Harriet Tubman,” which used field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. The piece included a Spotify playlist so you could listen as you read.

Today, we’re thrilled to bring you what we hope will be an even more immersive experience: Maya Cunningham reading her essay, and thanks to the editing and mixing skills of Phantom Power producer Ravi Krishnaswami, her field recordings and playlist selections are mixed into the story.

And just a quick note, you’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. If you want to learn more about this history, a great place to start is a book edited by two professors Mack studied with at Indiana University, Drs. Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby. It’s called African American Music: An Introduction.

And today, we share our Patrons-only segment, “What’s Good,” in our main feed. Maya will recommend something good to read, listen to, and do.

Today’s musical selections and soundscapes are by Maya Cunningham. The show was mixed and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami. The Harriet Tubman image was created by Maddie Haynes.

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Joseph Straus, "Cultural Narratives of Old Age in the Lives, Work, and Reception of Old Musicians" (Routledge, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Cultural Narratives of Old Age in the Lives, Work, and Reception of Old Musicians (Routledge, 2024) discusses the creative work of old musicians—composers, performers, listeners, and scholars—and how those forms of music- making are received and understood. Joseph Straus argues that composing oldly, performing oldly, and listening oldly are distinctive and valuable ways of making music—a difference, not a deficit; to be celebrated, not ignored or condemned. This book follows Age Studies in seeing old age through a cultural lens, as something created and understood in culture. Straus’ text seeks to identify the ways that old musicians (composers, performers, listeners, and scholars) accept, resist, adapt, and transform the cultural scripts for the performance of old age. Musicking oldly (making music in old age) often represents an attempt to rewrite ageist cultural scripts and to find ways of flourishing musically in a largely hostile landscape.

Joseph Straus is Distinguished Professor of Music at the City University of New York Graduate Center, specializing in music since 1900. He has written technical music-theoretical articles, analytical studies of music by a variety of modernist composers, and, more recently, a series of articles and books that engage disability as a cultural practice. You can also listen to his episodes on SMT-POD in which he further discusses musicking in old age.

Emily Ruth Allen is an Instructor in Music History and Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina.

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Hildegard Westerkamp: A Life in Soundscape Composition

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Today we speak to Hildegard Westerkamp, the pioneering composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. The centerpiece of all of her work is a close attention to the sonic environment and its relation to culture. We will listen to excerpts of six soundscape compositions made between 1975 and 2005, all of which reward the close listener–conceptually and aesthetically–with a deeper relationship to the sonic environment.

Mack Hagood interviewed Westerkamp shortly after the death of R. Murray Schafer in late 2021. Westerkamp worked closely with Schafer in the early 1970s and she graciously agreed to talk about him despite the grief being fresh. They also discussed her own amazing career and that’s the part of the tape we are sharing in this episode. They talk about her formative years as a 20-something working with Schafer and his World Soundscape Project and then we jump into a number of her compositions, ending with the piece “Breaking News” from 2012.

Incredibly, she said Mack was the first person to ever ask her about that piece, even though it is one of her favorites. And sure enough, not long after this interview she released a retrospective album on Earsay Music called Breaking News, which features that piece and a number of others created between 1988 and 2012.

For our Patreon members we have the full, unedited interview for those who want to hear all her thoughts on R. Murray Schafer and her career. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower.

And a quick correction: Hildegard wanted me to clarify that the sentence “When there is no sound, hearing is most alert,” which she uses in “Whisper Study,” is a quote from the Indian mystic Kirphal Singh in his book Naam (or Word).

Pieces featured in this episode:

“Gently Penetrating beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place” (1997)

“Whisper Study” (1975)

“Fantasie for Horns” (1978)

“A Walk through the City” (1981)

“Für Dich – For You” (2005)

“Breaking News” (2002)

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood.

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Katie Beisel Hollenbach, "The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Katie Beisel Hollenbach reconsiders the story of American popular music, celebrity following, and fan behavior during World War II through close examination of “bobbysoxers.” Preserved in popular memory as primarily white, hysterical, teen girl devotees of Frank Sinatra clad in bobby socks and saddle shoes, these girls were accused of displaying inappropriate behavior and priorities in their obsessive pursuit of a crooning celebrity at a time of international crisis. Dr. Beisel Hollenbach peels back the stereotypes of girlhood idol adoration by documenting the intimate practices of wartime Sinatra fan clubs, revealing a new side of this familiar story in American history through the perspective of the bobbysoxer.

In World War II America, fan clubs and organizations like Teen Canteens offered a haven for teenage girls to celebrate their enjoyment of popular culture while cultivating relationships with each other through media icons and the entertainment industry. Many of these organizations attempted to encourage diverse memberships, influenced in part by Frank Sinatra's public work on racial and religious tolerance, and by Sinatra's own identity as an Italian American. Away from the critical public eye, these communities offered girls a place to safely explore and discuss issues including civil rights, politics, the war, patriotism, internationalism, and professional development in the context of their shared Sinatra fandom. With these broader social and political complexities in mind, The Business of Bobbysoxers shines a light on musical fan communities that provided teenage girls with peer groups at a critical moment of personal and historical change, allowing them to creatively express their desires and imagine their futures as American women together.

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Jeff Gomez, "There Was No Alternative: Generation X, AIDS, and the Making of a Classic Nineties Record" (McFarland, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Grunge. Flannel. Generation X. In 1993, Seattle was the capital of the world, Nirvana was king, and slackers were everywhere. When the Red Hot organization, a group of activists dedicated to raising money and awareness of AIDS, released their third compilation CD featuring the biggest bands of the era--Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, The Breeders, Nirvana and more it quickly became the touchstone of a generation. Rolling Stone called No Alternative a "jaw-dropping compilation of musical gems."

This book takes a look back at what happened to the bands involved with No Alternative. It includes new interviews with the musicians and others behind the record, and chronicles the downfall of an industry, the taming of a devastating illness, and the arrival of another global pandemic. It's about growing up, saying goodbye, and proving once more that you can't go home again (even if that's where you left all of your CDs).

Jeff Gomez has been writing about the worlds of Generation X and alternative music for over 25 years and is the author of several books including Zeppelin Over Dayton: Guided By Voices Album By Album and Math Rock.

Jeff Gomez’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter and Bluesky.

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Samantha Ege, "South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene by Samantha Ege (University of Illinois Press, 2014) is a collective biography of a group of Black women living in Chicago who were at the center of the support, promotion, and circulation of classical music by Black composers—often specifically Black women composers—in the years between the World Wars. Women like Nora Holt, Maud Roberts George, Estella Conway Bonds, and her daughter Margaret Bonds founded and led institutions, raised money, wrote music criticism, composed music, played in and arranged concerts, opened their homes to salons and their wallets to support concerts and even individuals. This “behind the scenes” book, shows how these Race Women made Chicago’s South Side into a center of Black classical music making.

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Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 6 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Our book is: Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra (UNC Press, 2025), by Ericka Verba, which explores the life of Chilean musician and artist Violeta Parra (1917–1967). Parra is an inspiration to generations of artists and activists across the globe. Her music is synonymous with resistance, and it animated both the Chilean folk revival and the protest music movement Nueva Canción (New Song). Her renowned song "Gracias a la vida" has been covered countless times, including by Joan Baez, Mercedes Sosa, and Kacey Musgraves. A self-taught visual artist, Parra was the first Latin American to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in the Louvre. In this remarkable biography, Dr. Ericka Verba traces Parra's radical life and multifaceted artistic trajectory across Latin America and Europe and on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Drawing on decades of research, Dr. Verba paints a vivid and nuanced picture of Parra's life. From her modest beginnings in southern Chile to her untimely death, Parra was an exceptionally complex and talented woman who exposed social injustice in Latin America to the world through her powerful and poignant songwriting. This examination of her creative, political, and personal life, flaws and all, illuminates the depth and agency of Parra's journey as she invented and reinvented herself in her struggle to be recognized as an artist on her own terms.

CW: suicide

Our guest is: Dr. Ericka Verba, who is Director and Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She is a founding member of SCALAS (Southern California Association of Latin American Studies) and the recipient of the E. Bradford Burns Award for service to the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies. She is the author of the book Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Neil Fox, "Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2024), Dr. Neil Fox considers a broad range of music documentaries, delving into their cinematic style, political undertones, racial dynamics, and gender representations, in order to assess their role in the cultivation of myth.

Combining historical and critical analyses, and drawing on film and music criticism, Fox examines renowned music films such as A Hard Day's Night (1964), Dig! (2004), and Amazing Grace (2006), critically lauded works like Milford Graves Full Mantis (2018) and Mistaken for Strangers (2013), and lesser-studied films including Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959) and Ornette: Made in America (1985). In doing so, he offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, situating these films within their wider cultural contexts and highlighting their formal and thematic innovations.

Discussions in the book span topics from concert filmmaking to music production, the music industry, touring, and filmic representations of authenticity and truth. Overall, Music Films traces the evolution of the genre, highlighting its cultural significance and connection to broader societal phenomena.

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Robert Dayton, "Cold Glitter: The Untold Story of Canadian Glam" (Feral House, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Cold Glitter: The Untold Story of Canadian Glam (Feral House, 2025) uncovers a forgotten yet fascinating chapter on glam rock music and culture...from Canada. Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist Robert Dayton taps his Canadian roots to reveal mind-blowing stories of musicians fighting to be heard. It's a universal story of determined creators striving to make their voices heard. Dayton has spent years researching and interviewing these ground-breaking musicians trapped by geography, colonial mindsets, and the cultural behemoth that is the United States. There's no denying that glam rock was marginalized in Canada. In fact, RCA almost didn't release the 1973 Bowie-produced Lou Reed album "Transformer" in Canada because they didn't see a market for it.

Of course, they were wrong! Young Canadians, like youth around the world, were rebelling against the oppressive conservative mainstream culture and saw themselves in the anything-goes freedom of glam rock. Cold Glitter gets at the reasons why: nature vs. artifice, old world values vs. new freedoms, and how transgressive actions--including gender play--shook the Canadian art establishment to its core. Filled with stories from musicians about what they did to build a career and fight against the old guard controlling the airwaves and stages. Readers everywhere will find solidarity with the all-too-familiar story of artists who were attacked for appearing outrageous and daring to be different. Within the struggle to be fabulous are mind-blowing anecdotes of fun and mayhem. Readers will be taken back to the seventies as they meet the unknown and infamous musicians and artists who dared to be glamorous. Familiar names like magician Doug Henning, Vancouver band Sweeney Todd and their lead singer and one-hit-wonder, Nik Gilder, and his replacement, Bryan Adams, to underground heroes like the Hollywood Brats to hundreds of musicians who put away their mascara and left their glamorous wild days behind. Cold Glitter is filled with rare (and sometimes outrageous) images throughout and additional chapters on glam fashion, film, and comedy in Canada.

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Monica A. Hershberger, "Women in American Operas of The 1950s: Undoing Gendered Archetypes" (U Rochester Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The 1950s looks placid from the outside, but underneath that calm post-war exterior roiled the intellectual and activist beginnings of the political movements that tore through the 1960s and 1970s. In Women in American Operas of the 1950s: Undoing Gendered Archetypes (University of Rochester Press, 2023), Monica A. Hershberger considers the main female characters in four operas written in the 1950s: The Ballad of Baby Doe, Lizzie Borden, The Tender Land, and Susannah. For each work, Hershberger analyzes the historical context and musical treatment of these four characters, who are all stereotyped as the virgin or the whore, or sometimes even both. In an unusual and productive analytical choice, Hershberger also includes the interpretive decisions and perspectives of the sopranos who originated or popularized these four roles, rather than focusing exclusively on the scores and the views of the male creative teams that wrote the works. Several of the operas include instances of emotional abuse as well as gendered and sexual violence that have long been ignored or downplayed by opera scholars, but Hershberger does not shy away from these disturbing subjects in the book.

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Lily E. Hirsch, "Taking Funny Music Seriously" (Indiana UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Take funny music seriously! Though often dismissed as silly or derivative, funny music, Lily E. Hirsch argues, is incredibly creative and dynamic, serving multiple aims from the celebratory to the rebellious, the entertaining to the mentally uplifting.

Music can be a rich site for humor, with so many opportunities that are ripe for a comedic left turn. Taking Funny Music Seriously (Indiana UP, 2024) includes original interviews with some of the best musical humorists, such as Tom Lehrer, "the J. D. Salinger of musical satire"; Peter Schickele, who performed as the invented composer P. D. Q. Bach, the supposed lost son of the great J. S. Bach; Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome of the funny music duo Garfunkel and Oates; comedic film composer Theodore Shapiro; Too Slim of the country group Riders in the Sky; and musical comedian Jessica McKenna, from the podcast Off Book, part of a long line of "funny girls." With their help, Taking Funny Music Seriously examines comedy from a variety of genres and musical contexts--from bad singing to rap, classical music to country, Broadway music to film music, and even love songs and songs about death.

In its coverage of comedic musical media, Taking Funny Music Seriously is an accessible and lively look at funny music. It offers us a chance to appreciate more fully the joke in music and the benefits of getting that joke--especially in times of crisis--including comfort, catharsis, and connection.

Lily E. Hirsch is a musicologist and author most recently of Can't Stop the Grrrls: Confronting Sexist Labels in Music from Ariana Grande to Yoko Ono; Weird Al: Seriously; and Insulting Music: A Lexicon of Insult in Music.

Lily on Twitter and Bluesky.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter and Bluesky.

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In One Ear, Out The Other

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

On today’s show, we address a performer’s nightmare—the nightmare of not being able to hear yourself onstage. My guest is ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday, who takes us behind the scenes of the famed Cirque du Soleil to learn how even Cirque’s world-class musicians struggle with technology when they want to hear themselves.

Building on his international career as a touring sound technician, ethnomusicologist Jacob Danson Faraday researches the working communities and hidden labor of live sound technicians on large-scale touring productions. He is a recent graduate of the PhD program in ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Today Jake takes us behind the scenes of Cirque du Soleil, sharing his dissertation research on how sound engineers and musicians negotiate the power to hear oneself.

Stage monitoring, the technology that allows musicians to hear the performance as they play, is a topic we rarely hear about, but it’s absolutely essential to performers. Faraday suggests that, while new in-ear monitors are marketed as a godsend for performers, they are more of a mixed blessing, “homogenizing listening” and creating new kinds of issues and anxieties for musicians.

Today’s show was edited and mixed by Jacob Danson Faraday, with additional editing by Mack Hagood.

The song “Sail Away” by Colton Benjamin (2017) was obtained from the Free Multitrack Download Library on the Cambridge Music Technology website by Mike Senior, author of the excellent book Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio.

Read the dissertation: Buried in the mix: touring sound technicians, sonic control, and emotional labour on Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo by Jacob Danson Faraday (2021).

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I. Augustus Durham, "Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius (Duke UP, 2023), I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and media from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Drawing on psychoanalysis, affect theory, and black studies, Durham explores the black mother as both a lost object and a found subject often obscured when constituting a cultural legacy of genius across history. He analyzes the works of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Marvin Gaye, Octavia E. Butler, and Kendrick Lamar to show how black cultural practices and aesthetics abstract and reveal the lost mother through performance. Whether attributing Douglass’s intellect to his matrilineage, reading Gaye’s falsetto singing voice as a move to interpolate black female vocality, or examining the women in Ellison’s life who encouraged his aesthetic interests, Durham demonstrates that melancholy becomes the catalyst for genius and genius in turn is a signifier of the maternal. Using psychoanalysis to develop a theory of racial melancholy while “playing” with affect theory to investigate racial aesthetics, Durham theorizes the role of the feminine, especially the black maternal, in the production of black masculinist genius.

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Fela Kuti and the Black Atlantic

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This summer, sound artist and “guerrilla academic” Ben Coleman got in touch to say how much he enjoys Phantom Power. He also suggested we check out another podcast he’s into called Love is the Message.

We’re glad we did! Love is the Message: Music, Dance & Counterculture is a fantastic show from Tim Lawrence and Jeremy Gilbert, both of them authors, academics, DJs and audiophile dance party organisers. I recognized Tim Lawrence’s name from his great book on Arthur Russell. Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London and a prolific author. Tim and Jeremy have been longtime collaborators and when the clubs closed and universities cut faculty hours due to covid, they started podcasting.

The way I’d describe their show is, imagine the amazing college class you never got to take where you learn about the intersections of global dance music and radical politics, from the 1960s to today. They do shows on disco, Motown, reggae, tropicalia, funk, you name it with a strong cultural studies perspective. And I think the episode we’re going to hear today is a perfect example of their approach—it’s ostensibly an episode about Fela Kuti, but it’s also terrific seminar on the Black Atlantic and the political history of Nigeria.

So thanks, Ben, for the recommendation. Thanks, Tim and Jem for sharing the pod with me and doing this episode swap. And thanks everyone for listening. Talk next month!

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Andrew David Field, "Rocking China: Music Scenes in Beijing and Beyond" (Earnshaw Books, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Andrew Field, in his new book Rocking China (Earnshaw Books, 2023), documents one of the most exciting moments in the history of Chinese indie music. Through interviews with key players in these scenes over a period of two decades, Field explores the meanings of rock music in Chinese society as well as the many challenges and obstacles to the development of indie rock scenes in China. Highlights include a journey by rail into the heartlands of China with the hardcore rock band SUBS and legendary “rock godfather” Cui Jian. Along the journey to document the live rock music scenes of Beijing, he discovered an emerging world of musicians, bands, clubs, festivals, promoters, record shop and record label owners that were pushing the envelope of indie music for China and the world. This book takes the reader deep into the world of independent rock music that has been flourishing in urban China since the 2000s.

Andrew Field is an American historian, documentary film producer, and professor at Duke Kunshan University. Based in Shanghai, Field is a scholar of musical history and creative culture in contemporary China, including the role jazz music played in 20th century Shanghai. He is the author of Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist (2014) and Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics (2010), and one of the co-authors of Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (2015).

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, medical anthropology, hope studies, and the anthropology of borders and frontiers. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Johny Brown, "Corpse Flower" (Skill, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From the frontman of Band of Holy Joy, Johny Brown, Corpse Flower (Skill, 2024), is a long-form prose poem that shares Brown's journey through one of the most challenging times in his life. Released as a multimedia project, Corpse Flower includes not only Brown's book but the music and reading that goes along with it. Moving from dark to light and ending in hope and joy, Brown's work shares with readers his world in lyrical verse.

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Awfully Viral

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

It’s summer and we are busy working on episodes for our fourth season. We’ve also rebuilt our website–check out the the fabulous new phantompod.org. There’s other great stuff in store for the podcast, so stay tuned!

But today, I want to share one of my favorite podcasts with you: Will Robin’s Sound Expertise. For those of you into musicology or popular music studies, there’s a great chance you’re already a subscribe. That’s because Will’s show is fantastic and I personally know many music scholars who are devoted fans of this show that features conversations with established and up-and-coming music scholars. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Robin, you might remember that I quoted his New York Times obituary of R. Murray Schafer in our first episode on Schafer. He has written about music for the Times for at least a decade. He’s also an assistant professor of Musicology at the University of Maryland and the author of the book Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music. Sound Expertise will be dropping its third season in the fall.

The episode you are about to hear is one that I love as a media scholar. Will Robin interviews Dr. Paula Harper about her work on viral music videos and taste, specifically that terrible Rebecca Black video “Friday” that’s probably still rattling around in some dark recess of your brain. Dr. Harper digs into the awful virality of that video and all of its cover versions, discerning what this case study can tell us about genre, gender, and how and why sound travels on the internet. It’s a great discussion and I hope you enjoy it. And by the way, since this interview happened, Paula Harper has joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of music. So, who says YouTube rots your brain?

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Toby Manning, "Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music" (Repeater, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of popular music’s role in shaping our society. Told through a Marxist lens, Toby Manning traces the last seventy years of political and social upheavals through its most iconic US and UK-based music.

Mixing Pop and Politics examines the connections between popular music and political ideology and explores themes like the liberation of rock ’n’ roll, containment of girl groups, defiance of glam, resignation of soft rock, the communal spirit of disco, and the individualism of 1980s pop. Spanning the early 1950s to today, the book reveals how music—from doo-wop to hip-hop, punk to crunk, and grunge to grime—has both reflected and resisted the political forces of its time.

Toby Manning is the author of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (2006) and John le Carré and the Cold War (2018).

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Leah Kardos, "Kate Bush's Hounds of Love" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Hounds Of Love invites you to not only listen, but to cross the boundaries of sensory experience into realms of imagination and possibility. Side A spawned four Top 40 hit singles in the UK, 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)', 'Cloudbusting', 'Hounds of Love' and 'The Big Sky', some of the best-loved and most enduring compositions in Bush's catalogue. On side B, a hallucinatory seven-part song cycle called The Ninth Wave broke away from the pop conventions of the era by using strange and vivid production techniques that plunge the listener into the psychological centre of a near-death experience. Poised and accessible, yet still experimental and complex, with Hounds Of Love Bush mastered the art of her studio-based songcraft, finally achieving full control of her creative process. When it came out in 1985, she was only 27 years old.

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (Bloomsbury, 2024) charts the emergence of Kate Bush in the early-to-mid-1980s as a courageous experimentalist, a singularly expressive recording artist and a visionary music producer. Track-by-track commentaries focus on the experience of the album from the listener's point of view, drawing attention to the art and craft of Bush's songwriting, production and sound design. It considers the vast impact and influence that Hounds Of Love has had on music cultures and creative practices through the years, underlining the artist's importance as a barrier-smashing, template-defying, business-smart, record-breaking, never-compromising role model for artists everywhere.

Leah Kardos is a senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, UK. She is the author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (Bloomsbury, 2022), which was included as one of The Wire's 'Best Books of 2022'.

Leah on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

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Kathleen A. Abromeit and Dyani Sabin, "Music Information Literacy: Inclusion and Advocacy" (Library Juice Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Becoming a more equitable librarian is an ongoing process. In the face of the last decade’s events and increased public awareness of issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), library workers in music libraries can do things to create the space in our teaching for optimal creativity and connection by and with our library users. As the editors of Music Information Literacy: Inclusion and Advocacy (Library Juice Press, 2024), Kathleen A. Abromeit and Dyani Sabin bring together contributions that imagine what it would be like to expand our inclusion structures so that we increasingly recognize and accommodate differences in our music libraries.

The ways librarians teach and assist students must change to amplify the voices of those who have been traditionally marginalized and create effective and equitable libraries and classrooms. Doing so is a multi-part process, where critical information literacy overlaps with self-reflection as a librarian and a deep understanding that our students have identities and experiences that influence how they navigate their world. Many of our students have experienced trauma from the generational oppression of systemic racism, gender fluidity, invisible disabilities, discrimination, or poverty. Ongoing trauma triggers toxic stress that can rewire parts of the brain and impact one’s ability to process information, formulate questions, and feel safe enough to be creative and in the zone of ideas. The chapters in the volume are authored by librarians who have actively been learning and self-reflecting on what is needed to invite users into their libraries and teaching spaces fully. The book is divided into three sections: Critical Theories, Concepts, & Reflections, Bringing Underrepresentation to the Forefront, and Supporting Activism. Each chapter includes case studies and discussion questions supporting ideas and concepts. A sample reading guide for each chapter is included as well.

Kathleen A. Abromeit is the Head of the Conservatory Library at Oberlin College and Conservatory, and Dyani Sabin is a writer based in the Midwest.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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Eric Drott, "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" (Duke UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024) provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .

Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Toby Bennett, "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How does the music industry actually work? In Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out Toby Bennett, a Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture & Organisation in the School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster offers a deep ethnography of everyday life in a contemporary record company. The book examines the challenges facing music, both businesses and artists, as digital transforms every element of the industry. Offering a detailed theoretical framework for understanding these changes, as well as rich details on the ordinary organisational practices that keep the music industry running, the book will be essential reading across humanities, social sciences, and for anyone interested in music and culture industries.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester.

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Joy White, "Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid" (Repeater, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

What happened to culture in 2020? In Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid (Repeater, 2024), Joy White, a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies at the University of Bedfordshire, explores the impact of Covid, along with social, community and artistic responses. The book ranges widely, including comparative analysis of the UK and Jamaica, deep dives into contemporary Black music and Black culture on TV, digital modes of making and distributing music, and emerging cultural practices on platforms such as TikTok. Theoretically rich as well as offering detailed media and cultural analysis, the book is essential reading of humanities, social science and public health scholars, as well as for anyone interested in reflecting on the era when Covid first hut society.

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Seth Rogovoy, "Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Seth Rogovoy's latest book for Oxford University Press is called Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2024). Often, biographies of musicians put the story of the subject’s life front and center, letting the music recede into the background. For a musician like George Harrison, this would be a mistake. George, the lead guitarist of the Beatles, sometimes referred to as the “quiet one,” was one of his generation’s greatest guitarists. He quietly steered the Fab Four in directions that made them legendary, through his innovative use of sitar or his thoughtful, self-reflective song-writing that contrasted with John’s ironic poetics and Paul’s cheery symphonies. A late-bloomer of sorts, George truly came into his own as a solo artist pursuing a rock and roll that centered spirituality and existential yearning.

For a chapter-by-chapter playlist, check out Seth's guided listen.

Subscribe to Seth's Substack: Everything is Broken.

Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet and The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music and contributing editor for The Forward.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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David Suisman, "Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America's Soldiers" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In his new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of the America's Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, 2024), David Suisman shows that the US military has deep and multilayered investment in music. It employs thousands of musicians, whose music creates communal norms and identities. Music also helps soldiers to grapple with the realities of combat, while serving as a weapon in its own right, at places like Guantánamo Bay. Suisman calls music "a lubricant in the gears of the American war machine," and he ably shows how its elemental qualities have been used and transformed, much as the military itself has, by technology and by changing understandings of the self.

Instrument of War is a first-of-its-kind study of music in the lives of American soldiers. Although musical activity has been part of war since time immemorial, the significance of the US military as a musical institution has generally gone unnoticed. Historian David Suisman traces how the US military used—and continues to use—music to train soldiers and regulate military life, and how soldiers themselves have turned to music to cope with war’s emotional and psychological realities. Opening our ears to these practices, Suisman reveals how music has enabled more than a century and a half of American war-making. Instrument of War unsettles assumptions about music as a force of uplift and beauty, demonstrating how it has also been entangled in large-scale state violence.

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Veronica Keller and Sabrina Mittermeier, "From Broadway to the Bronx: New York City’s History through Song" (Intellect, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

From Broadway to the Bronx: New York City’s History through Song (Intellect, 2024) tells the history of New York City in song across a variety of different genres that the city has been home to and instrumental in developing, covering everything from early twentieth-century sheet music to Broadway’s musical theater, hip-hop, disco, punk, dancehall, but also contemporary metal, rock, and pop. It features an analysis of the work of artists with intimate connections to the city like Billy Joel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Debbie Harry, Shinehead, and the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as an exclusive interview with RENT original cast member, Anthony Rapp. The collection includes essays from authors across the disciplines of cultural studies, media studies, cultural history, and musicology, resulting in a far-ranging treatment of the interconnection of the city space and its musical history.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Margaret Mehl, "Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert" (Open Book, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Margaret Mehl’s Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert (Open Book 2024) examines the ways in which Western classical (or “art”) music contributed to Japanese nation-building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mehl’s analysis of this critical half-century or so in modern Japanese history is sensitive to the power of the participative “musicking” in shaping shared understandings of national and local community and their place within a larger world. The book, which is split into the global, national, and local, also demonstrates that as much as Western art music shaped Japan, Japan shaped back. In doing so, “Japanese” music was defined in important ways that have continued to influence a sense of national self and culture.

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Fiona Smyth, "Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century" (Manchester UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scientific demonstration of new techniques in acoustic measurement. It aimed to address a surprising question: could a building be a musical instrument?

Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Fiona Smyth tells the fascinating story of the scientists, architects and musicians who set out to answer this question. Beginning at the turn of the century, their innovative experiments, which took place at sites ranging from Herbert Baker's Assembly Chamber in Delhi to Abbey Road Studios and a disused munitions factory near Perivale, would come to define the field of 'architectural acoustics'. They culminated in 1951 with the opening of the Royal Festival Hall - the first building to be designed for musical tone.

Deeply researched and richly illustrated, Pistols in St Paul's brings to light a scientific quest spanning half a century, one that demonstrates the power of international cooperation in the darkest of times.

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Benjamin Barson, "Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons" (Wesleyan UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons (Wesleyan UP, 2024) recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies, and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas—Haiti—as a nexus for cultural and political change in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.

Brassroots Democracy demonstrates how Black musicians infused participatory music practice with innovative forms of grassroots democracy. Late nineteenth-century Black brass bands and activists rehearsed these participatory models through collective performance that embodied the democratic ethos of Black Reconstruction. Termed "Brassroots Democracy," this fusion of political and musical spheres revolutionized both. Brassroots Democracy illuminates the Black Atlantic struggles that informed music-as-world-making from the Haitian Revolution through Reconstruction to the jazz revolution. The work theorizes the roots of the New Orleans brass band tradition in the social relations grown in maroon ecologies across the Americas. Their fruits contributed to the socio-sonic commons of the music we call jazz today

BENJAMIN BARSON is a historian, baritone saxophonist, and political activist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His work has been published in Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party (2020), Routledge Handbook on Jazz and Gender (2021) and Routledge Guide to Ecosocialism (2021).

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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Connie DeNave, "The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass" (2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In The Image Maker: Shattering Rock and Roll's Glass Ceiling (2023), Connie DeNave shares her experiences in the public relations world during the British Invasion and the beginning of rock-n-roll marketing. Born in Brooklyn, New York, DeNave graduated from Hunter College and found herself with no job skills. Throughout the mid-1950s to the 1980s, DeNave was rock and roll's first female press agent powerhouse. She revolutionized the public relations business at a time when it was an old boys' club. And she did this all with her—previously unheard of—all female staff. She crashed through the glass ceiling of the music business and represented some of the most influential and popular artists of their time. Her portfolio includes The Rolling Stones, Faces, Herman's Hermits, Dick Clark, Chubby Checker, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, and Dusty Springfield. DeNave's memoir examines what it meant to be a women in business at a time when women couldn't even get a credit card. She shares her experiences in the entertainment business and the importance of press agents and public relations in creating a star.

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Richard Schoch, "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life" (Atria Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans – the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd and West Side Story, Into the Woods, and Company. With acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows regularly performed in London and New York, and new generations being introduced to the man who forever transformed musical theatre, Sondheim’s legacy has only grown. What is it about such classic songs as ‘Being Alive’ from

Company, ‘No One Is Alone’ from Into the Woods, or ‘Send in the Clowns’ from A Little Night Music (to name but a few) that still resonates for so many?

In How Sondheim Can Change Your Life (Atria Books (North America) Ebury (UK and Commonwealth), 2024), Dr. Richard Schoch shows how Sondheim’s greatness (beyond the clever lyrics and adventurous music) lies in his ability to tell stories that speak to all of us. From Louise’s desire for freedom as Gypsy Rose Lee to Sweeney Todd’s thirst for revenge, the struggles we see in Sondheim’s characters are ones we all have – and we can learn valuable lessons from how those struggles are resolved.

Following the arc of Sondheim’s extraordinary career, How Sondheim Can Change Your Life is rich with stories and insights into the master’s creative process, and reveals the many ways that Sondheim’s works can enrich the lives of all of us.

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Lisa Nielson, "Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World: A Social History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

During the early medieval Islamicate period (800–1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and sound permeated all layers of the social structure.

Lisa Nielson here presents a rich social history of music, musicianship and the role of musicians in the early Islamicate era. Focusing primarily on Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem, Lisa Nielson draws on a wide variety of textual sources written for and about musicians and their professional/private environments – including chronicles, literary sources, memoirs and musical treatises – as well as the disciplinary approaches of musicology to offer insights into musical performances and the lives of musicians. In the process, Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World: A Social History (Bloomsbury, 2021) sheds light onto the dynamics of medieval Islamicate courts, as well as how slavery, gender, status and religion intersected with music in courtly life. It will appeal to scholars of the Islamicate world and historical musicologists.

Lisa Nielson is an Anisfield-Wolf Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Music at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA.. She received her PhD from the University of Maine at Orono, USA and holds a bachelor's and master's degree in music performance and pedagogy.

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R. Murray Schaffer (1933-2021), Part 2

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How to think about the contradictory figure of R. Murray Schafer? A renegade scholar who used sound technology to create an entirely new field of study, even as he devalued the very tools of its trade. A gifted composer who claimed a sincere appreciation for indigenous cultures, yet one who, perhaps, could only love them on his own terms, only as they fit into his sweeping vision for Canadian music. An erudite reader with a deep knowledge of world cultures, who nevertheless dismissed Canada’s most multicultural areas as less than truly Canadian. And a man, who despite a bomb-throwing persona on the page, is described by those who knew him as a kind and generous person.

Today we speak to Jonathan Sterne, Mitchell Akiyama, and Hildegard Westerkamp to learn the critiques and contradictions of Schafer. Perhaps the greatest testament to his lasting legacy is the fact that we aren’t done arguing with him.

Works discussed in this episode:

Jonathan Sterne’s first book, The Audible Past, includes critiques of Schafer’s work, especially his concept of schizophonia. His chapter “Soundscape, Landscape, Escape” (PDF, in the edited volume Soundscapes of the Urban Past) traces the intellectual and audiophile histories of Schafer’s term soundscape.

Listen, a short film on Schafer directed by David New, includes Shafer’s claim that recorded sounds are not “real sound.”

Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Sound Walk presents a subtler way of thinking about “schizophonic” sounds. Her chapter “The Disruptive Nature of Listening: Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow” (in the edited volume Sound Media Ecology) reexamines the World Soundscape Project through the political lenses of the 1970s and today.

An episode of the CBC radio program “Soundscapes of Canada” is available at the Canadian Music Centre’s music library.

Rafael de Oliveira, Patrícia Lima, and Alexsander Duarte‘s interview with Schafer in Corfu, Greece is available on YouTube.

Mitchell Akiyama’s critique of the World Soundscape Project appears in “Unsettling the World Soundscape Project: Soundscapes of Canada and the Politics of Self-Recognition” (on the sound studies blog Sounding Out) and in his chapter “Nothing Connects Us but Imagined Sound” (in the edited volume Sound, Music, Ecology).

The program notes (PDF) to Schafer’s North/White contain his dismissal of urban Canadians (page 43).

Dylan Robinson’s book Hungry Listening opens with Schafer’s insulting words about “Eskimo music” and contains a critique of the way Schafer appropriates indigenous music to create his “Canadian” music.

The Vancouver Chamber Choir shares this performance of Schafer’s “Miniwanka” complete with a side scrolling presentation of the graphic score.

Today’s music was by R. Murray Schafer, Vireo, and Blue the Fifth.

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John Duffus, "Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today, the Hong Kong Philharmonic is one of the world’s great symphony orchestras. But when John Duffus landed in Hong Kong in 1979 as the Philharmonic’s general manager–its fifth in as many years–he quickly learned just how much work needed to be done to make a Western symphony orchestra work in a majority Chinese city.

John Duffus’s memoir Backstage in Hong Kong: A Life with the Philharmonic, Broadway Musicals and Classical Superstars (Blacksmith: 2024) charts his life from running the Philharmonic, bringing acts like the Three Tenors and Cats to Asia, and his thoughts on the Hong Kong Cultural Center and the West Kowloon Cultural District.

John joins the show today to explain what the general manager of an orchestra actually does, the trickiest problems he had to solve in Hong Kong and China, and his thoughts on whether Hong Kong is truly a “cultural wasteland.”

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Backstage in Hong Kong. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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David Rowell, "The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music" (Melville House, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A veteran music journalist argues that the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms is decimating the musical landscape, with dire consequences for the future of our culture ...

In The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music (Melville House, 2024), former Washington Post writer and editor David Rowell lays out how commercial and cultural forces have laid waste to the cultural ecosystems that have produced decades of great American music. From the scorched-earth demonetizing of artist revenue accomplished by Spotify and its ilk to the rise of dead artists "touring" via hologram, Rowell examines how a perfect storm of conditions have drained our shared musical landscape of vitality.

Combining personal memoir, intimate on-the-ground reporting, industry research, and cultural criticism, Rowell's book is a powerful indictment of a music culture gone awry, driven by conformity and subverted by the ways the internet and media influence what we listen to and how we listen to it.

David Rowell grew up in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For nearly 25 years he was an editor at The Washington Post Magazine and has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. He is currently a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. His previous books include the novel The Train of Small Mercies, and Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making. He lives just outside of Chapel Hill.

David Rowell’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

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R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021), Part 1

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

R. Murray Schafer recently passed away on August 14th 2021. If you’re someone who works with sound or enjoys sound art or experimental music–or you’ve just thrown around the word “soundscape”–you’ve probably engaged with his intellectual legacy. Schafer was one of Canada’s most influential avant-garde composers. He was also the creator of acoustic ecology, the founder of the World Soundscape Project, and the author of the classic book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. He brought a musician’s ear to the field of ecology and he brought an ecological perspective to music. And he bequeathed us a generative vocabulary for talking about and thinking about sound.

This is the first of a two-part series on R. Murray Schafer. Next month, we speak with two of Schafer’s critics–Mitchell Akiyama and Jonathan Sterne. But today, we speak with three of Schafer’s associates to understand the person, his creative works, and his lasting impact on the study of sound:

Ellen Waterman, ethnomusicologist, flutist, and Schafer expert
Hildegard Westerkamp, soundscape composer and member of the World Soundscape Project
Eric Leonardson, sound artist and President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology

Creative works heard on today’s show:

Listen, a short film on Schafer, directed by David New.
Snowforms, R. Murray Schafer
The Greatest Show, R. Murray Schafer
The Crown Of Ariadne, R. Murray Schafer
Wolf Music V: Nocturne, R. Murray Schafer
Le Testament, Ezra Pound
Loving, R. Murray Schafer
Beneath the Forest Floor, Hildegard Westerkamp
Miniwanka, R. Murray Schafer

Special thanks to Elisabeth Hodges for translation assistance, Alex Blue V for our outtro music, and Craig Eley for his dramatic turn as R. Murray Schafer.

Today’s show was produced and edited by Mack Hagood with additional editing by Ravi Krishnaswami.

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Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity discourses in classical music institutions? The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Kristina Kolbe addresses these concerns by critically examining how diversity work takes shape in a cultural sector so deeply implicated in hierarchies of class, structures of whiteness, and legacies of imperialism.

The book draws from ethnographic and interview data to analyse how diversity discourses become constructed in the organisational and creative processes of music production. From rehearsal and performance practices to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector's commitment to change, Dr. Kolbe reveals the institutional constraints and precarious labour relations that form around diversity work in classical music and skillfully considers what these processes can tell us about the remaking of class, race, and racism today.

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On Listening In

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today, in honor of World Listening Day, we rebroadcast our story on renowned Australian sound composer, media artist and curator Lawrence English.

This episode of gets deep into English’s own listening practices as an artist, specifically a technique he calls Relational Listening. In fact, as you’ll hear, he describes himself not as a sound maker but as a professional listener—that’s how central the act of listening is to his artistic practice.

In particular he talks about his reworking of an important work in the fields of musique concrète and field recording, Presque Rien by Luc Ferrari, and the recent premiere of Wave Fields, his own 12-hour durational sound installation for sleepers at Burleigh Heads in Queensland as part of the Bleach* Festival.

Lawrence is interested in the nature of listening and the capability of sound to occupy a body. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He investigates the politics of relation listening and perception, through live performance, field recordings and installation.

The show includes extracts from the following tracks:

Album: Cruel Optimism: “Hammering a Screw.”
Album: Wilderness of Mirrors: “Wilderness of Mirrors,” “Wrapped in Skin.”
Album: Songs of the Living: “Trigona Carbonaria Hive Invasion, Brisbane Australia,” “Cormorants Flocking At Dusk Amazon Brazil,” “Various Chiroptera Samford Australia.”
Album: Ghost Towns: “Ghost Towns.”
Album: Kiri No Oto: “Soft Fuse.”
Luc Ferrari: Presque Rien.

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Landon Palmer, "Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

During the mid-1950s, when Hollywood found itself struggling to compete within an expanding entertainment media landscape, certain producers and studios saw an opportunity in making films that showcased performances by rock 'n' roll stars. Rock stars eventually found cinema to be a useful space to extend their creative practices, and the motion picture and recording industries increasingly saw cinematic rock stardom as a profitable means to connect multiple media properties. Indeed, casting rock stars for film provided a tool for bridging new relationships across media industries and practices.

From Elvis Presley to Madonna, this book examines the casting rock stars in films. In so doing, Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom (Oxford UP, 2020) offers a new perspective on the role of stardom within the convergence of media industries. While hardly the first popular music culture to see its stars making the transition to screen, the timing of rock's emergence and its staying power within popular culture proved fortuitous for a motion picture business searching for its place in the face of continuous technological and cultural change. At the same time, a post-star-system film industry provided a welcoming context for rock stars who have valued authenticity, creative autonomy, and personal expression. This book uses illuminating archival resources to demonstrate how rock stars have often proven themselves to be prominent film workers exploring this terrain of platforms old and new - ideal media laborers whose power lies in the fact that they are rarely recognized as such.

Combining star studies with media industry studies, this book proposes an integrated methodology for writing media history that combines the actions of individuals and the practices of industries. It demonstrates how stars have operated as both the gravitational center of media production as well as social actors who have taken on a decisive role in the purposes to which their images are used.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Megan Steigerwald Ille, "Opera for Everyone: The Industry's Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Every year a relatively small number of canonic operas are produced around the world. Many companies shy away from new works, afraid of alienating a predominantly white, older, wealthy audience who are comfortable with operatic traditions. But opera can also be a site of incredible innovation.

Opera for Everyone: The Industry’s Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Megan Steigerwald Ille examines one of the most disruptive opera companies in the United States. The Los Angeles-based company, The Industry, wants to make opera for everyone by breaking down hierarchies, undermining the expectations of both audiences and performers, and confronting how opera is part of harmful systems of exclusion and marginalization. Rather than simply analyzing some operas and interviewing a handful of key players in the company, Steigerwald Ille spent years observing rehearsals and interviewing many of the participants in the Industry’s productions. Focusing on the period between 2012 and 2020, her ethnographic work yields a thorough and nuanced analysis of the company and its operas and the many ways they challenge the conventions of Western classical music.

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Ashawnta Jackson, "Soul-Folk" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light- the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals- and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours.

Soul-Folk (Bloomsbury, 2024) traces the growing imprints of soul-folk and how it made its way from folk tradition to subgenre. Along the way, it explores the musicians, albums, and histories that made the genre what it is.

Ashawnta Jackson is a writer based in Brooklyn. She writes mostly about music and culture and has written for Atlas Obscura, Artsy, Crime Reads, Bandcamp, JSTOR Daily, The Whitney Museum, and most recently Vinyl Me Please, where she wrote the liner notes for the reissue of Lee Morgan's Take Twelve. Earlier in her career, she was on the radio at KMHD Jazz Radio in Portland, OR.

Ashawnta on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

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Boris Adjemian, "The Brass Band of the King: Armenians in Ethiopia" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In 1924, the crown prince and future emperor of Ethiopia, Ras Täfäri, on a visit to Jerusalem, called on forty Armenian orphans who had survived the genocide of 1915-1916 to form his empire's royal brass band. The conductor, who was also Armenian, composed the first official anthem of the Ethiopian state.

Drawing on this highly symbolic event, and following the history of the small Armenian community in Ethiopia, in The Brass Band of the King: Armenians in Ethiopia (Bloomsbury, 2024) Boris Adjemian shows how it operated on the margins of political society, hiding in its interstices, preferring intimacy and discreet loyalty to the glitter of open politics. The astonishing role of the Armenians in their host country was embodied in the friendship that the kings and queens of Ethiopia extended to them, a theme that is echoed in the life stories collected from their descendants.

Bringing to light the political and cultural importance of a community that has long been ignored and has almost vanished, this study draws on the collective memory of Armenian immigration and the centuries-long history of proximity between the Armenian and Ethiopian Churches. The author argues for a sedentary approach to the diaspora, for a socio-history of this collective rootedness, which dates back to the 19th century and builds on historical representations of otherness from the early modern period up to the colonial era. Highlighting stateless immigrants halfway between the national and the foreign, this history reveals the agency of stateless immigrants and their descendants, their ability to play with identities and undermine assigned belongings.

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For Some Odd Reason

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s guest, Kate Carr, is an accomplished sound artist and field recordist whose recent work grapples with issues of communication and longing—themes we can all relate to in the Covid era.

In part one of the show, we mark Phantom Power’s three-year anniversary and 25th episode. Mack does a little thinking out loud about the different kinds of audio work that we’ve featured over the past three years. The terminology and practices for audio work always seem to be in flux—and people can have completely different terms for similar kinds of work. Mack imagines a spectrum of sound work, from more materialist genres like musique concrete to more conceptual or idealist genres like the audiobook, which emphasize meaning over form. In the end, the spectrum eats its own tail—the material is always conceptual and the conceptual is always material. Sound is always both resonance and meaning and the two can never be completely teased apart. Signal and noise are one.

In part two, we meet Kate Carr, an artist the critic Matthew Blackwell describes as a “sound essayist.” Since she began it in 2010, Kate Carr’s work as a musician and field recordist has taken her around the world, from her native Australia to a doctoral program at University of the Arts London. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wire, and Pitchfork. She also runs the field recording label Flaming Pines.

Since slightly before the pandemic, the theme of communication at a distance—always implicit in field recording—has taken center stage in her work. We examine three such pieces by Kate Carr. Each one explores how sound helps us communicate at a distance and how it comforts us in moments of loneliness:

“Contact”—a meditation on sonic connection through radio, morse code, and digital technology.

“Where to Begin”—a study of love letter writing, which Carr says has profound similarities with field recording.

“For Some Odd Reason”—an exploration of the kinds of noise we came to miss during social distancing and the mediated ways we’ve tried to add it back.

Together, these three pieces—one from before the pandemic, one from its beginning, and one from its interminable middle—explore how earnestly we try to connect across distance—and how heightened these attempts have become over the past year.

Huge thanks to our co-producer on this episode, Matthew Blackwell. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa and a freelance music writer. He writes and edits Tusk Is Better Than Rumours, a newsletter that covers the discographies of experimental musicians. He is also a contributor to Tone Glow, a newsletter featuring interviews with experimental musicians.

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Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What is the future of classical music? In The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024), Kristina Kolbe, an assistant professor of Sociology of Arts and Culture in the School of History, Culture and Communication at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, explores how the genre is seeking to become more diverse. In doing so, it reveals the challenges associated with changing audiences, performers and performances. Using a detailed case study, the book examines why classical music faces the need to change in the context of diversity discourses in both the music and the more general creative industries.

Offering a nuanced but critical perspective, the analysis outlines how diversity has had a limited impact on both case study opera house and the industry more generally. The critical perspective sets out how diversity can be easily commodified, how it depends on precarious workers, and how the pandemic of 2020 demonstrated just how much more work needs to be done. Offering rich empirical data as well as theoretical depth, the book is essential reading across the humanities and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music.

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Voice of Yoko

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today, Phantom Power‘s Amy Skjerseth brings us the story of perhaps the most famous vocal performance artist and avant-garde musician whose actual work probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves: Yoko Ono. Collaborator with the Fluxus group in the early 60s, creator of performances such as Cut Piece and her Bed In with John Lennon in the late 1960s, director of experimental films such as 1970’s Fly, and recording artist of experimental pop albums such as that Fly’s soundtrack… Despite this large body of work, her most famous role was that of wife to that guy in that band—a performance that made her the target of misogynous and racist criticism that persists to this day.

As Amy points out, much of this criticism centered on the sound of Yoko Ono’s voice. Of course, as we’ve explored on this show before, listening to the other with a racist or sexist ear is nothing new. But in Ono’s case, this prejudicial listening is compounded by the fact that, years before the emergence of punk rock, she was pushing the boundaries of acceptable vocal expression for anyone, let alone a woman—moaning, wailing, chortling, and screaming.

The vast majority of listeners immediately dismissed these sounds as a punchline. On today’s show, we’re going to actually listen. What is the purpose and meaning and effect of Ono’s vocal artistry? We’re exploring it in her recorded work, in her feminist and pacifist political agenda, and most of all, in her film Fly, in which she uses her voice to destroy boundaries between sound and touch, human and animal, self and other.

This episode includes elements from an audio essay Amy published at [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies.

Music by Yoko Ono, John Lennon, John Cage, Tanya Tagaq, and Graeme Gibson, as well as “Crickets, Birds, Summer Ambient” by Nikodemus Christian. You can hear most of the music again on this Phantom Power Spotify Playlist.

You can hear Yoko Ono’s Twitter response to Trump (November 11, 2016) here.

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Jason Weiss, "Listenings" (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Listenings (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) is a collection of meditations on the art of experiencing sound. The writings reflect Jason Weiss's passion for illuminating details, momentary experiences, and the most subtle and brief of auditory stimulations to consider their role in thought and emotion. The chapter-sections, each on a particular subtheme, invite us to visit concerts, to analyze music, to interpret sounds far and near, from friends, parents, relatives, and strangers, and to appreciate and esteem them as a key part of the human condition.

Listenings summons readers to reflect but also to consider listening as an artform, a dialogue, and a locus of experiences – to make music by listening. Jason Weiss adroitly argues that to listen is not merely to perceive sound as a stimulus but to interpret, to participate, to reflect, to engage in an activity that can shift from a passive one toward a new creative beginning.

This conversation includes Jason Weiss, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Jorge Rodríguez Acevedo of the Departamento de Humanidades at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPR-M). They discuss listening as a creative resource; the importance of listening in memory; Weiss’s precise and harmonious approach to linking language, sound and listening; the role of technology how we interpret sound; and the role of listening in the author’s life, experiences and creative process.

This interview, our podcast, and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes were made possible by generous support from the Mellon Foundation.

This is our second episode on Listenings - the first, on New Books Network en español, is available here.

Topics discussed in the interview:

Listening in translingual environments.
Music, performance, concerts.
Travel, distance, and new language contexts.
Technology and sound.
When Jason Weiss met Jorge Luis Borges in Paris.
The circumstances surrounding Roland Barthes’s death.
Jason Weiss’s book The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Literature in Paris and our podcast episode on that title.

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Francesco Lotoro, "The Lost Music of the Holocaust: Bringing the Music of the Camps to the Ears of the World at Last" (Headline, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Scores sewn into coat linings, instruments hidden in suitcases, sheet music stashed among dirty laundry, concertos written on discarded food wrappers - these are just some of the ingenious ways prisoners in civilian, political and military captivity from 1933 to 1953 protected their music in the darkest of times.

Italian pianist and composer Francesco Lotoro has been on a lifelong quest to find this remarkable music. He has painstakingly salvaged and performed symphonies, operas and songs written by the incarcerated musicians, many of whom died in the camps. He has travelled the globe to meet with families and survivors whose harrowing testimonies bear witness to the most devastating experiences in twentieth-century history.

Movingly piecing together the human stories of those who wrote and performed whilst imprisoned, The Lost Music of the Holocaust: Bringing the Music of the Camps to the Ears of the World at Last (Headline, 2024) takes readers on a journey into their extraordinary lives and music, shining a light on a unique beauty that somehow prevailed against all odds.

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Forest Listening Rooms

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What would happen if you took red state rural voters on a walk into the woods with left-wing environmental activists and experimental music fans? Our guest this episode knows the answer.

BRIAN HARNETTY is a composer and an interdisciplinary artist using sound and listening to foster social change.

While Brian studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, one of his teachers, Michael Finnissy, suggested he look for musical inspiration in his home state of Ohio. Brian took that advice and the result has been eight internationally acclaimed albums. Brian’s music combines archival recordings of interviews and singing—often from the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives—with his original compositions.

For the past decade, Brian has focused on the myth, history, ecology, and economy of Shawnee, a small Appalachian town in Ohio. His 2019 album Shawnee, Ohio was praised by the BBC, the Wire, and named 2019 Underground Album of the Year by MOJO. The album engages with the social and environmental impacts felt by the town and nearby Wayne National Forest in their long history with extractive industries from timber to coal mining to fracking.

But Brian doesn’t just document Shawnee’s narrative—he intervenes in it. He’s an environmental activist of a gentle kind, one who gets area residents of different political stripes to walk in the woods together to listen—to one another and to the forest. All in service of protecting and healing the land. In this episode, we are thrilled to present an audio documentary that Brian Harnetty has produced for Phantom Power about this quietly radical experiment, called Forest Listening Rooms. And afterwards I’ll speak to Brian about his project.

Learn more:

Visit Brian Harnetty’s studio in Ohio.

Check out his Bandcamp page.

Visit his website.

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Jennifer L. Lambe, "The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba" (UNC Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From television to travel bans, geopolitics to popular dance, The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba (UNC Press, 2024) explores how knowledge about the 1959 Cuban Revolution was produced and how the Revolution in turn shaped new worldviews. Drawing on sources from over twenty archives as well as film, music, theater, and material culture, this book traces the consolidation of the Revolution over two decades in the interface between political and popular culture.

The "subject of Revolution," it proposes, should be understood as the evolving synthesis of the imaginaries constructed by its many "subjects," including revolutionary leaders, activists, academics, and ordinary people within and beyond the island's borders. The book reopens some of the questions that have long animated debates about Cuba, from the relationship between populace and leadership to the archive and its limits, while foregrounding the construction of popular understandings. It argues that the politicization of everyday life was an inescapable effect of the revolutionary process, as well as the catalyst for new ways of knowing and being.

Jennifer Lambe is Associate Professor of History at Brown University.

Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University.

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Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines Robeson's voice as it exists in two broad and intersecting domains: as sound object and sounding gesture, specifically how it was fashioned in the contexts of singing practices, in recital, concert, and recorded performance, and as subject of identification. Olwage asks: how does the voice encapsulate modes of subjectivity, of being?

Combining deep archival research with musicological theory, this book is a study of voice as central to Robeson's sense of self and his politics. Paul Robeson's Voices charts the dialectal process of Robeson's vocal and self-discovery, documenting some of the ways Robeson's practice revised the traditions of concert singing in the first half of the twentieth century and how his voice manifested as resistance.”

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

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The Political Evolution of Taylor Swift

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we offer a political science / popular culture studies view of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. We situate Swift’s endorsement within the wider moment of popular culture, and consider her long journey from a self-imposed moratorium on political speech to her current position as the most sought-after endorsement in the election cycle. What does the endorsement mean? Why did she do it? And why did she sign her endorsement as from a “childless cat lady”?

Our previous discussion of Taylor Swift and politics is here.

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A Life Based on an Experiment

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Episode 21 presents a portrait of Iranian experimental composer Siavash Amini. His music, which moves seamlessly between contemplative ambience, menacing dissonance, and spacious melodicism, has been released on experimental imprints such as Umor Rex and Room40. His latest, A Mimesis of Nothingness, just came out on the Swiss label Hallow Ground.

Siavash tells host Mack Hagood that his entire life is based on an experiment and he doesn’t yet know what its outcome will be. This episode traces the contours of that story, from his boyhood as a metalhead in a small Iranian port town to his role in the development of Tehran’s lauded experimental music scene. Along the way, we drill down on the international and internal politics that add danger and difficulty to the life of this outspoken leftest composer.

Amini is forced to navigate not only the authoritarianism of Iranian government censorship, but also the authoritarianism of western tastemakers, who sometimes want him to make the “Middle Eastern music” they hear in their own heads. Steadfast in his individuality, Siavash makes sounds that resist these authorities–the defiant anthems of an imaginary land, population: one.

Most of the music in this episode is by Siavash Amini–listen to it again in this Spotify playlist and check out this great introduction to his music on Bandcamp.

This episode was edited by Mack Hagood.

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Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Are you a musical theatre fan who loves TikTok? Or are you curious about how this social media app has changed musical theatre fandom - and even the concept of the musical itself?

TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age (Oxford UP, 2024) takes readers inside the world of TikTok Broadway, where fans create, expand, and canonize musical theatre through viral videos. It argues that TikTok democratizes musical theatre fan cultures and spaces, creating a new canon of musical theatre that reflects the preferences and passions of the fans. Readers will also see how TikTok Broadway influences other aspects of U.S. popular culture, from Broadway shows to TV adaptations.

From Six and Beetlejuice to Wicked and Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, this book covers the most popular and innovative musical theatre content on TikTok. Author Trevor Boffone, a musical theatre scholar and a TikTok creator, shows how fans use the app to express their love for musical theatre, and how they collaborate to produce original works, such as Bridgerton: The Musical.

TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age shows how the app puts power in the hands of the fans.

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Yiu Fai Chow et al., "It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) is unique in focusing on just one band from one city – but the story of Tat Ming Pair, in so many ways, is the story of Hong Kong's recent decades, from the Handover to the Umbrella Movement to 2019's standoff. A comprehensive, theoretically informed study of the sonic history and present of Hong Kong through the prism of Tat Ming Pair, this book will be of interest to cultural studies scholars, scholars of Hong Kong, and those who study the arts in East Asia. The is an open access book. You can download the book here

Yiu Fai Chow is Professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing of Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalisation Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Qing Shen is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden.

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Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the first book in the Modern Music Masters series, Tom Boniface-Webb examines the Manchester band Modern Music Masters-Oasis (MMM, 2020). Founded in 1994 and playing together until their spectacular and abrupt breakup in 2009, during their time together Oasis made an imprint on British music that will last for generations, impacting fans throughout the world. Modern Music Masters-Oasis looks at the ways in which the band's chart placings--including eight number 1 albums and eight number 1 singes- show the larger narrative of rock-n-roll and the way Oasis impacted the rock-n-roll landscape during their 15-year history. Modern Music Masters-Oasis is the first in this series of books that explores artists (most of which from the United Kingdom) by looking at the social and political environment surrounding their careers.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Mark Blake, "Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac" (Pegasus Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

An illuminating deep-dive into everything Fleetwood Mac--the songs, the rivalries, the successes, and the failures—Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac (Pegasus Books, 2024) evokes the band's entire musical catalog as well as the complex human drama at the heart of the Fleetwood Mac story.

Fleetwood Mac has had a ground-breaking career spanning over fifty years and includes some of the best-selling albums and greatest hits of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But the band's unique story is one of enormous triumph and also deep tragedy. There has never been a band in the history of music riven with as much romantic drama, sexual tension, and incredible highs and lows as Fleetwood Mac.

Dreams is a must-read for casual Fleetwood Mac fans and die-hard devotees alike. Presenting mini-biographies, observations, and essays, Mark Blake explores all eras of the Fleetwood Mac story to explore what it is that has made them one of the most successful bands in history.

Blake draws on his own exclusive interviews with Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, and the late Peter Green and Christine McVie, and addresses the complex human drama at the heart of the Fleetwood Mac story, including the complicated relationships between the band's main members, but he also dives deep into the towering discography that the band has built over the past half-century.

Among Mark Blake's previous books are Magnifico!: The A to Z of Queen; the bestselling Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd; and Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin and Beyond, which was listed as a "Music Book of the Year" by the London Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Telegraph. Mark lives in England.

Mark on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

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What is Radio Art?

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What is radio art? It’s a rather unfamiliar term in the United States, but in other countries, it’s a something of an artistic tradition. Today’s guest, Dr. Colin Black is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning radio artist and composer. He speaks to us about his practice as a radio artist and the influence the Australian radio program The Listening Room had on Australia’s sonic avant garde. We then listen to his piece Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1, which both explores and exemplifies the possibilities of radio art. It’s both informative and a total treat for the ears!

The piece was originally commissioned by the Dreamlands commissions for Radio Arts, funded by the Arts Council England and Kent County Council.

Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1 is a meta-referencing poetic reflection and meditation on radio art underpinned by an artistic treatment of dislocation, transmission, reception and place as a thematic underscore. The work is in the form of an abstract song cycle that chiefly oscillates between “songs” originating from High Frequency (HR) radio static/broadcasts between 3 and 30 MHz and those from interviewees replying to questions relating to radio art. Location recordings, sound effect and musical composition weave this originating material together to form a sonic confluence and juxtaposition of elements to stimulate the listener’s imagination while offering an insight into the work’s subject matter.

Interviewees (in order of appearance): Armeno Alberts, Tom Roe, Jean-Philippe Renoult, Gregory Whitehead, Götz Naleppa, Andrew McLennan, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Heidi Grundmann, Andreas Hagelüken, Teri Rueb and Kaye Mortley

Producer and Composer: Colin Black High Frequency (HR) radio receiver operator: Dimitri Papagianakis

Music for this episode is by Blue the Fifth. We also hear a brief excerpt of Things Change,Things Stay the Same by Rik Rue.

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Randall Stephens, "The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll" (Harvard UP, 2018)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

I was immediately drawn to the book The Devil’s Music by Dr. Randall Stephens, Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. Dr. Stephens and I came across one another online and the book, which combines part rock n’ roll history, part American Christianity history, was an absolute delight for me. The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock n’ Roll out now from Harvard University Press (2018), tells the story of how my experiences with rock music in the 1990’s came to be. From the inside cover of the book, “When rock n’roll emerged in the 1950’s, ministers denounced it from their pulpits and Sunday school teachers warned of the music’s demonic origins. The big beat, Billy Graham believed, was “ever working in the world for evil.” Yet by the early 2000s Christian rock had become a billion-dollar industry. The Devil’s Music tells the story of this transformation. Enjoy our conversation.

Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here.

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Steve Moriarty, "Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution" (Ferel House, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Mia Zapata and the Gits: A True Story of Art, Rock and Revolution (Ferel House, 2024) by Steve Moriarty, shares the story of the Seattle based The Gits and their charismatic front person Mia Zapata. The Gits were on the verge of international rock stardom but on July 7, 1993, days before their third US tour, Mia Zapata, The Gits 27-year-old singer-songwriter, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a stranger. Zapata's death sent chilling ripples through progressive communities throughout the United States. She became a cause-celebre for women's rights activists outraged by the brutal killing and lack of law enforcement support.

This book reclaims Zapata's story to focus on the art she and The Gits created and not her tragic end. Much has been written and said about her murder, yet Zapata's life and work remain overshadowed by the circumstances of her death. Zapata's friend and bandmate, Steve Moriarty, tells her story--and the story of their band, The Gits--from their first meeting in 1985 to their last goodbye. Moriarity and Zapata met in 1985 as first-year students at Antioch College, where they discovered the power of punk rock and found an outlet for their progressive ideas through music. Zapata, Moriarity, and fellow students Matt Dresdner and Andy Kessler attended a show by San Francisco punk legends Dead Kennedys that inspired the friends to start a band fueled by Mia's provocative lyrics. They quickly gained critical praise and dedicated fans.

Moriarty details their struggles as newcomers to the then-pre-tech outpost of the Seattle music scene. Interspersed are the tales Zapata told of her legendary ancestor, Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, to entertain the band as they spent countless hours on the road crammed into a single un-air-conditioned van touring the US and Europe. They shared stages with Beck, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Joan Jett, Bikini Kill, L7, and more--all who expected Mia and The Gits to be the next "big thing." The Gits's story is more than a biography; it's a testament to the ability of artists and musicians to challenge the status quo and the power of friendship to change the world. Moriarty reframes the sensationalist story as he shares his personal narrative and presents, with intimacy, grit, and humor, the lived experience of The Gits and his dear friend, Mia Zapata. Included are never before seen paintings, letters, and pictures.

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The Sounds of Silents

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What did going to the movies sound like back in the “silent film” era? The answer takes us on a strange journey through Vaudeville, roaming Chautauqua lectures, penny arcades, nickelodeons, and grand movie palaces. As our guest In today’s episode, pioneering scholar of film sound, Rick Altman, tells us, the silent era has a lot to teach us about why sound works the way it does at the movies today. And as our other guest, sound and film historian Eric Dienstfrey tells us, “What we think of today as standard practice is far from inevitable.” In fact, some of the practices we’ll hear about are downright wacky.

Audiences today give little thought to the relationship between sound and images at the movies. When we hear a character’s footsteps or inner thoughts or hear a rousing orchestral score that the character can’t hear, it all seems natural. Yet these are all conventions that had to be developed by filmmakers and accepted by audiences. And as Altman and Dienstfrey show us, the use of sound at the movies could have developed very differently.

Dr. Rick Altman is Professor Emeritus of Cinema and Comparative Literature in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. Altman is known for his work on genre theory, the musical, media sound, and video pedagogy. He is the author of Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), Film/Genre (Bloomsbury, 1999), and A Theory of Narrative (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

Dr. Eric Dienstfrey is Postdoctoral Fellow in American Music at the University of Texas at Austin. Eric is a historian of sound, cinema, and media technology. His paper “The Myth of the Speakers: A Critical Reexamination of Dolby History” won the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award for best article of the year in 2016.

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Soar and Chill

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why do certain musical sounds move us while others leave us cold? Are musical trends simply that—or do they contain insights into the culture at large? Our guest is a musicologist who studies pop and electronic dance music. She’s fascinated by the way EDM privileges timbral and rhythmic complexity over the chord changes and harmonic complexities of the blues-based rock and pop music of yore. However, Robin James is also a philosopher and she connects these musical structures to social and economic structures, not to mention structural racism and sexism.

In this episode, cris and Mack have a lengthy, freeform interview and listening session with Robin in which she breaks down the sounds of EDM, pop, hip hop, “chill” playlists, and industrial techno, conceiving them as varied responses to neoliberalism’s intensification of capitalism. Her analysis includes lyrical content, but her main focus is the soars, stutters, breaks, and drops that mimic the socio-economic environment of the 21st century. It’s an environment that demands resilience from all of us—and especially from women and people of color.

Robin James’s books include:

· Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, neoliberalism (Zer0 Books, 2015).

· The Sonic Episteme: acoustic resonance & biopolitics (Duke, 2019).

· The Conjectural Body: Gender, Race, & the Philosophy of Music (Lexington Books, 2010).

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Leslie Ramos, "Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take" (Lund Humphries, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In an era where the financial stability of many arts organizations is increasingly precarious, arts philanthropy stands at a critical juncture. The recent COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21 laid bare the vulnerabilities in existing funding structures, highlighting just how fragile these lifelines can be. Coupled with a surge in social initiatives that demand attention and resources, the way the arts are funded is undergoing scrutiny and transformation.

A new wave of philanthropists—individuals with fresh motivations and evolving priorities—has emerged. These next-gen donors continue the legacy of their predecessors, while actively reshaping it, bringing forth new perspectives and expectations. Their influence is profound but necessitates a balance of caution and optimism as the arts sector navigates this changing landscape.

This is where Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take (Lund Humphries, 2023) steps in, offering a sprawling yet incisive exploration of philanthropy in the arts. The book examines the interests and behaviors of donors and recipients, suggesting ways in which their practices can be better intertwined. Through open and wide-ranging discussions, it explores the intricacies of giving and receiving in the arts, shedding light on the unique challenges and opportunities that define this relationship.

For collectors, philanthropists, and patrons, this book is more than just analysis—it’s a handy guide that equips them with the knowledge to navigate the peculiarities of arts philanthropy. For art market and museum professionals, it provides insights into the evolving dynamics of donor relationships, helping them adapt to the rapidly changing environment. Amidst the increasing financial instability of numerous arts organizations, arts philanthropy finds itself at a critical juncture.

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George Musgrave, "The England No One Cares About: Lyrics from Suburbia" (Goldsmiths Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

An exploration of the much-derided English suburbs through rap music.

There are many different Englands. From the much-romanticized rolling countryside, to the cosmopolitanism of the inner cities (embraced by some as progressive, multicultural enlightenment and derided by others as the playground of a self-righteous metropolitan elite), or the disparagingly named "left behind" communities which, post-Brexit, have so interested political parties and pundits, demographers and statisticians.

But there is also an England no one cares about. The England of semi-detached houses and clean driveways for multiple cars devotedly washed on Sundays, of "twitching curtains" and Laura Ashley sofas; of cul-de-sacs to nowhere and exaggerated accents; of late night drives to petrol stations on A roads, fake IDs tested in Harvesters, and faded tracksuits and over-gelled hair in Toby Carverys; of questionable hash from a "mate of a mate" and two-litre bottles of White Lightning from Budgens consumed in a kids playground. Much derided. Unglamorous, ordinary; cultural vacuity and small "c" conservatism. A hodgepodge. An--apparently--middling, middle-of-the-road middle-England of middle-class middle-mindedness.

Part poetry anthology, part academic study into placemaking, and part autoethnography, The England No One Cares About (Goldsmith Press, 2024) innovatively brings together academic discussions of the ethnographic potential of lyrics, scholastic representations of suburbia, and thematic analysis to explore how rap music can illuminate the experiences of young men growing up in suburbia. This takes place by exploring the author's own annotated lyrics from his career as a musician known as Context where he was referred to by the BBC as "Middle England's Poet Laureate."

George Musgrave studies the psychological experiences and working conditions of creative careers. He collaboratively undertook a major research project entitled Can Music Make You Sick? and cowrote a bestselling book on the subject. He has worked on ethical decision-making by music managers and wellbeing in the gig economy, and his research has been featured on BBC News, Pitchfork, Mixmag, GQ, The Financial Times, BBC Introducing, The Grammys, and Billboard among others. He is also a musician, signed with EMI/Sony/ATV.

George on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America: Music, Satire, & the Battle Against the Christian Right (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley on Twitter.

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Gavin Steingo, "Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 04:00:00 +0000

In Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity (U Chicago Press, 2024), music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of attempted communication beyond the human--cases in which the dualistic relationship of human to non-human is dramatically challenged. From singing whales to Sun Ra to searching for alien life, Steingo charts the many ways we have attempted to think about, and indeed to reach, beings that are very unlike ourselves.

Steingo focuses on the second half of the twentieth century, when scientists developed new ways of listening to oceans and cosmic space--two realms previously inaccessible to the senses and to empirical investigation. As quintessential frontiers of the postwar period, the outer space of the cosmos and the inner space of oceans were conceptualized as parallel realities, laid bare by newly technologized "ears." Deeply engaging, Interspecies Communication explores our attempts to cross the border between the human and non-human, to connect with non-humans in the depths of the oceans, the far reaches of the universe, or right under our own noses.

Gavin Steingo is Professor in the Department of Music at Princeton University. He is also affiliated with the programs in Media and Modernity, African Studies, and Jazz Studies. Steingo’s research examines sound and music as fundamental features in the construction of global modernity, with research specializations in African music, sound studies, acoustic ecology, and music and philosophy. Methodologically, his work is united by a mode of inquiry where theory, history, and ethnography form part of a shared constellation.

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Franz Nicolay, "Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music" (U Texas Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A close look at the lives of working musicians who aren't the center of their stage.

Secret (and not-so-secret) weapons, side-of-the-stagers, rhythm and horn sections, backup singers, accompanists—these and other “band people" are the anonymous but irreplaceable character actors of popular music. Through interviews and incisive cultural critique, writer and musician Franz Nicolay provides a portrait of the musical middle class. Artists talk frankly about their careers and attitudes toward their craft, work environment, and group dynamics, and shed light on how support musicians make sense of the weird combination of friend group, gang, small business consortium, long-term creative collaboration, and chosen family that constitutes a band. Is it more important to be a good hang or a virtuoso player? Do bands work best as democracies or autocracies? How do musicians with children balance their personal and professional lives? How much money is too little? And how does it feel to play on hundreds of records, with none released under your name? In exploring these and other questions, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music (U Texas Press, 2024) gives voice to those who collaborate to create and dissects what it means to be a laborer in the culture industry.

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Nadirah Simmons, "First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed the Game" (Twelve, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This enlightening book reframes the history of hip-hop—and this time, women are given credit for all their trailblazing achievements that have left an undeniable impact on music.

First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed the Game (Twelve, 2024), hip-hop is not just the music, and women have played a big role in shaping the way it looks today. First Things First takes readers on a journey through some notable firsts by women in hip-hop history and their importance. Factual firsts like Queen Latifah becoming the first rapper to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Lauryn Hill making history as the first rapper to win the coveted Album of the Year Award at the GRAMMYs, April Walker being the first woman to dominate in the hip-hop fashion game, and Da Brat being the first solo woman rapper to have an album go platinum, and metaphorical firsts like Missy Elliott being the first woman rapper to go to the future. (Trust me, she really did.)

There are chapters on music legends like Nicki Minaj, Lil’ Kim and Mary J. Blige, tv and radio hosts like Big Lez and Angie Martinez, and so many more ladies I would name but I don’t want to spoil the book! There are games, charts and some fire images, too.

Altogether, First Things First is a celebration of the achievements of women in hip-hop who broke down barriers and broke the mold. So the next time someone doesn’t have their facts straight on the ladies in hip-hop, you can hit them with “first things first”…

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Jim Higgins, "Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground" (Trouser Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From the time he began recording with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s until his death in 2013, Lou Reed released nearly 50 original albums. In Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground (Trouser Press Books, 2024), Jim Higgins delves into each one, with descriptions, details, analysis and appraisals that will amplify and expand fans' understanding and appreciation of them.

This listener's guide is personal as well as definitive, a thoughtful consideration of Reed's entire career from the perspective of a devoted follower able to separate the highs from the lows.

Jim Higgins is arts and books editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a former pop music and jazz critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel. He is a two-time winner of Wisconsin Area Music Industry award for music journalist of the year and twice won the Sentinel staff-voted award for humor writing. Like Andy Warhol, he is a native of Pittsburgh.

Jim on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America: Music, Satire, & the Battle Against the Christian Right (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Resonant Grains

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the 1950s, a schoolteacher named Carleen Hutchins attempted a revolution in how concert violins are made. In this episode, Craig Eley of the Field Noise podcast tells us how this amateur outsider used 18th century science to disrupt the all-male guild tradition of violin luthiers. Would the myth of the never-equaled Stradivarius violin prove to be true or could a science teacher with a woodshop use an old idea to make new violins better than ever?

We also learn about the mysterious beauty of Chladni patterns, the 18th century technique of using tiny particles to reveal how sound moves through resonant objects–the key to Hutchins’ merger of art and science.

In this episode, we hear the voices of:

Quincy Whitney, Carleen Hutchins biographer and a former arts reporter for the Boston Globe.
Myles Jackson, a professor of the history of science at Princeton.
Joseph Curtin, a MacArthur-award winning violin maker.
Sam Zygmuntowicz, an extremely renowned violin maker and creator of Strad3D.
Carleen Hutchins herself.

You can subscribe to Craig Eley’s Field Noise podcast to hear the original version of this story.

This episode was edited by Craig Eley and Mack Hagood. Music is by Blue Dot Sessions and Marc Bianchi. The archival interview clips of Carleen Hutchins were provided by filmmaker James Schneider. The interview with Quincy Whitney was recorded by Andrew Parrella at New Hampshire Public Radio.

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Sheila Curran Bernard, "Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.

But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

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Robyn Hitchcock, "1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left" (Akashic Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left (Akashic Books, 2024) explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive-compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of thirteen--just as Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes.

When he arrives in January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for the comforts of home and his family's loving au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he's mutated into a 6'2? tall rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really high and fly to Nashville.

In between--as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside--Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester, threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid--a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno.

At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?

Robyn Hitchcock is a rock 'n' roll surrealist. Born in London in 1953, he describes his songs as "pictures you can listen to." Hitchcock has floated at a tangent to the mainstream for nearly five decades, and his songs have been performed by R.E.M., the Replacements, Neko Case, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Lou Barlow, Grant-Lee Phillips, Sparklehorse, and Suzanne Vega with the Grateful Dead, among others. Hitchcock lives in London with his wife Emma Swift and two cats, Ringo and Tubby.

Robyn on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America: Music, Satire, & the Battle Against the Christian Right (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025).

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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40 Years of Purple Rain: What to Make of the Movie/Album in 2024

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Purple Rain, Prince’s semi-autobiographical, semi-concert film, hit cinemas 40 years ago this week. The movie followed the album of the same name by a few short weeks. While the album is considered a defining musical achievement, the movie met a mixed reception at the time, and later critics have been both troubled by its misogyny and perplexed by its surreal qualities and uneven acting.

We consider the movie and the music at the four-decade mark, centering our discussion on the figure of Prince (who plays a character called “The Kid” in the movie) as a set of shifting signifiers allowing, and perhaps demanding, an active reading by audiences interested in gender, race, musical genre, performance, and more.

Mentioned in this episode: Jack Hamilton, “Baby I’m a Star”: Prince, Purple Rain, and the Audiovisual Remaking of the Black Rock Star” in Black Camera (2022) Vol. 14, No. 1.

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Kevin Mattson, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In his new book, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford UP, 2020), Kevin Mattson documents punk rock in the early 1980s through a comprehensive look into the music, zines, films, bands, and punk Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tactics. He shows how widespread the punk movement was in creating a counterculture that challenged the conservative narrative of 1980s America. Mattson places the punk countercultural movement into the wider context of Reagan’s America and the cultural war that his presidency created. In opposition to Reagan’s panic narratives of nuclear wars, his tax cuts for the rich, and cuts to public education and other social services, punks saw themselves as everything they rejected about the US. Mattson’s extensive archival research into the punk counterculture makes for an informative and captivating read into the larger ways in which punk impacted American cultural identities and challenged 1980s conservativism.

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Emily Wilbourne, "Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Emily Wilbourne argues for the relevance of such individuals to the history of Western music and for the importance of sound-particularly musical and vocal sounds-to systems of racial and ethnic difference. Many of the individuals discussed in these pages were subject to enslavement or conditions of unfree labour; some laboured at tasks that were explicitly musical or theatrical, while all intersected with sound and with practices of listening that afforded full personhood only to particular categories of people.

Integrating historical detail alongside contemporary performances and musical conventions, this book makes the forceful claim that operatic musical techniques were-from their very inception-imbricated with racialized differences. Dr. Wilbourne offers both a macro and micro approach to the content of this book. The first half of the volume draws upon a wide range of archival, theatrical and historical sources to articulate the theoretical interdependence of razza (lit. "race"), voice, and music in early modern Italy; the second half focuses on the life and work of a specific, racially-marked individual: the enslaved, Black, male soprano singer, Giovannino Buonaccorsi (fl.1651-1674). Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence reframes the place of racial difference in Western art music and provides a compelling pre-history to later racial formulations of the sonic.

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Emily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020), Emily J. Lordi takes on the challenge of explaining “soul,” through a book that zooms in and out between sweeping ideas about suffering and resilience in Black culture and fine-grained, close readings of individual performances by soul musicians. Rather than centering big musical gestures and major popular hits, Lordi pays close attention to musical practices like falsetto, ad-libs, and false endings to ground her analysis. She focuses on artists that are some of the most recognizable Black singers in the United States such as Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and James Brown, but she also spends a lot of time with more obscure figures including Donny Hathaway and Minnie Riperton. She ends the book with a powerful contemplation of how the logic of soul, born in the political and social tumult of the late 1960s, still resonates with some of today’s most popular women singers.

Emily J. Lordi is an Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. The Meaning of Soul is her third book. In addition to her scholarly work, she is an active cultural critic and music journalist published in venues such as Billboard, The Atlantic, and NPR.

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AI and Music: The Future is Here (featuring "There I Ruined It")

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and recently UConn’s Center for the Study of Popular Music hosted a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Music. The panel featured Dr. Mitchell Green, Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut; Dustin Ballard, a musician and creator of the social media channel “There I Ruined It”; and Dr. Aaron Dial, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Humanities and Technoscience Lab at Purdue University.

The conversation addressed AI music creation, production, composition, aesthetics, trends, copyright issues, and algorithms.

The panel was moderated by Professor Jeffrey Ogbar, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music and Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

Timestamps:

Mitchell Green: 7:00-23:40
Aaron Dial: 23:45-43:55
Dustin Ballard: 44:02-54:32

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Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, "Dance Music Spaces: Clubs, Clubbers, and DJs Navigating Authenticity, Branding, and Commercialism" (Lexington, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Dance Music Spaces: Clubs, Clubbers, and DJs Navigating Authenticity, Branding, and Commercialism (Lexington Books, 2022), Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo examines the production of physical and digital spaces in dance music, and how the players—clubs, clubbers, and DJs—use authenticity, branding, and commercialism to navigate them. An in-depth study into three women DJs—The Blessed Madonna, Honey Dijon, and Peggy Gou—reveals a new concept, “authenticity maneuvering.” In it Danielle Hidalgo exposes how the strategic use of a rave ethos both bolsters acceptance in dance music spaces and hides often problematic commercial practices. This timely, thoughtful, and deeply personal book presents a compelling analysis of the complicated interplay between dancing bodies, digital practices, and spatial offerings in contemporary dance music.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Paul Rekret, "Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis" (Goldsmiths Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The emergence of the popular music industry in the early twentieth century not only drove a wedge between music production and consumption, it also underscored a wider separation of labor from leisure and of the workplace from the domestic sphere. These were changes characteristic of an industrial society where pleasure was to be sought outside of work, but these categories have grown increasingly porous today. As the working day extends into the home or becomes indistinguishable from leisure time, so the role and meaning of music in everyday life changes too.

In arguing that the experience of popular music is partly conditioned by its segregation from work and its restriction to the time and space of leisure—the evening, the weekend, the dancehall— Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis (Goldsmiths Press, 2024) shows how changes to work as it grows increasingly precarious, part-time, and temporary in recent decades, are related to transformations in popular music. Connecting contemporary changes in work and the economy to tendencies in popular music, Take This Hammer shows how song-form has both reflected developments in contemporary capitalism while also intimating a horizon beyond it. From online streaming and the extension of the working day to gentrification, unemployment and the emergence of trap rap, from ecological crisis and field recording to automation and trends in dance music, by exploring the intersections of work and song in the current era, not only do we gain a new understanding of contemporary musical culture, we also see how music might gesture towards a horizon beyond the alienating experience of work in capitalism itself.

Paul Rekret is Lecturer in Media Industries in the School of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster, UK.

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Jake Johnson, "The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Las Vegas is a place the American dream made; a city built in the middle of desert visited by millions of people every year hoping to make their dreams (big or small) come true. The essays in The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas (University of Illinois Press, 2023) examines Las Vegas not as a kitschy, vaguely embarrassing American tourist destination, but rather takes seriously the performers and audiences who have made Las Vegas the embodiment of American mythology. In this interview, the volume's editor, Jake Johnson, is joined by two contributors: Brian F. Wright, author of “Elvis in Vegas: The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and the City of Second Chances” and Joanna Dee Dass co-author with Maddie House-Tuck of “The Real Deal: Impersonation and the American Dream in Branson and Vegas.” The Possibility Machine is a large collection of essays that examines music and performance in Las Vegas from multiple perspectives and considers the city’s history from mob-dominated playground to a family-friendly tourist destination. The essays explore music as an important facet of the lives of the city's residents, its promise of second chances to performers, the allure of its spectacle to audiences, and the circulation of its reputation around the U.S.

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On Michael Jackson: A Lecture by Margo Jefferson

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In September 2006, Margo Jefferson spoke to the Institute about her book, On Michael Jackson (Vintage, 2007). Jefferson received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for criticism when she was at the New York Times. Her 2015 book, Negroland: A Memoir, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And in 2022, she published, Constructing a Nervous System, a memoir in fragments. She has taught at NYU, The New School, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she is a professor of professional practice.

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A Drummer's Tale

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Charles Hayward is one of the most propulsive, resourceful and generative rock-plus drummers of the past half-century. An influential percussionist, keyboardist, songwriter, singer of songs, and forward thinker through sound, Charles spoke with Phantom Power about a 40thanniversary touring with a partly reformed and enlarged This Heat as This Is Not This Heat, and then opened into generous reflections on his solo works The Bell Agency and 30 Minute Snare Drum Roll.

Charles is founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. Since the late 1980s he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations, including Massacre with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith. Most recently he released an album of improvised duets with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

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Ann Powers, "Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell" (Dey Street Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

For decades, Joni Mitchell's life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians--from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile--and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as--with the other arm--she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.

In Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (Dey Street Books, 2024), Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer's childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell's musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell's collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.

Along this journey, Powers' wide-ranging musings on the artist's life and career reconsider the biographer's role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so, Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.

Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.

Ann Powers has been a music critic for more than thirty years, working for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and other publications. In the decade she has worked with NPR, she has written extensively on music and culture and appeared regularly on the All Songs Considered podcast and on news shows including All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Her books include a memoir, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music; and Piece by Piece with Tori Amos. Powers lives in Nashville. Ann Powers on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM, serves as a co-chair of the associate board at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and volunteers in the music archive at the Old Town School of Folk Music. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America: Music, Satire, & the Battle Against the Christian Right (LSU Press, Spring 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Palazzo Editions, Fall 2025). Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Christopher T. Conner and David R. Dickens, "Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) explores the subculture’s emergence as a deviant subculture. This text analyzes how industry professionals, fans, and public officials helped usher in a new age of EDM, arguing that while the defining features of the subculture made it attractive, they also laid the foundations for outsiders to commodify the movement as a culture industry. Chris Conner and David Dickens explore the concept of “commodified resistance” as the mechanism by which the movement's politically dissident features were removed and its place as a multi-billion-dollar industry made possible. Ultimately, this text advocates the continued utility of the culture industry thesis through an empirical analysis of the EDM subculture.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Laura Davis-Chanin and Liz Lamere, "Infinite Dreams: The Life of Alan Vega" (Backbeat Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Infinite Dreams: The Life of Alan Vega (Backbeat, 2024) by Laura Davis-Chanin and Liz Lamere is the first biography on the life of Alan Vega, best known as the co-founder of the punk duo Suicide. In their exhaustive biography Davis-Chanin and Vega's wife of 30 years, Liz Lamere, start with Vega's early life and attempts at astrophysics in college, to his encounter with Iggy Pop that changed his path and encouraged him to become an artist and performer. Infinite Dreams describes Vega’s many experiments across a variety of media, including the partnership with Marty Rev that became Suicide, which challenged audiences to look deep inside themselves and to not settle for distractions. Delving into his artistic life as well as his personal trials, Infinite Dreams combines candid photos, drawing, images of art pieces, and reminiscence of a wide array of musicians and artists, creating an intimate glimpse into the life of Vega and those he influenced.

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Screwed and Chopped

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swerve a slow path through the city streets, banging out a distinctive local music that paid tribute to those very same streets and neighborhoods.

Folklorist and Houston native Langston Collin Wilkins studies slab culture and the “screwed and chopped” hip hop that rattles the slabs and serves as the culture’s soundtrack. Wilkins shows us how sonic creativity turns a space—a collection of buildings and streets—into a place that is known, respected, and loved.

In this show we hear the slow, muddy, psychedelic sounds of DJ Screw and The Screwed Up Click, including rappers such as Lil Keke, Fat Pat, Big Hawk, and UGK–as well as songs by Geto Boys, Willie Dee, Swishahouse, Point Blank, Biggie Smalls, and MC T Tucker & DJ Irv.

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Timothy P. Storhoff, "Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the United States during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, who eased the musical embargo of the island and restored relations with Cuba. Musical exchanges during this period act as a lens through which to view not only US-Cuban musical relations but also the larger political, economic, and cultural implications of musical dialogue between these two nations. In this first book on the subject since Obama’s presidency, musicologist Timothy P. Storhoff describes how, after specific policy changes, musicians were some of the first to take advantage of new opportunities for travel, push the boundaries of new regulations, and expose both the possibilities and limitations of licensing musical exchange. This ethnography demonstrates how performances reflect aspirations for stronger transnational ties and a common desire to restore the once-thriving US-Cuban musical relationship.

Dr. Timothy Storhoff is an orchestra administrator, fundraiser, and ethnomusicologist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) is a PhD candidate in Musicology at Florida State University. She is currently working on a dissertation about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations.

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Corey J. Miles, "Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South" (U Mississippi Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South (University of Mississippi Press, 2023), Corey J. Miles narrates how southern Black sound, feeling, and being is constantly policed, surveilled, and criminalized. In doing so, he re-narrates the region as the "carceral South," to capture the ways people in the South and beyond can feel the emotional weight of the criminalization of Blackness. Where exactly does the South begin and end? Current maps are too rigid to account for the ways Black people have built the South while being simultaneously excluded from it.

Drawing from the different ways Black artists in the 2-5-2 area code in North Carolina use "vibe" as a mode of knowing and communication, Miles illustrates how Black feeling and unfeeling offer entry points into the contemporary South that challenge static and monolithic notions of the region. Placing the local artists in conversation with other southern cultural creators such as 2 Chainz, Rod Wave, and Rapsody, these ethnographic narratives demonstrate that there are multiple Souths, with overlapping and distinct commitments to working through pain, sound, and belonging. Pain music, a subgenre of trap music, is used to take the listener to moments of violence to allow them to hear the desires, anger, and silences that bind Black life in community. Through conceptions of ratchet, hood, and ghetto, Black artists turn away from respectable images and unmap the South. In trap music, they move the South to a space where multiple modes of being find respect and care.

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Matthew D. Morrison, "Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States" (U California Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (U California Press, 2024) explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of slavery and blackface.

Blacksound as an idea is not the music or sounds produced by Black Americans but instead the material and fleeting remnants of their sounds and performances that have been co-opted and amalgamated into popular music. Morrison unpacks the relationship between performance, racial identity, and intellectual property to reveal how blackface minstrelsy scripts became absorbed into commercial entertainment through an unequal system of intellectual property and copyright laws. By introducing this foundational new concept in musicology, Blacksound highlights what is politically at stake--for creators and audiences alike--in revisiting the long history of American popular music.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Tara López, "Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso" (U Texas Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Tara López's Chuco Punk: Sonic Insurgency in El Paso (University of Texas Press, 2024), is an immersive study of the influential and predominantly Chicanx punk rock scene in El Paso, Texas. Punk rock is known for its daring subversion, and so is the West Texas city of El Paso. In Chuco Punk, Tara López dives into the rebellious sonic history of the city, drawing on more than seventy interviews with punks, as well as unarchived flyers, photos, and other punk memorabilia.

Connecting the scene to El Paso's own history as a borderland, a site of segregation, and a city with a long lineage of cultural and musical resistance, López throws readers into the heat of backyard punx shows, the chaos of riots in derelict mechanic shops, and the thrill of skateboarding on the roofs of local middle schools. She reveals how, in this predominantly Chicanx punk rock scene, women forged their own space, sound, and community. Covering the first roots of Chuco punk in the late 1970s through the early 2000s, López moves beyond the breakout bands to shed light on how the scene influenced not only the contours of sound and El Paso but the entire topography of punk rock.

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Kyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created the genres later to be known as blues, country, and jazz.

Barnett also engages the early recording industry as entertainment media, considering the ways in which sound recording, radio, and film converge in the late 1920s. Record Cultures explores Gennett Records and jazz; race records, with a focus on the African American-owned Black Swan Records, as well as the white-owned Paramount Records; the origins of old-time music as a category that will become country; the growth of radio; the intersections of music and film; and the recording industry’s challenges in the wake of the Great Depression.

Kyle Barnett is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at Bellarmine University.

Kimberly Mack holds a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, and she is an Assistant Professor of African-American literature at the University of Toledo in Ohio. Her book, Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White, is forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press in December 2020. Mack is also a music critic who has contributed her work to national and international publications, including Music Connection, Relix, Village Voice, PopMatters, and Hot Press. She published a 2019 essay for Longreads titled “Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me.”

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Daniel Rachel, "Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation" (Akashic Books, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Daniel Rachel's new book Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation (Akashic, 2024) presents the definitive history of 2 Tone Records. In 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers in Britain, the US, and beyond, as albums by the Specials, the Selecter, Madness, the English Beat, and the Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born. 2 Tone was Black and white: a multiracial force of British and Caribbean musicians singing about social issues, racism, class, and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and fought against rightwing extremism. It was exuberant and eclectic: white youths learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae, crossed with a punk attitude, to create an original hybrid.

The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, England, and masterminded by a middle-class art student, Jerry Dammers, who envisioned an English Motown. Dammers signed a slew of successful artists, and a number of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, infighting among the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to the inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination. Over the following years, Dammers built the label back up again, entering a new phase full of fresh signings and a beautiful end-piece finale in the activist hit song “(Free) Nelson Mandela.”

Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.

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Ryan White, "Springsteen: Album by Album" (Palazzo Editions, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 31 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The definitive illustrated book on "The Boss"-- Springsteen: Album by Album (Palazzo Editions, 2024) is now updated to celebrate Bruce Springsteen’s 75th birthday!

Renowned for his passionate songwriting, galvanizing live shows, and political activism, Bruce Springsteen stands astride the rock 'n' roll stage like a colossus--and the iconic rocker shows no signs of slowing down. With in-depth reviews of 21 studio albums spanning over 6 decades of music history, Springsteen delves into every aspect of the superstar's career. Richly photographed, and featuring brilliant writing by one of America's top music critics as well as an introduction by Peter Ames Carlin (author of the bestselling biography Bruce).

Ryan White has been writing cultural features for over twenty years, and is the author of Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way. Ryan on Twitter.

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Bodie A. Ashton, "The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity, and Society" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity, and Society (Bloomsbury, 2024), editor Bodie Ashton compiles twelve essays exploring the impact of Pet Shop Boys across the past four decades. The Pet Shop Boys came of age at a time of deep socio-political tension. From the rise of sexual politics and awareness to Thatcherite neoliberalism and the Cold War, this book explores the cultural and political impact of the band and offers a fascinating window into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. An archetypal 'gay band', it shows how their overt queerness influenced generations of LGBTQIA+ music lovers and artists alike.

Covering the full oeuvre of The Pet Shop boys; their albums, films, stage productions and collaborations, chapters in this collection show how their work is suffused with political commentary on the past and present covering themes as broad as queer identity, the HIV/AIDs epidemic, globalization and Brexit. It also places them within the context of their times and considers them as activists, authors, social commentators, political actors and personalities to better understand what influenced them. Bringing together a range of perspectives and disciplines, The Pet Shop Boys and the Political provides a unique and untapped insight into a formative pop band of the modern era that has mirrored and shaped society over the past forty years.

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Ears Racing

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lynn Stoever–editor of the influential sound studies blog Sounding Out!–about her new book, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). We tend to think of race and racism as visual phenomena, but Stoever challenges white listeners to examine how racism can infect our ears, altering the sound of the world and other people. We discuss the history of American prejudicial listening since slavery and learn how African American writers and musicians have pushed back against this invisible “sonic color line.”

Works discussed include Richard Wright’s Native Son and music by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Fishbone, and Lena Horne.

Additional music by Graeme Gibson and Blue the Fifth.

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Dirty Rat

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This time we talk with a fascinating sound artist and composer Mack met at a recent meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. As his website puts it, “Brian House is an artist who explores the interdependent rhythms of the body, technology, and the environment. His background in both computer science and noise music informs his research-based practice. Recent interests include AI, telegraphy, and urban rats.” If that description looks a little daunting on the screen, the work itself sounds really cool to cris and Mack. We’ll listen to three pieces of Brian’s: a composition that imprints motion-tracking data on collectible vinyl, a field recording from the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and an encounter with the wildlife that put the “burrows” in New York’s five boroughs.

Links to works discussed: Quotidian Record (2012), Urban Intonation (2017).

Mack notes that it was incredible to edit this episode using Daniel Fishkin’s daxophone arrangement of John Cage’s “Ryoanji” (1983).

The other music on today’s episode is by Brian House and Graeme Gibson.

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Rob Drew, "Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster enclaves while the cassette’s likeness pops up on T-shirts, coffee mugs, belt buckles, and cell phone cases. In Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Rob Drew traces how a lowly, hissy format that began life in office dictation machines and cheap portable players came to be regarded as a token of intimate expression through music and a source of cultural capital.

Drawing on sources ranging from obscure music zines to transcripts of Congressional hearings, Dr. Drew examines a moment in the early 1980s when music industry representatives argued that the cassette encouraged piracy. At the same time, 1980s indie rock culture used the cassette as a symbol to define itself as an outsider community. Indie’s love affair with the cassette culminated in the mixtape, which advanced indie’s image as a gift economy. By telling the cassette’s long and winding history, Dr. Drew demonstrates that sharing cassettes became an acceptable and meaningful mode of communication that initiated rituals of independent music recording, re-recording, and gifting.

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James A. Cosby, "Rock Music, Authority and Western Culture, 1964-1980" (McFarland, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The history of rock and roll music can be seen in a long arc of Western civilization's struggle for both greater individual expression and societal stability. In the 1960s, the West's relationship with authority ruptured, in part due to the rock revolution. The lessons and implications of this era have yet to be fully grasped.

James A. Cosby's book Rock Music, Authority and Western Culture, 1964-1980 (McFarland, 2024) examines the key artists, music, and events of the classic rock era--defined here as 1964 to 1980--through a virtual psychoanalysis of the West. Over these years, important truths unfold in the stories of British Invaders, hippies, proto-punks, and more, as well as topics to include drugs, primal scream therapy, the occult, spirituality, and disco and its detractors, to name just a few. Through a narrative that is equal parts entertaining, scholarly, and even spiritual, readers will gain a greater appreciation for rock music, better understand the confusing world we live in today, and see how greater individuality and social stability may be better reconciled moving forward.

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Douglas L. Reside, "Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Thousands of shows have opened on Broadway. Why do we remember some and not others?

The musical theatre repertory is not composed of titles popular in the theatre but by those with successful cast recordings, movie versions, or even illegal bootlegs on YouTube. The shows audiences know, and the texts and music they expect to hear when they attend a production, are defined by media consumed at home more than by memories of performances witnessed in the theatre. For example, author Doug Reside shows that it is no accident that the serious book musical with a fixed score developed in the 1940s - when commercially pressed and marketed record albums made it possible to record most of the score of a new musical in a fixed medium. And Hamilton, a musical with dense lyrics and revolutionary musical style, would not have been as easily accessible to world audiences if most hadn't already had the opportunity to learn the score by listening to free digital streams of the original cast recording.

The technologies that made these media possible developed concurrently with and shaped the American musical as an art form. Reside uncovers how the affordances and limitations of these technologies established a repertory of titles that are most frequently performed and defined by the texts used in these performances. Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory (Oxford UP, 2023) argues that the musicals we most remember are those which most effectively used their era's best recording and distribution technologies to document and share the work with those who would never see the original production on Broadway.

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Denise Von Glahn, "Circle of Winners: How the Guggenheim Foundation Composition Awards Shaped American Music Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Founded in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides support to what their current website says are "exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions."

In Circle of Winners: How the Guggenheim Foundation composition Awards Shaped American Music Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2023), Denise Von Glahn studies the institution between its founding and the late 1930s, with special emphasis on the music composition award. Funded by the Guggenheim mining fortune, the Foundation took early shape from the efforts of Carroll Wilson, Frank Aydelotte, and Henry Allen Moe--three Rhodes Scholars who initially struggled to envision and implement the organization's ambitious goals. One of the few groups providing support to composers before WWII, Von Glahn explains how the Foundation’s selection practices and the network that helped to shape and sustain its work impacted American classical music and picked winners in the American musical marketplace.

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Alyxandra Vesey, "Extending Play: The Feminization of Collaborative Music Merchandise in the Early Twenty-First Century" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Despite the hypervisibility of a constellation of female pop stars, the music business is structured around gender inequality. As a result, women in the music industry often seize on self-branding opportunities in fashion, cosmetics, food, and technology for the purposes of professional longevity. Extending Play: The Feminization of Collaborative Music Merchandise in the Early Twenty-First Century (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the ubiquity of brand partnerships in the contemporary music industry through the lens of feminized labor, to demonstrate how female artists use them as a resource for artistic expression and to articulate forms of popular feminism through self-commodification. In this book, author Alyxandra Vesey examines this type of promotional work and examines its proliferation in the early 21st century.

Though brand partnerships exist across all media industries, they are a distinct phenomenon for the music business because of their associations with fan club merchandise, concert merchandise, and lifestyle branding, often foregrounding women's participation in shaping these economies through fan labor and image management. Through textual and discourse analysis of artists' songs, music videos, interviews, social media usage, promotional campaigns, marketing strategies, and business decisions, Extending Play investigates how female musicians co-create branded feminine-coded products like perfume, clothes, makeup, and cookbooks and masculine-coded products like music equipment as resources to work through their own ideas about gender and femininity as workers in industries that often use sexism and ageism to diminish women's creative authority and diminish the value of the recording in order to incentivize musicians to internalize the demands of industrial convergence.

By merging star studies, popular music studies, and media industry studies, Extending Play proposes an integrated methodology for approaching contemporary cultural history that demonstrates how female-identified musicians have operated as both a hub for industrial convergence and as music industry professionals who use their extramusical skills to reassert their creative acumen.

Alyxandra Vesey is Assistant Professor in Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on the gendered dynamics of creative labor in the music industries. Her work has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Television and New Media, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Camera Obscura, Velvet Light Trap, and Emergent Feminisms: Complicating a Postfeminist Media Culture. Alyxandra on Twitter.

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Kristin M. Franseen, "Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson" (Clemson UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Imagining Musical Pasts: the Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson (Clemson University Press, 2023) by Kristin M. Franseen explores the complicated archive of sources, interpretations, and people present in queer writings on opera and symphonic music from ca. 1880 to 1935. It focuses primarily on the work of three turn-of-the-twentieth-century music scholars--philosopher and horror writer Vernon Lee (pseud. Violet Paget), biographer and program note annotator Rosa Newmarch, and critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson. All three were queer, all discussed music both as part of fiction and nonfiction writing, and all worked outside of the academy. Rather than finding a grand unifying theory of early queer musicology, Franseen has closely examined three idiosyncratic writers who struggled to stay true to their ideas of intellectual honesty while also writing about music, musical figures, and musical listening in quite different ways. By studying each scholar's individual approach to constructing and interpreting musical and sexual knowledge, the book draws attention to aspects of their work previously neglected or considered only in isolation. Franseen meditates on questions of what constitutes historical evidence, what role should gossip and rumor have in nonfiction writing, and what should count as musicology, as she discusses each person's work.

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Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, "Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From Bill Clinton playing his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama referencing Jay-Z's song "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," politicians have used music not only to construct their personal presidential identities but to create the broader identity of the American presidency. Through music, candidates can appear relatable, show cultural competency, communicate values and ideas, or connect with a specific constituency. On a less explicit level, episodes such as Clinton's sax-playing and Obama's shoulder brush operate as aural and visual articulations of race and racial identity. But why do candidates choose to engage with race in this manner? And why do supporters and detractors on YouTube and the Twittersphere similarly engage with race when they create music videos or remixes in homage to their favorite candidates?

With Barack Obama, Ben Carson, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump as case studies, Tracks on the Trail: Popular Music, Race, and the US Presidency (U Michigan Press, 2023) sheds light on the factors that motivate candidates and constituents alike to articulate race through music on the campaign trail and shows how the racialization of sound intersects with other markers of difference and ultimately shapes the public discourse surrounding candidates, popular music, and the meanings attached to race in the 21st century. Gorzelany-Mostak explores musical engagement broadly, including official music in the form of candidate playlists and launch event setlists, as well as unofficial music in the form of newly composed campaign songs, mashups, parodies, and remixes.

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Miriam Piilonen, "Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary theories? What were the values and limits of these evolutionist turns of thought, and in what ways have they endured in present-day music research?

Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human (Oxford UP, 2024) is a critical examination of ideas about musical origins, emphasizing nineteenth-century theories of music in the evolutionist writings of Darwin and Spencer. Author Miriam Piilonen argues for the significance of this Victorian music-evolutionism in light of its ties to a recently revitalized subfield of evolutionary musicology. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to music theorizing, Piilonen explores how historical thinkers constructed music in evolutionist terms and argues for an updated understanding of music as an especially fraught area of evolutionary thought.

In this book, Piilonen delves into how historical evolutionists, in particular Darwin and Spencer, developed and applied a concept of music that served as a boundary-drawing device, used to trace or obscure the conceptual borders between human and animal. She takes as primary texts the early evolutionary treatises that double as theoretical accounts of music's origins. For Darwin, music served as a kind of proto-language common to humans and animals alike; he heard the songs of birds and the chirps of mice as musical, as articulated in texts such as The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Spencer, on the other hand, viewed music as a specifically human stage of evolutionary advance, beyond language acquisition, as outlined in his essay, "The Origin and Function of Music" (1857). These competing views established radically different perspectives on the origin and function of music in human cultural expression, while at the same time being mutually constitutive of one another.

A ground-breaking contribution to music theory and histories of science, Theorizing Music Evolution turns to music evolution with an eye toward disrupting and intervening in these questions as they recur in the present.”

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Adele Oliver, "Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill" (404 Ink, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill (404 Ink, 2023) by Adèle Oliver shines a critical light on UK drill and its fraught relationship with the British legal system. Intervening on current discourse steeped in anti-Blackness and moral panic, this Inkling ‘deeps’ how the criminalisation of UK drill cannot be disentangled from histories, technologies, and realities of colonialism, consumerism and more.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Joseph M. Thompson, "Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism" (UNC Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history reveals how country music's Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to service members. Beginning in the 1950s, the military flooded armed forces airwaves with the music, hosted tour dates at bases around the world, and drew on artists from Johnny Cash to Lee Greenwood to support recruitment programs.

Over the last half of the twentieth century, the close connections between the Defense Department and Music Row gave an economic boost to the white-dominated sounds of country while marginalizing Black artists and fueling divisions over the meaning of patriotism. This story is filled with familiar stars like Roy Acuff, Elvis Presley, and George Strait, as well as lesser-known figures: industry executives who worked the halls of Congress, country artists who dissented from the stereotypically patriotic trappings of the genre, and more.

In Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (UNC Press, 2024), Joseph M. Thompson argues convincingly that the relationship between Music Row and the Pentagon helped shape not only the evolution of popular music but also race relations, partisanship, and images of the United States abroad.

Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University.

Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University.

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Leah Broad, "Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World" (Faber & Faber, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

This is a story of four composers whose careers, lives and loves as women working in 20th century Britain have since been largely forgotten.

Dr Leah Broad’s 2023 debut Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World (Faber & Faber, 2023), reveals the life and music of some of Britain’s most exciting 20th-century composers. A musicologist who gravitates towards figures at the margins of Western Art Music, the four subjects of Broad’s biography (Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Doreen Carwithen and Dorothy Howell) experience success, even fame, before being pushed to the periphery. They compose operas, film music, songs and sonatas, encounter the Second Viennese School and fashion early freelance instrumental careers. Broad’s narrative begins in 1858 with the birth of Ethel Smyth. She charts two world wars, the development of post-war British institutions such as the BBC and the Arts Council of Great Britain, and brings us all the way to Doreen Carwithen’s death in 2003. In this time, the four composers take on the diverse politics of suffragette militancy, 60’s American liberalism and a staunch British-Catholic conservatism. Through grouping such diverse personalities, Broad refuses the tendency to isolate women as historical anomalies or singular figures. Her fluent prose expertly interweaves their lives, whilst revealing a true diversity of music, thought and experience.

Joseph Edwards is a writer and violinist based in London. His current research looks at the importance of sound in chronic illness experience. Contact him via email at joseph8edwards@gmail.com or through Twitter @joseph8edwards.

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Edward Dusinberre, "Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The first violinist of the Takács Quartet weaves scholarship on Edward Elgar, Antonin Dvořák, Bela Bartók and Benjamin Britten with a deeply personal evocation of belonging, national identity and the private life of a string quartet.

Edward Dusinberre’s Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home (Faber, The University of Chicago Press 2022) alternates traditional musicology with personal reminiscence, situating details of Dusinberre’s English upbringing and current life in Colorado, alongside Dvořák’s tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America and Bartók’s bleak final years of illness and longing as a Hungarian refugee. He gives behind-the-scenes access to quartet life, an esoteric and often guarded profession. Dusinberre explains the rehearsal process, reveals the complexity of auditioning new members and evokes the struggles performing musicians faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The evolution of sound and style is an important topic for a quartet formed almost 50 years ago in 1970’s Budapest. Now based in Boulder, Colorado, with cellist András Fejér the only remaining founding member, Dusinberre considers the subject of music and nationalism as it relates to the shifting identity of the Takács and their repertoire. This exploration of change and exchange speaks to our fluctuating relationships with self-identity and difficulties in defining home.

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Richard Beaudoin, "Sounds As They Are: The unwritten music in classical recordings" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In a recording, what sounds count as music? Sounds made by a musician's body--including inhales, finger taps, and grunts--have for decades been dismissed as extraneous noises. In Sounds As They Are: The unwritten music in classical recordings (Oxford UP, 2024), author Richard Beaudoin pioneers a field of inquiry into non-notated sounds in recordings of classical music, recognizing often-overlooked sounds made by the bodies of performers and their recording equipment as music.

Beaudoin classifies such sounds via inclusive track analysis (ITA), a bold new theory based on a comprehensive census of audible events on a given recording, and then codifies their musical function. He builds a typology across four large categories: sounds of breath (inhaling and exhaling), sounds of touch (guitar squeaks, piano pedals), sounds of effort (grunting and moaning), and surface noise (on early recording formats). Breaths are shown to be as complex and diverse as chords. Touch sounds create empathy with listeners. Effortful vocalizations reveal connections between music-making and sex. The measurement of surface noise reveals moments of synchronization with the meter of the recorded piece. He draws analogies between unwritten music and painting, photography, poetry, psychology, and government. The book's methodology is intertwined with the aesthetics and ethics of non-notated sounds: who is allowed to make them, and how they are received by listeners, critics, and scholars. Beaudoin uncovers insidious inequalities across music studies and the recording industry, including the silencing of body and breath sounds along lines of gender and race.

Sounds as They Are demonstrates the expressive, interpretive, and embodied possibilities that emerge when all sounds are valued coequally and asks music theory to face a simple truth: that all sounds deserve recognition.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Sam McPheeters, "Mutations: Twenty Years Embedded in Hardcore Punk" (Barnacle Book, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse, lifestyle, escapism, conversation, community, ideology, sales category, social movement, punishable offense, badge of authenticity, reason to drink beer forever, or an aesthetic of belligerent incompetence. And if someone has a strong belief about what punk is, odds are they have even stronger feelings about what punk is not.

Sam McPheeters championed many different versions. Over the course of two decades, he fronted Born Against, released dozens of records and fanzines, and toured seventeen times across the northern hemisphere. In Mutations: Twenty Years Embedded in Hardcore Punk (Barnacle Book, 2020), he examines the diverse realms he intersected—New York hardcore, Riot Grrrl, Gilman street, the hidden enclaves of Olympia, and New England, and downtown Los Angeles—and the forces of mental illness and creative inspiration that drove him, and others, in the first place.

Sam McPheeters was born in Ohio and raised in upstate New York. In 1981, at age twelve, he co-authored Travelers Tales: Rumors and Legends of the Albany-Saratoga Region. Starting in 1989, he sang for Born Against, Men's Recovery Project, and Wrangler Brutes, touring seventeen times across North America, Europe, and Japan. Since 2009, he has written for Criterion, Vice, and The Village Voice, among others. He currently lives in Pomona, CA, with his wife.

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Caste, Music, and Microinequities with Supriya Subramani

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Pat speaks with Dr Supriya Subramani.

Dr Subramani's interest in morality and ethics has led her to explore morality, behaviour, and ethics in healthcare contexts. She has worked on the concepts of belonging, micro-inequities, moral habitus, the idea of the passive patient, the social construction of incompetency, and reflexivity.

They discuss caste and contemporary music, resistance and poetry, and autonomy and participatory theatre.

Background notes and a transcript of this episode are also available on the Concept : Art website (http://www.conceptartpodcast.com).

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Stephen Lee Naish, "Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper" (Routledge, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper (Routledge,2024), Stephen Lee Naish explores how as a director Dennis Hopper used music and sound to propel the narrative of his work and to signpost the era in which the films were made and the characters' place within American culture. Naish examines five of Hopper's films to show how this deep engagement with music to build character and setting continued throughout his career, as Hopper used folk, punk, hip-hop, and jazz to shape the worlds of his films in ways that influenced other filmmakers and foreshadowed the advent of the music video format. As Naish demonstrates, throughout his career Hopper relied on music to propel his films and tell his stories.

In Easy Rider, Hopper was one of the first filmmakers to include popular rock, pop, and folk music on a soundtrack. In his sophomore film The Last Movie, Hopper blended diegetic performances of folk and traditional Peruvian indigenous music to create a textured piece of sound art. In Out of the Blue, Hopper used punk rock as a vibrant shock, but also as a reaction to the failed ethos of the past. In 1988's Colors he incorporated hip-hop and rap music to soundtrack the lives of the gang members who rule the streets of Los Angeles. Finally, in his 1990 film The Hot Spot, Hopper commissioned a hybrid soundtrack of jazz/blues by Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker to accompany his steamy neo-noir. Using case studies of five of Hopper's directorial films, Naish aims to uncover the film soundtrack as a vital piece of the narrative, not only in Dennis Hopper's films but in film as a whole.

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Radha Kapuria, "Music in Colonial Punjab" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Music in Colonial Punjab (Oxford UP, 2023) offers the first social history of music in undivided Punjab (1800-1947), beginning at the Lahore court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and concluding at the Patiala royal darbar. It unearths new evidence for the centrality of female performers and classical music in a region primarily viewed as a folk music centre, featuring a range of musicians and dancers -from 'mirasis' (bards) and 'kalawants' (elite musicians), to 'kanjris' (subaltern female performers) and 'tawaifs' (courtesans). A central theme is the rise of new musical publics shaped by the anglicized Punjabi middle classes, and British colonialists' response to Punjab's performing communities. The book reveals a diverse connoisseurship for music with insights from history, ethnomusicology, and geography on an activity that still unites a region now divided between India and Pakistan.

Dr Radha Kapuria is an Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Durham University, United Kingdom. She is a historian of gender and culture in South Asia. Her current research is on the impact of the 1947 Partition on musicians’ lives in India and Pakistan. This ongoing research will feed into her second monograph on musical memories of the Partition, focused on the history of musical exchange across the Indo-Pak border in both South Asia and the British diaspora since 1947.

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Coretta M. Pittman, "Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Coretta M. Pittman (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) traces the evolution of Black women’s literacy practices from 1892 to 1934.

Pittman explores two distinct but related eras of Black women’s writing—the Women’s Era of the 1890s and early 1900s, and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Casting a wide net, Pittman analyzes fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic writing by Black women along with songs performed and written by classic blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Victoria Spivey. This innovative approach allows Pittman to show how women from these two generations approached issues of class, respectability, uplift, and empowerment.

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Micajah Henley, "The Clash's Sandinista!" (Bloombury, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Following the success of their instantly iconic double LP, London Calling, The Clash set out to do something "triply outrageous." Named after the Nicaraguan rebels who successfully overthrew an authoritarian dictator, Sandinista! consists of 36 songs across six sides of vinyl. Produced by the band, it showcases their politics as well as their ability to adopt a multitude of genres ranging from punk, reggae, jazz, gospel, calypso, and hip hop. Free from the influence of their Machiavellian manager, Bernie Rhodes, The Clash still battled their record label to release the triple LP on their terms: three for the price of one.

Despite its polarizing reception from critics at the time of its release, Sandinista! is often considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Nevertheless, critics and fans have spent over 40 years debating whether the album would be better as a 12-track LP. In The Clash’s Sandinista! (Bloomsbury, 2024), Henley entertains that idea and considers what is lost or gained in the process. To do so, the book delves into the politics of The Clash, the spliff bunkers constructed for the production of the album, and the sacrifices made upon its release. It examines the album's 36 tracks and considers the significance of the record's dissection on behalf of fans who curate their own versions of the album in the mixtape, CD, and playlist eras.

Micajah Henely is an adjunct professor at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. He is the creator of the music podcast You Forgot One. Micajah Henely on Twitter.

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Gavin Butt, "No Machos Or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk" (Duke UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How do art schools influence music? In No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk (Duke UP, 2022), Gavin Butt, a Professor of Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle, tells the story of art, music and higher education in Leeds in the mid-1970s. Using archives and interviews, as well as analysis of the music and art of the era, the book shows the importance of art and art theory to a huge range of bands, including Gang of Four, Scritti Politti and Soft Cell. The analysis also takes a critical perspective on art, music and the era, thinking through the importance of class, gender, and racial inequalities to punk and post-punk. A rich and detailed defence of the importance of arts education, the book will be of interest across the arts and humanities, as well as for anyone wanting to know more about why Leeds matters!

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Judith Tick, "Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song" (Norton, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) was one of America’s greatest musicians. In this major biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer who Transformed American Song (Norton 2023), Judith Tick documents Ella’s importance as a music maker, the ups and downs of her career, and her place in the music industry. Singers are often sidelined in histories of jazz, and jazz critics often celebrated instrumentalists over vocalists in their commentary. Consequently, many authors have not taken Ella seriously as a musical innovator, composer, arranger, or creative performer. Judith Tick shows that Ella was all these things and more. She provides new information about Ella’s family and early career, and analyzes how Ella negotiated the ever-shifting lines between jazz and pop. Tick shows that Ella was an ambitious risk-taker whose musical curiosity and skill led her to make some of the twentieth-century’s most important recordings, and helped establish the great American songbook.

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David Savran, "Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad" (Oxford UP, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad (Oxford UP, 2024) offers a look at how the Broadway musical travels the world, influencing and even transforming local practices and traditions. It traces especially how the musical has been indigenized in South Korea and Germany, the commercial centers for Broadway musicals in East Asia and continental Europe. Both countries were occupied after World War II by the United States, which disseminated U.S. American popular music, jazz, movies, and musical theatre in the belief that these nations needed to rebuild their cultures in accordance with U.S. guidelines. By the 1990s, Broadway imports had become phenomenally popular in Seoul and Hamburg while home-grown musicals proliferated that adapted and transformed the prototypes that had been disseminated by the U.S.

Although this book focuses on recent musicals, it also looks back through the twentieth century to plot the evolution of musical theatre in South Korea and Germany. Part One considers the key questions: What is a musical? Why is it the great success story of U.S. theatre? How has it been assimilated to musical theatre traditions around the world? Part Two focuses on musical theatre in South Korea, studying the import/export business in large-scale musicals about Korean history and innovative hybrid experiments that mix local performance traditions with the Broadway vernacular. Part Three moves to Europe to analyze the conflicted attitudes toward musicals in the German-speaking world. Its three chapters survey the history of musicals in Germany from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reconfiguration of musical theatre conventions by experimental directors, and finally the ground-breaking German-language productions of Broadway classics by Barrie Kosky and other innovative directors.

In the twenty-first century, Broadway-style musical theatre has succeeded in becoming a lingua franca, the template for musical theatre around the world. This book shows how some of the most innovative, beautiful, and exciting musical theatre is being made outside the United States.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Reading Taylor Swift as a Cultural and Political Text

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Taylor Swift is by some measures the most popular person on the planet. Her periodic reinventions set the mass cultural terms of debate, and her political interventions – through exhorting her fans on social media – lead to huge spikes in voter registration. It is hoped by Democrats, and feared by Republicans, that a Taylor endorsement of Joe Biden in 2024 might meaningfully tip the scales in favor of reelection.

In this episode, we consider Taylor Swift as a popular and political text, over which she exercises substantial, but not total, authorial control. What role in the culture does she play? How should we interpret her recent association with the NFL? How do the parasocial relationships of her fans – “Swifties” – to the artist herself contribute to authorship of the Taylor text. And how should we read the counter-subversive conspiratorial responses to her halting forays into electoral politics?

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Amy Coddington, "How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race" (U California Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race (U California Press, 2023) examines the programming practices at commercial radio stations in the 1980s and early 1990s to uncover how the radio industry facilitated hip hop's introduction into the musical mainstream. Constructed primarily by the Top 40 radio format, the musical mainstream featured mostly white artists for mostly white audiences. With the introduction of hip hop to these programs, the radio industry was fundamentally altered, as stations struggled to incorporate the genre's diverse audience. At the same time, as artists negotiated expanding audiences and industry pressure to make songs fit within the confines of radio formats, the sound of hip hop changed. Drawing from archival research, Amy Coddington shows how the racial structuring of the radio industry influenced the way hip hop was sold to the American public, and how the genre's growing popularity transformed ideas about who constitutes the mainstream.

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Priyanka Basu, "The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia" (Routledge, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How can culture be authentic in the modern world? In The Poet's Song: Folk and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Rouitledge, 2023), Dr Priyanka Basu, a Lecturer in Performing Arts at Kings College London, explores the history and practice of the folk performance Kobigaan. The book draws on rich archival and historical analysis, as well as fieldwork in West Bengal and Bangladesh, to tell the story of how Kobigaan has evolved over time, how it has been preserved, how it has changed media and changed practice, and how the struggles over to whom Kobigaan belongs play out today. A fascinating and engaging text, the book will be of interest to scholars across the humanities, as well as for anyone interested in arts and culture!

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Roseen Giles, "Monteverdi and the Marvellous: Poetry, Sound, and Representation" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The marvellous, a key concept in literary debates at the turn of the seventeenth century, involved sensory and perspectival transformation, a rhetoric built on the unexpected, contradictory, and thought-provoking. The composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) created a new practice in which the expressive materials of music and poetry were placed in concert. This innovative new study of Monteverdi's literary personality integrates musical and poetic analysis to create an approach to text-music relations that addresses scholars of both literature and music.

Roseen Giles' book Monteverdi and the Marvellous: Poetry, Sound, and Representation (Cambridge UP, 2023) illuminates how experiments in language and perception at the turn of the seventeenth century were influenced and informed by the work of musicians of that era. Giles provides a new perspective on the music and poetry of Monteverdi's madrigals through the poetics of the marvellous. In his madrigals, Monteverdi created a reciprocity between poetry and music which encouraged audiences to contemplate their interactions, and, consequently, to listen differently.

Kate Driscoll is Assistant Professor of Italian and Romance Studies at Duke University. She is a specialist of early modern Italian and European literary and cultural history, with interests in women’s and gender studies, performance history, and the cultures of diplomacy and reception. Email: kate.driscoll@duke.edu.

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Joseph Cone, "Seeing Opera Anew: A Cultural and Biological Perspective" (Routledge, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

What people ultimately want from music-drama, audience research suggests, is to be absorbed in a story that engages their feelings, even moves them deeply, and that may lead them to insights about life and, perhaps, themselves. Joseph Cone's Seeing Opera Anew: A Cultural and Biological Perspective (Routledge, 2023) shows how both human biology and culture cause these effects.

Cone, a lifelong opera fan, ardent amateur singer and professional science writer, goes beyond the traditional approaches of musicology, criticism, history and biography. He adopts a "stereo" approach to assimilate cultural perspectives and contemporary evolutionary theories based in human biology. In doing so, he offers fresh insights on why music-dramas can offer such rich, immersive experiences, powerfully affecting our feelings and our understanding of life.

Written to stimulate the student and opera-goer as much as the professional, "Seeing Opera Anew" examines and interprets more than 15 operas in an informal and lively way based on a range of recent scholarship.

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Steve Ferzacca, "Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore" (NUS Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The basement of a veteran shopping mall located in the central business district of Singapore affords opportunities to a group of amateur and semi-professional musicians, of different ethnicities, ages, and generations to make a sonic way of life. Based on five years of deep participatory experience, this multi-modal (text, musical composition, social media, performance) sonic ethnography is centered around a community of noisy people who make rock music within the constraints of urban life in Singapore. The heart and soul of this community is English Language rock and roll music pioneered in Singapore by several members of the 1960s legendary "beats and blues" band, The Straydogs, who continue to engage this community in a sonic way of life.

In Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore (NUS Press, 2021), Ferzacca draws on Bruno Latour's ideas of the social--continually emergent, constantly in-the-making, "associations of heterogeneous elements" of human and non-human "mediators and intermediaries"--to portray a community entangled in the confounding relations between vernacular and national heritage projects. Music shops, music gear, music genres, sound, urban space, neighborhoods, State presence, performance venues, practice spaces, regional travel, local, national, regional, and sonic histories afford expected and unexpected opportunities for work, play, and meaning, in the contemporary music scene in this Southeast Asian city-state. The emergent quality of this deep sound is fiercely cosmopolitan, yet entirely Singaporean. What emerges is a vernacular heritage drawing upon Singapore's unique place in Southeast Asian and world history.

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Horace J. Maxile, Jr. and Kristen M. Turner, "Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's Guide" (Routledge, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors include women and people of color in the typical music history survey course and the foundational music theory classes. This book provides a reconceptualization of the principles that shape the decisions instructors should make when crafting the syllabus. It offers new perspectives on canonical composers and pieces that take into account musical, cultural, and social contexts where women and people of color are present. Secondly, it suggests new topics of study and pieces by composers whose work fits into a more inclusive narrative of music history. A thematic approach parallels the traditional chronological sequencing in Western music history classes. Three themes include people and communities that suffer from various kinds of exclusion: Locales & Locations; Forms & Factions; Responses & Reception. Each theme is designed to uncover a different cultural facet that is often minimized in traditional music history classrooms but which, if explored, lead to topics in which other perspectives and people can be included organically in the curriculum, while not excluding canonical composers.

Dr. Horace J. Maxile, Jr. is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Baylor University. His primary interests are the concert music of Black composers, music semiotics, and gospel music. His research has appeared in scholarly journals such as Perspectives of New Music, American Music, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and Black Music Research Journal.

Dr. Kristen M. Turner is a Lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her work centers on issues of race, gender, and class in American popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Her research has appeared in collected editions and scholarly journals including the Journal of the American Musicological Society, the Journal of the Society for American Music, American Studies, and Musical Quarterly.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research is about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival.

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Kunal Purohit, "H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars" (HarperCollins, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Can a song trigger a murder? Can a poem spark a riot? Can a book divide a people? Away from the gaze of mainstream urban media, across India's dusty, sleepy towns, a brand of popular culture is quietly seizing the imagination of millions, on the internet and off it. From catchy songs with acerbic lyrics to poetry recited in kavi sammelans to social media influencers shaping opinions with their brand of 'breaking news' to books rescripting historical events, 'Hindutva Pop' or H-Pop is steadily creating societal acceptability for Hindutva's core beliefs.

By cleverly inserting Hindutva into popular culture, H-Pop normalizes Islamophobia, demonizes minorities and vilifies its critics each day, without ever making headlines. What makes H-Pop so popular? Who are its stars and its audience? Who is pouring in the money, the effort and the resources to produce and broadcast it? What is its impact on the BJP and Prime Minister Modi's popularity? And what kind of an India is it trying to create? These are some of the questions that award-winning independent journalist Kunal Purohit explores in this riveting investigative book as he travels through India, profiling some of H-Pop's most prolific and popular creators--its stars and celebrities. He interrogates whether the creators are driven by ideology or commerce, and what motivates the audience to consume their daily dose of bigotry. In H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars (HarperCollins, 2023), Purohit uncovers the frightening face of a New India--one that is united by hate, divided by art.

Kunal Purohit has been a journalist for nearly two decades, writing on issues of development, politics, inequality, gender and the intersections between them. He is an independent journalist and has, in the recent past, reported closely on hate crimes and the rise of Hindu nationalism across the country. He has worked in the newsrooms of Hindustan Times and The Free Press Journal in Mumbai. He is an alumnus of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, from where, as a Felix Scholar, he earned an MSc in Development Studies with distinction in 2017. Kunal received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism in 2012, the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting in 2014 and the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitive Reporting in 2014 and 2019. He has also received various fellowships and journalism grants. His work can be found in Al Jazeera, ProPublica, The Times of India, Foreign Policy, Hindustan Times, South China Morning Post, Deutsche Welle and The Wire, among others.

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John Howland, "Hearing Luxe Pop: Glorification, Glamour, and the Middlebrow in American Popular Music" (U California Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Hearing Luxe Pop: Glorification, Glamour, and the Middlebrow in American Popular Music (U California Press, 2021) explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has long thrived in American popular music, in which popular-music idioms are merged with lush string orchestrations and big-band instrumentation. John Howland presents an alternative music history that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses of orchestration and arranging, traveling from symphonic jazz to the Great American Songbook, the teenage symphonies of Motown to the “countrypolitan” sound of Nashville, the sunshine pop of the Beach Boys to the blending of soul and funk into 1970s disco, and Jay-Z’s hip-hop-orchestra events to indie rock bands performing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. This book attunes readers to hear the discourses gathered around the music and its associated images as it examines pop’s relations to aspirational consumer culture, theatricality, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, and glamorous lifestyles.

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Richard T. Rodríguez, "A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad" (Duke UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad (Duke UP, 2022), Richard T. Rodríguez examines the relationship between British post-punk musicians and their Latinx audiences in the United States since the 1980s. Melding memoir with cultural criticism, Rodríguez spotlights a host of influential bands and performers including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, Bauhaus, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Pet Shop Boys. He recounts these bands’ importance for him and other Latinx kids and discusses their frequent identification with these bands’ glamorous performance of difference. Whether it was Siouxsie Sioux drawing inspiration from Latinx contemporaries and cultural practices or how Soft Cell singer Marc Almond’s lyrics were attuned to the vibrancy of queer Latinidad, Rodríguez shows how Latinx culture helped shape British post-punk. He traces the fandom networks that link these groups across space and time to illuminate how popular music establishes and facilitates intimate relations across the Atlantic. In so doing, he demonstrates how the music and styles that have come to define the 1980s hold significant sway over younger generations equally enthused by their matchlessly pleasurable and political reverberations.

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Bryce Henson, "Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil" (U Texas Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Known as Black Rome, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, is a predominantly Black city. The local art, food, and dance are closely linked to the population's African roots. Yet many Black Brazilian residents are politically and economically disenfranchised. Bryce Henson details a culture of resistance and activism that has emerged in response, expressed through hip-hop and the social relations surrounding it.

Based on years of ethnographic research, Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil (University of Texas Press, 2023) illuminates how Black hip-hop artists and their circles contest structures of anti-Black racism by creating safe havens and alternative social, cultural, and political systems that serve Black people. These artists valorize and empower marginalized Black peoples through song, aesthetics, media, visual art, and community action that emphasize diasporic connections, ancestrality, and Black identifications in opposition to the anti-Black Brazilian nation. In the process, Henson argues, the Salvador hip-hop scene has reinvigorated and reterritorialized a critical legacy of Black politicocultural resistance: the quilombo, maroon communities of Black fugitives who refused slavery as a way of life, gathered away from the spaces of their oppression, protected their communities, and nurtured Black life in all its possibilities.

Bryce Henson is an assistant professor of media, culture, and identity in the Department of Communication and Journalism and associate faculty in the Africana Studies Program at Texas A&M University.

Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Mark Guarino, "Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The untold story of Chicago's pivotal role as a country and folk music capital.

Chicago is revered as a musical breeding ground, having launched major figures like blues legend Muddy Waters, gospel soul icon Mavis Staples, hip-hop firebrand Kanye West, and the jazz-rock band that shares its name with the city. Far less known, however, is the vital role Chicago played in the rise of prewar country music, the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the contemporary offspring of those scenes.

In Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival (U Chicago Press, 2023), veteran journalist Mark Guarino tells the epic century-long story of Chicago's influence on sounds typically associated with regions further south. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and deep archival research, Guarino tells a forgotten story of music, migration, and the ways that rural culture infiltrated urban communities through the radio, the automobile, and the railroad. The Midwest's biggest city was the place where rural transplants could reinvent themselves and shape their music for the new commercial possibilities the city offered. Years before Nashville emerged as the commercial and spiritual center of country music, major record labels made Chicago their home and recorded legendary figures like Bill Monroe, The Carter Family, and Gene Autry. The National Barn Dance--broadcast from the city's South Loop starting in 1924--flourished for two decades as the premier country radio show before the Grand Ole Opry. Guarino chronicles the makeshift niche scenes like "Hillbilly Heaven" in Uptown, where thousands of relocated Southerners created their own hardscrabble honky-tonk subculture, as well as the 1960s rise of the Old Town School of Folk Music, which eventually brought national attention to local luminaries like John Prine and Steve Goodman. The story continues through the end of the twentieth century and into the present day, where artists like Jon Langford, The Handsome Family, and Wilco meld contemporary experimentation with country traditions.

Featuring a foreword from Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks and casting a cross-genre net that stretches from Bob Dylan to punk rock, Country and Midwestern rediscovers a history as sprawling as the Windy City--celebrating the creative spirit that modernized American folk idioms, the colorful characters who took them into new terrain, and the music itself, which is still kicking down doors even today.

Mark Guarino covers national news and culture from Chicago for the Washington Post, ABC News, the New York Times, and other outlets. He was the Midwest bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years. Mark on Twitter.

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Murray Forman and Mark V. Campbell, "Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production" (Intellect, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 4 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Despite the vast popularity and cultural influence of hip-hop, efforts to archive its history are still in fairly early stages. Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production (Intellect, 2023), edited by Mark V. Campbell and Murray Forman, focuses on the cultural and political aspects of those undertakings. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of collection, curation, preservation, and digitization, and critically analyzes institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access, and the ideological implications of hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values. A wide swath of hip-hop culture is covered by the contributors, including dance, graffiti, clothing, and battle rap.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

83 'til Infinity: 40 Years of Hip-Hop in the Ottawa–Gatineau Region exhibit at Ottawa Art Gallery
Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool
Sarah Baker (Google Scholar profile)
Marion Leonard (university profile)
Les Roberts (university profile)
Sara Cohen (university profile)

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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Michael O'Malley, "The Beat Cop: Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Francis O’Neill (1848–1936) was a Chicago police officer and a folk music collector. Michael O’Malley connects these two seemingly unrelated activities in his biography of O’Neill, The Beat Cop: Chicago’s Chief O’Neill and the Creation of Irish Music (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Born in Ireland in 1848, O’Neill emigrated to the United States soon after the Civil War was over and eventually joined the Chicago Police Department. He rose through the ranks and became Chief of Police in 1901. But in his spare time and after his retirement in 1905, O’Neill devoted himself to collecting Irish traditional music, ultimately publishing several important large collections of the repertory as well as a book that documents Ireland’s musical landscape at the turn of the twentieth century. O’Malley tells O’Neill’s story within multiple, interwoven contexts including British colonialism, Irish nationalism in the United States, American race relations, the standardization in American institutions, and the internal politics of the Chicago Police Department and the city it protected. O’Malley also reveals fascinating connections between O’Neill’s policework and his approach to Irish music.

Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Aaron Carnes, "In Defense of Ska: The Ska Now More Than Ever Edition" (Clash Books, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The era of ska shame is officially over, and ska fans no longer need to hide in the basement, skanking alone.

The creator of the popular podcast In Defense of Ska has doubled down on defending the checkered flag genre with his new edition of In Defense of Ska: Ska Now More Than Ever Edition (Clash Books, 2024). The original version was chosen by Pitchfork as one of the best music books of 2021, and was an official recommended read in Rolling Stone’s June 2021 issue. In this expanded version, author Aaron Carnes weaves in tons of new interviews and stories, continuing his crusade to rebuff pop culture’s dismissal of American ska as nothing more than porkpie hats and silly lyrics.

Updated journalistic essays, personal stories, historical investigations, and a brand-new epilogue exploring ska’s “lost years” serve as a much-needed crash course on the hundreds of bands, big or small, that formed the passionate community that continues to love and evolve America’s much-maligned and infamously underrated ska scene.

Join the movement today and discover why ska is a cultural force that can’t be ignored!

Aaron Carnes is a music journalist based out of Northern California. His work has appeared in Playboy, Salon, Noisey, Bandcamp Daily, Sun Magazine, Sierra Club Magazine, and Ozy. He’s also the music editor at Good Times weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Jessica Goethals, "Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court" (U Toronto Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth century. She secured a steady stream of elite patrons – including popes, queens, grand dukes, and influential cardinals – while male poets and librettists wrote celebratory poetry on her behalf. In addition to her appearances as a soprano on the opera stage, Costa published a remarkable fourteen full-length texts across an expanse of genres: burlesque comedy, drama, equestrian ballet, pastoral opera, amorous letters, lyric poetry, and history.

Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court (U Toronto Press, 2023) brings together close textual readings of Costa’s numerous publications with archival materials detailing her performance itinerary and social-cultural networks. The book progresses chronologically through her life, geographically along the routes she travelled, and thematically via the genres in which she experimented. Jessica Goethals illuminates how Costa was unafraid to leap over the boundaries of decorum that delimited what women should and did write about. More than merely a literary biography, this book is also a portrait of seventeenth-century courts, their concerns, and their entertainments.

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Adriana Helbig, "ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Adriana Helbig's book ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid (Oxford University Press, 2023) offers a micro ethnography of economic networks that impact the daily lives of Romani musicians on the borders of the former Soviet Union and the European Union. It argues that the development aid allotted to provide economic assistance to Romani communities, when analyzed from the perspective of the performance arts, continues to marginalize the poorest among them. Through their structure and programming, NGOs choose which segments of the population are the most vulnerable and in the greatest need of assistance.

Drawing on ethnographic research in development contexts, ReSounding Poverty asks who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today. Framing the critique of development aid in musical terms, it engages with Romani marginalization and economic deprivation through a closer listening to vocal inflections, physical vocalizations of health and disease, and emotional affect. ReSounding Poverty brings us into the back rooms of saman, mud and straw brick, houses not visited by media reporters and politicians, amplifying the cultural expressions of the Romani poor, silenced in the business of development.

Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East.

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Aniefiok Ekpoudom, "Where We Come From: Rap, Home & Hope in Modern Britain" (Faber and Faber, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Why is music important to place, and place important to music? In Where We Come From: Rap, Home and Hope in Modern Britain (Faber and Faber, 2024), Aniefiok Ekpoudom, a freelance writer and storyteller from South London, tells the story of UK Rap and Grime music. In doing so he tells the story of Modern British culture. The book uses three places- South London, South Wales, and the Midlands, and three case studies of some of UK Rap and Grime’s leading artists. In doing so, the book powerfully charts the struggles and triumphs of modern British music, and the struggles and triumphs of the places where that music comes from. A work of brilliant and compelling narrative non-fiction, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music, culture, and place.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester.

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Katherine Rye Jewell, "Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio" (UNC Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Jewell uncovers how battles to control college radio were about more than music—they were an influential, if unexpected, front in the nation’s culture wars. These battles created unintended consequences and overlooked contributions to popular culture that students, DJs, and listeners never anticipated. More than an ode to beloved stations, this book will resonate with both music fans and observers of the politics of culture.

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Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay, "Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan" (U Texas Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A literary and visual exploration of the songs of Steely Dan.

Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock canon has conjured a more vivid cast of rogues and heroes, creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators--or imbued their characters with so much humanity. Pulling from history, lived experience, pulp fiction, the lore of the counterculture, and their own darkly comic imaginations, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker summoned protagonists who seemed like fully formed people with complicated pasts, scars they don't talk about, delusions and desires and memories they can't shake. From Rikki to Dr. Wu, Hoops McCann to Kid Charlemagne, Franny from NYU to the Woolly Man without a Face, every name is a locked-room mystery, beguiling listeners and earning the band an exceptionally passionate and ever-growing cult fandom.

Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan (U Texas Press, 2023) presents the world of Steely Dan as it has never been seen, much less heard. Artist Joan LeMay has crafted lively, color-saturated images of her favorite characters from the Daniverse to accompany writer Alex Pappademas's explorations of the famous and obscure songs that inspired each painting, in short essays full of cultural context, wild speculation, inspired dot-connecting, and the occasional conspiracy theory. All of it is refracted through the perspectives of the characters themselves, making for a musical companion unlike any other. Funny, discerning, and visually stunning, Quantum Criminals is a singular celebration of Steely Dan's musical cosmos.

Alex Pappademas is the author of Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant--The Movies & Meaning of an Irrepressible Icon and the writer and host of the acclaimed podcast The Big Hit Show. His work has also appeared in GQ, the New York Times, and Grantland. Alex on Twitter.

Joan LeMay is an artist based in London and New York City (although the paintings for this book were created in Portland). Her work appears in multiple publications and books and has been shown in museums, galleries, and public spaces internationally. Joan on Twitter.

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Elizabeth Eva Leach, "Medieval Sex Lives: The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders" (Cornell UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How was music important to medieval society? In Medieval Sex Lives:The Sounds of Courtly Intimacy on the Francophone Borders (Cornell UP, 2023), Prof Elizabeth Eva Leach, a Professor of Music at the University of Oxford explores the history and content of the Douce 308 manuscript to tell the story of the cultural and sexual scripts that framed courtly life in the Medieval era. The book tells the long history of the idea of courtly love, as well as using contemporary theories and cultural practices to re-examine the songs and lyrics in the manuscript. A fascinating and absorbing read, the book will be of interest to humanities scholars and more widely to anyone interested in the history of music, sex, and sexuality. You can also find out more about the book here on Prof Leach’s blog.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester.

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Laurent Dubois, “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument” (Harvard UP, 2016)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Most scholars of popular music use songs, artists, and clubs as the key texts and sites in their exploration of the social, cultural, political, and economic effects of music. Laurent Dubois‘ new book looks at the history of an instrument, the banjo, to help us better understand American history and culture. Dubois also helps readers understand the banjo as part of an Afro-Atlantic musical heritage.

In The Banjo: Americas African Instrument (Harvard University Press, 2015), Dubois examines how the banjo came into existence in the Americas and what it reveals about debates about American culture. Dubois book starts in Africa with a wide range of instruments that shaped the banjo. He then follows these instruments as they cross the Atlantic in the Middle Passage, winding up in the Caribbean and in North America. Sifting through travelers accounts and documents in archives, Dubois shows how the banjo brought together African peoples in the Americas, creating a familiar but new instrument and sound. He describes the banjo as the product of parallel development in which many enslaved musicians deployed similar instrument-making strategies to create what we now know as the banjo.

The story, however, does not stop there. The banjo came to represent authentic Africa American and American culture and became a key symbol in abolitionist rhetoric and minstrelsy. As a result, the banjo was not simply an instrument but a powerful marker of identity within American culture. Dubois traces how the banjo played a significant role in jazz, country, bluegrass, and folk music, symbolizing a diverse set of values and politics. From the minstrel Joel Walker Sweeney to the political activist Pete Seeger, the history of the banjo is the history of American popular culture.

Laurent Dubois is Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University. He is also the author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution and Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. More information about his work on the banjo can be found at Banjology and Musical Passage.

Richard Schur, Professor of English at Drury University, is the host for this podcast.

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Ralph H. Craig, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she found in Buddhism. Her spiritual transformation is often overshadowed by the rags-to-riches arc of her life story. But in this groundbreaking biography, Ralph H. Craig III traces Tina's journey from the Black Baptist church to Buddhism and situates her at the vanguard of large-scale movements in religion and pop culture.

Paying special attention to the diverse metaphysical beliefs that shaped her spiritual life, Craig untangles Tina's Soka Gakkai Buddhist foundation; her incorporation of New Age ideas popularized in '60s counterculture; and her upbringing in a Black Baptist congregation, alongside the influences of her grandmothers' disciplinary and mystical sensibilities. Through critical engagement with Tina's personal life and public brand, Craig sheds light on how popular culture has been used as a vehicle for authentic religious teaching. Scholars and fans alike will find Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner (Eerdmans, 2023) as enlightening as the iconic singer herself.

When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she found in Buddhism. Her spiritual transformation is often overshadowed by the rags-to-riches arc of her life story. But in this groundbreaking biography, Ralph H. Craig III traces Tina’s journey from the Black Baptist church to Buddhism and situates her at the vanguard of large-scale movements in religion and pop culture.

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Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Communication at Louisiana State University--on a dope new work of cultural criticism The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era (University of Alabama Press, 2017). The Mark of Criminality positions the work of key gangsta rap artists--Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur--as well as the controversies their work produced, squarely within the law-and-order politics and popular culture of the 1980s and 1990s to reveal a profoundly complex period in American history when the meanings of crime and criminality were incredibly unstable. McCann argues that, among other well-circulated meanings, the mark of criminality was a source of power, credibility, and revenue. By understanding gangsta rap as a potent, if deeply imperfect, enactment of the mark of criminality, we can better understand how crime is always a site of struggle over meaning.

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Walter Greason and Tim Fielder, "The Graphic History of Hip Hop" (NYC Department of Education, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Hip Hop turned 50 this year. It has been five decades since DJ Cool Herc played a party in the Bronx that gave birth to a global cultural revolution. To honor this anniversary and teach this history, the New York City Department of Education has published The Graphic History of Hip Hop. Dr. Walter Greason wrote the text, which is beautifully illustrated by Afrofuturist graphic artist Tim Fielder.

As the first in a series of collaborative graphic novels, The Graphic History of Hip Hop brings together a powerful blend of music, art, and history drawn from over sixty years of research by hundreds of professional historians and other scholars from the humanities and social sciences. The book is designed to engage students as they will see, hear and experience how the world of Hip Hop evolved in response to the rapidly changing political and environments from the 1970s through the 2000s. This work is an essential resource to enhance modern urban and world history curriculums and create a unique and engaging classroom settings for students. This shorter version is free to download as PDF and a longer hardcover version will be published soon.

Also see the project website, here.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

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Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt, "Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt tells a new story about the history of the music business and the ten technological advances that disrupted it over the last century.

In recent years, narratives about the music industry tend to hew to a common theme: it was humming along for decades until the Internet and Napster came along and disrupted it. Key Changes shows that this view is incorrect: the industry was actually shaken up not once in the 1990s, but ten times over more than 100 years. These ten disruptions came with the introduction of new formats for enjoying recorded music: starting with the cylinders and discs played on early phonographs; then moving through radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads, streaming, and streaming video; and then into Artificial Intelligence (AI), which enables a wide range of new capabilities with profound impacts upon the business. This book devotes a chapter to each of these formats, illustrating how such innovations beget shifts in creativity, consumer behavior, economics, and law.

Each of the technological innovations covered in this book not only disrupted the music business, but also fundamentally altered the industry's character. And while the technologies themselves have evolved in unique and varied ways over the decades, the changes within the business follow a clear pattern. Veteran music industry professionals and music technology experts Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt illuminate this pattern through a framework they term "the 6 Cs": cutting edge technology, channels of distribution, creators, consumers, cash, copyright. This framework provides insight into how such disparate innovations similarly disrupted and transformed the music business in each era. Extensively researched and supplemented by interviews with Grammy-winning artists, producers and executives, the book provides an insightful perspective on the ways technology has fundamentally altered the music industry, throughout history and into the present era.

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Nate Patrin, "The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), Nate Patrin examines how the link between film and song endures as more than a memory. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movies and pop music, a phenomenon Patrin tracks through the past fifty years, revealing the power of music in movies to move the needle in popular culture. Rock 'n' roll, reggae, R&B, jazz, techno, and hip-hop: each had its moment--or many--as music deployed in movies emerged as a form of interpretive commentary, making way for the legitimization of pop and rock music as art forms worthy of serious consideration. These commentaries run the gamut from comedic irony to cheap-thrills excitement to deeply felt drama, all of which Patrin examines in pairings such as American Graffiti and "Do You Want to Dance?"; Saturday Night Fever and "Disco Inferno"; Apocalypse Now and "The End"; Wayne's World and "Bohemian Rhapsody"; and Jackie Brown and "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?"

What gives power to these individual moments, and how have they shaped and shifted music history, recasting source material or even stirring wider interest in previously niche pop genres? As Patrin surveys the scene--musical and cinematic--across the decades, expanding into the deeper origins, wider connections, and echoed histories that come into play, The Needle and the Lens offers a new way of seeing, and hearing, these iconic soundtrack moments.

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Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) played a foundational role in the African American entertainment industry. T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners’ Booking Association in Jazz-Age America by Michelle R. Scott (University of Illinois Press, 2023) examines this circuit of vaudeville theaters active between 1920 and 1930 which booked blues singers, comedians, dancers, and many other kinds of entertainers into Black-serving theaters throughout the United States. T.O.B.A. launched and nurtured the careers of many Black performers including Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and Hattie McDaniel. Scott traces T.O.B.A.’s antecedents in the first decades of the twentieth century and documents the ten years of its existence. She contextualizes T.O.B.A. within the politics of segregated America, the Black communities served by its theaters, and its effect on the lives and careers of thousands of Black performers.

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Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music" (Columbia UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to a tune involves mental faculties most of us don't even realize we have.

Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it--teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing--in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences.

Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, Every Brain Needs Music is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, "Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine" (Callaway, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Several years ago, a treasure trove containing some 6,000 original Bob Dylan manuscripts was revealed to exist. Their destination? Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The documents, as essential as they are intriguing—draft lyrics, notebooks, and diverse ephemera— comprise one of the most important cultural archives in the modern world. Along with countless still and moving images and thousands of hours of riveting studio and live recordings, this priceless collection now resides at The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just steps away from the archival home of Dylan’s early hero, Woody Guthrie.

Nearly all the materials preserved at The Bob Dylan Center are unique, previously unavailable, and, in many cases, even previously unknown. As the official publication of The Bob Dylan Center, Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine (Callaway, 2023) is the first wide-angle look at the Dylan archive, a book that promises to be of vast interest to both the Nobel Laureate’s many musical fans and to a broader national and international audience as well.

Edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine focuses a close look at the full scope of Dylan’s working life, particularly from the dynamic perspective of his ongoing and shifting creative processes—his earliest home recordings in the mid-1950s right up through Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), his most recent studio recording, and into the present day.

The centerpiece of Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is a carefully curated selection of over 600 images including never-before-circulated draft lyrics, writings, photographs, drawings and other ephemera from the Dylan archive.

With an introductory essay by Sean Wilentz and epilogue by Douglas Brinkley, the book features a surprising range of distinguished writers, artists and musicians, including Joy Harjo, Greil Marcus, Michael Ondaatje, Gregory Pardlo, Amanda Petrusich, Tom Piazza, Lee Ranaldo, Alex Ross, Ed Ruscha, Lucy Sante, Greg Tate and many others. After experiencing the collection firsthand in Tulsa, each of the authors was asked to select a single item that beguiled or inspired them. The resulting essays, written specifically for this volume, shed new light on not only Dylan’s creative process, but also their own. Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is an unprecedented glimpse into the creative life of one of America’s most groundbreaking, influential and enduring artists.

Mark Davidson is the Curator of the Bob Dylan Archive and the Director of Archives and Exhibitions for the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Centers in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with an emphasis on folk music collecting, and an MSIS in archiving and library science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark has written widely on music and archives-related subjects, including his dissertation, “Recording the Nation: Folk Music and the Government in Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1936–1941,” and the essay “Blood in the Stacks: On the Nature of Archives in the Twenty-First Century,” published in The World of Bob Dylan.

Parker Fishel is an archivist and researcher who was co-curator of the inaugural exhibitions at the Bob Dylan Center. Providing archival consulting for numerous musicians and estates under the umbrella of Americana Music Productions, Fishel is also a co-founder of the improvised music archive Crossing Tones and a board member of the Hot Club Foundation. Highlights from his recording credits include Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969 (Third Man Records), a forthcoming box set inspired by the Chelsea Hotel (Vinyl Me, Please), and several volumes of the GRAMMY Award–winning Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series.

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Hilary French, "Ballroom: A People’s History of Dancing" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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Ramsey Lewis and Aaron Cohen, "Gentleman of Jazz: A Life in Music" (Blackstone, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

This immersive new autobiography provides insight into the early life and illustrious career of the late great Ramsey Lewis, one of the most popular jazz pianists of all time. Beginning with his childhood growing up in Chicago's Cabrini Green neighborhood, Ramsey Lewis recounts his memories of the music in his parents' church and his early piano lessons. As he learned classical technique, Lewis also absorbed countless jazz records and heard gospel music weekly, finally becoming a performer himself in his teenage years. With his coauthor and collaborator, Aaron Cohen, Lewis describes his early steps in jazz from joining the Clefs in the '50s, to eventually establishing the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

This memoir provides an evocative tour of Lewis's life from the club circuit of the early 1960s and recording with Chess Records to working with producer Maurice White and musicians such as Stevie Wonder. In this deep dive into an exceptional life and expansive career, Lewis takes us through his artistic challenges, offers insight and perspective on his own musical growth and the creative process, and describes his eventual foray into symphonic composition and performance.

Gentleman of Jazz: A Life in Music (Blackstone, 2023) is an inspiration to young musicians eager to follow in his footsteps and a tribute to the legacy of Ramsey Lewis and is sure to appeal to longtime fans as well as those new to the jazz scene.

Ramsey Lewis (1935-2022) was one of the most popular jazz pianists of all time, with more than eighty albums to his name. A National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, Top 10 hitmaker, and winner of three Grammys, Lewis also hosted popular television and radio shows that honored the history of jazz music. He was not only influential for many modern jazz artists but beats he created decades ago can be heard across R&B and hip-hop. Through it all, Lewis remained grounded, never leaving behind his roots in Chicago.

Aaron Cohen covers the arts for numerous publications and teaches English, journalism, and humanities at the City Colleges of Chicago. He is the author of Aretha Franklin's "Amazing Grace" and Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power.

Aaron Cohen on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Ina Rupprecht, ed., "Persecution, Collaboration, Resistance: Music in the ‘Reichskommissariat Norwegen’ (1940–45)" (Waxmann Verlag, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

When Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, the long lasting bilateral relations changed fundamentally. Immediately, the administration of the ‘Reichskommissariat Norwegen’ responsible for culture and therein music together with the Norwegian puppet regime’s department for culture implemented the adaption to the new, official National Socialist guidelines.

The diversity of music in Norway during the occupation is presented in this book by Norwegian and German authors, confronting research on collaboration, persecution, and resistance for the first time as an international endeavour. Persecution, Collaboration, Resistance: Music in the ‘Reichskommissariat Norwegen’ (1940–45) (Waxmann Verlag, 2020) illustrates not only examples of exile and persecution and ask for the consequences of Nazi politics on prominent and forgotten fates, but depict how Norwegian artists and their organisations positioned themselves towards collaboration or resistance during and after the war, as well as contrasting it with the impressions of German musicians, both military and civilian, playing in Norway during the occupation.

Including Norway into the international discourse on ‘Music and Nazism’, the articles address readers both interested in the German occupation of Norway, and the implications the German administration and its Norwegian counterparts had on the music life.

This book is available open access here.

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Greil Marcus, "Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs" (Yale UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Greil Marcus is perhaps the world’s foremost interpreter of Bob Dylan. This podcast focuses on Marcus’ latest Dylan book, Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs (Yale University Press, 2022). Marcus begins his book with a 2001 quote from Dylan: “I can see myself in others.” In this sense, Marcus writes, “the engine of his songs is empathy.” We begin our conversation with “Murder Most Foul,” from 2020, on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with Dylan “putting on Kennedy’s bloody suit.” We discuss, too, “Desolation Row,” from 1965. The opening line— “They’re selling postcards of the hanging…”— could be a reference, Marcus suggests, to a lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920, just over twenty years before Dylan was born there. And Marcus offers insights on the five other songs covered in this volume: “Blowin’ in the Wind”/1962; “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll”/1964; “The Times They Are A-Changin’”/1964; “Jim Jones”/1992; and “Ain’t Talkin’”/2006.

Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January.

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Warren Zanes, "Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' (Crown, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen's most important record--the lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself.

Nebraska is rough and unfinished, recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective of the mood of the country, but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist's life, the beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after the album's release.

Warren Zanes spoke to many people for Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (Crown, 2023), including Bruce Springsteen himself. He also interviewed more than a dozen celebrated artists and musical insiders, from Rosanne Cash to Steven Van Zandt, about their reactions to the album. Zanes interweaves these conversations with inquiries into the myriad cultural touchpoints, including Terrence Malick's Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O'Conner, that influenced Springsteen as he was writing the album's haunting songs. The result is a textured and revelatory account of not only a crucial moment in the career of an icon but also a record that upended all expectations and predicted a home-recording revolution.

Warren Zanes is the New York Times bestselling author of Petty: The Biography. As a member of the Del Fuegos, he has shared the stage with Bruce Springsteen, and continues to write and record music. Zanes holds a PhD in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester and presently teaches at New York University. He is a Grammy-nominated producer of the PBS series Soundbreaking and was a consulting producer on the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. Zane's work has appeared in Rolling Stone and the Oxford American, and he has served as a vice president at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Warren on his website and Twitter.

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Pavitra Sundar, "Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Pavitra Sundar's book Listening with a Feminist Ear: Soundwork in Bombay Cinema (U Michigan Press, 2023) is a study of the cultural politics and possibilities of sound in cinema. Eschewing ocularcentric and siloed disciplinary formations, the book takes seriously the radical theoretical and methodological potential of listening. It models a feminist interpretive practice that is not just attuned to how power and privilege are materialized in sound, but that engenders new, counter-hegemonic imaginaries.

Focusing on mainstream Bombay cinema, Sundar identifies singing, listening, and speaking as key sites in which gendered notions of identity and difference take form. Charting new paths through seven decades of film, media, and cultural history, Sundar identifies key shifts in women's playback voices and the Islamicate genre of the qawwali. She also conceptualizes spoken language as sound, and turns up the volume on a capacious, multilingual politics of belonging that scholarly and popular accounts of nation typically render silent. All in all, Listening with a Feminist Ear offers a critical sonic sensibility that reinvigorates debates about the gendering of voice and body in cinema, and the role of sound and media in conjuring community.

Khadeeja Amenda is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. @KhadeejaAmenda.

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Brigid Cohen, "Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The heart of Brigid Cohen’s Musical Migration and Imperial New York: Early Cold War Scenes (University of Chicago Press, 2022) are the connections forged and broken amid the dislocations caused by war and imperialist ambitions. Rather than telling a simple chronological narrative, Cohen circles loosely around a single year, 1960, and crosses time and place to examine how a group of artists mediated ideas of displacement, race, gender, imperialism, and Cold War Orientalism in their work. Cohen begins with an examination of the complex musical and personal interactions during the 1957 Greenwich House sessions organized by Edgard Varèse, and then turns to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the early work of Yoko Ono, and finally the early years of Fluxus. She considers a disparate collection of crossed paths in New York City, a place she calls a “capital of Empire.” While she focuses on figures, institutions, and groups that are well known among scholars who work on music and Cold War politics, she looks under and around these familiar topics to center people, art, and events that have been overlooked or even dismissed in other scholarship.

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Gary Tomlinson, "The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning" (Zone Books, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all.

Tomlinson’s map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.”

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu).

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Ralph H. Craig III, "Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner" (Eerdmans, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

If you don’t know Tina Turner’s spirituality, you don’t know Tina.

Paying special attention to the diverse metaphysical beliefs that shaped her spiritual life, Craig untangles Tina’s Soka Gakkai Buddhist foundation; her incorporation of New Age ideas popularized in ’60s counterculture; and her upbringing in a Black Baptist congregation, alongside the influences of her grandmothers’ disciplinary and mystical sensibilities. Through critical engagement with Tina’s personal life and public brand, Craig sheds light on how popular culture has been used as a vehicle for authentic religious teaching. Scholars and fans alike will find Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner (Eerdmans, 2023) as enlightening as the iconic singer herself.

For those of you interested in the stories and poems of the first Buddhist nuns mentioned in the interview yet not included in the book's footnotes (hey, it's a trade book, so space for footnotes is limited), collected in Therīgāthā, you can find the stories here: Kisāgotamī; Ambapālī; Isidāsī. You can also find a modern recreation of Ambapālī's song here.

For a trustworthy, philologically solid, yet still readable translation of Therīgāthā, see here. I also find this translation most useful because of its high-quality but manageable footnotes.

Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California.

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A Deep Dive into Olivia Rodrigo's "Guts"

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Olivia Rodrigo's new album "Guts" offers a compelling perspective on early adult uncertainty, societal expectations of young women, and the craft of songwriting. We take a deep dive into the art and persona of this chart-bestriding performer.

The UConn PopCast is proud to be sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. Learn about our MA Program.

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Michael Kaler, "Get Shown the Light: Improvisation and Transcendence in the Music of the Grateful Dead" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Of all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music’s structure and listening experience: the incorporation of extended improvisation into live performances. While many bands—including Cream, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground—stretched out their songs with improvisations, no band was more identified with the practice than the Grateful Dead.

In Get Shown the Light: Improvisation and Transcendence in the Music of the Grateful Dead (Duke UP, 2023), Michael Kaler examines how the Dead’s dedication to improvisation stemmed from their belief that playing in this manner enabled them to touch upon transcendence. Drawing on band testimonials and analyses of early recordings, Kaler traces how the Dead developed an approach to playing music that they believed would facilitate their spiritual goals. He focuses on the band’s early years, the significance of their playing Ken Kesey’s Acid Test parties, and their evolving exploration of the myriad musical and spiritual possibilities that extended improvisation afforded. Kaler demonstrates that the Grateful Dead developed a radical new way of playing rock music as a means to unleash the spiritual and transformative potential of their music.

Michael Kaler is Associate Professor, teaching stream, at the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy at the University of Toronto Mississauga and author of Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and Its Contexts.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X.

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Greg Beets and Richard Whymark, "A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin" (U Texas Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has been well-chronicled, there is no book about Austin music in the 90s. In their new book, A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin (University of Texas Press, 2023), veterans of the sccene Greg Beets and Richard Whymark have put together an oral history of the decade. Beets and Whymark are not trying to cover all of the music made in Austin during the 1990s; they're most interested in the underground/punk community in which they participated. While a few of those bands got big (e.g., Spoon), the music remained mostly local, DIY. It was driven by live shows, though local media (radio, TV, print), record stores, and a few labels were also important to the story. Beets and Whymark devote chapters to those elements, but almost half of the chapters are based around a particular club. Organizing the book around physical spaces is not only appropriate for telling the story of the music, it is nice framing for the larger story of Austin. As the authors note, the city was still a relatively sleepy place in the early 1990s, with vacant blocks downtown and loads of small clubs that opened and closed simply because music-minded people wanted a place to play. By 1999, longtime venues like the Electric Lounge and Liberty Lunch were bulldozed to make way for development and tech companies.

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Michael Custodis, "Music and Resistance: Cultural Defense During the German Occupation of Norway 1940-45" (Waxmann Verlag, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Nov 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The role of music during the German occupation of Norway (1940-45) proves to be an exceptional case for cultural opposition in a dictatorship. Few famous musicians, some local celebrities and innumerous hardly known activists preferred artistic instead of militant means to demonstrate reluctance, spread information, contradict the legitimacy of the German occupants and raise the moral strength of fellow countrymen in Norway and abroad, while risking to be caught, incarcerated and driven into exile. The indispensable advantage was the popular belief of art as an apolitical matter so that music even could reach into fields that would have been inaccessible to open political agitation.

Based on considerable findings in public archives and private collections, Michael Custodis' Music and Resistance: Cultural Defense During the German Occupation of Norway 1940-45 (Waxmann Verlag, 2021) discusses music in concentration camps in Norway and the fate of Jewish musicians, portrays choirs, military ensembles, orchestral and church music in Norway. It further analyzes Harald Sæverud's 5th symphony and Moses Pergament's choir symphony Den judiska sången, illustrates the exile of musicians in Stockholm and discusses resistance music in historic media such as the Errol Flynn-movie Edge of Darkness (1943), recapitulated by a model for music as resistance.

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Jennifer Saltzstein, "Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Nov 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2023) investigates how northern French vernacular poets and musicians writing in the late middle ages expressed relationships between people and their environments. It explores medieval French song through the critical and disciplinary lenses of ecocriticism and environmental history. The repertoire under scrutiny embraces the gamut of forms and genres of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French music, considering the songs of the trouvères, the ars antiqua motet, the formes fixes, the plays of Adam de la Halle, and the lyric-infused narrative poetry of Guillaume de Machaut. Although these works have never before been conceptualized as a corpus of nature poetry, they routinely evoke nature and the outdoors. They feature the gardens, meadows, and trees found in the countryside that many of their authors inhabited, and they conceptualize nature as crucial to poetic inspiration, to the fulfillment of desire, and as a space symbolic of the sacred. Through a deep contextualization of these songs and the people who wrote them, Song, Landscape, and Identity offers a novel account that demonstrates how song could present modalities of engagement with nature that were determined by geography, gender, and status. Key questions include: How realistic is the nature imagery in these songs? What ways of interaction with a landscape do they encourage? Where, and for whom, were such experiences available? The answers to these questions reposition medieval song as a privileged vehicle through which songwriters expressed relationships between nature, place, and class.

Jennifer Saltzstein is a Presidential Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches courses on the music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. She is author of The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013) and editor of Musical Culture in the World of Adam de la Halle (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

Áine Palmer is a PhD candidate in Music History at Yale University. Her work considers trouvère song and the anthologies that collect them in the long thirteenth century.

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Jason Lamb, "NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion, an Oral History" (PM Press, 2024)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

They were unlike any other band in the punk scene they called home.

NoMeansNo started in the basement of the family home of brothers Rob and John Wright in 1979. For the next three decades, they would add and then replace a guitar player, sign a record deal with Alternative Tentacles and tour the world. All along the way, they kept their integrity, saying "NO" to many mainstream opportunities. It was for this reason the band (intentionally) never became a household name, but earned the respect and love of thousands of fans around the world, including some who became big rock stars themselves. They were expertly skilled musicians playing a new kind of punk: intelligent, soulful, hilarious, and complex. They were also really nice Canadian dudes.

NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion (PM Press, 2024) is the fully authorized oral and visual history of this highly influential and enigmatic band which has never been told before now. Author Jason Lamb obtained exclusive access to all four former members and interviewed hundreds of people in their orbit, from managers and roadies to fellow musicians, friends, and family members. The result is their complete story, from the band's inception in 1979 to their retirement in 2016, along with hundreds of photos, posters, and memorabilia, much of which has never been seen publicly before.

For established fans, this book serves as a "love letter" to their favorite group and provides many details previously unknown. For those curious about the story and influence of NoMeansNo, it reveals an eye-opening tale of how a punk band could be world class musicians while truly "doing it themselves." Their impact and importance cannot be overstated, and NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion is the essential archive.

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Stephen B. Armstrong, "I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock 'n' Roll High School" (Backbeat Books, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Armstrong's new book I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock-n-Roll High School (Backbeat Books, 2023), provides a detailed production history of this beloved film that draws upon extensive interviews the author has conducted with many of the people who contributed to its creation, including director Allan Arkush, uncredited co-director Joe Dante, screenwriter Joseph McBride, producer Michael Finnell, the Ramones' tour manager, Monte A. Melnick, and Roger Corman. Armstrong not only engages in the production of this classic film, but also examines the life of director Allan Arkush and the events that brought him to directing with film for New World Pictures. Armstrong also tells the story of the Ramones, giving insight into their experiences becoming the band that help Riff Randell and the students of Vince Lombardi High as they rebel against the tyrannical Principal Togar and blow up their school.

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Adam Blum et al., "Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis" (Columbia UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today we have a group session (read: an hour and a half) with the authors Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michal Levin discussing their new book Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 2023). Acknowledging that “We’re not the first to think about music in the clinical situation” the authors focused on the analytic project “as a kind of music in its own right.” With an interest in sensory, non-representational experiences. “We settled on music as a primordial operating system that all human beings are brought into.”

We begin the interview with each author sharing their ideas on a key tenet of the book which is that “Before we can become fully functioning emotional, rational, linguistic, cultural, social, or political animals, human beings first become musical animals.” From here we explore the questions posed in the book. “What does the frame, frame?” What is meant by “Music is never the creation of an individual in isolation… there is no such thing as private music”, “What is the process of human musicalization”, “What happens to us when the rhythm changes?”

This was a rich discussion and each author sharpened my thinking. One of the more meaningful exchanges came around my reaction to this line in the book, "the analytic frame may be usable as rhythm from the get-go; the analyst drops the beat, and the dance begins." In my reading I disagreed sharply. It is the patient who comes in an drops the beat! Peter's clarifying response to me may be the highlight of many highlights in this enchanting jam session of an interview.

Near the end of our discussion in which the vicissitudes of induction as enchantment have made repeated appearances, I quote a passage that synthesizes much of the previous 90 minutes and speaks to the emotional resonance of the book.

“There is a good reason why psychoanalysis has been ambivalent about, if not terrified, of enchantment, which is that it’s overwhelmingly powerful and potentially extremely hazardous. Why? Because at bottom the human being seeks and needs induction. We are thus radically suggestible and susceptible to influence and in-form-ation (and possibly ex-form-ation) by the environment, a “dethroning of the ego” that Freud could never accept. Our need for enchantment renders us essentially and permanently vulnerable to being taken over, and the crucial distinction between whether we are malevolently exploited or benevolently induced into culture is harrowingly historical, a matter of what world into which one is born.” (p.70)

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.

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Paul Crenshaw, "Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other '80s Perils" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In his new collection of essays, Melt With Me (Mad Creek Press, 2023), Paul Crenshaw examines the intersection of 1980s pop culture, the Cold War, and the trials of coming of age. Crenshaw takes up a range of topics from Star Wars to video games, Choose Your Own Adventure books to the Satanic Panic. Blending the personal with the historical, levity with gravity, Crenshaw shows how pop culture shaped those who grew up in 1980s America: how Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative drove fears of nuclear war, how professional wrestling taught us everyone was either a good guy or a bad guy, how Bugs Bunny cartoons reflected the absurdity of war and mutually assured destruction, and how video games taught young boys, in particular, that no matter how hard they tried to save it, the world would end itself. Reflecting on the decade and its dark influence on fear-based notions of nation and manhood, Crenshaw writes, "All this reminds me I'm still afraid of the same things I was afraid of as a child. Some days I think the movies are real and we're watching the last hour of humanity. You'll have to decide if there's any hope."

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Scott Creney and Brigette Adair Herron, "The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first critical history of one of the most legendary and influential bands in American popular music. Locating The B-52s in the intellectual climate of their hometown of Athens, GA and following the band from New York's downtown scene in the early 1980s to their upcoming farewell tour, the book argues that The B-52s are much more significant political and musical influences on American society than their reputation as a silly party band suggests, and that their ongoing commitment to values including cooperation, mutual support, and using disruptive fun as a form of social change are an antidote to the neoliberalization sweeping both Athens and the rest of the Western world.

For example, the book shows how the band synthesized influences from the modern artists displayed at the University of Georgia art museum, early queer activism on campus in the 1970s, and their experiences as queer people living through the AIDS crisis to create music that continues to be artistically and politically influential today. The authors are active members of the Athens, GA music scene, and the book includes original interviews with a range of number close to the band.

Scott Creney is author of the work of creative nonfiction Dear Al-Qaeda: Letters to the World's Most Notorious Terror Organization (Black Ocean). They have written about music, books, and film for Clash Music, The Fanzine, Collapse Board, and Ablaze!, among others, and contributed six entries to 101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear. Scott was also the bass player for the Athens band Tunabunny.

Scott on Twitter.

Brigette Adair Herron holds a Ph.D. in Adult Education from the University of Georgia and is author/co-author of numerous peer reviewed academic articles and a scholarly monograph. Her writing on music has been featured in the book 101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear, and on the web publications Collapse Board, Vice, and Eldredge Atlanta. She is a multi-instrumentalist with a long history in the Athens music scene.

Brigette on Instagram.

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Sheldon Birnie, "Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock, 1900-2001" (‎Eternal Cavalier Press, 2015)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From 1990 to 2001, while the popular radio waves were consumed with the buzz of grunge and alternative rock, Winnipeg managed to craft a unique underground music scene that moved in its own direction. At once informed by their predecessors and stubbornly determined to create the art that they wanted to see made, bands like Kittens, Propagandhi, and the Weakerthans built on this foundation and ultimately found success beyond the Perimeter Highway, though they always remained true to the values and defiant spirit that first allowed them to crawl up from the muddy banks of the Red River. Wild and uninhibited, it’s a sound and a time that has captivated author Sheldon Birnie since his first forays into the turgid waters of the city’s underground during his family’s yearly summer pilgrimages across the prairie from their home in BC. Now firmly entrenched in the city, Birnie has gone to painstaking lengths to document one of the most important decades in Winnipeg’s musical history. Through detailed research and extensive interviews, Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock, 1900-2001 (‎Eternal Cavalier Press, 2015) paints a vivid picture of the Heart of the Continent and the characters that inhabited its tiny stages from 1990 to 2001.

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Kiana Fitzgerald, "Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music" (Running Press Adult, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From underground roots to mainstream popularity, hip-hop's influence on music and entertainment around the world has been nothing short of extraordinary. Ode to Hip-Hop chronicles the journey with profiles of fifty albums that have defined, expanded, and ultimately transformed the genre into what it is today. From 2 Live Crew's groundbreaking As Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989 to Cardi B's similarly provocative Invasion of Privacy almost thirty years later, and more, Kiana Fitzgerald's book Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music (Running Press Adult, 2023) covers hip-hop from coast to coast. Organized by decade and with sidebars on fashion, mixtapes, and key players throughout, the result is a comprehensive homage to hip-hop, published just in time for the fiftieth anniversary. Enjoyed in the club, at a party, through speakers or headphones–the albums in this book deserve to be listened to again and again, for the next fifty years and beyond.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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Jonathan Mael, "Harlem World: How Hip Hop's Super Showdown Changed Music Forever" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

July 3, 1981, was a pivotal night for the future of America's newest art form: hip hop. In New York's Harlem World Club, the Fantastic Romantic Five and the Cold Crush Brothers competed, with an unprecedented $1,000--and their reputations--on the line in a highly anticipated rap battle. The show drew hundreds of fans to settle a question that still dominates hip hop circles: Who's the best?

In Harlem World: How Hip Hop's Super Showdown Changed Music Forever (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), journalist Jonathan Mael chronicles this fateful night of hip hop rivalry and shares a new look at how Harlem helped ignite a musical revolution. Since hip hop first emerged in New York in the early 1970s, artists like Theodore Livingston (DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore) and Curtis Brown (Grandmaster Caz) sought to elevate this uniquely American musical genre by pushing the limits of record-playing techniques and lyricism. The two crews they assembled put on the best shows in a world where hip hop was still a strictly live art form. Even as acts like the Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow became commercially successful, New York's top two crews strove to claim the ultimate spot atop the city's hip hop scene.

The battle blew the roof off Harlem World that night, and bootlegged cassette tapes of the match-up sent aftershocks around the city as more fans listened to the legendary performances. Set in the New York of the 1970s and '80s, this book shares dozens of new, exclusive interviews and a treasure trove of previously unpublished archival material to tell the story of Cold Crush and Fantastic's rivalry, documenting one of the most important stories in hip hop history. This is the first book of its kind to focus on 1979-1983 and the legendary battles at Harlem World while connecting the genre's formative years to its massive role in American society today.

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Kimberly Mack, "Living Colour's Time's Up" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The iconic Black rock band Living Colour's Time's Up, released in 1990, was recorded in the aftermath of the spectacular critical and commercial success of their debut record Vivid. Time's Up is a musical and lyrical triumph, incorporating distinct forms and styles of music and featuring inspired collaborations with artists as varied as Little Richard, Queen Latifah, Maceo Parker, and Mick Jagger. The clash of sounds and styles don't immediately fit. The confrontational hardcore-thrash metal - complete with Glover's apocalyptic wail - in the title track is not a natural companion with Doug E. Fresh's human beat box on "Tag Team Partners," but it's precisely this bold and brilliant collision that creates the barely-controlled chaos. And isn't rock & roll about chaos?

Living Colour's sophomore effort holds great relevance in light of its forward-thinking politics and lyrical engagement with racism, classism, police brutality, and other social and political issues of great importance. In Living Colour's Time's Up (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kimberly Mack explores the creation and reception of this artistically challenging album, while examining the legacy of this culturally important and groundbreaking American rock band.

Kimberly Mack is the author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White (2020), which won the 2021 College English Association of Ohio's Nancy Dasher Award. She is also a music critic and memoirist who has written for publications including Longreads, Music Connection, No Depression, Relix, PopMatters, and Hot Press.

Kimberly Mack on Twitter.

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Chris Molanphy, "Old Town Road" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Old Town Road (Duke University Press, 2023), Chris Molanphy considers Lil Nas X’s debut single as pop artifact, chart phenomenon, and cultural watershed. “Old Town Road” was more than a massive hit, with the most weeks at No. 1 in Billboard Hot 100 history. It is also a prism through which to track the evolution of popular music consumption and the ways race influences how the music industry categorizes songs and artists. By both lionizing and satirizing genre tropes—it’s a country song built from an alternative rock sample, a hip-hop song in which nobody raps, a comical song that transcends novelty, and a queer anthem—Lil Nas X troubles the very idea of genre. Ultimately, Molanphy shows how “Old Town Road” channeled decades of Americana to point the way toward our cultural future.

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Gregory Cahill, "The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock's Lost Queen" (Life Drawn, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock's Lost Queen (Life Drawn, 2023) is very well-reseraech graphic novel based on the life of beloved Cambodian singer Ros Serey Sothea, whose “Golden Voice” helped define Cambodia’s Golden Age of music until her mysterious disappearance in the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Developed in partnership with Sothea’s family. There is a saying in Cambodia: Music is the soul of a nation. Perhaps no one embodied that spirit more than Ros Serey Sothea, a young woman who would forever change the landscape of Cambodian music as the Queen with the Golden Voice. From a humble rice farmer to nationally recognized singer, Sothea’s success captured the hearts of the Khmer people. Throughout her career, she recorded over 500 songs, her signature angelic voice soaring over genres from traditional ballads to psychedelic rock and beyond. As the Cambodian civil war raged, Sothea's singing career continued to flourish, even when she served in the army as one of the country's first female paratroopers. After years of bloody conflict, the communist Khmer Rouge seized control, murdering artists and destroying their music, bringing Cambodia's golden age into a dark era of silence. Sothea’s fate is unknown. Ros Serey Sothea's golden voice lives on in the popular music of Cambodia to this very day. Gone but not forgotten, her legacy continues to inspire. The Golden Voice tells the story of Sothea’s life, developed alongside the surviving family who knew her, and accompanied by an interactive soundtrack.

Gregory Cahill is an Emmy Award winning television producer for the CBS entertainment talk show The Talk. His previous TV credits include 24, Mad Men, and Medium. In 2006, Cahill wrote and directed a short film titled The Golden Voice, depicting Ros Serey Sothea's final days under Khmer Rouge. After years of research, he began work on a graphic novel also titled The Golden Voice, depicting Ros Serey Sothea's life story. The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock's Lost Queen is his first book.

Kat Baumann is an illustrator and comics creator from Southern Minnesota who graduated from the Visual Arts department of the Perpich Center for Arts Education in 2009, received my bachelor’s in Studio Art in 2013 and interned at Helioscope (formerly Periscope) Studio in 2014. She decided to become a comic artist at a young age when she was heavily influenced by Japanese manga and South Korean manhwa.

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Jonathan Leal, "Dreams in Double Time: On Race, Freedom, and Bebop" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Dreams in Double Time: On Race, Freedom, and Bebop (Duke UP, 2023), Jonathan Leal examines how the musical revolution of bebop opened up new futures for racialized and minoritized communities. Blending lyrical nonfiction with transdisciplinary critique and moving beyond standard Black/white binary narratives of jazz history, Leal focuses on the stories and experiences of three musicians and writers of color: James Araki, a Nisei multi-instrumentalist, soldier-translator, and literature and folklore scholar; Raúl Salinas, a Chicano poet, jazz critic, and longtime activist who endured the US carceral system for over a decade; and Harold Wing, an Afro-Chinese American drummer, pianist, and songwriter who performed with bebop pioneers before working as a public servant. Leal foregrounds that for these men and their collaborators, bebop was an affectively and intellectually powerful force that helped them build community and dream new social possibilities. Bebop’s complexity and radicality, Leal contends, made it possible for those like Araki, Salinas, and Wing who grappled daily with state-sanctioned violence to challenge a racially supremacist, imperial nation, all while hearing and making the world anew.

"Dreams of Autumn" on Spotify.
"Dreams of Autumn on Apple Music.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University Email: nathan.smith@yale.edu

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A Better Way to Buy Books

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Andrew Chan, "Why Mariah Carey Matters" (U Texas Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Why Mariah Carey Matters (University of Texas Press, 2023) examines the creative and complicated evolution of the musical artist. In the 1990s, Carey perfected blending pop, hip-hop, and R&B and drew from her turbulent personal life to create introspective, sonically sound masterpieces like “Vision of Love,” “Make it Happen,” and “Butterfly.” There is no doubt about Carey’s star power, as she has sold over 220 million albums globally and has the most Billboard chart-topping singles of any solo artist. Although a pioneering songwriter and producer, Carey’s musicianship and influence are still insufficiently appreciated.

Andrew Chan looks beyond Carey’s glamorous persona to explore her experience as a biracial Black woman in the music business, her adventurous forays into house music and gospel, and her appeal to multiple generations of queer audiences. He also reckons with the transcendent ideal of the voice that Carey represents, showing how this international icon taught artists worldwide to sing with soul-shaking intensity and a spirit of innovation.

Andrew Chan writes regularly about music, film, and books. His work has been published by the Criterion Collection, Film Comment, NPR, the New Yorker, and Reverse Shot.

Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master’s in Humanities. Her research and writing interests include popular culture, the public history of women’s fiction, and women in Greco-Roman mythology.

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The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

In this episode we speak with Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness core faculty, Jack Bagby about his engagement with the philosophy of music, from Socrates, to Schopenhauer, and Bergson. We discuss Jack’s recent PCC class called The Philosophy of Music and the Attunement of the Soul and dive into the complex ideas of these thinkers regarding the transformative powers of music. Jack explains how the ancient Greek’s developed a complex set of tuning systems and alternative temperaments with powerful attributes and psychic properties, in which one can attune themselves to through the development of an affective psychology. Jack, and myself have been experimenting composing and improvising in these these modes and we share 3 pieces based on ancient Greek modes.

PCC Forum with Jack Bagby: Tuning, Caring for, and Recollecting the Soul in Socrates' Swansongs

Musical Compositions in the Episode by Jack Bagby and Jonathan Kay

1. A Paean of Apollo the Healer in Archytas' Dorian Diatonic

2. Ptolemy soft diatonic

3. A prelude to the compromises of universality. Ptolemy's Even Diatonic

John (Jack) Bagby received his PhD. in philosophy from Boston College in 2021, and a B.A. in philosophy and ancient Greek language, from the Pennsylvania State University in 2013. Professor Bagby conducts research on the history of philosophy, focusing on problems related to consciousness, nature, and evolution. He has published in Epoché and Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, on ancient Greek philosophy and phenomenology (especially Henri Bergson) and has strong research interests in Baruch Spinoza, 19th-20th century European philosophy, process philosophy, philosophy of music, and aesthetics. He is currently working on a translation of Bergson's 1902-3 Lectures at the Collège de France The History of The Idea of Time (Bloomsbury Press), and finishing up the manuscript of his monograph Integrals of Experience: Aristotle and Bergson. When thinking about complex concepts or solving textual problems, Jack loves to construct diagrams and concept maps. Between 2016-2018 he combined his love for creating visualizations with his love of Spinoza to create a website that maps the complex textual citations used in his magnum opus, the Ethics.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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John Szwed, "Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith" (FSG, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Who was Harry Smith? Was he an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a painter? Was he a charlatan? A genius? Was he a moocher, a schmuck, a bum? As John Szwed's Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith (FSG, 2023) reveals, Smith was all of these and more. Best known for editing The Anthology of American Folk Music, Smith was also a pioneer in experimental film who Jonas Mekas considered one of the leading lights of the New American Cinema. He created paintings that attempted to transcribe bebop recordings. He acted as mysticism consultant on the 1967 effort to levitate the Pentagon. But he also spent years living in poverty, in SROs, at the Chelsea Hotel, or at the apartments of famous friends like Allen Ginsberg. The story of Harry Smith is thus also a story of a vanished New York Bohemia that mixed high and low, the street and the gallery, the Bowery and MOMA, to create one of the most remarkable outpourings of cultural production this country has even seen. And Smith was at the center of it all.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Anna Kathryn Grau and Lisa Colton, "Female-Voice Song and Women's Musical Agency in the Middle Ages" (Brill, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

While there is little doubt that women were active participants in medieval musical culture, their role has nevertheless been variously obfuscated, undermined, and overlooked, in large part because of the relative absence of named women composers. Work from recent decades has sought to re-insert women into our music-historical narratives, often by broadening their scopes and shifting away from strictly author-focused surveys.

Female-Voice Song and Women's Musical Agency in the Middle Ages (Brill, 2022) brings together seventeen essays, each of which newly identifies contributions to musical culture made by women before 1500 across Europe. Encompassing not only medieval French, English, and Italian culture, but also stretching to Iceland and the Islamicite courts, this volume speaks to the various ways in which we can hear women’s voices through history.

Prof. Lisa Colton and Dr. Anna Kathryn Grau jointly edited this collection, in addition to contributing chapters to it. In this episode, they speak with Áine Palmer about the study of women’s participation in medieval musical culture, the process of putting together an edited volume such as this, and share insights on their own analyses of 13th-century French motets.

Bonnie Gordon, "Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmechanized bodies could not. The voices of these technologically enhanced singers, with their unique timbre, range, and strength, contributed to a dramatic expansion of musical vocabulary and prompted new ways of imagining sound, the body, and personhood.

Connecting sometimes bizarre snippets of history, this multi-disciplinary book moves backward and forward in time, deliberately troubling the meaning of concepts like “technology” and “human.” Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds (U Chicago Press, 2023) attends to the ways that early modern encounters and inventions—including settler colonialism, emergent racialized worldviews, the printing press, gunpowder, and the telescope—participated in making castrati. In Bonnie Gordon’s revealing study, castrati serve as a critical provocation to ask questions about the voice, the limits of the body, and the stories historians tell.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University. Email: nathan.smith@yale.edu

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Una McIlvenna, "Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Across Europe, from the dawn of print until the early twentieth century, the news of crime and criminals' public executions was printed in song form on cheap broadsides and pamphlets to be sold in streets and marketplaces by ballad-singers. Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900 (Oxford UP, 2022) looks at how and why song was employed across Europe for centuries as a vehicle for broadcasting news about crime and executions, exploring how this performative medium could frame and mediate the message of punishment and repentance. Examining ballads in English, French, Dutch, German, and Italian across four centuries, author Una McIlvenna offers the first multilingual and longue durée study of the complex and fascinating phenomenon of popular songs about brutal public death.

Ballads were frequently written in the first-person voice, and often purported to be the last words, confession or 'dying speech' of the condemned criminal, yet were ironically on sale the day of the execution itself. Musical notation was generally not required as ballads were set to well-known tunes. Execution ballads were therefore a medium accessible to all, regardless of literacy, social class, age, gender or location. A genre that retained extraordinary continuities in form and content across time, space, and language, the execution ballad grew in popularity in the nineteenth century, and only began to fade as executions themselves were removed from the public eye. With an accompanying database of recordings, Singing the News of Death brings these centuries-old songs of death back to life.

Una McIlvenna is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. A literary and cultural historian of early modern Europe, she is also the author of Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici (2016). She has held positions at the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Kent and Queen Mary University of London

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John Brackett, "Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness" (Duke UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live acts of the rock era. Performing over 2300 shows between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead’s reputation as a “live band” was—and continues to be—sustained by thousands of live concert recordings from every era of the group’s long and colorful career.

In Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness (Duke UP, 2023), musicologist John Brackett examines how live recordings—from the group’s official releases to fan-produced tapes, bootlegs to “Betty Boards,” and Dick’s Picks to From the Vault—have shaped the general history and popular mythology of the Grateful Dead for over fifty years. Drawing on a diverse array of materials and documents contained in the Grateful Dead Archive, Live Dead details how live recordings became meaningful among the band and their fans not only as sonic souvenirs of past musical performances but also as expressions of assorted ideals, including notions of “liveness,” authenticity, and the power of recorded sound.

John Brackett is Instructor of Music at Vance-Granville Community College, the author of John Zorn: Tradition and Transgression and a coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches.

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Chuyun Oh, "K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media" (Routledge, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media (Routledge, 2022) is about K-pop dance and the evolution and presence of its dance fandom on social media.

Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, choreography, and participation-observation with 40 amateur and professional K-pop dancers in New York, California, and Seoul, the book traces the evolution of K-pop dance from the 1980s to the 2020s and explains its distinctive feature called ‘gestural point choreography’ – front-driven, two-dimensional, decorative and charming movements of the upper body and face – as an example of what the author theorizes as ‘social media dance.’ It also explores K-pop cover dance as a form of intercultural performance, suggesting that, by imitating and idolizing K-pop dance, fans are eventually ‘fandoming’ themselves and their bodies.

Presenting an ethnographic study of K-pop dance and its fandom, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Media Studies, Korean Studies, Performance Studies, and Dance.

Chuyun Oh is an Assistant Professor of Dance at San Diego State University. As a Fulbright scholar and former professional dancer, she studies racial and gender identities in performance. She is a co-author of Candlelight Movement, Democracy and Communication in Korea (Routledge 2021).

Leslie Hickman is a translator and writer who earned her MA in Korean Studies from Yonsei University. On Twitter.

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Polyphony

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Brian Fairley tells us about Polyphony, a concept from music that describes multiple melodic lines sounding at once. The many voices of polyphony have an ancient and colonial history, which has reappeared in some key reverberations in twentieth century criticism and theory.

In the conversation, we discuss several texts, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929); James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (UC Press, 1986); Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Knopf, 1993); and one of Kim’s favorite scholarly books, Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton, 2021). Brian also discusses Denise Ferreira da Silva’s work “On Difference Without Separability.”

Brian Fairley received his PhD in Ethnomusicology from New York University in 2023; he is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Music at Amherst College.His manuscript in progress, Dissected Listening: Race, Nation, and Polyphony in the South Caucasus, excavates a series of experimental sound recordings from 1916 to 1966 to show how the concept of musical polyphony emerged in tandem with techniques of multichannel sound and imperial discourses of racial, national, and religious difference. His work has appeared in the journal Ethnomusicology and is forthcoming in Theoria: Historical Aspects of Music Theory, as well as an edited volume titled Key Terms in Music Theory for Antiracist Scholars.

The image for this episode is Paul Klee’s 1932 painting “Polyphony,” which is in the public domain in the US and Europe. Digital image sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

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Nicholas Tochka, "Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America" (Oxford UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Progressive and libertarian, anti-Communist and revolutionary, Democratic and Republican, quintessentially American but simultaneously universal. By the late 1980s, rock music had acquired a dizzying array of political labels. These claims about its political significance shared one common thread: that the music could set you free.

Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America (Oxford UP, 2023) explains how Americans came to believe they had learned the truth about rock 'n' roll, a truth shaped by the Cold War anxieties of the Fifties, the countercultural revolutions (and counter-revolutions) of the Sixties and Seventies, and the end-of-history triumphalism of the Eighties. How did rock 'n' roll become enmeshed with so many different competing ideas about freedom? And what does that story reveal about the promise-and the limits-of rock music as a political force in postwar America?

Nicholas Tochka writes about the politics of postwar music-making in Eastern Europe and the Americas. In 2016, Oxford University Press published his first book, Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Socialist Albania. He is currently completing one project on citizenship in postsocialist Europe, and another about the invention of the Sixties in the United States. He works at the Conservatorium of Music, the University of Melbourne in Australia, and plays both bass and guitar.

Nicholas on Twitter.

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Andy Cowan, "B-Side: Pop History Via Its Greatest B-Sides, 1917-2017" (Headpress, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In his new book B-Sides: Pop History Via Its Greatest B-Sides, 1917-2017 (Headpress, 2023), Andy Cowan explores a century of music b-sides. Pop music would be a different beast without the B-Side. Music history is riven with songs deemed throwaway that revolted against their lowly status and refused to be denied. Be it rock'n'roll's national anthem ('Rock Around The Clock'), disco's enduring game-changer ('I Feel Love') or hip-hop's most notorious dis track ('Hit 'Em Up'), all three started life as the so-called 'lesser' track on releases primed for maximum chart impact. But the B-side has done much more than make stars of Bill Haley, Donna Summer and 2Pac. Whether it was the Beatles, the Kinks and the Yardbirds in the 60s, Elton John, the Who and Queen in the 70s, Depeche Mode, the Cure and Prince in the 80s, or Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead in the 90s, the B-side allowed many of the world's greatest artists freedom to experiment with no commercial constraints in an age where physical product ruled the roost. A quickfire A-Z of 500+ flips, B-SIDE is the first serious examination of the format's covert role in pushing the musical envelope. Best read with one eye on YouTube and one ear on a streaming service, its revelations will prick up the ears of music fans of all persuasions.

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Rich Deakin, "Grebo!: The Loud & Lousy Story of Gaye Bykers on Acid and Crazyhead" (Headpress, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Grebo! The Loud & Lousy Story of Gaye Bikers on Acid and Crazyhead (Headpress, 2021) Rich Deakin explores West Midlands 1980s, home to heavy metal. Black Sabbath and Judas Priest are household names, but over the smoking chimneys and factory yards something new and equally ugly forms... 'Grebo' was a media constructed music genre that even today sends a shudder down the spines of discerning music fans and critics.

A homegrown proto-grunge -- counterpart to the likes of Butthole Surfers, Mudhoney, early Nirvana, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden -- grebo was a British phenomenon that drew on an eclectic range of influences, from punk, 60s garage and psychedelia, through to 70s heavy rock and thrash metal. It foreshadowed rave culture and was steeped in class politics. GAYE BYKERS ON ACID and CRAZYHEAD hailed from Leicester. They were not the first bands to be labelled grebo but they were the most unashamedly unkempt and came to be considered its greatest exponents. They were "a burst of dirty thunder" and almost no one liked them. Based on interviews with band members, friends, fans, and roadies, this book is an uncompromising history of an overlooked music scene. Rich Deakin charts its course via the changing fortunes of the Bykers and Crazyhead, taking us on the booze-filled tour buses, behind the dodgy deals and onto the international stage and back again (with a pitstop for a rock movie that swallows lots of money). Their careers were short, but the two bands managed to shake up the UK indie scene and along the way became Britain's unlikely ambassadors of rock following the collapse of Soviet Russia.

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Howard Fishman, "To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse" (Dutton, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Howard Fishman's To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton, 2023) is a fascinating hybrid biography that weaves together Fishman's own odyssey of research with the surprising life story he uncovers. Connie Converse was a gifted songwriter whose music came to public notice more than fifty years after it was recorded. Her album How Sad, How Lovely has taken its place alongside albums by rediscovered artists like Karen Dalton, Kath Bloom, and Sibylle Baier. In Converse's case, though, it was not only her music that disappeared. Following a series of personal and professional crises, Converse drove away from her home in Ann Arbor, never to be heard from again. When Fishman visited Ann Arbor to meet Converse's brother, he was shown an archive of several filing cabinets that revealed Converse as much more than a singer and guitarist. She composed art songs, song cycles, and operas. She was also managing editor at the Journal for Conflict Studies and authored a pioneering analysis of structural racism. To Anyone Who Ever Asks gives us a fuller portrait of Converse than has ever before been available, even as it reveals the many gaps that remain in her story.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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William Perrine, "Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental, & Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego" (Billingsgate Media, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental, & Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego (Billingsgate Media, 2023) is the untold story of a sleepy Navy town that became the unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their time. The late 60s arrival of Harry Partch -- hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum -- jump started a revolution that was as much social as it was musical, drawing on the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California. Artists as diverse as Partch, Pauline Oliveros, Kenneth Gaburo, Roger Reynolds, Diamanda Galás, Warren Burt, David Dunn, Robert Turman and Master Wilburn Burchette may have pursued different paths -- Sonic Meditations, compositional linguistics, microtonal scales, invented instruments, cutting edge electronics, underwater synthesizers, Tibetan throat singing, environmental sound, pure noise -- but they also sought to dismantle the systems of American life and replace them with a radically inclusive and socially responsive aesthetic that looked to the future even when it sometimes referenced a distant, idyllically imagined past. In their pursuit of "Irrelevant Music" -- Kenneth Gaburo's term for an untainted music free of constraint and compromise -- these disparate artists constitute a shadow history of American experimental music far removed from the European and East Coast models of the time.

Bill Perrine is the director of the documentaries Children of the Stars, It’s Gonna Blow!!! San Diego’s Music Underground, 1986-96, and Why Are We Doing This In Front of People?

Bill’s website.

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Adrian Rifkin, "Future Imperfect: The Past Between My Fingers..." (2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Then let the story really begin in 1968, though it has little to do with May. By chance it opens in January of that year, and it really concerns me rather than the world of political events, though these are always on my mind, as they were always on my mind.

Future Imperfect: The Past Between My Fingers... (2021), Adrian Rifkin’s short Bildungsroman sets beside each other the fault lines of events and moments recalled without a diary with the verification and sometimes undermining effects of new research of materials, the recovery of what was known, what might have been known, and what was merely probable, as if this were a history of the history of art.

Adrian Rifkin speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the uses of radical pedagogy, dreams, art history, and the economy of memory. Wagner and the Teletubbies also feature.

Adrain’s performance Hypotheses and Loving Contradictions at Haus der Kunst, 2017
The White Pube 🎨🖌️🐀
Jeffrey Steele
Robert Motherwell
Artangel
Afterall
Allan Sekula’s Fish Story
Elizabeth Price
Anne Tallentire
Hanne Darboven
Hans Eysenck

Adrian Rifkin is a writer and art historian engaged in contemporary art, film, classical and popular music, canonical and mass imagery, literature and pornography. Until recently he was Professor of Art Writing at Goldsmiths. He is the author of Street Noises: Studies in Parisian Pleasure, 1900-40, and Ingres Then, and Now. His collected essays appeared as Communards and Other Cultural Histories and his work was the subject of the anthology Inter-disciplinary Encounters.

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Marie Arleth Skov, "Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation" (Intellect, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In her book, Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023), Marie Arleth Skov examines the punk movement of the 1970s to early 1980s. Through archival research, interviews, and an art historical analysis, Skov situates punk as an art movement. It is about pop, pain, poetry, presence, and about a ‘no future’ generation refusing to be the next artworld avant-garde, instead choosing to be the ‘rear-guard’.

Skov draws on personal interviews with punk art protagonists from London, New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin, among others the members Die Tödliche Doris (The Deadly Doris), members of Værkstedet Værst (The Workshop Called Worst), Nina Sten-Knudsen, Marc Miller, Diana Ozon, Hugo Kaagman, as well as email correspondence with Jon Savage, Anna Banana, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Skov covers events such as the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in London in 1976 and Die Große Untergangsshow (The Grand Downfall Show) in West-Berlin in 1981 and explores paintings, drawings, bricolages, collages, booklets, posters, zines, installations, sculptures, Super 8 films, documentation of performances and happenings, body art, street art.

What emerges is how crucial the concept of history was in punk at that point in time. The punk movement's rejection of the tale of progress and prosperity, as it was being propagated on both sides of the iron curtain, evidently manifested itself in punk visual art too. Central to the book is the thesis that punks placed themselves as the rear-guards, not the avant-gardes, a statement which was in made by Danish punks in 1981, when they called themselves “bagtropperne". Behind the rear-guard watchword was the rejection of the inherent notion of progress that the avant-garde name brings with it; how could a "no future" movement want to lead the way?

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Michael Gray, "Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan-Vol. 1 Language & Tradition" (FM Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Song & Dance Man is an established classic, available again for Dylan fans and scholars alike on the 50th Anniversary of the original edition. The work in these three volumes has been called “Monumental, endlessly illuminating.” (Rolling Stone) “Probably the greatest book about the work of a single popular musician ever to have been published.” (London Review Bookshop) and "The definitive critical work." (Evening Standard).

Author Michael Gray is recognized as a world authority on the work and career of Bob Dylan; he was the first to consider Dylan’s writing as worthy of treatment as serious art. As author K G Miles said: “People forget that the road to the Nobel Prize was very long, took many years, and began with that book; it began with Michael Gray.”

Song & Dance Man is unique in its scope, integrating biographical, literary and musical contexts into a powerful scrutiny of Dylan as songwriter and performer.

This first volume contains the foundational and timeless analysis that made this book a classic - looking at how Dylan's writing and performance set in the folk and literary traditions and how it compared to other efforts to write rock and pop songs. It deeply inspects and discusses Dylan's use of language, both his early bursts of complexity and his later move towards simplicity.

Included is a special review of the song 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune' which Gray finds particularly effective and impressive, and an over 100-page chapter detailed Dylan's fascination with and use of the pre-war blues.

Michael Gray is a critic, writer, public speaker & broadcaster recognised as a world authority on the work of Bob Dylan, and as an expert on rock’n’roll history. He also has a special interest in pre-war blues, and in travel.

Song & Dance Man on Twitter.

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Roy Christopher, "Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism" (MIT Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism (MIT Press, 2022), edited by Roy Christopher, is a moment. It is the deconstructed sample, the researched lyrical metaphors, the aha moment on the way to hip-hop enlightenment. Hip-hop permeates our world, and yet it is continually misunderstood. Hip-hop's intersections with Afrofuturism and science fiction provide fascinating touchpoints that enable us to see our todays and tomorrows. This book can be, for the curious, a window into a hip-hop-infused Alter Destiny--a journey whose spaceship you embarked on some time ago. Are you engaging this work from the gaze of the future? Are you the data thief sailing into the past to U-turn to the now? Or are you the unborn child prepping to build the next universe? No, you're the superhero. Enjoy the journey.--from the introduction by Ytasha L. Womack

Through essays by some of hip-hop's most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large. Introduced by Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, this book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multilayered, interdisciplinary perspective.

Alex Kuchma is an MA student in history at York University. He has have researching hip-hop actively and collecting oral histories for more than a decade.

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Arturo Rodríguez Morató and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, "Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What are the latest developments in the sociology of the arts? In Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Arturo Rodríguez Morató, a Professor of Sociology and current Director of the CECUPS (Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society) at the University of Barcelona, and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Whitman College, bring together 12 leading researchers to present new empirical and theoretical breakthroughs within the field. The book has a huge range of case studies and approaches, from architectural competitions and graffiti to The Beatles, opera, and football shirts. Drawing on Spanish-speaking scholarship, the book broadens the global basis for the sociology of art, and is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Paul Metsa and Rick Shefchik, "Blood in the Tracks: The Minnesota Musicians Behind Dylan's Masterpiece" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The story of the Minneapolis musicians who were unexpectedly summoned to re-record half of the songs on Bob Dylan's most acclaimed album.

When Bob Dylan recorded Blood on the Tracks in New York in September 1974, it was a great album. But it was not the album now ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the ten best of all time. “When something’s not right, it’s wrong,” as Dylan puts it in “You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—and something about that original recording led him to a studio in his native Minnesota to re-record five of the songs on that landmark album, including “Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” Six Minnesota musicians sat in on that two-night recording session at Sound 80, bringing their unique sound to some of Dylan’s best-known songs—only to have their names left off the album and their contribution unacknowledged for more than forty years. This book tells the story of those two nights in Minneapolis, of the musicians who gave the album so much of its ultimate form and sound, and of their decades-long fight for recognition.

Paul Metsa and Rick Shefchik's book Blood in the Tracks: The Minnesota Musicians Behind Dylan's Masterpiece (U Minnesota Press, 2023) takes readers behind the scenes with these “mystery” Minnesota musicians: twenty-one-year-old mandolin virtuoso Peter Ostroushko; drummer Bill Berg and bass player Billy Peterson, the house rhythm section at Sound 80; progressive rock keyboardist Gregg Inhofer; guitarist Chris Weber, who owned The Podium guitar shop in Dinkytown; and Kevin Odegard, whose own career as a singer-songwriter had paralleled Dylan’s until he had to take a job as a railroad brakeman to make ends meet. Through in-depth interviews and assiduous research, Paul Metsa and Rick Shefchik trace the twists of fate that brought these musicians together and set them on different paths in its wake: their musical experiences leading up to the December 1974 recording session, the divergent careers that followed, and the painstaking work it took to finally get the official credit that was their due.

A rare look at the making—or remaking—of an all-time-great album, and a long overdue acknowledgment of the musicians who helped make it happen, Blood in the Tracks brings to life a transformative moment in the history of rock and roll, for the first time in its true context and with its complete cast of players.

Paul Metsa is a musician and songwriter with twelve original records to his credit, as well as an autobiography, Blue Guitar Highway, also published by University of Minnesota Press. He has played more than five thousand professional gigs—including at Farm Aid V in Dallas in 1992, the Tribute to Woody Guthrie at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., in 1999—and has received seven Minnesota Music Awards. His self-published Alphabet Jazz: Poetry, Prose, Stories, and Songs was released in September of 2022.

Rick Shefchik spent almost thirty years in daily journalism, mostly as a critic, reporter, and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He is author of several books, including Everybody’s Heard about the Bird: The True Story of 1960s Rock ’n’ Roll in Minnesota (Minnesota, 2015).

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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Andrew Snyder, "Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro" (Wesleyan UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) tells the story of neofanfarrismo, an explosive carnival brass band community turned activist musical movement in Rio de Janeiro, as Brazil shifted from a country on the rise in the 2000s to one beset by various crises in the 2010s. Though predominantly middle-class, neofanfarristas have creatively adapted the critical theories of carnival to militate for a more democratic city. Illuminating the tangible obstacles to musical movement building, Andrew Snyder argues that festive activism with privileged origins can promote real alternatives to the neoliberal city, but meets many limits and contradictions in a society marked by diverse inequalities.

Dr. Andrew Snyder is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Ethnomusicology at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa [New University] of Lisbon] in Portugal. Building on the recently published book that is the subject of this interview, Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro, he is beginning a new book project focused on the postcolonial relationships enacted in Brazilian carnival practices in Lisbon. He has also increasingly worked as an editor, having co-edited the books, HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism and At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice, and he will soon be a lead co-editor of the Journal of Festive Studies. He is also a trumpet player, who has played with many of the groups he studies.

Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries.

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Robin James, "The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence" (UNC Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In 1983, an Ohio radio station called WOXY launched a sonic disruption to both corporate rock and to its conservative home region, programming an omnivorous range of genres and artists while being staunchly committed to local independent art and media. In the 1990s, as alternative rock went mainstream and radio grew increasingly homogeneous, WOXY gained international renown as one of Rolling Stone's "Last Great Independent Radio" stations. The station projected a philosophy that prioritized such independence--the idea that truly progressive, transgressive, futuristic disruptions of the status quo were possible only when practiced with and for other people.

In The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence (UNC Press, 2023), philosopher Robin James uses WOXY's story to argue against a corporate vision of independence--in which everyone fends for themselves--and in favor of an alternative way of thinking and relating to one another that disrupts norms but is nevertheless supported by communities. Against the standard retelling of the history of "modern rock," James looks to the local scenes that made true independence possible by freeing individual artists from the whims of the boardroom. This philosophy of community-rooted independence offers both a counternarrative to the orthodox history of indie rock and an alternative worldview to that of the current corporate mainstream.

Robin James is a writer, editor, and philosopher. She is the author of four books including Resilience & Melancholy and The Sonic Episteme. Robin on Twitter.

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Lisa McCormick, "The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How can sociology help us understand art and music? In The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), the editor Lisa McCormick, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh, draws together the latest research in cultural sociology that examines art and music. Global in scope, and eclectic in choice of subjects and methods, the book is united by the shared approach of the strong programme in cultural sociology. As a result, the book offers a cultural approach to cultural objects, setting new agendas and explaining controversies. The range of topics, both historical and contemporary, make the book essential reading across both arts and humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in art and music!

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Heather Augustyn, "Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond" (2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 25 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In her latest book, Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond (Sally Brown Publishing, 2023), Heather Augustyn explores the ska revival in the UK during the lates 1970s and 1980s. The 2 Tone label represented unity of black and white in both the content of the songs, and appearance of the bands. While race may have been central to this declaration, where did gender fit in? Many bands had few, if any, women in their lineup and so women had to do it for themselves. Empowered by punk and impassioned by Jamaican ska and reggae, they took up the microphone, the saxophone, drumsticks. Women demanded their space on the stage and in the studio. Through exclusive interviews with more than 50 women involved in ska in the UK during the '70s and '80s, Rude Girls: Women in 2 Tone and One Step Beyond tells their stories of adversity, perseverance, and sisterhood for an inspiring look at half of the story that has never been told.

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Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden: A Girl's Life in the Incredible String Band

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 22 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Damon Kruskowski, author of Ways of Hearing and The New Analog, previously member of Galaxie 500 and currently a member of Damon & Naomi interviews Rose Simpson about her book Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden.

Rose is an English former musician. Between 1968 and 1971, she was a member of the Incredible String Band, with whom she sang and played bass guitar, violin, and percussion.

Between 1967 and 1971 Rose Simpson lived with the Incredible String Band (Mike Heron, Robin Williamson and Licorice McKechnie), morphing from English student to West Coast hippie and, finally, bassist in leathers. The band's image adorned psychedelic posters and its music was the theme song for an alternative lifestyle.

Rose and partner Mike Heron believed in, and lived, a naive vision of utopia in Scotland. But they were also a band on tour, enjoying the thrills of that life. They were at the center of “Swinging London” and at the Chelsea Hotel with Andy Warhol's superstars. They shared stages with rock idols and played at Woodstock in 1969. Rose and fellow ISB member Licorice were hippie pin-ups, while Heron and Robin Williamson the seers and prophets of a new world.

Through a haze of incense and marijuana, they played out their Arcadian dreams on stages brilliant with the colors of clothes, light-shows, rugs, cushions, and exotic instruments. Like most utopias, the ISB's imploded. Never seeing herself as a professional musician, Rose retained an outsider's detachment even while living the life of a hippie chick. Her memoir gives a voice to those flower-wreathed girls whose photographs have become symbols of the psychedelic sixties.

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Mark LeVine, "We'll Play Till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World" (U California Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In We'll Play till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World (University of California Press, 2022), Mark LeVine, Professor at University of California, Irvine, dives into the revolutionary youth music cultures of Muslim societies before, during, and beyond the waves of resistance that shook the region from Morocco to Pakistan.

This sequel to his celebrated 2008 musical travelogue Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, shows how some of the world's most extreme music not only helped inspire and define region-wide protests, but also exemplifies the beauty and diversity of youth cultures throughout Muslim societies. In our conversation we discussed early metal scenes in the Southwest Asia, the Arab uprisings, hip hop culture, the rise of electronic music, musicians and fans organizing and protesting, the circulation of music through global platforms, the role of subcultures, harassment, imprisonment and police brutality toward youth, the role of women in music scenes, and collaboration and authorship.

Kristian Petersen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu.

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Sebanti Chatterjee, "Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Sebanti Chatterjee's book Choral Voices: Ethnographic Imaginations of Sound and Sacrality (Bloomsbury, 2023) is about sacred and secular choirs in Goa and Shillong across churches, seminaries, schools, auditoriums, classrooms, reality TV shows, and festivals. Voice and genre emerge as social objects annotated by tradition, nostalgia, and innovation. Piety literally and metaphorically shapes the Christian lifeworld, predominantly those belonging to the Presbyterian and Catholic denominations. Indigeneity structures the political and cultural motifs in the making of the Christian musical traditions. Located at the intersection of Sociology, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology, the choral voices emplace 'affect' and the visual-aural dispatch. Thus, sonic spectrum holds space for indigenous and global musicality.

This ethnographic work will be useful for scholars researching music and sound studies, religious studies, cultural anthropology, and sociology of India.

Tiatemsu Longkumer is a Ph.D. scholar working on Indigenous Religion and Christianity at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong: India.

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John Klaess, "Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City" (Duke UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City (Duke UP, 2022), John Klaess tells the story of rap's emergence on New York City's airwaves by examining how artists and broadcasters adapted hip hop's performance culture to radio. Initially, artists and DJs brought their live practice to radio by buying time on low-bandwidth community stations and building new communities around their shows. Later, stations owned by New York's African American elite, such as WBLS, reluctantly began airing rap even as they pursued a sound rooted in respectability, urban sophistication, and polish. At the same time, large commercial stations like WRKS programmed rap once it became clear that the music attracted a demographic that was valuable to advertisers. Moving between intimate portraits of single radio shows and broader examinations of the legal, financial, cultural, and political forces that indelibly shaped the sound of rap radio, Klaess shows how early rap radio provides a lens through which to better understand the development of rap music as well as the intertwined histories of sounds, institutions, communities, and legal formations that converged in the post-Civil Rights era.

John Klaess is an independent scholar based in Boston. John on Duke University Press.

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Mark Goodall, "Gathering of the Tribe: A Companion to Occult Music on Vinyl" (Headpress, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In his new series, Gathering of the Tribe (Headpress, 2022) Mark Goodall explores the mysterious power of sound and tone. Each book in the series is devoted to reviewing records that reveal divide and cosmic laws, voyages to other worlds, or use sound as a tool for transformation.

Volume One: Acid explores the key explores the key aspects of the acid experience, these being principally the way in which psychedelic drugs intensify sensory impressions (sound and vision); the ability to experience different dimensions simultaneously and mystical dimensions where the individual feels unified with the cosmos. This music also explores aspects of the infamous ‘bad trip’ or the ‘terror that was wrong’, where positive feelings are replaced by paranoia, depression, anxiety and disturbing flashbacks, the ‘other side of anguish.’

Volume Two: Landscape examines the ways that landscapes have long inspired the consciousness of creative artists. By way of quick introduction to the links between music and territories, the 1977 KPM 1191 library music LP features a suite of pieces with titles such as ‘Country Lanes’, ‘Passing Meadows’ and ‘Memory Lane’ composed by Johnny Pearson to express the different aspects of (mostly rural) landscapes. The pieces are interesting as they try to capture an immersive experience of being in a land by using sound. This is a process by which many of the composers in this volume hope to express the wonder and mystery of landscape through sound. The music has been made to express a variety of landscapes: rural and urban; real and imaginary.

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Philip Ewell, "On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press, 2023) by Philip Ewell is an unflinching look at white supremacy and the academy, specifically in the discipline of music theory, although Ewell’s insights and arguments can apply just as well to all music studies and most, if not all, other academic fields. Using meticulous research and his own experiences, Ewell documents the results of music theory’s white racial frame. He shows how the power traditionally wielded by white, cisgender men in academia is supported by the methodologies, the pedagogy, and the very music that most music specialists study, perform, and teach, and how this white racial frame makes it difficult for anyone else to feel comfortable, much less succeed in the field. Ultimately, the book brings attention to the myriad ways that people are excluded, denigrated, and marginalized by deeply entrenched beliefs, analytical methods, and systems in music theory. Ewell reminds readers that there is a difference between diversity work and antiracism, and how important it is to recognize when “solutions” are actually supporting the very racial injustices they purport to reform. Although the problem is too complex for easy answers, Ewell ends the book with some strategies to begin to subvert music’s white racial frame and make “music more welcoming for everyone.”

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Annie Zaleski, "Lady Gaga: Applause" (Palazzo Editions, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

As one of the world's best-selling musicians, Lady Gaga has set the musical bar high. Since her debut album, The Fame (2008), she has sold more than 124 million records and scooped numerous awards, including twelve Grammy Awards and eighteen MTV Music Video Awards.

Yet she is much more than a musician. At the helm of the Haus of Gaga--a close-knit circle of behind-the-scenes creatives--Lady Gaga is a performance artist like no other; her forward-thinking fashions and innovations mark her out as the ultimate maverick. Recently, she has reinvented herself as an accomplished jazz performer, dueting with legendary singer Tony Bennett on Cheek to Cheek (2014) and Love For Sale (2021), while also proving herself a consummate actor with lead roles in A Star Is Born (2018) and House of Gucci (2021). And with her advocacy for LGBT rights and active championing of kindness via the Born This Way Foundation, co-founded with her mother Cynthia Germanotta in 2011, it's clear to see why her fans adore her.

Lady Gaga: Applause (Palazzo Editions, 2022) is a celebration of a true artist of our time. Illustrated throughout with stunning photography and complementary fashion segments, this comprehensive history follows Lady Gaga's ever-evolving and often unpredictable career, and is testament to her many talents. A must for Little Monsters everywhere.

Annie Zaleski is an award-winning freelance, journalist, editor, and critic based in Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, she was on staff at the Riverfront Times and Alternative Press. Her profiles, interviews, and criticism have appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, NPR Music, The Guardian, Salon, Time, Billboard, The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, Stereogum, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Las Vegas Weekly. She is the author Duran Duran's Rio (Bloomsbury).

Annie on Twitter.

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Craig Leonard, "Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse" (MIT Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse (MIT Press, 2022), Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse, an original member of the Frankfurt School and icon of the New Left, while also acknowledging his philosophical limits. This account reinvigorates Marcuse for contemporary readers, putting his aesthetic theory into dialogue with anti-capitalist activism.

Craig Leonard speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about anti-art, habit, the practice of defamiliarisation, a subversion of common sense. Leonard brings forward Marcuse’s claim that the aesthetic dimension is political because of its refusal to operate according to the repressive common sense that establishes and maintains relationships dictated by advanced capitalism.

Craig Leonard‘s research and teaching interests include artist publications, sound art, performance and sculpture. His recent exhibitions include Central Art Garage (Ottawa), Darling Green (New York) and Double Happiness (Toronto). He is associate professor of art at NSCAD.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Will York, "Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age" (Headpress, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age (Headpress, 2023), Will York draws on over 100 interviews with musicians, artists, and scene participants as well as zines and other ephemera from the time period to chronicle post-punk San Francisco. York starts with the Punk Era and moves through Post Punk, Hard Core, the Eighties and into the Nineties, to explore the golden age of analog DIY culture, from the dark cabaret of Tuxedomoon and Factrix, the apocalyptic sounds of Minimal Man and Flipper, the conceptual humor of Gregg Turkington's Amarillo Records; through to the subversive pop music of Faith No More, the left-field experimentalism of Caroliner, Mr. Bungle, and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, and much more. It's a tale full of existential drama, tragic anti-heroes, dark humor, spectacular failures--and even a few improbable successes. In addition, York has a companion podcast to delve further into the scene and the interviews.

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Rachel Anne Gillett, "At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Rachel Gillett's At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores the world of the French "Jazz Age" in the years after the First World War. Tracing the common ground and differences between communities of African American, French Antillean, and French West African artists who lived, performed, and interacted with one another in the French capital during the 1920s and 30s, the book asks questions about Blackness, Frenchness, colonialism, racism, identity, and solidarity through a focus on the experiences of a diversity of historical actors and sources. Connecting the rich and complex world of entertainment to social and political change and resistance, the book draws attention to class and gender as well as race to think through issues of nationalism, transnational movement and exchange, and anti-colonialism. Its chapters work with a range of materials including police records, recordings, biography and autobiography, and a wealth of images of/from the diverse Parisian cultural life the era.

Pushing beyond the well-established history of white responses to Black musical forms (Jazz and the Biguine) during this period, the book emphasizes the perspective of Black observers, including the famous Nardal sisters of Martinique, who commented on the varied cultural and political effects of artists and performances. The book will be a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of music, race, and exchanges across the Atlantic, including different points within the French empire during this period. And the legacies of this moment continue to resonate in France and beyond a century later.

Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013.

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The Making of "Ways of Hearing"

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bonus to the Ways of Hearing podcast and book

A behind-the-scenes conversation with the creators of Ways of Hearing, the podcast and book. Hosted by author Damon Krukowski, with Radiotopia and Showcase executive producer Julie Shapiro, sound designer Ian Coss, MIT Press editor Matthew Browne, and graphic designer James Goggin. Recorded live before a studio audience at the PRX Podcast Garage, April 9, 2019. Mixed by Ian Coss.

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Celeste Day Moore, "Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France" (Duke UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Celeste Day Moore is a historian of African American culture, media, and Black internationalism in the twentieth century. Her first book, Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Duke University Press, 2021), was awarded the Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies. Her research has appeared in American Quarterly, the Journal of African American History, and the first edited volume of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago and has been a fellow at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. As an associate professor of history at Hamilton College, she teaches courses on African American history as well as histories of empire, race, Black internationalism, and U.S. international relations.

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.

Annie deSaussure, holds a Ph.D. in French from Yale University and is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Languages and Literary Studies at Lafayette College. Her work focuses on minority regional languages, literatures, and cultures in contemporary France, with a focus on the region of Brittany, the historical and artistic dimensions of radio in France, and podcasting.

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Simon Strange, "Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity and the Development of Punk, Post Punk and New Wave Music" (Intellect, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Blank Canvas: Art School Creativity From Punk to New Wave (Intellect Publishing, 2022), Simon Strange explores the relationship between art and music within education in the United Kingdom. Strange examines the diverse range of people who broke down the barriers between art, life, and the creative self. He looks at art school Britain in the 1960s and ’70s, a hotbed of experimental DIY creativity that blurred the lines between art and music. Tracing lines from the Bauhaus “blank slate” through the white heat of the Velvet Underground and the cutting edge of the Slits, Blank Canvas draws on interviews with giants of the genre across the spectrums of music, gender, and race, from Brian Eno to Pauline Black, Cabaret Voltaire to Gaye Advert. What emerges is a portrait of the era as an eclectic range of musical styles and cultures fused, erupting into a diverse flow of outspoken originality. Providing a framework for creativity within the arts and education, the book illuminates a path for the cultural evolution of both musicians and artists hoping to create the future.

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David Rothenberg, "Whale Music: Thousand Mile Songs in a Sea of Sound" (Terra Nova Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Whale song is an astonishing world of sound whose existence no one suspected before the 1960s. Its discovery has forced us to confront the possibility of alien intelligence--not in outer space but right here on earth. Thoughtful, richly detailed, and deeply entertaining, Whale Music: Thousand Mile Songs in a Sea of Sound (Terra Nova Press, 2023) uses the enigma of whale sounds to open up whales' underwater world of sonic mystery. In observing and talking with leading researchers from around the globe as they attempt to decipher undersea music, Rothenberg tells the story of scientists and musicians confronting an unknown as vast as the ocean itself. His search culminates in a grand attempt to make interspecies music by playing his clarinet with whales in their native habitats, from Russia to Canada to Hawaii.

This is a revised edition of Thousand Mile Song, originally published in 2008. The latest advances in cetacean science and interspecies communication have been incorporated into this new edition, along with added photographs and color whale scores.

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Geoff Harkness, "DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas" (Columbia UP, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

99.9% of aspiring rappers never make it in the music industry. So why do we only hear the stories of the ones who do?

DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you've never heard of. Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, they developed a reputation for ferocious rhyming and frenetic live performances. In their heyday, DVS Mindz released a critically acclaimed CD, received nominations for prestigious awards, and opened for legends such as Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC, and De La Soul as well as KC icon Tech N9ne. But the group struggled with creative differences, substance abuse, ego battles, and money issues, and they split up in 2003.

Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed. Based on more than one hundred hours of video and audio recordings from 1999 to 2022, this fly-on-the-wall account offers a backstage pass into the recording studios and radio stations, video shoots and house parties, nightclubs and concert halls of the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka music scene circa 2000.

DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas (Columbia UP, 2023) is at once a compulsively readable group biography of four talented MCs, a vibrant voyage through the forgotten history of local hip hop, and a breathtakingly real story of struggling to achieve big dreams.

Alex Kuchma is an MA student in history at York University. He has have researching hip-hop actively and collecting oral histories for more than a decade.

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Wolfgang Marx, "I Don't Belong Anywhere: Gyorgy Ligeti At 100" (Brepols Publishers, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Wolfgang Marx's I Don't Belong Anywhere: Gyorgy Ligeti At 100 (Brepols Publishers, 2022) commemorates the centenary of Gyorgy Ligeti's birth. The volume consists of twelve contributions that consists of new investigations of many aspects of Legeti's career.

2023 marks the centenary of Ligeti's birth, an appropriate moment to take stock of the relevance this composer has in the contemporary world, to assess where he "belongs" today and how our views of his uvre and our understanding of his position in musical and cultural history have evolved. What do Ligeti and his music have to say to us in our post-postmodernist age? Why do his works still fascinate us so much? This book offers new readings of core compositions such as "Aventures", "Lontano", "Le Grand Macabre", the "Holderlin Fantasies" and "Galamb borong". It also reassesses the context and reception of Ligeti's works, including the influence of Romanian music (not least in his childhood), musical life in Hungary between 1945 and 1956, the ways in which his thinking was influenced by his experience of different soundscapes, yet also the surprisingly widespread use of his music in film and TV (beyond the usual suspect). Finally it presents new sources discovered or made available only recently: letters exchanged between Ligeti and Aliute Mecys in 1972, the correspondence between the composer and his publisher Schott, and an extended BBC interview from 1997.

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Trent Walker, "Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia" (Shambhala, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A unique Buddhist tradition, accessible in English for the first time—translations of forty-five Cambodian Dharma songs, with contextualizing essays and a link to audio of stunning vocal performances.

Trent Walker's Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia (Shambhala, 2022) is the first collection of traditional Cambodian Buddhist literature available in English, presenting original translations of forty-five poems. Introduced, translated, and contextualized by scholar and vocalist Trent Walker, the Dharma songs in this book reveal a distinctive Southeast Asian genre of devotion, mourning, and contemplation. Their soaring melodies have inspired Cambodians for generations, whether in daily prayers or all-night rituals.

Trained in oral and written lineages in Cambodia, Walker presents a carefully curated range of poems from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries that capture the transformative wisdom of the Khmer Buddhist tradition. Many of the poems, having been transcribed from old cassette tapes or fragile bark-paper manuscripts, are printed here for the first time. A link to recordings of selected songs in English and Khmer accompanies the book. These frank and compelling poems offer mirrors to our own lives—even as they challenge Buddhist conventions of how to die, how to grieve, and how to repay the ones we love.

Selected recordings of Dharma songs can be accessed here: Trent Walker--Dharma Songs.

You can download Trent Walker's 1631-page-long dissertation here: Unfolding Buddhism.

Here's the link to register for his course at Barre Center: Story and Song.

Jessica Zu is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist studies. She is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Southern California.

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Rose Marshack, "Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children (University of Illinois Press, 2023), Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack details her life in the 80s and 90s as part of a heavily touring Indie Rock band. Using her Tour Reports from the 1990s, Marshack relates what life was like during the indie rock breakthrough while the advent of new digital technologies transformed the recording and marketing of music. Touring in a van, meeting your idols, juggling a programming job with music, keeping control and credibility, the perils of an independent record label (and the greater perils of a major)--Marshack chronicles the band's day-to-day life and punctuates her account with excerpts from her tour reports and hard-learned lessons on how to rock, program, and teach while female. She also details the ways Poster Children applied punk's DIY ethos to digital tech as a way to connect with fans via then-new media like pkids listservs, internet radio, and enhanced CDs. An inside look at a scene and a career, Play Like a Man is the evocative and humorous tale of one woman's life in the trenches and online.

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Nicolas Collins on Leonardo Music Journal’s 20th Anniversary

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Nicolas Collins, editor of Leonardo Music Journal and Chair of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, answered our questions about the 20th anniversary issue of LMJ. The issue's theme was improvisation. In the podcast, Nic explains how he chose the theme and shares insights about putting the issue together, as well as about how improvisation and composition have evolved during his tenure as editor of LMJ.

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Hugh Hodges, "The Fascist Groove Thing: A History of Thatcher's Britain in 21 Mixtapes" (PM Press, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This is the late 1970s and '80s as explained through the urgent and still-relevant songs of the Clash, the Specials, the Au Pairs, the Style Council, the Pet Shop Boys, and nearly four hundred other bands and solo artists.

Each chapter presents a mixtape (or playlist) of songs related to an alarming feature of Thatcher's Britain, followed by an analysis of the dialogue these artists created with the Thatcherite vision of British society. "Tell us the truth," Sham 69 demanded, and pop music, however improbably, did. It's a furious and sardonic account of dark times when pop music raised a dissenting fist against Thatcher's fascist groove thing and made a glorious, boredom-smashing noise. Bookended with contributions by Dick Lucas and Boff Whalley as well as an annotated discography, The Fascist Groove Thing: A History of Thatcher's Britian in 21 Mixtapes (PM Press, 2023) presents an original and polemical account of the era.

Hugh Hodges has written extensively on African and West Indian music, poetry, and fiction, including essays on Fela Kuti, Lord Kitchener, and Bob Marley. Linton Kwesi Johnson praised his book Soon Come as "extremely engaging and an important, original scholarly work." He currently teaches at Trent University, Ontario, where his research focuses on cultural resistance in its many forms, and his band the Red Finks remains hopelessly obscure.

Hugh’s author page for PM Press.

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Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Michael Gurevich, lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at the Queen’s University, Belfast School of Music and Sonic Arts, serves as guest editor of the Winter 2010 issue of Computer Music Journal. In this podcast, Michael discusses the fields of Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). He describes how these fields intersect and what they can learn from each other, touching on how the field of Computer Music has grown and how this affects performance and composition of electronic music. This conversation was recorded on December 14, 2010.

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Brian Harker, "Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, an American Classic" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

John W. Bubbles was an actor, singer, comedian, and most importantly, a dancer. Born in 1902, Bubbles was an innovator in the jazz tap style and half of the great vaudeville act, "Buck and Bubbles," with his partner pianist Buck Washington. Brian Harker tells Bubbles' story in Sportin’ Life: John W. Bubbles, An American Classic (Oxford University Press, 2022). Bubbles’ long career, which largely ended after a stroke in 1967, spanned several significant shifts in American popular entertainment. He started entertaining audiences in vaudeville just as films began to dominate the landscape followed by television. Harker tells the story of Bubbles’ tumultuous life and situates his career as a Black dancer within segregated America and an entertainment industry that perpetuated racist stereotypes and exploited its workers—especially those from minoritized communities. Although Bubbles originated the role of Sportin’ Life in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, he has largely slipped out of American memory. Harker restores Bubbles to his rightful place as an innovative dancer and an important figure in twentieth-century American popular entertainment.

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Error, Ego, Humility and Music: A Discussion with Tony Monaco

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For today’s episode we welcome jazz organist Tony Monaco to the show. Tony is a master of the Hammond B3 and has collaborated with many other great jazz musicians, including fellow jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco, drummer Steve Smith, as well as guitarists Pat Martino and George Benson, among many others. Downbeat Magazine named Tony in the top 5 jazz organists internationally for the years 2005-2011 and his albums have been both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, with several climbing to the upper levels of Jazzweek’s annual top 100 listings. Our conversation covers much ground related to error, ego, humility and music, but also Tony’s struggles with alcoholism over the course of his career. And be sure to listen all the way to the end for a great live rendition of Tony’s composition I’ll Remember Jimmy.

John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations.

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Margaret Hall, "Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond" (Applause Books, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Margaret Hall's Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond (Applause Books, 2022) is the definitive book on Broadway's greatest music director. From a youth playing in jazz bands to a storied career conducting Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Evita, and Into the Woods, Gemignani's life story provides a behind-the-scenes look at many of the pivotal moments in musical theatre history. The book also provides a vivid sense of Gemignani as a person: a warm, avuncular, yet passionately opinionated figure whom many Broadway legends rely on to make their shows come alive.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Dan DiPiero, "Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a function of any encounter between subjects, objects, and environments. Bringing contingency into conversation with the utopian strain of critical improvisation studies, DiPiero shows how particular social investments cause improvisation to be associated with relative freedom, risk-taking, and unpredictability in both scholarship and public discourse. Taking seriously the claim that improvisation is the same thing as living, Contingent Encounters overturns long-standing assumptions about the aesthetic and political implications of this notoriously slippery term.

Dan DiPiero is a musician and Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology at Ithaca College, soon-to-be Assistant Professor of Music Studies, UMKC Conservatory.

Gummo Clare is a PhD researcher in the School of Media and Communications, University of Leeds.

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Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt: A Conversation with Andrew Simon

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Andrew Simon, a historian of media, popular culture, and the Middle East at Dartmouth College, discusses his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2022) , with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Media of the Masses is an engaging book that examines the impact of cassettes, cassette players, and their users during a particular period in Egypt's recent past. It provides a brilliant example of how disparate and surprising sources can be used to uncover the extraordinary story of an ordinary technology. Along the way, Simon directs our attention to a significant truth: audiocassettes provided countless people with the opportunity to create and circulate cultural content long before the internet and social media ever entered our daily lives. This book will captivate anyone interested in the history of technology, mass media, or popular culture.

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech. He studies human life with technology, with particular focus on the relationship between government, business, and technological change. His first book, Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2019.

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Jen B. Larson, "Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983" (Feral House, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 (Feral House, 2023), Jen B. Larson takes readers throughout the United States on a punk history lesson. Dividing the country into regions, Larson documents local and regional bands and scenes, many of which have stories that were in danger of being lost. Profiling over 80 bands and artists, Hit Girls shares women's experiences as pioneers of punk. Highlighting their successes and documenting the sexism and racism within the scene, Hit Girls includes over 100 images, a comprehensive playlist of all the artists, and interviews with many of the artists including Texacala Jones, Alice Bag, Nikki Corvette, and Penelope Houston. Hit Girls is an important text in the history of popular music and punk and adds to the work of centering women in music history.

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Pete Millwood, "Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger; the other, earlier, visit was by the US table tennis team. Historians have mulled over the transcripts of Kissinger's negotiations with Chinese leaders. However, they have overlooked how, alongside these diplomatic talks, a rich program of travel and exchange had begun with ping-pong diplomacy.

Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US-China Relations (Cambridge UP, 2022) reveals how a diverse cast of Chinese and Americans – athletes and physicists, performing artists and seismologists – played a critical, but to date overlooked, role in remaking US-China relations. Based on new sources from more than a dozen archives in China and the United States, Pete Millwood argues that the significance of cultural and scientific exchanges went beyond reacquainting the Chinese and American people after two decades of minimal contact; exchanges also powerfully influenced Sino-American diplomatic relations and helped transform post-Mao China.

Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the politics of American grand strategy during World War II.

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Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson, "Failures in Cultural Participation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless initiatives to make the arts more accessible to the public and to make them more relevant have been advocated for in policy and funding settlements.

But the dial on who participates and how much has not shifted, despite many thousands of projects trying to address the problem. And this isn’t even the punchline. Not only do the interventions not work, nobody involved in them admits that the interventions may have been a failure.

Having spent many years working in cultural policy studies and in arts practice, Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson take the arts and culture sector to task over this fiction. Their book Failures in Cultural Participation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) puts a mirror to the industry and invites cultural policymakers, organisations, and practitioners to confront their failures.

David Stevenson speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the culture sector’s refusal to acknowledge failure in widening participation and moving the debate from the ‘value’ of culture to considering how policies can be designed and implemented. David argues for an honest and transparent acknowledgement of failure at individual, organisational and governmental levels.

The Failspace Project tools
A special issue of the Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation edited by Leila and David
David’s “I hate opera” paper.

Leila Jancovich is a professor of Cultural Policy and Participation at the University of Leeds. Before entering academia, she worked for many years in the arts and festivals sector as a producer, researcher, and policy maker.

David Stevenson is the Dean of The School of Arts, Social Sciences, and Management at Queen Margaret University. His research focuses on relations of power and the production of value within the cultural sector.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Nic Brown, "Bang Bang Crash: A Memoir" (Counterpoint, 2023)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In his memoir, Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023), Nic Brown shares his experiences as a rock and roll drummer who abandons his successful music career to pursue his true passion and discovers a deeper understanding of artistic fulfillment in this episodic memoir of swapping one dream for another In the mid-1990s, fresh out of high school, Nic Brown was living his childhood dream as a rock and roll drummer. Signing a major label record deal, playing big shows, hitting the charts, giving interviews in Rolling Stone, appearing on The Tonight Show—what could be better for a young artist? But contrary to expectations, getting a shot at his artistic dream early in life was a destabilizing shock. The more he achieved, the more accolades that came his way, the less sure Brown became about his path. Only a few years into a promising musical career, he discovered the crux of his discontent: he was never meant to remain behind the drums. In fact, his true artistic path lay in a radically different direction entirely: he decided to become a writer, embarking on a journey leading him to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, publish novels and short stories, and teach literature to college students across the country. Bang Bang Crash tells the story of Nic Brown’s unusual journey to gain new strength, presence of mind, and sense of perspective, enabling him to discover an even greater life of artistic fulfillment.

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Making Meaning Episode 11: Living Music

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Music is not merely entertainment—it is a living tradition, a connective tissue linking generations together in a shared pursuit of joy and significance. And through those links across time and space, we build a world of meaning, one improvisation at a time.

Guest:

Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway." Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship,a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. In 2014 he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he is jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.

Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas.

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Lauron J. Kehrer, "Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Notions of hip hop authenticity, as expressed both within hip hop communities and in the larger American culture, rely on the construction of the rapper as a Black, masculine, heterosexual, cisgender man who enacts a narrative of struggle and success.

In Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2022), Lauron J. Kehrer turns our attention to openly queer and trans rappers and presents an alternative and more inclusive narrative about the development of hip hop that includes the contributions of queer people throughout the history of the genre. They consider the role of disco, house music, and the ballroom scene in New York City to demonstrate how these different communities and networks played and continue to play a role in hip hop. Kehrer also explores Bounce, a regional form of hip hop with deep roots in New Orleans and its queer communities that has recently entered national circulation. By centering the performances of openly queer and trans artists of color, Queer Voices in Hip Hop reclaims their work as essential to the development and persistence of hip hop in the United States as it tells the story of the queer roots of hip hop.

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Making Meaning Episode 8: Gifts of Belonging

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In music, Kimbra found a way to create and share gifts. And through that gifting, she provides space for others to find deep connection and belonging. But music also offers something more mysterious—a language to wrestle with meaning, an attempt to capture and express the experience of life.

Guest:

Kimbra is a two-time Grammy Award and six-time Aria winner who mixes pop, R&B, jazz, and rock. Some of her most famous singles include “Cameo Lover,” “Belong,” and “Somebody that I Used To Know.”

Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas.

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Steven Hyden, "Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation" (Hachette Books, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and have even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of A Generation, music critic and journalist Steven Hyden celebrates the life, career, and music of this legendary group, widely considered to be one of the greatest American rock bands of all time. Long Road is structured like a mix tape, using 18 different Pearl Jam classics as starting points for telling a mix of personal and universal stories. Each chapter tells the tale of this great band -- how they got to where they are, what drove them to greatness, and why it matters now.

Much like the generation it emerged from, Pearl Jam is a mass of contradictions. They were an enormously successful mainstream rock band who felt deeply uncomfortable with the pursuit of capitalistic spoils. They were progressive activists who spoke in favor of abortion rights and against the Ticketmaster monopoly, and yet they epitomized the sound of traditional, male-dominated rock 'n' roll. They were looked at as spokesmen for their generation, even though they ultimately projected profound confusion and alienation. They triumphed, and failed, in equal doses -- the quintessential Gen-X tale.

Impressive as their stats, accolades, and longevity may be, Hyden also argues that Pearl Jam's most definitive accomplishment lies in the impact their music had on Generation X as a whole. Pearl Jam's music helped an entire generation of listeners connect with the glory of bygone rock mythology, and made it relevant during a period in which tremendous American economic prosperity belied a darkness at the heart of American youth. More than just a chronicle of the band's career, this book is also a story about Gen- X itself, who like Pearl Jam came from angsty, outspoken roots and then evolved into an establishment institution, without ever fully shaking off their uncertain, outsider past. For so many Gen-Xers growing up at the time, Pearl Jam's music was a beacon that offered both solace and guidance. They taught an entire generation how to grow up without losing the purest and most essential parts of themselves.

Written with his celebrated blend of personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Hyden explores Pearl Jam's path from Ten to now. It's a chance for new fans and old fans alike to geek out over Pearl Jam minutia--the B-sides, the beloved deep cuts, the concert bootlegs--and explore the multitude of reasons why Pearl Jam's music resonated with so many people. As Hyden explains, "Most songs pass through our lives and are swiftly forgotten. But Pearl Jam is forever."

Steven Hyden is the author of This Isn't Happening, Twilight of the Gods, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, and (with Steve Gorman) Hard to Handle. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Billboard, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Grantland, The A.V. Club, Slate, and Salon. He is currently the cultural critic at UPROXX.

Steven Hyden on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Deep Cuts: Classic Rock and Hair Metal with Professor and Guitarist Jesse Kavadlo

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Jesse Kavadlo is the classic “renaissance man” – literature and humanities professor, author of acclaimed books and articles, President of the Don DeLillo Society, fantastic husband and father…AND self-taught guitarist and vocalist with Top Gunz, one of the most popular 1980s rock cover bands in America.

In this Deep Cuts conversation, Jesse and Bob discuss his guitar-saturated youth and the circuitous path he later took to the university classroom. They regale in their shared Gen X roots and how that past still informs them today, as well as a variety of pop culture topics, from grunge’s almost overnight takedown of hair metal to professors and tweed jackets (and spandex).

At the heart of this Deep Cut episode is Jesse’s guitar playing and singing as a lens to uncover the ways a new generation of young people are discovering classic rock, particularly the Doors (the subject of Bob’s book Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties, published by Hamilcar Publications). A highlight is Jesse’s demonstration of the subtlety and beauty of Doors guitarist Robby Krieger versus the styles of soloists like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen.

Please drop us a line to let us know what you think!

Bob Batchelor is an award-winning cultural historian and biographer. His latest books are Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties and Stan Lee: A Life. Visit him on the web at www.bobbatchelor.com or email at bob@bobbatchelor.com

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Nick Seaver, "Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The people who make music recommender systems have lofty goals: they want to broaden listeners’ horizons and help obscure musicians find audiences, taking advantage of the enormous catalogs offered by companies like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora. But for their critics, recommender systems seem to embody all the potential harms of algorithms: they flatten culture into numbers, they normalize ever-broadening data collection, and they profile their users for commercial ends. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, anthropologist Nick Seaver describes how the makers of music recommendation navigate these tensions: how product managers understand their relationship with the users they want to help and to capture; how scientists conceive of listening itself as a kind of data processing; and how engineers imagine the geography of the world of music as a space they care for and control.

Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation (U Chicago Press, 2022) rehumanizes the algorithmic systems that shape our world, drawing attention to the people who build and maintain them. In this vividly theorized book, Seaver brings the thinking of programmers into conversation with the discipline of anthropology, opening up the cultural world of computation in a wide-ranging exploration that travels from cosmology to calculation, myth to machine learning, and captivation to care.

Nick Seaver is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the director of the Science, Technology, and Society program at Tufts University.

Mathew Gagné is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University.

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Maria Sonevytsky, "Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine" (Wesleyan UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine (Wesleyan UP, 2019), Maria Sonevytsky tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of “wildness” as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, Sonevytsky assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, Sonevytsky proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

John Vsetecka is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University where he is finishing a dissertation that examines the aftermath of the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine (Holodomor).

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Anthony Reed, "Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production" (Duke UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production (Duke UP, 2020), Anthony Reed argues that studying sound requires conceiving it as process and as work. Since the long Black Arts era (ca. 1958–1974), intellectuals, poets, and musicians have defined black sound as radical aesthetic practice. Through their recorded collaborations as well as the accompanying interviews, essays, liner notes, and other media, they continually reinvent black sound conceptually and materially.

Soundwork is Reed’s term for that material and conceptual labor of experimental sound practice framed by the institutions of the culture industry and shifting historical contexts. Through analyses of Langston Hughes’s collaboration with Charles Mingus, Amiri Baraka’s work with the New York Art Quartet, Jayne Cortez’s albums with the Firespitters, and the multimedia projects of Archie Shepp, Matana Roberts, Cecil Taylor, and Jeanne Lee, Reed shows that to grasp black sound as a radical philosophical and aesthetic insurgence requires attending to it as the product of material, technical, sensual, and ideological processes.

Henry Ivry is a Lecturer in 20th and 21st Century Literature in the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow.

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Rens Bod, "A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present" (Oxford UP, 2014)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Many histories of science have been written, but A New History of the Humanities (Oxford UP, 2014) offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present. There are already historical studies of musicology, logic, art history, linguistics, and historiography, but this volume gathers these, and many other humanities disciplines, into a single coherent account.

Its central theme is the way in which scholars throughout the ages and in virtually all civilizations have sought to identify patterns in texts, art, music, languages, literature, and the past. What rules can we apply if we wish to determine whether a tale about the past is trustworthy? By what criteria are we to distinguish consonant from dissonant musical intervals? What rules jointly describe all possible grammatical sentences in a language? How can modern digital methods enhance pattern-seeking in the humanities? Rens Bod contends that the hallowed opposition between the sciences (mathematical, experimental, dominated by universal laws) and the humanities (allegedly concerned with unique events and hermeneutic methods) is a mistake born of a myopic failure to appreciate the pattern-seeking that lies at the heart of this inquiry.

A New History of the Humanities amounts to a persuasive plea to give Panini, Valla, Bopp, and countless other often overlooked intellectual giants their rightful place next to the likes of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.

Rens Bod is a professor of humanities at the University of Amsterdam.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter.

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Dick Weissman, "Bob Dylan's New York: A Historic Guide" (SUNY Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

New York has long been a city where people go to reinvent themselves.

And since the dawn of the twentieth century, New York City’s Greenwich Village has been at the center of that alchemy of reinvention. Its side streets, squares and coffeehouses have nurtured generations of artists, writers, and musicians, among them Bob Dylan.

Dylan first set foot in the Village in 1961, and even as he continues to make music, you can argue that his Greenwich Village years in the 1960s were a formative period in his life and work. Dick Weissman’s new book, Bob Dylan's New York: A Historic Guide (SUNY Press, 2022) helps fans and students of Dylan walk the streets where his career took off. Weissman-- musician, author, veteran of the folk scene, and associate professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver—emphasizes the Village but also takes in the midtown Manhattan offices that ran the music industry in Dylan’s early days and the backroads of Woodstock, NY where Dylan found refuge from the big city. The result is a book that situates Dylan’s New York years in a rich context.

Bob Dylan’s New York is organized as a series of mapped walking tours--covering Bleecker Street, MacDougal Street, Washington Square and more—that convey the people and institutions that nurtured Dylan’s early career. Individual stops on the tour—such as Dylan’s apartment building at 161 West Fourth Street and the sites of Izzy Young’s Folklore Center on MacDougal Street and Sixth Avenue—are covered in well-researched entries. The book also lists the homes and addresses of other famous Village inhabitants such as the journalist John Reed, the artist Jackson Pollock, the singer Barbra Streisand, and the political activist Eleanor Roosevelt, suggesting the cultural and political ferment of the Village in the twentieth century. Bob Dylan’s New York is generously illustrated with photographs, many of them from folklore collections at the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that capture famous and not-so-famous inhabitants of the Village folk scene in the 1960s.

The gentrification that has transformed the Village in recent decades has shoved aside much of the grass-roots folk music scene that made the neighborhood so interesting. Nevertheless, many of the cafes and clubs where Dylan and his contemporaries honed their craft are still there, hidden in plain sight. This folkie, former Village resident and long-time Dylan fan went out for a two-hour walk with Bob Dylan’s New York in hand. I made many discoveries on streets that I thought I knew, and I barely scratched the surface of what the book has to offer.

Robert W. Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University. Email: rwsnyder@rutgers.edu.

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Richard Aquila, "Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America: A Cultural History of the Early 1960s" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called the American Century. Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For one brief, shining moment in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars.

From the former host of NPR's Rock & Roll America, Richard Aquila's Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America: A Cultural History of the Early 1960s (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) offers an in-depth look at early 1960s rock & roll, as well as an unconventional history of Kennedy's America through the lens of popular music. Based on extensive research and exclusive interviews with Dion, Bo Diddley, Brenda Lee, Martha Reeves, Pete Seeger, Bob Gaudio, Dick Clark, and other legendary figures, the book rejects the myth that Buddy Holly's death in 1959 was the day the music died. It proves that rock & roll during the early 1960s was vibrant and in tune with the history and events of this colorful era. These interviews and Aquila's research reveal unique insights and new details about politics, gender, race, ethnicity, youth culture, and everyday life. Rock & Roll in Kennedy's America recalls an important chapter in rock & roll and American history.

Richard Aquila is professor emeritus of history and American studies at Penn State University and the former host of NPR's Rock & Roll America. He is the author of The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-Century America and Let's Rock! How 1950s America Created Elvis and the Rock & Roll Craze.

Richard’s website.

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Oana Serban, "After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions" (de Gruyter, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions revolutionized the way philosophers and historians of science thought about science, scientific progress, and the nature of scientific knowledge. But Kuhn himself also considered later on how his framework might apply to art. In After Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions (De Gruyter, 2022), Oana Serban elaborates on the suggestions and proposals of Kuhn and others to develop a new view of aesthetic and artistic progress and change based in Kuhn’s work. Serban, who is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bucharest, adds the key concept of aesthetic validity to the Kuhnian analysis as central to the concept of an aesthetic revolution. The dominance of a particular aesthetic paradigm depends on broadly political factors and are responses to particular ideological questions, such as “What is the relation between humans and God?” Artistic revolutions, in contrast, are stylistic expressions of these ideological frames, such that the norms, values, and styles in art can be transgressive without being Kuhnian revolutions.

Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.

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Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The Moog synthesizer ‘bent the course of music forever’ Rolling Stone declared.

Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation---suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, and Stevie Wonder discovered his synthesizer, and it came to be featured in seminal film scores including Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange. The Moog's game-changing sounds saturated 60's counterculture and burst into the disco party in the 70's to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and become a star in the process.

But he was also going broke. Imitators copied his technology, the musicians' union accused him of replacing live players, and Japanese competitors started overtaking his work. He struggled to hang on to his inventions, his business, and his very name. Bob's story upends our notions of success and wealth, showing that the two don't always go together.

In Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution (Oxford UP, 2022), author Albert Glinsky draws on exclusive access to Bob Moog's personal archives and his probing interviews with Bob's family and a multitude of associates, for this first complete biography of the man and his work. Switched On takes the reader on a roller coaster ride at turns triumphant, heart-breaking, and frequently laugh out loud absurd---a nuanced trip through the public and private worlds of this legendary inventor who altered the course of music.”

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University. He can be reached at nathan.smith@yale.edu.

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Siv B. Lie, "Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (U Chicago Press, 2021) shows how relationships between racial identities, jazz, and national belonging become entangled in France.

Jazz manouche—a genre known best for its energetic, guitar-centric swing tunes—is among France’s most celebrated musical practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It centers on the recorded work of famed guitarist Django Reinhardt and is named for the ethnoracial subgroup of Romanies (also known, often pejoratively, as “Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. French Manouches are publicly lauded as bearers of this jazz tradition, and many take pleasure and pride in the practice while at the same time facing pervasive discrimination. Jazz manouche uncovers a contradiction at the heart of France’s assimilationist republican ideals: the music is portrayed as quintessentially French even as Manouches themselves endure treatment as racial others.

In Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (U Chicago Press, 2021), Siv B. Lie explores how this music is used to construct divergent ethnoracial and national identities in a context where discussions of race are otherwise censured. Weaving together ethnographic and historical analysis, Lie shows that jazz manouche becomes a source of profound ambivalence as it generates ethnoracial difference and socioeconomic exclusion. As the first full-length ethnographic study of French jazz to be published in English, this book enriches anthropological, ethnomusicological, and historical scholarship on global jazz, race and ethnicity, and citizenship while showing how music can be an important but insufficient tool in struggles for racial and economic justice.

Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com.

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Rebecca Binns, "Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde" (Manchester UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated to the life and career of Vaucher. As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work was recognized the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art. While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on the history of feminist art. The book explores how her life has shaped her output, with particular focus on the open-house collective at Dial House in Essex, a centre for radical creativity.

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Comedies of 'Fair Use': Lewis Hyde on Owning Art and Ideas

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In April 2006, The Institute held a two day symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use. In this session, Lewis Hyde talks about owning art and ideas.

Hyde is a cultural critic and scholar, whose work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property. He is best known for his books, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, and Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art.

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What Makes a Book, Song or Movie Popular? A Conversation with Noah Askin

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular children's books, songs, and movies seem to last forever. Is it because the successful ones are similar but different? Is it a fluke? Is it the marketing? Or is it the story that the song/book/movie/anything tells, or is, or is it perhaps the story we make of it.

Noah Askin is Assistant Professor of Teaching Organization and Management at UC-Irvine in the Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to his arrival in Southern California, he was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, where he directed and taught multiple Executive Education programs in addition to teaching the organizational design and leadership core course in the MBA program. He has a popular TEDx talk on what makes popular songs succeed.

Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos.

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Craig Seymour, "Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross" (2017)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was too weak to receive visitors, but cards and good wishes came from Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Anita Baker, Halle Berry, Patti LaBelle, Jesse Jackson, Burt Bacharach, Bette Midler, Star Jones, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick, among others. With a will to live matched only by the enormous strength and power of his heart, soul, and singing talent, Luther survived and is regaining his voice. Craig Seymour's Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross (2017) is a loving tribute to the man who has entertained millions.

Luther remains one of the music industry's most private celebrities. In Luther, the first biography of the hugely popular and beloved singer, Craig Seymour investigates and illuminates Luther's life, from his early obsession with soulful girl groups to the day he was discovered by glam rocker David Bowie to his devastating stroke and inspiring recovery. Seymour explores Luther's elusive sexuality, the taboo question that has plagued him for his entire career. He talks about Luther's yo-yo dieting, and the pain his weight has caused him and those around him. He tells the whole story behind the widely publicized feuds between Luther and R&B icons Aretha Franklin and Anita Baker as well as the group En Vogue. And he frankly and honestly explores the tragedies of Luther's life: the 1986 car crash that killed his best friend and nearly destroyed his career, and the 2003 stroke that almost ended his life.

An authentic R&B legend, Luther Vandross is one of the most popular and talented vocalists in the world. His life has been full of pain and love, tragedy and redemption. And now, for the first time ever, Luther gives you a backstage pass into his life and longing.

Cresa Pugh is a PhD Candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard University. For more information see scholar.harvard.edu/cresa and follow her on Twitter @CresaPugh.

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Tom McLeish, "The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

What human qualities are needed to make scientific discoveries, and which to make great art? Many would point to 'imagination' and 'creativity' in the second case but not the first. Tom McLeish's The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art (Oxford UP, 2021) challenges the assumption that doing science is in any sense less creative than art, music or fictional writing and poetry, and treads a historical and contemporary path through common territories of the creative process. The methodological process called the 'scientific method' tells us how to test ideas when we have had them, but not how to arrive at hypotheses in the first place. Hearing the stories that scientists and artists tell about their projects reveals commonalities: the desire for a goal, the experience of frustration and failure, the incubation of the problem, moments of sudden insight, and the experience of the beautiful or sublime.

Selected themes weave the practice of science and art together: visual thinking and metaphor, the transcendence of music and mathematics, the contemporary rise of the English novel and experimental science, and the role of aesthetics and desire in the creative process. Artists and scientists make salient comparisons: Defoe and Boyle; Emmerson and Humboldt, Monet and Einstein, Schumann and Hadamard. The book draws on medieval philosophy at many points as the product of the last age that spent time in inner contemplation of the mystery of how something is mentally brought out from nothing. Taking the phenomenon of the rainbow as an example, the principles of creativity within constraint point to the scientific imagination as a parallel of poetry.

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Fearghus Roulston, "Belfast Punk and the Troubles: an Oral History" (Manchester UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Belfast Punk and the Troubles: an Oral History (Manchester UP, 2022) is an oral history of Belfast’s punk scene from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s that explores what it was like to be a punk in a city shaped by the violence of the Troubles, and how this differed from being a punk elsewhere. It suggests a critical understanding of sectarianism, subjectivity and memory politics in Northern Ireland, and argues for the importance of placing punk within the segregated structures of everyday life described by the interviewees. Adopting an innovative oral history approach, the book analyses a small number of oral history interviews in granular detail, looking at the punk scene as a structure of feeling shaped through the experience of growing up in wartime Belfast.

Fearghus Roulston is the Chancellor's Fellow in the History of Activism at the University of Strathclyde. He is co-reviews editor of the Oral History Journal and a member of the journal's editorial board. His work focuses on how interpretative oral history and memory studies can illuminate people’s affective and discursive relations to politics, place and culture, generally in the context of the Troubles and the north of Ireland.

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Chokepoint Capitalism: How Chokepoint Capitalism is Strangling Creative Industries

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Many of the creative industries look like an hourglass. On the one side, you have creators; on the other, the rest of us. In the middle, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow say there's often a 'chokepoint.' Corporate behemoths -- be they streaming apps, publishers, tech giants, or others -- put on the squeeze, exploiting their market power to extract rents, push down wages, and push up costs.

But Cory and Rebecca have solutions to break the stranglehold, and in this episode of Darts and Letters Cory helps Jay explore various chokepoints, from concert tickets to audiobooks, and how we can open up the industries and get workers paid.

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Catherine Bateson, "Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood" (Louisiana UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Dr Catherine Bateson is Associate Lecturer of American History at the University of Kent. She researches and writes about the role of song in the American Civil War, the sentiments ballads reveal about conflict experiences (especially for Irish Americans) and the culture of transnational music in mid-nineteenth century America. She has also written about aspects of retreat, enemy encounters, and home-front identity as articulated in American Civil War songs, and the role of music and song in military history more broadly. Dr Bateson is the co-founder of the War Through Other Stuff Society, former Vice-Chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of America and is currently Associate Editor of the Irish in the American Civil War website project.

In this interview she discusses her new book, Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood (Louisiana State University Press, 2022)

Irish-born and Irish-descended soldiers and sailors were involved in every major engagement of the American Civil War. Throughout the conflict, they shared their wartime experiences through songs and song lyrics, leaving behind a vast trove of ballads in songbooks, letters, newspaper publications, wartime diaries, and other accounts. Taken together, these songs and lyrics offer an underappreciated source of contemporary feelings and opinions about the war. Irish American Civil War Songs provides the first in-depth exploration of Irish Americans’ use of balladry to portray and comment on virtually every aspect of the war as witnessed by the Irish on the front line and home front. Bateson considers the lyrics, themes, and sentiments of wartime songs produced in America but often originating with those born across the Atlantic in Ireland and Britain. Her analysis gives new insight into views held by the Irish migrant diaspora about the conflict and the ways those of Irish descent identified with and fought to defend their adopted homeland. Bateson’s investigation of Irish American song lyrics within the context of broader wartime experiences enhances our understanding of the Irish contribution to the American Civil War. At the same time, it demonstrates how Irish songs shaped many American balladry traditions as they laid the foundation of the Civil War’s musical soundscape.

Aidan Beatty is a historian at the Frederick Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh

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Philip Nanton, "Riff: The Shake Keane Story" (Papillote Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Philip Nanton's new book Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 2022) follows the life and work of Shake Keane, the peripatetic and creative poet and musician from St. Vincent. Keane was an influential figure in the 1960s London jazz scene, worked briefly for the government on his home island, and moved to New York where he built lasting relationships, all the while creating an extensive discography and numerous publications. Nanton's considerations of Keane's contributions to freeform jazz as well as his innovative approach to poetry will inspire readers to seek out the sounds and words he left behind.

Alejandra Bronfman is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Latin American, Caribbean & U.S. Latino Studies at SUNY, Albany.

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Natasha Lasky, "Britney Spears's Blackout" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In the midst of her public breakdown, she managed to record an album, Blackout. Critics thought it spelled the end for Britney Spears' career.

But Blackout turned out to be one of the most influential albums of the aughts. It not only brought glitchy digital noise and dubstep into the Top 40, but also transformed Britney into a new kind of pop star, one who shrugged off mainstream ubiquity for the devotion of smaller groups of fans who worshipped her idiosyncratic sound.

Britney Spears’s Blackout (Bloomsbury, 2022) returns to the grimy clubs and paparazzi hangouts of LA in the 2000s as well as the blogs and forums of the early internet to show how Blackout was a crucial hinge between twentieth and twenty-first-century pop.

Natasha Lasky is a writer and filmmaker living in Chicago, USA.

Natasha on Instagram.

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Norm Cohen et al., "An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century" (A-R Editions, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The Music of the United States of America Series of musical editions is a monumental undertaking funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities with financial and organizational support from the University of Michigan, the American Musicological Society, the Society of American Music, and A-R Editions. The aim of the MUSA series, as it is called, is to provide expertly researched and edited scores of music from a wide variety of musical traditions performed in the United States. The thirty-second volume of the MUSA series is An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century published by A-R Editions in 2021 and edited by the Anne Dhu McLucas, Norm Cohen, and Carson Cohen. Dr. McLucas passed away before the edition was completed and Carson stepped in to complete the project with his father Norm. This collection of one hundred songs is a record of a fundamental repertoire in American music. Brought to this country by colonists, the folk songs became one of the foundations of the genre that early record executives called hillbilly music which was eventually rebranded as country music.

Each entry has extensive notes explaining the piece’s background and text, information about the recording used for the musical transcription, and a list of secondary sources that discuss the song. An American Singing Heritage required the editors to sift through thousands of recordings and songs to pick a representative sample of this large and fascinating repertoire. The editors selected sources for transcriptions in a broad range of singing styles and representing many regions of the United States. The selections attempt to avoid the biases of previous collections and provide a fresh group of examples, many heretofore unseen in print. The sources for the transcriptions are recordings of traditional musicians from the 1920s through the early 1940s drawn from commercial recordings of "hillbilly" musicians, and field recordings in the collection of the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, now part of the Archive of Folk Culture. The American Musicological Society awarded the collection the 2022 Claude V. Palisca Award for an Outstanding Edition.

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Mary Channen Caldwell, "Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Mary Channen Caldwell in her new book Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song (Cambridge University Press 2022) opens up new avenues for investigation by centering the refrain as an area of focus in which to analyze Latin songs through the Middle Ages.

Throughout medieval Europe, male and female religious communities attached to churches, abbeys, and schools participated in devotional music making outside of the chanted liturgy. Newly collating over 400 songs from primary sources, this book reveals the role of Latin refrains and refrain songs in the musical lives of religious communities by employing novel interdisciplinary and analytical approaches to the study of medieval song. Through interpretive frameworks focused on time and temporality, performance, memory, inscription, and language, each chapter offers an original perspective on how refrains were created, transmitted, and performed. Arguing for the Latin refrain's significance as a marker of form and meaning, this book identifies it as a tool that communities used to negotiate their lived experiences of liturgical and calendrical time; to confirm their communal identity and belonging to song communities; and to navigate relationships between Latin and vernacular song and dance that emerge within their multilingual contexts.

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Bridget Kies and Megan Connor, "Fandom, the Next Generation" (U Iowa Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In Fandom, the Next Generation (University of Iowa Press, 2022), Bridget Kies and Megan Connor have edited the first collection to offer a close study of fan generations, which are defined not only by fans’ ages, but by their entry point into a canon or via their personal politics. Divided into three parts--Reboots, Revivals, and Nostalgia; Generations of Enduring Fandoms; and Generation Tensions--contributors further the conversation about how generational fandom is influenced by and, in turn, influences technologies, industry practices, and social and political changes. As reboot culture continues, as franchises continue expanding over time, and as new technologies enable easier access to older media, Fandom, the Next Generation offers a necessary investigation into transgenerational fandoms and intergenerational fan relationships.

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Elliott H. Powell, "Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

From Beyoncé's South Asian music-inspired Super Bowl Halftime performance, to jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane's use of Indian song structures and spirituality in their work, to Jay-Z and Missy Elliott's high-profile collaborations with diasporic South Asian artists such as the Panjabi MC and MIA, African American musicians have frequently engaged South Asian cultural productions in the development of Black music culture. Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (U Minnesota Press, 2020) traces such engagements through an interdisciplinary analysis of the political implications of African American musicians' South Asian influence since the 1960s.

Elliott H. Powell asks, what happens when we consider Black musicians' South Asian sonic explorations as distinct from those of their white counterparts? He looks to Black musical genres of jazz, funk, and hip hop and examines the work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Rick James, OutKast, Timbaland, Beyoncé, and others, showing how Afro-South Asian music in the United States is a dynamic, complex, and contradictory cultural site where comparative racialization, transformative gender and queer politics, and coalition politics intertwine. Powell situates this cultural history within larger global and domestic sociohistorical junctures that link African American and South Asian diasporic communities in the United States. The long historical arc of Afro-South Asian music in Sounds from the Other Side interprets such music-making activities as highly political endeavors, offering an essential conversation about cross-cultural musical exchanges between racially marginalized musicians.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Gregor Gall, "The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer: Radicalism, Resistance and Rebellion" (Manchester UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Joe Strummer was one of the twentieth century's iconic rock'n'roll rebels. As frontperson, spokesperson and chief lyricist for The Clash, he played a major role in politicising a generation through some of the most powerful protest songs of the era, songs like 'White Riot', 'English Civil War' and 'London Calling'. At the heart of this protest was the struggle for social justice and equality.

The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer: Radicalism, Resistance and Rebellion (Manchester UP, 2022) examines Strummer's beliefs on a range of issues - including socialism, alienation, exploitation, multiculturalism and humanism - analysing their credibility, influence and impact, and asking where they came from and how they developed over time. Drawing on Strummer's lyrics, various interviews and bootleg recordings, as well as interviews with those he inspired, The punk rock politics of Joe Strummer takes the reader on a journey through the political influences and motivations that defined one of the UK's greatest punk icons.

Gregor Gall is a Visiting Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Glasgow. He is editor of the Scottish Left Review magazine, director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation and a regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines. Gregor Gall on Twitter.

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Bradley Morgan, "U2's the Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America" (Backbeat Books, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat, 2021) Bradley Morgan examines U2's iconic album and their critique of America as a symbol of hope. Through analysis of each track on The Joshua Tree, Morgan examines the 1987 release, the subsequent 2017 30th anniversary tour, and his own connection with the band and his Irish heritage.

U2 planted the seeds for The Joshua Tree during an existential journey through America. As Irishmen in the 1970s, the band grew up with the belief that America was a place of freedom and prosperity, a symbol of hope and a refuge for all people. However, global politics of the 1980s undermined that impression and fostered hypocritical policies that manipulated Americans and devastated people around the world.

Originally conceived as "The Two Americas," The Joshua Tree was U2's critique of America. Rather than living up to the ideal that the country was "an idea that belongs to people who need it most," the band found that America sacrificed equality and justice for populism and fascism. This book explores the political, social, and cultural themes rooted in The Joshua Tree when it was originally released in 1987 and how those themes resonated as a response to the election of Donald Trump when U2 toured for the album's 30th anniversary.

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Meredith Schweig, "Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Like many states emerging from oppressive political rule, Taiwan saw a cultural explosion in the late 1980s, when nearly four decades of martial law under the Chinese Nationalist Party ended. As members of a multicultural, multilingual society with a complex history of migration and colonization, Taiwanese people entered this moment of political transformation eager to tell their stories and grapple with their identities. In Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan (U Chicago Press, 2022), ethnomusicologist Meredith Schweig shows how rap music has become a powerful tool in the post-authoritarian period for both exploring and producing new knowledge about the ethnic, cultural, and political history of Taiwan.

Schweig draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, taking readers to concert venues, music video sets, scenes of protest, and more to show how early MCs from marginalized ethnic groups infused rap with important aspects of their own local languages, music, and narrative traditions. Aiming their critiques at the educational system and a neoliberal economy, new generations of rappers have used the art form to nurture associational bonds and rehearse rituals of democratic citizenship, making a new kind of sense out of their complicated present.

Meredith Schweig is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Emory. Her research explores twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular musics of East Asia, with a particular emphasis on narrative, gender, and cultural politics in post-authoritarian Taiwan.

Li-Ping Chen is Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow in the East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical interventions have bridged Black cultural studies and musicology. Representing twenty-five years of commentary and scholarship, these essays document Ramsey's search to understand America's Black musical past and present and to find his own voice as an African American writer in the field of musicology.

Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present (U California Press, 2022) embraces historiography, ethnography, cultural criticism, musical analysis, and autobiography, traversing the landscape of Black musical expression from sacred music to art music, and jazz to hip-hop. Taken together, these essays and the provocative introduction that precedes them are testament to the legacy work that has come to define a field, as well as a rousing call to readers to continue to ask the hard questions and write the hard truths.

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Nancy November, "String Quartets in Beethoven's Europe" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Nancy November's edited volume String Quartets in Beethoven's Europe (Academic Studies Press, 2022) is the first detailed study of string quartets in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Europe. It brings together the work of nine scholars who explore little-studied aspects of this multi-faceted genre. Together, this book’s chapters deal with compositional responses to Beethoven’s string quartets and the prestige of the genre; varied compositional practices in string quartet writing, with a particular emphasis on texture and performance elements; and the reception of Beethoven’s string quartets ca. 1800. They include discussions of quartets composed for the amateur and connoisseur markets in Beethoven’s Europe; virtuosity, the French Violin School, and the quatuor brillant; the relationship between quartet composers and their audiences during Beethoven’s era; and the cross-pollination of quartet styles in Europe’s musical centers such as Vienna, Paris, and St. Petersburg.

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Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in folk songs in fin de siècle Britain and America. While the work of folk collectors such as John Lomax, Cecil Sharp and Hubert Parry seems primarily about the preservation of premodern musical cultures, Cole suggests that the anxieties about the disappearance of these traditions were inseparable from – and constitutive of – a critique of industrial modernity. That is, the preoccupation with folk culture in this period was as much about discontent with the present and imagining new visions for the future as it was motivated by a socio-historical interest in the vernacular musics of the past. Cole shows how the desire for ‘folk culture’ actually occluded the messy, hybrid reality of vernacular music making, and the lives of those who made it, as a result.

Cole makes the compelling case that what he calls the ‘folkloric imagination’ is shot through with a twinned politics of nostalgia and utopia, with both radical and reactionary elements lying just beneath the surface. The Folk traces how the invention of folk song by the collectors of the late 19th and early 20th Century was tightly bound up with contentious questions of race, nation, and empire that would come to an ugly head with the advent of fascism. By pursuing these threads into the present day, Cole shows how the same tensions continue to permeate the use and abuse of ‘the folk’ in contemporary political culture.

Dr Ross Cole is Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Leeds.

Gummo Clare is a PhD researcher in the School of Media and Communications, University of Leeds.

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Larisa Kingston Mann, "Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (UNC Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, our host Mariela Morales Suárez discusses the book Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (UNC Press, 2022) by Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann.

You’ll hear about:

Dr. Mann’s intellectual trajectory and how she became interested in the topic of copyright in Jamaican popular music;
The concept of “rude citizenship” through the Jamaican music world;
What it means to be “original” from the perspective of copyrights, language, and diverse modes of cultural production in Jamaica;
Dr. Mann’s writing process as a form of translation from fieldwork notes, archival materials, and music contents into ethnography;
How to make the classroom a meaningful pedagogical space by learning from marginal voices and practices;
What constitutes the exilic spaces, namely, the reimagining of marginalized spaces as sites of agency and sovereignty through music and cultural production;
The transnational networks of the local music production in Jamaica and global flows of sonic resistance, especially during COVID-19.

About the book

In this deep dive into the Jamaican music world filled with the voices of creators, producers, and consumers, Larisa Kingston Mann—DJ, media law expert, and ethnographer—identifies how a culture of collaboration lies at the heart of Jamaican creative practices and legal personhood. Because many working-class and poor people are cut off from the full benefits of citizenship on the basis of race, class, and geography, Jamaican music spaces are an important site of social commentary and political action in the face of the state’s limited reach and neglect of social services and infrastructure. Music makers organize performance and commerce in ways that defy, though not without danger, state ordinances and intellectual property law and provide poor Jamaicans avenues for self-expression and self-definition that are closed off to them in the wider society. In a world shaped by coloniality, how creators relate to copyright reveals how people will play outside, within, and through the limits of their marginalization.

You can find this book on the University of North Carolina Press website.

Author: Larisa Kingston Mann is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University (PA, USA).

Host: Mariela Morales Suárez is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania where she specializes in transnational media flows, technological appropriations, diasporic identity formation, and popular culture.

Editor & Producer: Jing Wang. She is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

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John F. Lyons, "Joy and Fear: The Beatles, Chicago and the 1960s" (Permuted Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

For many, the Beatles offered a delightful alternative to the dull and the staid, while for others, the mop-top haircuts, the unsettling music, and the hysterical girls that greeted the British imports wherever they went were a symbol of unwelcome social and cultural change. This opposition to the group--more widespread and deeper rooted in Chicago than in any other major American city--increased as the decade wore on, especially when the Beatles adopted more extreme countercultural values.

At the center of this book is a cast of characters engulfed by the whirlwind of Beatlemania, including the unyielding figure of Mayor Richard J. Daley who deemed the Beatles a threat to the well-being of his city; the Chicago Tribune editor who first warned the nation about the Beatle menace; George Harrison's sister, Louise, who became a regular presence on Chicago radio; the socialist revolutionary who staged all of the Beatles' concerts in the city and used much of the profits from the shows to fund left-wing causes; the African-American girl who braved an intimidating environment to see the Beatles in concert; a fan club founder who disbelievingly found herself occupying a room opposite her heroes when they stayed at her father's hotel; the University of Chicago medical student who spent his summer vacation playing in a group that opened for the Beatles' on their last tour; and the suburban record store owner who opened a teen club modeled on the Cavern in Liverpool that hosted some of the biggest bands in the world.

Drawing on historical and contemporary accounts, Joy and Fear: The Beatles, Chicago and the 1960s (Permuted Press, 2020) brings to life the frenzied excitement of Beatlemania in 1960s Chicago, while also illustrating the deep-seated hostility from the establishment toward the Beatles.

John F. Lyons is a Professor of History at Joliet Junior College in Illinois where he teaches classes in British and American history. John on Twitter.

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Charles Sawyer, "B. B. King: From Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the 'King of the Blues'" (Schiffer Publishing, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Want to take a trip with the king of the Blues? As B.B. King’s photographer and original biographer, Charlie Sawyer was along for the ride. In B.B. King from Indianola to Icon: A Personal Odyssey with the King of the Blues (Schiffer, 2022), journalist and photographer Charles Sawyer discusses his many years working with and near the greatest of Blues icons, from the early years as King was transitioning to the “Chitlin Circuit” to mainstream audiences to the founding of the B. B. King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center, Sawyer was there for it all, and shares it with us—along with more than 100 photographs.

David Hamilton Golland is dean of the Wayne D. McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University, where he is also professor of history. @DHGolland.

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Mark Burford, "Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field" (Oxford UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 19:19:00 +0000

Mahalia Jackson, the great mid-twentieth century gospel singer, thought of herself as an embodiment of the history of African Americans in the United States. She understood that her family’s background, as they moved from enslavement in Louisiana to farming in the same rural area to New Orleans at the beginning of the twentieth century and then her own move to Chicago with the Great Migration was emblematic of the experiences of generations of black people. In Mahalia Jackson & the Black Gospel Field (Oxford University Press, 2018), Mark Burford describes Jackson as both an exemplary figure and an exceptional figure. Ending the book in 1955 just as Jackson reached the height of her career after she released her first recording with a major label and was hosting her own television show, Burford uses the first part of Jackson’s career to tell the story of the development of gospel music set against her experiences, the networks within which she moved, and the overlapping contexts of black culture and American political history. Adapting Pierre Bordieu’s ideas, he argues that to study gospel music we must understand the cultural field created by all the players in the industry—the performers, composers, business owners, churches, audiences, and media company executives that shaped gospel music. For a time, Mahalia Jackson was in the center of this network, and Burford uses her connections to explore this field. She grew up with the industry and eventually became one of the best-known gospel singers in the United States by navigating the gospel music industry with her potent combination of a great voice, charisma, and business acumen. Besides telling the compelling story of gospel music and Mahalia Jackson, Burford analyzes Jackson’s voice and her early Apollo recordings using innovative techniques grounded in the listener’s experience. Much more than a biography of Mahalia Jackson, this book is a reimagining of the study of gospel music.

Mark Burford is Associate Professor of Music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he is also chair of the American Studies program. His research and teaching focuses on twentieth-century popular music in the United States, with particular focus on African American music, and late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-German concert music. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and edited collections. His article “Sam Cooke as Pop Album Artist—A Reinvention in Three Songs” received the Society for American Music’s 2012 Irving Lowens Award for the outstanding article on American music. He is the author of Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field, released last fall by Oxford University Press, and editor of the forthcoming Mahalia Jackson Reader, an anthology of writings on Jackson that he is editing for Oxford’s Readers on American Musicians series.

Kristen M. Turner, Ph.D. is a lecturer at North Carolina State University in the music department. Her work centers on American musical culture at the turn of the twentieth century and has been published in several journals and essay collections.

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Nina Sun Eidsheim, "The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music" (Duke UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 20:38:00 +0000

In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples of his speech. Dr. Nina Sun Eidsheim’s latest book, The Race of Sound: Listening Timbre and Vocality in African American Music (Duke University Press, 2019) explores the values, stereotypes, and cultural norms that underline such a question. Through examples ranging from black opera singers in the nineteenth century to user’s responses to the vocal synthesis technology called Vocaloid, Eidsheim sheds light on the ways that listeners invest racial and gendered meanings in vocal timbre. Contending that vocal timbre is an even stronger marker for race and gender than physical appearance, Eidsheim explores the consequences of and reasons for the cognitive dissonance caused by of the seeming “mismatch” between the bodies and vocal timbres of African American jazz singer Jimmy Scott and Norwegian child singer and Billie Holiday impersonator, Angelina Jordan. She takes on the significant political and social results of essentialized understandings of race, gender, age, and ethnicity that support cultural constructions of identity and investigates the central role vocal timbre plays in creating and reinforcing those ideas.

Nina Sun Eidsheim is a Professor of Musicology in the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California at Los Angeles.

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Stevie Van Zandt, "Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir" (Hachette Books, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early '60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story.

The first true heartbeat of Unrequited Infatuations: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2022) is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with Rock and Roll. Groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones created new ideas of community, creative risk, and principled rebellion. They changed him forever. While still a teenager, he met Bruce Springsteen, a like-minded outcast/true believer who became one of his most important friends and bandmates. As Miami Steve, Van Zandt anchored the E Street Band as they conquered the Rock and Roll world.

And then, in the early '80s, Van Zandt stepped away from E Street to embark on his own odyssey. He refashioned himself as Little Steven, a political songwriter and performer, fell in love with Maureen Santoro who greatly expanded his artistic palette, and visited the world's hot spots as an artist/journalist to not just better understand them, but to help change them. Most famously, he masterminded the recording of "Sun City," an anti-apartheid anthem that sped the demise of South Africa's institutionalized racism and helped get Nelson Mandela out of prison.

By the '90s, Van Zandt had lived at least two lives--one as a mainstream rocker, one as a hardcore activist. It was time for a third. David Chase invited Van Zandt to be a part of his new television show, the Sopranos--as Silvio Dante, he was the unconditionally loyal consiglieri who sat at the right hand of Tony Soprano (a relationship that oddly mirrored his real-life relationship with Bruce Springsteen).

Underlying all of Van Zandt's various incarnations was a devotion to preserving the centrality of the arts, especially the endangered species of Rock. In the twenty-first century, Van Zandt founded a groundbreaking radio show (Little Steven's Underground Garage), created the first two 24/7 branded music channels on SiriusXM (Underground Garage and Outlaw Country), started a fiercely independent record label (Wicked Cool), and developed a curriculum to teach students of all ages through the medium of music history. He also rejoined the E Street Band for what has now been a twenty-year victory lap.

Unrequited Infatuations chronicles the twists and turns of Stevie Van Zandt's always surprising life. It is more than just the testimony of a globe-trotting nomad, more than the story of a groundbreaking activist, more than the odyssey of a spiritual seeker, and more than a master class in rock and roll (not to mention a dozen other crafts). It's the best book of its kind because it's the only book of its kind.

Stevie Van Zandt on Twitter.

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Emily Bingham, "My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song" (Knopf, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Any song as old and as familiar as “My Old Kentucky Home” is bound to have accrued many different meanings and an interesting history. Emily Bingham’s book, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song (Knopf, 2022) delivers on the promise of its title. In this book Bingham uses the reception of “My Old Kentucky Home,” composed in 1853 by Stephen Foster, to consider how white Americans have constructed a story about the United States that washes away racism and silences the pain of enslavement and racialized violence. Bingham traces the journey of “My Old Kentucky Home” from a popular minstrel song written by an alcoholic Northerner to Lost Cause anthem to American patriotic hymn to a symbol of a reckoning over United States history that is still unfinished. She explains how Black Americans’ responses to “My Old Kentucky Home” illuminates the challenges and contradictions of living within a racist system while also protesting it. Bingham also reveals the lengths to which some people will go in order to maintain an inauthentic history that conforms to a comforting national and even personal self-image.

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Steve Adelman, "Nocturnal Admissions: A Nightlife Memoir" (Santa Monica Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Nocturnal Admissions: Behind the Scenes at Tunnel, Limelight, Avalon, and Other Legendary Nightclubs (Santa Monica Press, 2022), nightclub director Steve Adelman reflects on his years working in some of the world's most popular nightclubs. In his memoir, Adelman reflects on his work in in New York City in the nightclub heyday of the late 1980s and 1990s, at the Roxy, Limelight, Tunnel, and Palladium, followed by Avalon (Boston, Hollywood, and Singapore locations), and the New Daisy Theatre in Memphis. Nocturnal Admissions is a timely, nonconventional look at one of pop culture's most outwardly glamorous, yet misunderstood industries, bringing the reader backstage into the world of nightlife at its highest level. Wearing the multiple hats of ringmaster, entrepreneur, guidance counselor, multimillion-dollar dealmaker, and music soothsayer, Adelman chronicles an improbable journey from small town to big city, filled with a cast of characters he could never have imagined: People named Hedda Lettuce, Jenetalia, Maxi Min, Jiggy, who collide with and around the likes of Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, Sir Richard Branson, Leonardo DiCaprio, RuPaul, Rudy Giuliani, and Snoop Dogg, among many, many others. Navigating city crackdowns, crazed partners, and cultural differences, Adelman relates how he watched his Nana out-dance an ex-NFL lineman, was chastised by Bob Dylan, launched the EDM musical movement, helped created the "mash up" with Perry Farrell, butted heads with Jerry Falwell, rang in the New Year with Matt Damon's mother, leveraged porn star Jenna Jameson, relied on advice from felons, almost pancaked Prince, and built the world's most lavish nightclub. Nocturnal Admissions is a hilarious, adrenaline-filled ride through the peak decades of the world's most famous nightclubs and nightlife scenes.

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Eldritch Priest, "Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains" (Duke UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains (Duke UP, 2022) Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm: those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our heads. Through a series of meditations on music, animal mentality, abstraction, and metaphor, Priest uses the earworm and the states of daydreaming, mind-wandering, and delusion it can produce to outline how music is something that is felt as thought rather than listened to. Priest presents Earworm and Event as a tête-bêche—two books bound together with each end meeting in the middle. Where Earworm theorizes the entanglement of thought and feeling, Event performs it. Throughout, Priest conceptualizes the earworm as an event that offers insight into not only the way human brains process musical experiences, but how abstractions and the imagination play key roles in the composition and expression of our contemporary social environments and more-than-human milieus. Unconventional and ambitious, Earworm and Event offers new ways to interrogate the convergence of thought, sound, and affect.

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu)

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Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The apparent failures of liberal thinking are a starting point for an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others.

What happens when the framework of the nation-state, the figure of the enterprising individual, and the premise of limitless development can no longer be counted on to produce a world worth living in? It is increasingly clear that these commonplace liberal conceptions have failed to improve life in any lasting way. In fact, they conceal fundamental connections to enslavement, colonization, moral debt, and ecological devastation.

Nicholas Gamso speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the ills of liberalism and art’s role in deciding on what may come after the impasse.

Nicholas Gamso is a writer and academic who works across theory, visual culture, performance, and space/place. He’s an editor at Places.

Kara Walker, A Subtlety, 2014
Manaf Halbouni, Monument, 2017
Warren Kanders controversy at the Whitney
Triple Chaser by Forensic Architecture
My conversations with and on Forensic Architecture
Wolfgang Tillmans and his anti-Brexit campaign
Ren Hang

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Marissa R. Moss, "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be" (Henry Holt, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

It was only two decades ago, but, for the women of country music, 1999 seems like an entirely different universe. With Shania Twain, country's biggest award winner and star, and The Chicks topping every chart, country music was a woman's world: specifically, country radio and Nashville's Music Row.

Cut to 2021, when women are only played on country radio 16% of the time, on a good day, and when only men have won Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards for a decade. To a world where artists like Kacey Musgraves sell out arenas but barely score a single second of airplay. But also to a world where these women are infinitely bigger live draws than most male counterparts, having massive pop crossover hits like Maren Morris's "The Middle," pushing the industry to confront its deeply embedded racial biases with Mickey Guyton's "Black Like Me," winning heaps of Grammy nominations, banding up in supergroups like The Highwomen and taking complete control of their own careers, on their own terms. When the rules stopped working for the women of country music, they threw them out and made their own: and changed the genre forever, and for better.

Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be (Henry Holt, 2022) is veteran Nashville journalist Marissa R. Moss's story of how in the past two decades, country's women fought back against systems designed to keep them down, armed with their art and never willing to just shut up and sing: how women like Kacey, Mickey, Maren, The Chicks, Miranda Lambert, Rissi Palmer, Brandy Clark, LeAnn Rimes, Brandi Carlile, Margo Price and many more have reinvented the rules to find their place in an industry stacked against them, how they've ruled the century when it comes to artistic output--and about how women can and do belong in the mainstream of country music, even if their voices aren't being heard as loudly.

Marissa R. Moss is an award-winning journalist who has written about the topic of gender inequality on the country airwaves for outlets like Rolling Stone, NPR, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and many more. Moss was the 2018 recipient of the Rolling Stone Chet Flippo Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism, and the 2019 Nashville Scene Best of Nashville Best Music Reporter. She has been a guest on The TODAY Show, Entertainment Tonight, CBS Morning Show, NPR's Weekend Edition, WPLN, the Pop Literacy Podcast, and more.

Marissa R. Moss on Twitter.

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Mark Clague, "O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of the Star-Spangled Banner" (Norton, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The national anthem of the United States is familiar around the world from Olympic medal ceremonies and American patriotic celebrations. Like anything that is over 200 years old, the meaning of The Star-Spangled Banner has changed over time and the song has been the focus of controversy at different times in its history. What many people think they know about the anthem is as much myth and legend as it is fact.

Mark Clague explores many aspects of the song in his book, O Say Can you Hear? : A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner (Norton, 2022). Francis Scott Key wrote the lyric to what would become the American national anthem around the time of a battle he witnessed during the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. As was the custom at the time, he intended for the words to be sung to a pre-existent tune that potential performers would have known. By the time Congress officially named the song the US’s anthem in 1931, it was merely ratifying what had already become a cultural tradition. The Star Spangled Banner has its detractors: the melody is difficult to sing, the words are hard to remember and militaristic. Francis Scott Key was a slaveholder and the word “slave” appears in the third verse. Clague takes on this seemingly straightforward history and more recent controversy by busting myths about the anthem, delving deep into the history of the song from its composition until the present, and highlighting some key performances that have helped to shape Americans’ understanding of their country and themselves. The book is just one aspect of a larger public humanities project.

The website for the Star Spangled Music Foundation contains even more information on the anthem and its history including content suitable for educators working from Kindergarten to the college level and continues to be updated.

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Adam Abraham, "Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors (Bloomsbury, 2022), Adam Abraham chronicles the history of this hit musical. Starting with the story of Roger Corman's 1960s movie that was shot in two days with a budget of $30,000, and largely forgotten, Abraham details how two decades later Little Shop of Horrors opened Off-Broadway and became a surprise success.

Abraham relates the Faustian tale of Seymour and his man-eating plant transcended its humble origins to become a global phenomenon, launching a popular film adaptation and productions all around the world. This timely and authoritative book looks at the creation of the musical and its place in the contemporary musical theatre canon. Examining its afterlives and wider cultural context, the book asks the question why this unlikely combination of blood, annihilation, and catchy tunes has resonated with audiences from the 1980s to the present.

At the core of this in-depth study is the collaboration between the show's creators, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Told through archival research and eyewitness accounts, this is the first book to make extensive use of Ashman's personal papers, offering a unique and inspiring study of one of musical theatre's greatest talents.

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Aniket De, "The Boundary of Laughter: Popular Performances Across Borders in South Asia" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Combining archival research with ethnographic fieldwork, Aniket De's book The Boundary of Laughter: Popular Performances Across Borders in South Asia (Oxford UP, 2022) explores how spaces of popular performance have changed with the emergence of national borders in modern South Asia. The author traces the making of the popular theater form called Gambhira by Hindu and Muslim peasants and laborers in colonial Bengal, and explores the fate of the tradition after the Partition of the region in 1947. Drawing on a rich and hitherto unexplored archive of Gambhira songs and plays, this book provides a new approach for studying popular performances as shared spaces-that can accommodate peoples across national and religious boundaries.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Will Birch, "Cruel to Be Kind: The Life and Music of Nick Lowe" (Da Capo Press, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

This is the definitive biography of singer-songwriter Nick Lowe, best known for "Cruel To Be Kind,” “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” and "(What's So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding."

Biographer Will Birch, who in addition to being a music writer was a drummer and songwriter with The Records, has known Lowe for over forty years and melds Lowe's gift as a witty raconteur with his own authoritative analysis of Lowe's background and the cultural scenes he exemplifies. Lowe's parallel fame as one of the best interviews in the business will contribute to this first look into his life and work--and likely the closest thing fans will get to an autobiography by this notoriously charming cult figure.

This is not an authorized biography, but Lowe has given it his spiritual blessing and his management and label are fully on board. Cruel to Be Kind: The Life and Music of Nick Lowe (Da Capo Press, 2019) is the colorful yet serious account of one of the world's most talented and admired musicians. Based on a tremendous amount of legwork, exclusive interviews with Lowe, and contributions from Elvis Costello, Chrissie Hynde, Ry Cooder, Johnny Marr, Curtis Stigers, Huey Lewis, Daryl Hall, and many others, Cruel to Be Kind is a fascinating and fun portrait of one of the coolest figures in popular music.

Will Birch is a former drummer, songwriter and record producer for acts such as Dr Feelgood, the Long Ryders, Any Trouble and Billy Bremner of Rockpile. He enjoyed hits with the Kursaal Flyers (“Little Does She Know”) and The Records (“Starry Eyes”). Throughout the 1990s, Will wrote many articles for Mojo and other music magazines and in 2000 published his first book, No Sleep Till Canvey Island: The Great Pub Rock Revolution. In 2010 he published Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography.

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics (Twitter @15MinFilm).

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Antonio C. Cuyler, "Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the US" (Routledge, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Where are the success stories for people of color in opera? In Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the U.S. (Routledge, 2021), Antonio Cuyler, Director of the MA Program & Associate Professor of Arts Administration at Florida State University (FSU), and Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama at the University of Michigan, explores the careers of six leading figures in the American opera industry, and in doing so creates important theoretical insights and practical lessons about success and struggle in the arts. The book combines detailed interview data with a deep understanding of arts management and cultural policy as a field, along with a personal commitment to transforming opera to make it both an open and a sustainable genre. The book is essential reading across arts and humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in opera and the arts!

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Michael Elliott, "Have a Little Faith: The John Hiatt Story" (Chicago Review Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A journey through an artist's quest for success, deep dive into substance abuse, family tragedy, and ultimate triumph.

By the mid-1980s, singer-songwriter John Hiatt had been dropped from three record labels, burned through two marriages, and had fallen deep into substance abuse.

It took a stint in rehab and a new marriage to inspire him, then a producer and an A&R man to have a little faith. By February 1987, he was back in the studio on a shoestring budget with a hand-picked supergroup consisting of Ry Cooder on guitar, Nick Lowe on bass, and Jim Keltner on drums, recording what would become his masterpiece, Bring the Family.

Based on author Michael Elliott's multiple extensive and deeply personal interviews with Hiatt as well as his collaborators and contemporaries, including Rosanne Cash, Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder, and many others, Have a Little Faith: The John Hiatt Story (Chicago Review Press, 2021) is the journey through the musical landscape of the 1960s through today that places Hiatt's long career in context with the glossy pop, college-alternative, mainstream country, and heartland rock of the last half-century.

Michael Elliott is a contributor to the pioneering roots music authority No Depression. His writing has also appeared in PopMatters, Albmism, Americana UK, and The Bitter Southerner. Elliott spent close to thirty years in radio broadcasting and management in a variety of formats. He has interviewed and produced profiles on musicians as diverse as Isaac Hayes, Charlie Daniels, Delbert McClinton, Johnny Rivers, and Little Richard. He lives in Raleigh, NC. His website is michael-elliott.com

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

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M. I. Franklin, "Sampling Politics: Music and the Geocultural" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Music sampling has become a predominantly digitalized practice. It was popularized with the rise of Rap and Hip-Hop, as well as ambient music scenes, but it has a history stretching back to the earliest days of sound recording and experimental music making from around the world. Digital tools and networks allow artists to sample music across national borders and from diverse cultural traditions with relative ease, prompting questions around not only fair use, copyright, and freedom of expression, but also cultural appropriation and "copywrongs." For example, non-commercial forms of sharing that are now commonplace on the web bring musicians and their audiences into closer contact with emerging regimes of commercial web-tracking and state-sponsored online surveillance. Moreover, when musicians actively engage in political or social causes through their music, they are liable to both commercial and state forces of control. Shifts back to corporate ownership and control of the global music business—online and offline—highlight competing claims for commercial and cultural ownership and control of sampled music from local communities, music labels, and artists.

Each case study is based on archival research, close listening, and musical analysis, alongside conversations and public reflections from artists such as David Byrne, Annirudha Das, Asian Dub Foundation, John Cage, Brian Eno, Sarah Jones, Gil Scott-Heron, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dunya Yunis, and Sonia Mehta.

Sampling Politics: Music and the Geocultural (Oxford UP, 2021) provides ways to listen and hear (again) how sampling practices and music making work, on its own terms and in context. In so doing, M.I. Franklin corrects some errors in the public record, addressing some longstanding misperceptions over the creative, legal, and cultural legacy of music sampling in some cases of rich, and complex practices that have also been called musical "borrowing," "cultural appropriation," or "theft." This book considers the musicalities and musicianship at stake in each case, as well as the respective creative practices and performance cultures underscoring the ethics of attribution and collaboration when sampling artists make music.

Marianne Franklin is Professor of Global Media and Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London

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Ellis Jones, "DIY Music and the Politics of Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Since the 1970s, there has been a rich, global lineage of broadly guitar-based music scenes which have enacted a political critique of the commercial music industries under the banner of ‘DIY’. DIY music practice has involved taking control of production and distribution processes and lowering barriers to participation and performance, as a form of cultural resistance. In DIY Music and the Politics of Social Media (Bloomsbury, 2020), Ellis Jones analyses the effects of the internet and social media on the inner lives and the communal music-making of practitioners in contemporary DIY music scenes.

Jones provides a nuanced and original reading of the points of convergence and (substantial) divergence between the emancipatory and participatory rhetoric of digital platforms and the ethical imperatives of DIY music, past and present. He argues that the imperatives toward self-branding, commodification and individualization that are baked into the affordances of social media are fundamentally inimical to the convivial, oppositional politics of DIY music. As digital platforms seep into and mediate more and more facets of everyday life, this book underscores the need for a renewed critique of the conditions of cultural production – and offers valuable points of departure for forms of culturally resistant DIY musicking in the 21st Century.

Ellis Jones is a Lecturer in Music and Management in the Department of Music at the University of Leeds.

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Alan John Ainsworth, "Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960" (Intellect, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Alan John Ainsworth's book Sight Readings: Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-1960 (Intellect, 2022) explores the work of a wide range of American photographers attracted to jazz during the period 1900–60. It includes discussions of jazz as a visual subject, its attraction to different types of photographers and offers analysis of why and how they approached the subject in the way they did. While some of these photographers are widely recognized for their work, many African American photojournalists, studio photographers, early twentieth-century émigrés, the Jewish exiles of the 1930s and vernacular snapshots are frequently overlooked. Drawing on ideas from contemporary photographic theory backed up by extensive archival research, this book allows the reader to explore and understand twentieth-century jazz photography in both an engaging and comprehensive fashion.

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Leah Kardos, "Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (Bloomsbury, 2022) takes a close look at David Bowie's ambitious last works: his surprise 'comeback' project The Next Day (2013), the off-Broadway musical Lazarus (2015) and the album that preceded the artist's death in 2016 by two days, Blackstar. The book explores the swirl of themes that orbit and entangle these projects from a starting point in musical analysis and features new interviews with key collaborators from the period: producer Tony Visconti, graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook, musical director Henry Hey, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and assistant sound engineer Erin Tonkon.

These works tackle the biggest of ideas: identity, creativity, chaos, transience and immortality. They enact a process of individuation for the Bowie meta-persona and invite us to consider what happens when a star dies. In our universe, dying stars do not disappear - they transform into new stellar objects, remnants and gravitational forces. The radical potential of the Blackstar is demonstrated in the rock star supernova that creates a singularity resulting in cultural iconicity. It is how a man approaching his own death can create art that illuminates the immortal potential of all matter in the known universe.

Leah Kardos is a senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, UK, where she co-founded the Visconti Studio with music producer Tony Visconti. She specializes in the areas of record production, pop aesthetics and criticism, and exploring interdisciplinary approaches to creative practice.

Leah Kardos on Twitter

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John M. Shaw, "Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Following the Drums: African American Fife and Drum Music in Tennessee (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) is an epic history of a little-known African American instrumental music form. Carefully documenting the music's early uses for commercial advertising and sports promotion, John M. Shaw follows the strands of the music through the nadir of African American history during post-Reconstruction up to the form's rediscovery by musicologists and music researchers during the blues and folk revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the Drums is a journey through African American history and Tennessee history, with a fascinating form of music powering the story.

John M. Shaw is a musicologist, musician, writer, and blogger, currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Memphis.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama's carnival.

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Jeff Hayton, "Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Jeff Hayton's book Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Oxford UP, 2022) is a cultural history of punk in Germany. The manuscript tracks “the advent and growth of punk in divided Germany during the 1970s and 1980s, and the social and political responses to the subculture” (23). These decades witnessed an explosion of alternative culture across divided Germany, and punk was a critical constituent of this movement. For young Germans at the time, punk appealed to those gravitating toward individual and cultural experimentation rooted in notions of authenticity—endeavors considered to be more “real” and “genuine.” Punk, however, was a foreign import and the way Germans in both East and West adapted it to their own local needs, and the divergent, yet surprisingly connected history of punk in both Germanies tell us much about German history and society in the 1980s. Culture from the Slums makes two broad claims. First, Hayton argues “punk was a medium for alternative living and a motor for social change.” (8) Much more than simply a waypoint on the narrative of progress that supposedly led from 1968 towards unification and beyond, it was an important social and musical movement. Second, through a comparative analysis of the subculture, Hayton argues that punk helps explain why West Germany flourished and why East Germany collapsed.

Punk by the 1980s ceased to function as an instrument of difference in the west as it entered the mainstream, but the DDR never was able to control punk. Hayton examines the roles which punk played in German politics, society, and culture, and how German contexts transformed punk. Put differently: this study is about punk in Germany, and Germany in punk” (9) Culture from the Slums suggests that the ideas, practices, and communities which came out of Punk transformed both German societies along more diverse and ultimately democratic lines. The book is an important contribution to the growing scholarship of punk, which so far has been overwhelmingly focused on Anglo-American developments. Using a wealth of previously untapped archival documentation, the book integrates punk culture and music subculture into broader narratives of postwar inquiry and explains how punk rock shaped a divided Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ran Zwigenberg is an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University.

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Hanan Hammad, "Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Layla Murad (1918-1995) was once the highest-paid star in Egypt, and her movies were among the top-grossing in the box office. She starred in 28 films, nearly all now classics in Arab musical cinema. In 1955 she was forced to stop acting—and struggled for decades for a comeback. Today, even decades after her death, public interest in her life continues, and new generations of Egyptians still love her work. Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) recounts Murad's extraordinary life—and the rapid political and sociocultural changes she witnessed.

Hanan Hammad writes a story centered on Layla Murad's persona and legacy, and broadly framed around a gendered history of twentieth-century Egypt. Murad was a Jew who converted to Islam in the shadow of the first Arab-Israeli war. Her career blossomed under the Egyptian monarchy and later gave a singing voice to the Free Officers and the 1952 Revolution. The definitive end of her cinematic career came under Nasser on the eve of the 1956 Suez War.

Egyptians have long told their national story through interpretations of Murad's life, intertwining the individual and Egyptian state and society to better understand Egyptian identity. As Unknown Past recounts, there's no life better than Murad's to reflect the tumultuous changes experienced over the dramatic decades of the mid-twentieth century.

Roberto Mazza is visiting professor at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Twitter: @robbyref

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Caryn Rose, "Why Patti Smith Matters" (U of Texas Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Patti Smith arrived in New York City at the end of the Age of Aquarius in search of work and purpose. What she found—what she fostered—was a cultural revolution. Through her poetry, her songs, her unapologetic vocal power, and her very presence as a woman fronting a rock band, she kicked open a door that countless others walked through. No other musician has better embodied the “nothing-to-hide” rawness of punk, nor has any other done more to nurture a place in society for misfits of every stripe.

Why Patti Smith Matters (University of Texas Press, 2022) is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalist Caryn Rose contextualizes Smith’s creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith’s oeuvre, from her first album, Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music. The portrait of a ceaseless inventor, Why Patti Smith Matters rescues punk’s poet laureate from “strong woman” clichés. Of course Smith is strong. She is also a nuanced thinker. A maker of beautiful and challenging things. A transformative artist who has not simply entertained but also empowered millions.

Caryn Rose can be found on Twitter and you can read her work in her newsletter.

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Tony Perman, "Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In 2005, Tony Perman attended a ceremony alongside the living and the dead. His visit to a Zimbabwe farm brought him into contact with the madhlozi, outsider spirits that Ndau people rely upon for guidance, protection, and their collective prosperity.

Perman's encounters with the spirits, the mediums who bring them back, and the accompanying rituals form the heart of his ethnographic account of how the Ndau experience ceremonial musicking. As Perman witnessed other ceremonies, he discovered that music and dancing shape the emotional lives of Ndau individuals by inviting them to experience life's milestones or cope with its misfortunes as a group. Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life (U Illinois Press, 2020) explores the historical, spiritual, and social roots of ceremonial action and details how that action influences the Ndau's collective approach to their future. The result is a vivid ethnomusicological journey that delves into the immediacy of musical experience and the forces that transform ceremonial performance into emotions and community.

Tony Perman is an associate professor music at Grinnell College.

Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com.

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Jennifer Lin, "Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra's Historic Journey to China" (Temple UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra boarded a Pan Am 707 plane in Philadelphia for a once-in-a-lifetime journey: a multi-city tour of Maoist China, months after Nixon’s history-making visit.

There was drama immediately after they landed in Shanghai. Chinese officials asked for a last-minute change to the program: Beethoven’s Sixth. After protests that the Orchestra didn’t bring scores with them, officials returned with copies haphazardly sourced from across the country, with different notations and different notes, forcing the orchestra to make do.

That’s just one of the stories recounted in Jennifer Lin’s book, Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra's Historic Journey to China (Temple University Press: 2022). The book stems from the work Lin did in putting together a documentary film on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s trip; with so much left on the cutting room floor, she decided to turn it into an oral history.

Jennifer Lin is an award-winning journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker. She produced and codirected the feature-length documentary, Beethoven in Beijing, which premiered on PBS’s Great Performances in 2021. For 31 years, she worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer as a reporter, including posts as a foreign correspondent in China, a financial correspondent on Wall Street, and a national correspondent in Washington, DC. She is the author of Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: 2017), and coauthor of Sole Sisters: Stories of Women and Running (Andrews McMeel Publishing: 2006). Her current documentary project is Beyond Yellowface about two New York City dancers trying to rid ballet of offensive Asian stereotypes.

In this interview, Jennifer and I talk about the opening of China, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and how that 1973 visit still resonates today.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Beethoven in Beijing. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Alexandra Apolloni, "Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop (Oxford University Press, 2021) by Alexandra M. Apolloni is about how the vocal performances of girl singers in 1960s Britain defined—and sometimes defied—ideas about what it meant to be a young woman. Apolloni takes a case study approach to tease out many different strands of the nature of femininity in 1960s Britain, but she tackles much more than gender in this book. She also considers larger public conversations about authenticity, race, sexuality, and class which dictated and shaped the careers and the reception of the group of singers she writes about. In what is almost a group biography, Apolloni writes about Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Millie Small, Marianne Faithfull and P.P. Arnold. They are Black and white, many come from working-class backgrounds, most were born in Britain, and all were very young when they first gained national attention. While most of them have an international following, their careers were rooted in the U.K., but the music they sang was fundamentally influenced by the music of Black Americans. Apolloni carefully separates and interrogates the maelstrom of identity, music, political agendas, and cultural meanings that surround these women. The performances she analyzes reveal the historical and contemporary connections between voice, social mobility, and musical authority, and demonstrate how singers used voice to navigate the boundaries of race, class, and gender.

Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Race and Gender in the Western Music History Classroom: A Teacher’s Guide, which she wrote with Horace Maxile, was published by Routledge Press in 2022.

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Xinling Li, "Black Masculinity and Hip-Hop Music: Black Gay Men Who Rap" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Black Masculinity and Hip-Hop Music: Black Gay Men Who Rap (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), XinLing Li offers an interdisciplinary study of hip-hop music written and performed by rappers who are black gay men. This study examines the storytelling mechanisms of gay themed lyrics, and how these form protests and become enabling tools for (black) gay men to discuss issues such as living on the down-low and HIV/AIDS. It considers how the biased promotion of feminized gay male artists/characters in the mainstream entertainment industry have rendered masculinity an exclusively male heterosexual property, providing a representational framework for men to identify with a form of “homosexual masculinity” – one that is constructed without having to either victimize anything feminine or necessarily convert to femininity. The book makes a strong case that it is possible for individuals (like gay rappers) to perform masculinity against masculinity, and open up a new way of striving for gender equality.

XinLing Li received his PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and neurologically by sub-personal mechanisms, as revealed by scientific and philosophical analyses.

Under contemporary capitalism, as the gap between this self-image and reality becomes an ever greater source of social and mental distress, these theoretical insights are potential dynamite. Shifting his explorations from the sonic to the social, amplifying alienation and playing with psychic noise, artist and performer Mattin finally lights the fuse.

The noise is here to stay. Alienation is a constitutive part of subjectivity and an enabling condition for exploring social dissonance—the territory upon which we already find ourselves, the condition we inhabit today.

Mattin speaks (and sings) to Pierre d’Alancaisez about his performance score Social Dissonance, in which the audience is the instrument and the legacy of the Marxist theory of alienation.

Mattin is an artist, musician and theorist working conceptually with noise and improvisation. Through his practice and writing, he explores performative forms of estrangement as a way to deal with structural alienation. Mattin has exhibited and toured worldwide.

He has performed in festivals such as Performa and Club Transmediale and lectured in institutions such as Dutch Art Institute, Cal Arts, Bard, and Goldsmiths. Mattin is part of the bands Billy Bao and Regler and has over 100 releases on different labels worldwide. He co-hosts the podcast Social Discipline. Mattin took part in 2017 in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Jessica Lipsky, "It Ain't Retro: Daptone Records and the 21st-Century Soul Revolution" (Jawbone, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Soul is the most powerful expression of American music--a distinct combination of roots, migration, race, culture, and politics packaged together for your dancing pleasure. But if you thought the sounds of Motown or Stax Records died along with 8-tracks and macramé, you'd be wrong. For two decades, Daptone Records has churned out hard funk and such beautiful soul that these records sparked a musical revolution.

Run by a collective of soul-obsessed producers and musicians, the Brooklyn-based independent label launched the careers of artists such as Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Charles Bradley, and Bruno Mars. Daptone's records--and those of the larger soul revival scene--pay homage but never lip service to the original artists, proving that soul is still culturally relevant, and just as exciting as ever.

It Ain't Retro: Daptone Records and the 21st-Century Soul Revolution (Jawbone, 2021) charts this revival's players, sounds, and tectonic shifts over the past twenty years, taking you from dingy clubs where soul crazed DJs packed the dancefloor, to just uptown where some of the genre's heaviest musicians jumpstarted the renaissance in a basement studio, and all the way to the White House. This definitive tale of Daptone Records' soulful revolution chronicles the label's history, players, and sounds while dissecting the scene's cultural underpinnings, which continue to reverberate in pop music. The book also contains rare and unseen images of Daptone artists past and present, including Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, Antibalas, The Sugarman 3, The Budos Band, and more.

Jessica Lipsky is a journalist and DJ from Brooklyn by way of the San Francisco Bay. She first encountered sweet soul music as a child by obsessively tuning her radio dial and has since extensively covered soul, funk, reggae, and alternative Latin music. Her work on the intersection of culture, music, and politics has appeared in NPR, Billboard, Grammy.com, Columbia Journalism Review, Vice, and LA Weekly.

Jessica Lipsky on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

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Christopher Silver, "Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa" (Stanford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa (Stanford UP, 2022) offers a new history of twentieth-century North Africa, one that gives voice to the musicians who defined an era and the vibrant recording industry that carried their popular sounds from the colonial period through decolonization.

If twentieth-century stories of Jews and Muslims in North Africa are usually told separately, Recording History demonstrates that we have not been listening to what brought these communities together: Arab music. For decades, thousands of phonograph records flowed across North African borders. The sounds embedded in their grooves were shaped in large part by Jewish musicians, who gave voice to a changing world around them. Their popular songs broadcast on radio, performed in concert, and circulated on disc carried with them the power to delight audiences, stir national sentiments, and frustrate French colonial authorities.

With this book, Christopher Silver provides the first history of the music scene and recording industry across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers striking insights into Jewish-Muslim relations through the rhythms that animated them. He traces the path of hit-makers and their hit records, illuminating regional and transnational connections. In asking what North Africa once sounded like, Silver recovers a world of many voices—of pioneering impresarios, daring female stars, cantors turned composers, witnesses and survivors of war, and national and nationalist icons—whose music still resonates well into our present.

You can listen to the full versions of the songs mentioned in this interview here:

Louisa Tounsia’s "Ma fiche flous"
Habiba Messika’s “Anti Souria Biladi”
Samy Elmaghribi’s “Allah watani oua-sultani”

Avery Weinman is a PhD student in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She researches Jewish history in the modern Middle East and North Africa, with emphasis on Sephardi and Mizrahi radicals in British Mandatory Palestine. She can be reached at averyweinman@ucla.edu.

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John Luther Adams, "Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska" (FSG, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

John Luther Adams's Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) is a profound, funny, and enlightening memoir from one of our greatest contemporary composers. Adams describes the process of writing music inspired by the wild landscapes of the far north, pieces with titles like Arctic Dreams, In the White Silence, and Become Ocean. But as much as Silences So Deep is a meditation on craft, it is also a masterpiece of nature writing, reminiscent at times of Walden, at other times of Dharma Bums.

Adams moved to Alaska as a young man in search of the solitude of America's last frontier. But Adams also discovered community: a bohemian group of farmers, poets, activists, and musicians, including the poet John Haines and the conductor/composer/activist Gordon Wright.

Silences So Deep is sure to reward long-time fans of Adams' work and listeners of contemporary classical music more broadly. It will also appeal to nature lovers and to anyone interested in the day to day work of a life committed to art.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Kira Thurman, "Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms" (Cornell UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by Kira Thurman (Cornell University Press, 2021) is a truly interdisciplinary study. Dr. Thurman’s work sits at the intersection of German Studies, History, and Musicology. Beginning in the 1870s with concerts given by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Singing Like Germans covers a century of Black musicians performing classical music in Germany and Austria. This sprawling book takes on how and why Black musicians came to Central Europe to perform classical music from their homes in North America, Africa, or the Caribbean, and what their reception reveals about German ideas of race, nationhood, and musical culture. She traces how the political tumult of one hundred years of war, Nazism, and the division between East and West Germany contributed to the changing circumstances of Black musicians in the area, but also how ideas of race remained remarkably consistent in all that time. Performers such as Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Grace Bumbry, among many others, found opportunities in Central Europe denied them in other places, but audiences and critics understood their musicianship through racialized stereotypes and local political and cultural conditions. Given Singing Like German’s wide breadth—chronologically and as a work of scholarship—this conversation is in the form a roundtable rather than a traditional interview. Three hosts from the New Books Network have come together to interview Dr. Thurman.

Kristen Turner from New Books in Music is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century. Emily Allen (@emmyru91) is a host with New Books in Music and New Books in Celebration Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s carnival. Nicole Coleman from New Books in German Studies is Assistant Professor of German at Wayne State University. She tweets @drnicoleman.

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Andrew Simon, "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary individuals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households.

Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian National Archives, Andrew Simon provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players, he demonstrates, did not simply join other twentieth century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet. Positioned at the productive crossroads of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, Media of the Masses ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.

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Edward Anthony Avery-Natale, "Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications: Punk and Anarchy in Philadelphia" (Lexington, 2016)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Edward Anthony Avery-Natale's book Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications: Punk and Anarchy in Philadelphia (Lexington, 2016) explores the ways in which those who identify as punks and anarchists living in the Philadelphia area construct their identifications narratively through the use of ethics. The book shows that contemporary subcultural and political identifications are complicated by the multiplicity of identifications that postmodern subjects must work from. Throughout the book, it is shown that narrators strive to maintain the coherence of their identifications through narrative reconciliations of contradictions and conflicts. The identity label "anarcho-punk" is of particular salience here, as the hyphenation of the two terms, itself a central component of the book's analysis, forefronts the multiple nature of the identification on the whole. This makes anarcho-punk a particularly interesting identity to study because there we can see clearly the complicated nature of identities in the contemporary age most clearly. Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications includes chapters focusing on the entry into subculture, fashion, punk, politics, anarchy, race and racism, gender and sexuality, and more coupled with in-depth theoretical analysis.

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Judith Lochhead et al., "Sound and Affect: Voice, Music, World" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Sound and Affect: Voice, Music, World (U Chicago Press, 2021) maps a new territory for inquiry at the intersection of music, philosophy, affect theory, and sound studies. The essays in this volume consider objects and experiences marked by the correlation of sound and affect, in music and beyond: the voice, as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or machine-made; and our sonic environments, whether natural or artificial, and how they provoke responses in us. Far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced and even determined by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars, including both established and new voices. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersections with affect and the emotions.

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Mark Anthony Neal, "Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive" (NYU Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

We are living in an era of unprecedented access to popular culture: contemporary digital infrastructure provides anyone with an internet connection access to a dizzying array of cultural objects past and present, which mingle and connect in fascinating, bizarre and sometimes troubling ways.

In Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive (NYU Press, 2022), Mark Anthony Neal considers the opportunities and challenges that this vast archive represents for Black American culture, with a particular focus on music and sound. He suggests that despite the profusion of what he terms ‘Black big data’ and the supposed democratisation of access this entails, the contemporary moment is characterised by a profound amnesia and an absence of attention to the dense web of connections that bind the analogue past with the digital present. Black Ephemera seeks to at once draw out and ‘mystify’ these links, by attending to recordings, historical moments and archival projects which have often been neglected in other studies of Black music. Neal’s explorations have a wide historical scope and operate simultaneously in microscopic and conjunctural registers. The book includes analyses of legendary Memphis record label Stax, the place of Aretha Franklin and Mavin Gaye’s overlooked early recordings in/as the Great American Songbook, the use of musical citation to try and combat the erasure of Black women’s experience from the historical archive, and the significance of archival ephemera to Black mourning practices from Pattie LaBelle to Kendrick Lamar.

We cover a lot of music in this episode, and there’s even more in the book! A good place to start might be with two mixes made in response to Black Ephemera, which you can listen to here and here.

Gummo Clare is a PhD researcher in the School of Media and Communications, University of Leeds.

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Nikita Braguinski, "Mathematical Music: From Antiquity to Music AI" (Focal Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

What is mathematical music? In Mathematical Music from Antiquity to AI (Routledge, 2022), musicologist Nikita Braguinski discusses how mathematics has historically been used to make music, how it continues to influence musical composition, and the ways in which it may influence music in the future, including through artificial intelligence (AI). From pre-historic sounds to Gregorian chant to jazz to rock and beyond, from Mozart to M.C. Hammer, from the definition of an interval to time signatures to what gives human music its “soul,” Braguinski, a 2019-2020 Harvard University Music Department fellow, takes us on a fascinating journey.

David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland.

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Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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Stephen Deusner, "Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers" (U Texas Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Deusner's Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers (U Texas Press, 2021) is the book-length study Drive-By Truckers fans have been waiting for. A group biography in the form of a road trip saga, Deusner's book takes you to the Athens scene that has supported the band, the sweltering hot Birmingham studio where they recorded their breakthrough album Southern Rock Opera, and the Muscle Shoals in which a majority of the band was raised. Deusner's trip takes wide detours into Southern history and culture, as any proper treatment of the Truckers must. It is as much about what the band's music is about (family, tradition, violence, despair, transcendence) as it is about the music itself. This book is as complex, moving, thrilling, and funny as one of DBT's marathon sets. Pass the bourbon.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Stan BH Tan-Tangbau et al., "Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations Between Worlds" (Routledge, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội: Improvisations between Worlds (Routledge, 2022) examines the germination and growth of jazz under communist rule—perceived as the "music of the enemy" and "ideologically decadent"—in the Vietnamese capital of Hà Nội. After disappearing from the scene in 1954 following the end of the First Indochina War, jazz reemerged in the public sphere decades later at the end of the Cold War. Since then, Hà Nội has established itself as a vital and vibrant jazz center, complete with a full jazz program in the national conservatoire. Featuring interviews with principal players involved in cultivating the scene from past to present, this book presents the sociocultural encounters between musicians and the larger powers enmeshed in the broader political economy, detailing jazz’s journey to garner respect comparable to classical music as an art form possessing high artistic value. Ethnographical sketches explore how Vietnamese musicians learn and play jazz while sustaining and nurturing the scene, providing insight as to how jazz managed to grow in such an environment. Jazz in Socialist Hà Nội sheds light on those underlying caveats that allow Vietnamese jazz musicians to navigate the middle grounds between "worlds"—between music and politics—not as an act of resistance, but as realisation of artistic expression.

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Shara Rambarran, "Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [us] go…' Technology has revolutionized music, especially in the 21st century where the traditional rules and conventions of music creation, consumption, distribution, promotion, and performance have been erased and substituted with unthinkable and exciting methods in which absolutely anyone can explore, enjoy, and participate in creating and listening to music.

Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores the interactive relationship of sound, music, and image, and its users (creators/musicians/performers/audience/consumers). Areas involving the historical, technological, and creative practices of virtual music are surveyed including its connection with creators, musicians, performers, audience, and consumers. Shara Rambarran looks at the fascination and innovations surrounding virtual music, and illustrates key artists (such as Grace Jones, The Weeknd), creators (such as King Tubby, Kraftwerk, MadVillain, Danger Mouse), audiovisuals in video games and performances (such as Cuphead and Gorillaz), audiences, and consumers that contribute in making this musical experience a phenomenon. Whether it is interrogating the (un)realness of performers, modified identities of artists, technological manipulation of the Internet, music industry and music production, or accessible opportunities in creativity, the book offers a fresh understanding of virtual music and appeals to readers who have an interest in this digital revolution.

Shara Rambarran is Assistant Professor of Music at Bader International Study Centre, UK (Queen’s University, Canada). She co-runs the Art of Record Production conferences and is an editor on the Journal on the Art of Record Production and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality (2016). Shara Rambarran on Twitter.

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Richard Stamz and Patrick A. Roberts, "Give 'em Soul, Richard!: Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago" (U Illinois Press, 2010)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Give 'em Soul, Richard!: Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago (U Illinois Press, 2010) is the remarkable story of a remarkable man. Richard Stamz (1906-2007) never stopped hustling. From his birth on a Mississippi riverboat to appearances with Ma Rainey, from his connection to Governor Adlai Stevenson to his prison stint as a southside DJ fired over payola, Richard’s is the story of Twentieth-century Chicago. In a unique memoir, Prof. Patrick Roberts of Northern Illinois University repeats, explains, and interprets the life of Richard Stamz.

David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland.

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Mike Errico, "Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter" (Backbeat Book, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 26 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Mike Errico about his new book Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter (Backbeat Books, 2022).

Brain teasers invite you; brain embarrassers are songs you can’t get a handle on readily enough, causing listeners to give up. That is but one of the many fine distinctions Mike Errico makes in this engaging, whimsical-and-yet-serious book about the art of crafting songs. This episode spans a range from what constitutes a mission song (which lay out the story of the artist, e.g. Bruce Springsteen’s wanderlust), to what kind of flavor gets created depending on whether the melody starts on, before or after the downbeat. Melodies that start on the downbeat feel authoritative (think “Yesterday”). Melodies that start before the downbeat feel urgent, with the singer taking control (think “She Loves You”). And those that follow the downbeat feel conversational (think “All You Need Is Love”). Want to know about the Four Quadrants of Trust? Then give his episode a listen.

Mike Errico is a New York-based record artist, writer, and lecturing professor at universities including Yale, Wesleyan, and NYU. Besides international touring, Mike has had his opinions and insights appear in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and elsewhere.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of nine books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His new book is Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.

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Alejandro Nava, "Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today I speak with Alejandro Nava about his new book, Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop (U Chicago Press, 2022). This book explores an important aspect of hip-hop that is rarely considered: its deep entanglement with spiritual life.

The world of hip-hop is saturated with religion, but rarely is that element given serious consideration. In Street Scriptures, Alejandro Nava focuses our attention on this aspect of the music and culture in a fresh way, combining his profound love of hip-hop, his passion for racial and social justice, and his deep theological knowledge. Street Scriptures offers a refreshingly earnest and beautifully written journey through hip-hop’s deep entanglement with the sacred.

Nava reveals a largely unheard religious heartbeat in hip-hop, exploring crosscurrents of the sacred and profane in rap, reggaeton, and Latinx hip-hop today. Ranging from Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Lauryn Hill, Cardi B, and Bad Bunny to St. Augustine and William James, Nava examines the ethical-political, mystical-prophetic, and theological qualities in hip-hop, probing the pure sonic and aesthetic signatures of music, while also diving deep into the voices that invoke the spirit of protest. The result is nothing short of a new liberation theology for our time, what Nava calls a “street theology.”

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Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, "From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s copyright laws are predicated on the idea that music is intellectual property; a commodity that has value to its creator and to its publisher. But, how did that concept originate and why? From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2022) by Rebecca Geoffroy Schwinden tackles this question with an insightful examination of the years around the French Revolution when the legal protections for music moved from a system of monopolies granted by the sovereign that regulated music as an activity to a framework that assumed music was a kind of property. Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the revolution, music was an object that could be possessed.In Geoffroy-Schwinden’s analysis, this is far from a simple history of commodification, it is, instead, a process entwined with the political, ideological, and cultural agendas of the French Revolutionaries. It is also a history of the development of new institutions, and how the Paris Conservatory, founded in the fluid and sometimes violent aftermath of the French Revolution, became the conservator and arbiter of French musical traditions and pedagogy. Musicians capitalized on new kinds of legal protections to guard their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from their elite echelon.

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Guangtian Ha, "The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China" (Columbia UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark of their spiritual practice is the “loud” (jahr) remembrance of God in liturgical rituals featuring distinctive melodic vocal chants.

The first ethnography of this order in any language, The Sound of Salvation: Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China (Columbia UP, 2021) draws on nearly a decade of fieldwork to reveal the intricacies and importance of Jahriyya vocal recitation. Guangtian Ha examines how the use of voice in liturgy helps the Jahriyya to sustain their faith and the ways it has enabled them to endure political persecution over the past two and a half centuries. He situates the Jahriyya in a global multilingual network of Sufis and shows how their characteristic soundscapes result from transcultural interactions among Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Chinese Muslim communities. Ha argues that the resilience of Jahriyya Sufism stems from the diversity and multiplicity of liturgical practice, which he shows to be rooted in notions of Sufi sainthood. He considers the movement of Jahriyya vocal recitation to new media forms and foregrounds the gendered opposition of male voices and female silence that structures the group’s rituals.

Spanning diverse disciplines—including anthropology, ethnomusicology, Islamic studies, sound studies, and media studies—and using Arabic, Persian, and Chinese sources, The Sound of Salvation offers new perspectives on the importance of sound to religious practice, the role of gender in Chinese Islam, and the links connecting Chinese Muslims to the broader Islamic world.

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Dhanveer Singh Brar, "Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century" (Goldsmiths Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century (Goldsmiths Press, 2021) uses three Black electronic musics – footwork, grime, and the work of the producer Actress – to provide a theory of how Black musical experimentation has disrupted the circuits of racialized domination and exclusion in the 21st Century city. The book carefully attends to the unique ‘sonic ecologies’ produced by these three musical forms in South/West Chicago; East London and South London respectively, steering a course between uncritical celebration narratives of ‘resistant’ cultural production and dystopian analyses of urban decay.

Brar instead theorises these musics as forms of popular experimentalism which are not just inseparable from questions of space, race and class, but are productive of social and spatial relations. The book draws upon, and intervenes in, Black Studies literature to contribute a set of examples, questions and provocations that help readers to think about how the ‘Blackness of Black electronic dance music’ has produced (and continues to produce) a fugitive urban aesthetic sociality that has flourished in spite of the degradations of state and capital.

At the end of the interview, Dhanveer recommended some music as good entry points into the three musical worlds that we discuss and that he analyses in the book:

Actress – Splazsh (2010)

DJ Rashad – Just a Taste Vol. 1 (2011)

Slimzee/Wiley/Dizzee Rascal and more – Sidewinder sessions (2002-2004)

Gummo Clare is a PhD researcher in the School of Media and Communications, University of Leeds.

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J. Lorenzo Perillo, "Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Investigating the development of Filipino popular dance and performance since the late 20th century, Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-Hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism (Oxford UP, 2020) reveals how the Filipino dancing body has come to be, paradoxically, both globally recognized and indiscernible. The book draws from nearly two decades of ethnography, choreographic analysis, and community engagement with artists, choreographers, and organizers to ask: what does it mean for Filipinos to navigate the violent forces of empire and neoliberalism with street dance and Hip-Hop?

Dr. J. Lorenzo Perillo is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance and affiliated faculty with the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Center for Philippine Studies, and Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His work as an interdisciplinary cultural studies scholar is grounded within the indigenous Filipino concept of kapwa which translates imperfectly to ‘self-in-other’ and ‘together with the person’. In this way, he focuses on bridging Dance, Theatre, and Performance Studies with Critical Race, Ethnic, Feminist, and Indigenous Studies, while broadening the types of knowledge established within these fields.

Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries.

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Computational Creativity

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Saronik talks to Tuhin Chakrabarty about the creative processes of Artificial Intelligence, what we can expect from it, and how to keep the results fair.

(Saronik messes up the word GPT-3 twice!)

Reading List:

GPT3 Creativity

When AI Falls in Love, GPT-3 Creative Fiction, Are You Ready for NaNoWriMo?

Papers/Posts on Computational Creativity

Generating Similes Like a Pro, Content Planning for Neural Story Generation, Reverse, Retrieve, and Rank for Sarcasm Generation , The Comedian is in the Machine

Music and Art

Google Magenta

Creating Image from Text

Dall-E, Creative Text Generation

Bias in Language Models

Stereoset measures Racism, Sexism, and other Forms of Bias in AI Language Models, Towards Controllable Biases in Language Generation, The Woman worked as a Babysitter, Timnit Gebru’s thread about Google firing her, RealToxicityPrompts, Measuring and Reducing Gendered Correlations in Pre-trained Models

Bias in Poetry

Investigating Societal Biases in a Poetry Composition System

AI Poetry

Google’s New AI Helps You Write Poetry like Poe, Generating Topical Poetry

Academic Venues

Computational Creativity, Machine Learning for Creativity and Design

Image: created using Dall-E

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Aaron Cohen, "Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago’s place in the history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s was more than just a series of hits: it was a marker and a source of black empowerment.

In Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power (U Chicago Press, 2019), Aaron Cohen tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul music in Chicago. Together, soul music and black-owned businesses thrived. Record producers and song-writers broadcast optimism for black America’s future through their sophisticated, jazz-inspired productions for the Dells and many others. Curtis Mayfield boldly sang of uplift with unmistakable grooves like “We’re a Winner” and “I Plan to Stay a Believer.” Musicians like Phil Cohran and the Pharaohs used their music to voice Afrocentric philosophies that challenged racism and segregation, while Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire and Chaka Khan created music that inspired black consciousness. Soul music also accompanied the rise of African American advertisers and the campaign of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983. This empowerment was set in stark relief by the social unrest roiling in Chicago and across the nation: as Chicago’s homegrown record labels produced rising stars singing songs of progress and freedom, Chicago’s black middle class faced limited economic opportunities and deep-seated segregation, all against a backdrop of nationwide deindustrialization.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and a music critic’s passion for the unmistakable Chicago soul sound, Cohen shows us how soul music became the voice of inspiration and change for a city in turmoil. Aaron Cohen covers the arts for numerous publications and teaches English, journalism, and humanities at City Colleges of Chicago. He is the author of Aretha Franklin's "Amazing Grace."

Aaron Cohen on Twitter.

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Nancy Barile, "I'm Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-And-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion" (Bazillion Points, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Nancy Barile shares her love of hardcore punk in her new memoir, I'm Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises and All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion (Bazillion Points, 2022). From disaffected Catholic schoolgirl and glam maniac to instigator on the 1980s hardcore punk scene, Barile discovered freedom at a time when punk music was new and dangerous. She made her place behind the boards and right in the front row as insurgents such as SSD, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag wrote new rules and made history. She survived punk riots and urban decay, ran the streets with outcasts, and ultimately found true love as she fought for fairness and found her purpose. Her memoir archives her first-hand experiences in the early Philadelphia punk scene and forefronts the role of women in the scene.

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Amanda D. Lotz, "Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars" (MIT Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Has the internet really been the main culprit behind the upheaval of the contemporary media industries? In Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars (MIT Press, 2021), Professor Amanda Lotz provides a rebuttal to persistent myths about disruption across the mediascape of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. Through a granular reading of four media industries – newspapers, recorded music, film and television – Lotz demonstrates that the internet has had diffuse and divergent effects in each, none of which are adequately explained through simplistic narratives of piracy or cannibalism. Lotz suggests that the speed and scale of reconfiguration in these industries has stemmed more from built up consumer demand and business (mal)practices, often with deep historical roots, which have only then been catalysed by the advent of the internet.

Alongside laying out what we often get wrong about the internet and the media industries, Lotz provides detailed analyses of those media businesses which managed to negotiate this tumultuous period successfully. Media Disruption helps us understand how the media industries got to where they are today and provides valuable lessons for those seeking to weather disruptions to come.

Professor Amanda Lotz works at the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology.

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On Rock'n'Roll, aka "The Devil's Music"

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Randall J. Stephens is an Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. He previously taught at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne) and Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, Massachusetts). He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History (University of South Carolina Press, 2009).

His latest book is The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll (Harvard University Press, 2018). Stephens has written for the Atlantic, Salon, the Wilson Quarterly, Christian Century, the Independent, History Today, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and the New York Times. He has been interviewed for news and culture programs on the BBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, KBYU-FM 89.1, Austrian Youth Radio, and NPR. Stephens is one of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturers.

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Delinda Collier, "Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa" (Duke UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) Delinda Collier provides a sweeping new understanding of technological media in African art, rethinking the assumptions that have conceptualized African art as unmediated, primary, and natural. Collier responds to these preoccupations by exploring African artworks that challenge these narratives. From one of the first works of electronic music, Halim El-Dabh’s Ta’abir Al-Zaar (1944), and Souleymane Cissé's 1987 film, Yeelen, to contemporary digital art, Collier argues that African media must be understood in relation to other modes of transfer and transmutation that have significant colonial and postcolonial histories, such as extractive mining and electricity. Collier reorients modern African art within a larger constellation of philosophies of aesthetics and technology, demonstrating how pivotal artworks transcend the distinctions between the constructed and the elemental, thereby expanding ideas about mediation and about what African art can do.

Holiday Powers is Assistant Professor of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Africa and the Arab world, postcolonial theory, and gender studies.

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Patricia A. Banks, "Black Culture, Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America" (Stanford UP, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Why do corporations fund cultural organisations and events? In Black Culture, Inc: How ethnic community support pays for corporate America Patricia Banks, Professor of Sociology at Mount Holyoke College, explores the role of corporate funding in shaping cultural life, from historical examples of tobacco advertising and media, through to contemporary social media businesses’ presence at music festivals. The book draws on a wealth of examples and scholarship on Black culture in America, alongside analysis of diversity policy and practices. Most crucially, the book introduces the idea of ‘diversity capital’, showing the costs of corporate influence on culture, as well as the ambivalence and enthusiasm of cultural producers and audiences. Moving beyond simple explanations and analysis of race, corporate funding, and culture, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in the arts today.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Kenneth Partridge, "Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In the late ’90s, third-wave ska broke across the American alternative music scene like a tsunami. In sweaty clubs across the nation, kids danced themselves dehydrated to the peppy rhythms and punchy horns of bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish. As ska caught fire, a swing revival brought even more sharp-dressed, brass-packing bands to national attention. Kenneth Partridge's Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021) dives deep into this unique musical moment.

Prior to invading the Billboard charts and MTV, ska thrived from Orange County, California, to NYC, where Moon Ska Records had eager rude girls and boys snapping up every release. On the swing tip, retro pioneers like Royal Crown Revue had fans doing the jump, jive, and wail long before The Brian Setzer Orchestra resurrected the Louis Prima joint. Drawing on interviews with heavyweights like the Bosstones, Sublime, Less Than Jake, and Cherry Poppin' Daddies—as well as underground heroes like Mustard Plug, The Slackers, Hepcat, and The New Morty Show—Kenneth Partridge argues that the relative economic prosperity and general optimism of the late ’90s created the perfect environment for fast, danceable music that—with some notable exceptions—tended to avoid political commentary.

An homage to a time when plaids and skankin’ were king and doing the jitterbug in your best suit was so money, Hell of a Hat is an inside look at ’90s ska, swing, and the loud noises of an era when America was dreaming and didn’t even know it.

Looking for the bands Partridge didn't get to highlight in the book? You can find his writing about them on his Substack.

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Yana Stainova, "Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

El Sistema is Venezuela's large scale classical music education program for poor and working class people on the economic, social, and physical margins. In Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela (University of Michigan, 2021), anthropologist Yana Stainova follows the lives of musicians in examining the effects of the program on individuals and communities. Through conversations and interactions with musicians during music lessons, performances, and during their daily lives, Stainova finds that classical music education opens up a space to dream and makes possible different futures than those generally available to working class youth. Stainova theorizes that musicians engage in enchantment, which arises from, for example, the music itself, the labor of musical practice, and the relations between people and their instruments. Yet, enchantment also exceeds these components and gives way to escape, rupture, and resistance to power structures. Stainova examines these matters as Venezuela falls into violence from economic and governmental crisis. During our discussion we talked about the arguments of the book, the writing and structure of the book, and conducting field research in the circumstances described above.

Yana Stainova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University.

Reighan Gillam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

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Richard Brent Turner, "Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism" (NYU Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In his fascinating and riveting new book Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism (NYU Press, 2021), historian Richard Brent Turner tells a moving though rarely discussed narrative of the intersection and cross-pollination between Jazz and African American Islam from the 1940s to the 1970s. How did Islam and conversion to Islam inform the lives, careers, and musical productions of prominent jazz musicians in this period? And how did jazz spaces and culture provide the fodder for important African American Muslim movements and figures, such as the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X? Turner addresses these and other questions with profound historical depth and analytical ingenuity. Over the course of this book, the reader learns about such enormously interesting themes as the landscape of African American politics during the interwar period and beyond in major Northeastern cities (especially Boston), the intimate relationship between Jazz and the Ahmadiyya, the relationship between John Coltrane and Malcolm X, and the encounter of Jazz with Black internationalism. This lucidly written book will also animate great discussions in the classroom.

SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His other academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome.

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On Punk Rock and Religious Identity

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Francis Stewart completed her doctoral thesis on punk rock as a surrogate for religion, with a particular emphasis on Straight Edge punk, in 2011 at the University of Stirling.

Within the thesis, Stewart examined the notions of community, authenticity, integrity, DIY, and salvation. She also engaged with the connections between music and the expression of emotions, particularly those emotions which are deemed socially 'undesirable' or 'negative'. She also engaged with the question of what do we mean by the terms 'religious', 'spiritual' and 'faith'.

Her book, Punk Rock is My Religion: Straight Edge Punk and 'Religious' Identity, is out now from Routledge.

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Louis K. Epstein, "The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France" (Boydell, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Patronage has long been an important topic of study in musicology, but is much more likely to be one that specialists in medieval or renaissance music research. In The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France (Boydell Press, 2021), Louis Epstein turns to patronage in the twentieth century to reveal an important part of the musical economy that is often overlooked. Many different types of patrons existed in this period, from music publishers and the French government to institutions and wealthy individuals. Far from mere sources of funding, early twentieth-century patrons collaborated closely with composers, treating commissions for new music as opportunities to express their own artistry. Although some of these patrons tried to interfere with the compositional process, most were engaged in a more subtle form of labor. For instance, they curated like-minded composers, encouraged people to write in expensive genres like opera or orchestral music, and supported French nationalism. Epstein also finds that the French example helped to influence the flowering of institutional patronage in post-World War II America.

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Rebecca Cypess, "Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today we speak to Rebecca Cypess, Associate Professor at Rutgers University, about her new book: Musical Salons in the Enlightenment (University of Chicago, 2022). Interest in music sociability during the eighteenth century, including domestic and semi-domestic music-making, has been steadily growing. As scholars have noted, musical salons were crucial in providing a space where women could perform in public, which was otherwise impossible, for the most part. In this book, music scholar and performer Rebecca Cypess focuses on the figure of the salonnière, the female host at the center of most musical salons in Europe and America in the second half of the eighteenth century. Through case studies include the salons of Anne-Louise Brillon in Paris, Marianna Martines in Vienna, Sara Levy in Berlin, Elizabeth Graeme in Philadelphia, and the painter Angelika Kauffman in Rome, Cypess addresses several far-reaching issues in Enlightenment musical culture. Among them are questions having to do with collaboration and improvisation vs. authorship, sensual vs. intellectual experiences, the role of women in 'governing' the salons and collecting musical scores and instruments, and how these collections can function as texts that illuminate the lived experiences of eighteenth-century music. In this richly written book, Cypess draws on letters, diaries, and other written documents, as well as iconography, to make connections with non-musical practices, including games, and to recreate the salon as an immersive musical and creative environment.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Michael Spitzer, "The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth (Bloomsbury, 2021) takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages - from Bach to BTS and back - to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, looking at music in our everyday lives; music in world history; and music in evolution, from insects to apes, humans to AI. Through this journey we begin to understand how music is central to the distinctly human experiences of cognition, feeling and even biology, both widening and closing the evolutionary gaps between ourselves and animals in surprising ways.

The Musical Human boldly puts the case that music is the most important thing we ever did; it is a fundamental part of what makes us human.

Mel Rosenberg is a professor of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is also the founder of Ourboox, a web platform that allows anyone to create and share awesome flipbooks.

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Kate Guthrie, "The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain" (U California Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century musical life. The goal of these initiatives was rarely just to reach a larger and more diverse audience but to teach a particular way of listening that would help the public "appreciate" music.

In The Art of Appreciation: Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain (University of California Press, 2021), Dr. Kate Guthrie examines for the first time how and why music appreciation has had such a defining and long-lasting impact—well beyond its roots in late-Victorian liberalism. Dr. Guthrie traces the networks of music educators, philanthropists, policy makers, critics, composers, and musicians who, rather than resisting new mass media, sought to harness their pedagogic potential.

The book explores how listening became embroiled in a nexus of modern problems around citizenship, leisure, and education. In so doing, it ultimately reveals how a new cultural milieu—the middlebrow—emerged at the heart of Britain's experience of modernity.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Daudi Abe, "Emerald Street: A History of Hip Hop in Seattle" (U Washington Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

West Coast hip hop means much more than LA, argues Dr. Daudi Abe, a professor of humanities at Seattle Central College. In Emerald Street: A History of Hip Hop in Seattle (University of Washington Press, 2020), Abe argues that Seattle deserves an honored spot in the cultural geography of hip hop in the United States. Although less well known than Los Angeles, New York, or even Atlanta and New Orleans, Seattle has spawned two Grammy-award winning artists (Sir Mix-a-Lot and Macklemore) and has had an active hip hop, graffiti, and breaking scene since the early 1980s. Hip Hop, as Abe argues in the book, is all about making yourself known and representing where you're from as a means of communicating to others what it's like being from that place. In that regard, Seattle has consistently been a loud and proud voice in that regard, with the city's hip hop sitting alongside grunge and indie rock as parts of the musical landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

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Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, "Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Deirdre Ní Chonghaile is a writer, musician, broadcaster, and curator from the Aran Islands. Working bilingually in Irish and English, she is drawn to voices, contemporary and historical, especially those that have been marginalized, and to what they have to say or sing. She read Music at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, and worked at the University of Notre Dame and the Library of Congress. Deirdre is currently curating an exhibition for Roinn na Gaeilge at NUI Galway on the first professor of Irish there, Tomás Ó Máille, and also preparing an anthology of over fifty traditional songs composed in the Aran Islands from the nineteenth century to the present day.

In this interview, she discusses her new book Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice (U Wisconsin Press, 2021), which uses interlocking case-studies of traditional music collection to investigate questions of preservation, curation and marginalization.

Collecting Music in the Aran Islands, a critical historiographical study of the practice of documenting traditional music, is the first to focus on the archipelago off the west coast of Ireland. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile argues for a culturally equitable framework that considers negotiation, collaboration, canonization, and marginalization to fully understand the immensely important process of musical curation. In presenting four substantial, historically valuable collections from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she illustrates how understanding the motivations and training (or lack thereof) of individual music collectors significantly informs how we should approach their work and contextualize their place in the folk music canon.

Aidan Beatty is a historian at the Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh

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Lily E. Hirsch, "Weird Al: Seriously" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. In this book, for the first time, the parodies, original compositions, and polka medleys of the Weird Al universe finally receive their due respect. In Weird Al, Seriously, musicologist Lily Hirsch weaves together original interviews with the prince of parody himself, creating a fresh take on comedy and music’s complicated romance. She reveals that Yankovic’s jests have always had a deeper meaning, addressing such topics as bullying, celebrity, and racial and gender stereotypes. Weird Al is undeterred by those who say funny music is nothing but a low-brow pastime. And thank goodness. With his good-guy grace still intact, Yankovic remains unapologetically and unmistakably himself. Reveling in the mischief and wisdom of Yankovic’s forty-year career, this book is an Al-expense-paid tour of a true comedic and musical genius.

Franz Nicolay is a musician and writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. His first book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar, was named a "Season's Best Travel Book" by The New York Times. Buzzfeed called his second book, the novel Someone Should Pay for Your Pain," a knockout fiction debut;" and Rolling Stone named it one of the best music books of 2021. He teaches at Bard College.

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K. Stephen Prince, "The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot Of 1900" (UNC Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

For a brief moment in the summer of 1900, Robert Charles was arguably the most infamous black man in the United States. After an altercation with police on a New Orleans street, Charles killed two police officers and fled. During a manhunt that extended for days, violent white mobs roamed the city, assaulting African Americans and killing at least half a dozen. When authorities located Charles, he held off a crowd of thousands for hours before being shot to death. The notorious episode was reported nationwide; years later, fabled jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton recalled memorializing Charles in song. Yet today, Charles is almost entirely invisible in the traditional historical record. So who was Robert Charles, really? An outlaw? A black freedom fighter? And how can we reconstruct his story?

In The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot Of 1900 (UNC Press, 2021), K. Stephen Prince sheds fresh light on both the history of the Robert Charles riots and the practice of history-writing itself. He reveals evidence of intentional erasures, both in the ways the riot and its aftermath were chronicled and in the ways stories were silenced or purposefully obscured. But Prince also excavates long-hidden facts from the narratives passed down by white and black New Orleanians over more than a century. In so doing, he probes the possibilities and limitations of the historical imagination.

Brandon T. Jett, professor of history at Florida SouthWestern State College, creator of the Lynching in LaBelle Digital History Project, and author of Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South (LSU Press, 202) Twitter: @DrBrandonJett1

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Mike McCartney, "Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool" (Genesis Publications, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool (Genesis Publications, 2021), brings together all of his finest work including a wealth of previously unseen photographs and treasured drawings. McCartney takes us from his very first photograph, taken with the family Kodak Brownie box camera, to experimenting with his Rollei Magic camera and finding a love in surrealism, through to capturing the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool. The venues that were at the heart of the city are all featured, including the Casbah Club, the Jacaranda Club, Hope Hall, the Tower Ballroom and the legendary Cavern Club. This signed, limited edition book reveals the secrets of the Sixties and Seventies Liverpool through McCartney's photography, illustrations, and commentary.

In a commentary that is honest, revealing and often humorous, McCartney describes growing up in a post-war Liverpool and the cultural sensation that followed. McCartney shares his love of satire, poetry and music, and his experience of being there to photograph the talent that came out of Liverpool, including his own group, the Scaffold. From the Beatles to the Fourmost, and from the Roadrunners to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, McCartney captured the local bands as well as Liverpool's poets and artists, including Adrian Henri, Sam Walsh and Maurice Cockrill, RA. In Mike McCartney's Early Liverpool the incredible visiting acts that Liverpool welcomed are also celebrated, including Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Long John Baldry. With each photograph, McCartney gives a fascinating insight into the history of the vibrant city.

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Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon, "Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show in Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age (U Chicago Press, 2021), this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves.

Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisis can take scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and hand-wringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Building on ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Small and Danielle Allen, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world.

Paul Reitter is professor of Germanic languages and literatures at the Ohio State University. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe.

Chad Wellmon is professor of German studies and history at the University of Virginia. He is the author and editor of many books, The Rise of the Research University: A Sourcebook and Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University.

Alexandra Ortolja-Baird is Lecturer in Digital History and Culture at the University of Portsmouth. She tweets at @timetravelallie.

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Tim Smolko and Joanna Smolko, "Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music" (Indiana UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, McCarthyism, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of these world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (Indiana University Press, 2021), Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians coping with the effect of communism on American society and the threat of a nuclear conflict of global proportions. Atomic Tunes presents a musical history of the Cold War, analyzing the songs that capture the fear of those who lived under the shadow of Stalin, Sputnik, mushroom clouds, and missiles.

Joanna Smolko holds a PhD in Musicology and is Adjunct Professor of Music at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia. Tim Smolko holds master's degrees in Musicology and Library Science and is Monographs Original Cataloger at the University of Georgia.

Learn more about the Smolkos' work on their website, which you can access here.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a PhD in Musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations.

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Uwe Schütte, "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany" (Penguin, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in the wake of Nazi atrocities. Kraftwerk's intellectual and artistic debts to Weimar era movements like Bauhaus and early Soviet experimentation in constructivism and futurism are fully elucidated, showing how Kraftwerk's futuristic electro-pop was actually deeply rooted in pan-European avant-garde movements. Schütte also provides in-depth analysis of each of Kraftwerk's albums, including now-disowned early recordings and the most recent Kraftwerk studio release, 2003's Tour de France. With this book, Schütte makes a compelling case for Kraftwerk as a major artist in 20th century pop music, as influential in its own way as The Beatles or Elvis Presley.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Vicki L. Brennan, "Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality" (Indiana UP, 2018)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Singing the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L. Brennan reveals that by singing together, church members create one spiritual mind and become unified around a shared set of values. She follows parishioners as they attend choir rehearsals, use musical media—hymn books and cassette tapes—and perform the music and rituals that connect them through religious experience. Brennan asserts that church members believe that singing together makes them part of a larger imagined social collective, one that allows them to achieve health, joy, happiness, wealth, and success in an ethical way. Brennan discovers how this particular Yoruba church articulates and embodies the moral attitudes necessary to be a good Christian in Nigeria today.

Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality (Indiana UP, 2018) makes an important contribution to understanding the complex religious landscape of Lagos, which includes various Christian demonstrations and Muslim groups. Its firm grounding in ethnomusicology and media theory will be of interest to any who wish to better understand the intersection of music and religious experience.

Dr. Vicki Brennan is a cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who is an Associate Professor in the Religion Department and Director of the African Studies Program at the University of Vermont.

Sara Katz is a Postdoctoral Associate in the History Department at Duke University.

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James Lapine, "Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created 'Sunday in the Park with George'" (FSG, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

James Lapine's Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George" (FSG, 2021) is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the creation of a modern masterpiece. Through personal recollections and interviews with nearly all his surviving collaborators, Lapine gives us an intimate look at the fights, feuds, and deadline-defying compositions that went into this beloved musical. The result is a dramatic and entertaining book that deserves a place on every musical theatre lover's shelf next to Finishing the Hat. It will also appeal to instructors in musical theatre book-writing and directing.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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William Sites, "Sun Ra's Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Poet and jazz band musician Sun Ra, born in 1914, is one of the most wildly prolific and unfailingly eccentric figures in the history of music. Renowned for extravagant performances in which his band “Arkestra” appeared in neo-Egyptian garb, this keyboardist and bandleader also espoused an interstellar cosmology and that the planet Saturn was his true home. In his book, Sun Ra’s Chicago: Afrofuturism and the City (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. William Sites contextualizes this visionary musician in his home on earth—specifically in Chicago’s South Side, where from 1946 to 1961 Sun Ra lived and relaunched his career.

The postwar South Side was a hotbed of unorthodox religious and cultural activism: Afrocentric philosophies flourished, storefront prophets sold “dream-book bibles,” and Elijah Muhammad was building the Nation of Islam. It was also an unruly musical crossroads where the man then still known as Sonny Blount drew from an array of intellectual and musical sources—from radical nationalism, revisionist Christianity, and science fiction to jazz, blues, Latin dance music, and pop exotica—all this to construct a philosophy and performance style that imagined a new identity and future for African Americans. Sun Ra’s Chicago shows that late twentieth-century Afrofuturism emerged from a deep, utopian engagement with the city—and that by excavating the postwar black experience of Sun Ra’s South Side milieu, we can come to see the possibilities of urban life in new ways.

Dr. William Sites is Associate Professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. His fields of interest include urban and community studies, political economy, social movements, immigration, race, culture, social theory, and historical methods.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. carrie-lynn.evans@lit.ulaval.ca

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John Fenn and Lisa Gilman, "Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork" (Indiana UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

With The Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork (Indiana University Press, 2019), Lisa Gilman and John Fenn offer a comprehensive review of the ethnographic process for developing a project, implementing the plan, and completing and preserving the data collected. Throughout, readers will find a detailed methodology for conducting different types of fieldwork such as digital ethnography or episodic research, tips and tricks for key elements like budgeting and funding, and practical advice and examples gleaned from the authors' own fieldwork experiences. This handbook also helps fieldworkers fully grasp and understand the ways in which power, gender, ethnicity, and other identity categories are ever-present in fieldwork and guides students to think through these dynamics at each stage of research. Written accessibly for lay researchers working in different mediums and on projects of varying sizes, this step-by-step manual will prepare the reader for the excitement, challenges, and rewards of ethnographic research.

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Katie Rios, "This Is America: Race, Gender, and Politics in America's Musical Landscape" (Lexington Books, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

“This is America”: Race Gender and Politics in America’s Musical Landscape by Katie Rios (Lexington Books, 2021) examines an eclectic mix of different artists and cultural products, from Laurie Anderson and Childish Gambino to Hamilton. The artists Rios studies confront problems of race and gender that have deep roots in American history, often by championing social movements that have recently swept the nation such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. While a musicologist by training, Rios is concerned with more than the sonic signifiers of political dissent and resistance. She finds a shared language of cultural and political critique in a wide array of music, videos, dance, visual arts, and theater.

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Bruce Iglauer and Patrick A. Roberts, "Bitten by the Blues: The Alligator Records Story" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

It’s time for The Blues! In Bitten by the Blues: The Alligator Records Story (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Alligator Records president and founder Bruce Iglauer and his co-author, Patrick Roberts of Northern Illinois University, tell the tale of fifty years of Chicago Blues. From Delta-born guitar expressionists like Hound Dog Taylor to modern vocalists like Shemekia Copeland, from the South Side to the Norway fjords, Alligator Records has seen it all.

David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland.

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I'm Possible: A Conversation with Tuba Professor Dr. Richard White

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

Dr. White’s journey to earn a PhD in tuba
The Baltimore School for the Arts
The importance of having a village
The hidden curriculum
Why teaching and mentoring are equally important for educators to do
A discussion of the book I’m Possible: A Story of Survival, A Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream

Today’s book is: I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream (Flatiron Books, 2021), a memoir by Dr. Richard Antoine White. When he and his mother didn’t have a key to a room or a house, they had each other. Richard believed he could look after his mother, even as she struggled with alcoholism and sometimes disappeared, sending Richard into loops of visiting familiar spots until he could find her again. One night, when he almost died searching for her in the snow, he was taken in by his adoptive grandparents. When Richard joined the school band, he discovered a talent and a sense of purpose. He was accepted to the Baltimore School for the Arts, then to the Peabody, where he navigated racial and socioeconomic disparities as one of few Black students in his programs. Richard secured a coveted spot in a symphony orchestra and became the first African American to earn a doctorate in music for tuba performance.

Our guest is: Dr. Richard Antoine White, a professor, mentor, and motivational speaker. He received his bachelor's degree at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and his master's and doctoral degrees at Indiana University. Dr. White was principal tubist of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra from 2004 until its untimely demise in 2011. He is now principal tubist of the Santa Fe Symphony and is in his tenth season as principal tubist of the New Mexico Philharmonic. He teaches at the University of Mexico, where he is associate professor of tuba/euphonium. He is the author of I’m Possible.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.

Listeners to this episode might also be interested in:

Information about the documentary referenced in this podcast and the film’s trailer
Baltimore School for the Arts
The Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University
The Santa Fe Symphony
The New Mexico Philharmonic
Dr. White playing tuba

You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

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Michael Stewart Foley, "Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash" (Basic Books, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Johnny Cash famously declared himself to be “The Man in Black”. He sang that he dressed in a “somber tone” for “the poor and the beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town” and for “the prisoner who is long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times”. He famously performed for inmates of Folsom, San Quintin, and a number of other less well-known prisons. Cash publicly supported Native American activists and invited prominent African American guests on his prime-time television show. Yet, he initially supported Richard Nixon, shared the stage with the arch-conservative preacher Billy Graham, and recorded songs that glorified the South’s Lost Cause mythology. How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory political acts and messages? In Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, Michael Stewart Foley argues that Cash embodied a “politics of empathy” in which the singer always supported the underdog. This book makes the case that Johnny Cash deserves to be remember as an important figure who used his music for political purposes.

Michael Stewart Foley is the author of Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War, winner of the Scott Bills Memorial Prize from the Peace History Society, Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s, and Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables for the 33 1/3 book series. He is a founding editor of The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture and served as a consultant for the television series Mad Men. Foley has taught in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. This native New Englander is currently a professor of American Civilization at the Université Grenoble Alpes.

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Olga Rodríguez-Ulloa and Rodrigo Quijano, "Punk! Las Américas Edition" (Intellect, 2022)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In PUNK! Las Americas Editions (Intellect Books, 2021), editors Olga Rodrguez-Ulloa, Rodrigo Quijano, and Shane Greene have compiled a collection of academic essays and punk paraphernalia (including interviews, zines, poetry, and visual segments) exploring punk life. Part of the Global Punk Series, the volume is a collective challenge to the global hegemonic vision of punk. The book interrogates the dominant vision of punk--particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism--by analyzing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of "America," a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes, and despairs of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century experience. The book explores punk life through its multiple registers: vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays, and underground literary expression. Check out the Book Trailer on YouTube or Instagram.

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Jake Johnson, "Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Jake Johnson, author of Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America (University of Illinois Press, 2021) takes as his subject the artifice of musicals—no one really bursts into song and dance to liven up a simple conversation and even the historical characters are not true-to-life. He argues that it is the very unreality of musicals that makes them powerful sites of belief—whether it is a reflection of the beliefs of the creators of the work, or what audiences want to believe about themselves. He focuses on how musicals serve large and small communities across America and shape local religious, political, cultural, and familial identities. Rather than using examples from the commercial Broadway theater, however, Johnson brings to life more idiosyncratic productions from the middle of America from the “Senior Follies,” a Ziegfeld-follies like production staffed by older performers to a re-imagining of The Sound of Music written for a polygamous community called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the current political climate where consumers are fixated on the urban/rural divide and differences in the “flyover” states from the coasts, it seems especially important to turn critical attention to musical and dramatic practices outside of Broadway institutions.

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Vivian Kirkfield, "Making Their Voices Heard: The Inspiring Friendship of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe" (Little Bee Books, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Vivian Kirkfield about her book Making Their Voices Heard: The Inspiring Friendship of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe (Little Bee Books, 2020).

Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. On the outside, you couldn't find two girls who looked more different. But on the inside, they were alike--full of hopes and dreams and plans of what might be. Ella Fitzgerald's velvety tones and shube-doobie-doos captivated audiences. Jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington couldn't wait to share the stage with her, but still, Ella could not book a performance at one of the biggest clubs in town--one she knew would give her career its biggest break yet. Marilyn Monroe dazzled on the silver screen with her baby blue eyes and breathy boo-boo-be-doos. But when she asked for better scripts, a choice in who she worked with, and a higher salary, studio bosses refused. Two women whose voices weren't being heard. Two women chasing after their dreams and each helping the other to achieve them. This is the inspiring, true story of two incredibly talented women who came together to help each other shine like the stars that they are.

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Carol J. Oja and Charles Garrett, "Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U. S. Music in the 21st Century" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Carol J. Oja, Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the Twenty-21st Century (University of Michigan Press, 2021) is a multi-authored, collaboratively conceived book of essays that tackles key challenges facing scholars studying music of the United States in the early twenty-first century. This book encourages scholars in music circles and beyond to explore the intersections between social responsibility, community engagement, and academic practices through the simple act of working together. The chapters of the volume address issues of race, nationalism, mobility, cultural domination, and identity; as well as the crisis of the Trump era and the political power of music. Each contribution to the volume is written collaboratively by two scholars, bringing together contributors who represent a mix of career stages and positions. Through the practice of and reflection on collaboration, Sounding Together breaks out of long-established paradigms of solitude in humanities scholarship and works toward social justice in the study of music.

See the book's companion site here.

Dr. Charles Hiroshi Garrett is Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan and Dr. Carol J. Oja is William Powell Mason Professor of Music and Professor of American Studies at Harvard University. Learn more about the Eileen Southern Initiative, for which Dr. Oja is co-director, here.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama's carnival.

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Rosa Hawkins and Steve Bergsman, "Chapel of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In 1963, sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson traveled from the segregated South to New York City under the auspices of their manager, former pop singer Joe Jones. With their wonderful harmonies, they were an immediate success. To this day, the Dixie Cups’ greatest hit, “Chapel of Love,” is considered one of the best songs of the past sixty years. In Chapel of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), Rosa Hawkins and Steve Bergsman discuss the ups and downs of one of the most successful girl groups of the early 1960s. Telling their story for the first time, in their own words, Chapel of Love reintroduces the Louisiana Music Hall of Famers to a new audience.

Podcast guest Steve Bergsman is a longtime journalist who has written over a dozen books. His most recent book was a biography of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a PhD in Musicology from Florida State University. Her current research focuses on parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations.

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Stan BH Tan-Tangbau and Quyền Văn Minh, "Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Văn Minh and Jazz in Hà Nội" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent jazz musicians in Vietnam. Considered a pioneer in the country, Minh is often publicly recognized as the “godfather of Vietnamese jazz.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam: Quyền Văn Minh and Jazz in Hà Nội (UP of Mississippi, 2021) tells the story of the music as it intertwined with Minh’s own narrative. Stan BH Tan-Tangbau details Minh’s life story, telling how Minh pioneered jazz as an original genre even while navigating the trials and tribulations of a fervent socialist revolution, of the ideological battle that was the Cold War, of Vietnam’s war against the United States, and of the political changes during the Đổi Mới period between the mid-1980s and the 1990s.

Minh worked tirelessly and delivered two breakthrough solo recitals in 1988 and 1989, marking the first time jazz was performed in the public sphere in the socialist state. To gain jazz acceptance as a mainstream musical art form, Minh founded Minh Jazz Club. With the release of his debut album of original compositions in 2000, Minh shaped the nascent genre of Vietnamese jazz.

Minh’s endeavors kickstarted the momentum, from his performing jazz in public, teaching jazz both formally and informally, and contributing to the shaping of an original Vietnamese voice to stand out among the many styles in the jazz world. Most importantly, Minh generated a public space for musicians to play and for the Vietnamese to listen. His work eventually helped to gain jazz the credibility necessary at the national conservatoire to offer instruction in a professional music education program.

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David Sulzer, "Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music" (Columbia UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Why does a clarinet play at lower pitches than a flute? What does it mean for sounds to be in or out of tune? How are emotions carried by music? Do other animals perceive sound like we do? How might a musician use math to come up with new ideas?

This book offers a lively exploration of the mathematics, physics, and neuroscience that underlie music in a way that readers without scientific background can follow. David Sulzer, also known in the musical world as Dave Soldier, explains why the perception of music encompasses the physics of sound, the functions of the ear and deep-brain auditory pathways, and the physiology of emotion. He delves into topics such as the math by which musical scales, rhythms, tuning, and harmonies are derived, from the days of Pythagoras to technological manipulation of sound waves. Sulzer ranges from styles from around the world to canonical composers to hip-hop, the history of experimental music, and animal sound by songbirds, cetaceans, bats, and insects. He makes accessible a vast range of material, helping readers discover the universal principles behind the music they find meaningful.

Written for musicians and music lovers with any level of science and math proficiency, including none, Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music (Columbia UP, 2021) demystifies how music works while testifying to its beauty and wonder.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

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David Politzer, “The Physics of Banjos” (Open Agenda, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

The Physics of Banjos is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and David Politzer, 2004 Nobel Laureate and the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. This extensive conversation examines many of the intriguing aspects associated with the physics of banjos, including the ocarina effect, string-stretching, the subtleties of how we hear pitch, transient growth, and the mysterious ringing sound of banjos; while also touching briefly on contemporary issues in black holes and particle physics.

Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Jeffrey Brooks, "The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks (Cambridge UP, 2019) by Jeffrey Brooks, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, is a summa of his lifetime study of Russian culture. In doing so, Brooks provides a needed corrective to the prior standard work, now over 50 years old. Firebird and the Fox chronicles a century of Russian artistic genius, including literature, art, music and dance, within the dynamic cultural ecosystem that shaped it.

Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Hermes in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at DanielxPeris@gmail.com or via Twitter @HistoryInvestor. His History and Investing blog and Keep Calm & Carry On Investing podcast are at https://strategicdividendinves...

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Marcia Pally, "From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Leonard Cohen's troubled relationship with God is here mapped onto his troubled relationships with sex and politics. Analysing Covenantal theology and its place in Cohen's work, Marcia Pally's From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen (Bloomsbury, 2021) is the first to trace a consistent theology across sixty years of Cohen's writing, drawing on his Jewish heritage and its expression in his lyrics and poems.

Cohen's commitment to covenant, and his anger at this God who made us so prone to failing it, undergird the faith, frustration, and sardonic taunting of Cohen's work. Both his faith and ire are traced through:

Cohen's unorthodox use of Jewish and Christian imagery
His writings about women, politics, and the Holocaust
His final theology, You Want It Darker, released three weeks before his death

Professor Marcia Pally teaches at New York University, at Fordham University, and is an annual guest professor at Humboldt University’s Theology Faculty

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Mary Talusan, "Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music During US Colonization of the Philippines" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi by Mary Talusan focuses on the Philippine Constabulary band, a military band organized in 1902 that served the colonial government in the Philippines until World War II. Founded and led for most of its history by Walter Loving, a Black soldier in the American military, the band visited the United States four times between 1904 and 1939 and it is these visits that Talusan examines in Instruments of Empire. Listening with what Talusan calls the imperial ear, American commentators understood the group’s command of the standard band repertory of the period not as a result of the Filipino musician’s training and skill, but as evidence of their so-called natural musical ability which had been tamed by the allegedly civilizing influence of American colonial rule. Tracing the band’s reception over time, Talusan analyzes the cultural, political, and social causes and byproducts of American imperial ambitions.

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Sonia Gollance, "It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity" (Stanford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as venues for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships, as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, ethnic, and national boundaries. In the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish culture, dance offers crucial insights into debates about emancipation and acculturation. While traditional Jewish law prohibits men and women from dancing together, Jewish mixed-sex dancing was understood as the very sign of modernity––and the ultimate boundary transgression.

Writers of modern Jewish literature deployed dance scenes as a charged and complex arena for understanding the limits of acculturation, the dangers of ethnic mixing, and the implications of shifting gender norms and marriage patterns, while simultaneously entertaining their readers. In It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford UP, 2021), Sonia Gollance examines the specific literary qualities of dance scenes, while also paying close attention to the broader social implications of Jewish engagement with dance. Combining cultural history with literary analysis and drawing connections to contemporary representations of Jewish social dance, Gollance illustrates how mixed-sex dancing functions as a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions.

Amber Nickell is Associate Professor of History at Fort Hays State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies and Eastern Europe.

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John Holmes McDowell et al., "Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

The volume, Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change, edited by John Holmes McDowell, Katherine Borland, Rebecca Dirksen, and Sue Tuohy (University of Illinois Press, 2021), illustrates the power of performing diverse environmentalisms to highlight alternative ways of human beingness to improve the prospects for maintaining life on the planet under threat. In the interview, I spoke with editors John McDowell and Rebecca Dirksen, who detail how poetics and performance represent strategies in managing human and nonhuman entanglements with contemporary, wicked problems (e.g., threats to bicultural diversity and rampant environmental degradation, unresolved colonial histories, and capitalist pressures). Understanding diverse environmentalisms as embodiments of knowing demonstrates “the power of performances and expressive culture to move people to action: resisting, negotiating, and finding solutions to environmental problems. These are not only performances of diverse environmentalisms, but sources of inspiration and strength for us all” (261).

Performing Environmentalisms is an edited volume of ten essays broken up into three parts: Perspectives on Diverse Environmentalisms, Performing the Sacred, and Environmental Attachments. The compilation demonstrates how environmentalisms as artistic expression serve to curate tradition and create space for cultural sustainability. The array of case studies generates new strategies that incorporate a diverse set of peoples—injecting their knowledge, experiences, and practices into global conversations. Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change is a must read for anyone interested in investigating how creative, alternative sets of environmentalisms interpreted though traditional knowledges are integral to navigating local and global climate and ecological issues.

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Nina Kraus, "Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World" (MIT Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Making sense of sound is one of the hardest jobs we ask our brains to do. In Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World (MIT Press, 2021), Nina Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. Our hearing is always on—we can't close our ears the way we close our eyes—and yet we can ignore sounds that are unimportant. We don't just hear; we engage with sounds. Kraus explores what goes on in our brains when we hear a word—or a chord, or a meow, or a screech.

Our hearing brain, Kraus tells us, is vast. It interacts with what we know, with our emotions, with how we think, with our movements, and with our other senses. Auditory neurons make calculations at one-thousandth of a second; hearing is the speediest of our senses. Sound plays an unrecognized role in both healthy and hurting brains. Kraus explores the power of music for healing as well as the destructive power of noise on the nervous system. She traces what happens in the brain when we speak another language, have a language disorder, experience rhythm, listen to birdsong, or suffer a concussion. Kraus shows how our engagement with sound leaves a fundamental imprint on who we are. The sounds of our lives shape our brains, for better and for worse, and help us build the sonic world we live in.

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Nolan Gasser, "Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste" (Flatiron Books, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Why do we love the music we love? In Why You Like IT: The Science & Culture of Musical Taste (Flatiron Books, 2019) musicologist Nolan Gasser, architect of Pandora Radio’s Music Genome Project, discusses how psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, and culture combine to define our musical tastes—what he calls “enculturating.” From the Northern California Redwoods to Paris to Africa, from Nashville to New York City, and from medieval music to Phillip Glass to Led Zeppelin to Taylor Swift, Dr. Gasser takes us on a ride through our minds and how they process, understand and, yes, like music.

David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland.

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Sunhee Koo, "Sound of the Border: Music and Identity of Korean Minority Nationality in China" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

When faced with some of the complex identity questions which often arise in borderlands, Koreans in China – known as Chosonjok in Korean, Chaoxianzu in Chinese – have long seemed adept at navigating the shifting demands of being both Chinese and Korean. Sunhee Koo’s new book, Sound of the Border: Music and Identity of Korean Minority Nationality in China (U Hawaii Press, 2021), makes a strong case for Chaoxianzu music being a clear index of this, reflecting as it does the layered cultural worlds of this community living in Yanbian prefecture where China, North and South Korea, and the wider world collide.

Offering an in-depth account of the shifting styles, genres and themes present in Chaoxianzu musical output across the decades, Koo examines the form and content of Korean folksongs and traditional instrumentation, Chinese- and North Korean-inflected socialist propaganda tunes, and more recent commercialised blends of essentialised ‘ethnic’ music and South Korean pop. Woven into the book’s close musical analysis are rich reflections on the often-tumultuous social and political contexts navigated by Chaoxianzu musicians and their publics over time, all of which reveals that from these intersecting cultural worlds has emerged not so much a musical chimera as a varied and distinctive musical tradition in its own right.

Ed Pulford is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and indigeneity in northeast Asia.

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Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding, "Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth" (Zone Book, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears?

In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.

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Adam Lehrer, "Communions" (Hyperidean Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

[This episode contains explicit content.] Artists from Kurt Cobain to Amy Winehouse command fascination not only for their work but also for their drug addictions and the manner of their death. Communions is an attempt to understand the role that opiates play in the artistic lives of those who are gripped by addiction.

Channeling hallucinated versions of dead artists and junkies, these fragments access the uncanny allure of shared experience. Elements of speculative fiction, criticism and encrypted auto-biography merge to form a disconcerting portrait of the artist as addict. Neither denunciation nor valorization, Communions probes the haunting singularity of opiate addiction and its ineradicable influence on art and culture.

Adam Lehrer speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about addiction and class, our fetish for the artist flirting with death, communing with his heroes, his experience of the opioid crisis, and the role for art criticism in unraveling these issues. Lehrer reads a chapter on Darby Crash from Communions.

Adam Lehrer is a writer and art critic, but he’s also a former heroin addict himself. He blogs at Safety Propaganda.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Hiromu Nagahara, "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and Its Discontents" (Harvard UP, 2017)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2017) by Hiromu Nagahara is the first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry. The book connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryūkōka (“popular songs”), with Japan’s transformation into a middle-class society in the years after World War II.

With the arrival of major international recording companies like Columbia and Victor in the 1920s, Japan’s pop music scene soon grew into a full-fledged culture industry that reached out to an avid consumer base through radio, cinema, and other media. The stream of songs that poured forth over the next four decades represented something new in the nation’s cultural landscape. Emerging during some of the most volatile decades in Japan’s history, popular songs struck a deep chord in Japanese society, gaining a devoted following but also galvanizing a vociferous band of opponents. A range of critics—intellectuals, journalists, government officials, self-appointed arbiters of taste—engaged in contentious debates on the merits of pop music. Many regarded it as a scandal, evidence of an increasingly debased and Americanized culture. For others, popular songs represented liberation from the oppressive political climate of the war years.

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie is a tale of competing cultural dynamics coming to a head just as Japan’s traditionally hierarchical society was shifting toward middle-class democracy. The pop soundscape of these years became the audible symbol of changing times.

Hiromu Nagahara is an associate professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century.

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Andrea Warner, "Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography" (Graystone Books, 2018)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Nov 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Andrea Warner's Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (Graystone Books, 2018) tells the story, often in Buffy's own words, of the life of the remarkable artist and activist. Buffy Sainte-Marie's musical career is as varied and fascinating as those of her Canadian contemporaries Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, but he work has not always achieved the recognition it deserves. Warner's book is in part an attempt to rectify that by presenting Buffy's complete story to a new generation of readers and listeners. We encounter Buffy as a coffee shop folkie, an electronic music pioneer, and indigenous activist, a Sesame Street cast member, and finally as an elder stateswoman of Canadian music. This is a book for longtime fans or for new initiates who have never heard songs like Power in the Blood, Now That the Buffalo's Gone, The Universal Soldier, or The War Racket.

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Samantha Durbin, "Raver Girl: Coming of Age in the 90s" (She Writes Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

A ’90s time capsule buried inside a coming-of-age memoir set against the neon backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area's rave scene, Raver Girl (She Writes Press, 2021) chronicles Samantha’s double life as she teeters between hedonism and sobriety, chaos and calm, all while sneaking under the radar of her entrepreneur father—a man who happened to drop acid with LSD impresario Owsley Stanley in the ’60s.

Samantha keeps a list of every rave she goes to—a total of 104 over four years. During that time, what started as trippy fun morphs into a self-destructive roller coaster ride. Samantha opens the doors of her mind, but she's left with traumas her acid-fried brain won't let her escape; and when meth becomes her drug of choice, things get progressively darker. Through euphoric highs and dangerous lows, Samantha discovers she’s someone who lives life to the fullest and learns best through alternative experience rather than mainstream ideals. She’s a creative whose mind is limitless, whose quirks are charms, whose passion is inspirational. She’s an independent woman whose inner strength is rooted in unwavering family ties. And if she can survive high school, she just might be okay.

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Raphael Cormack, "Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s" (Norton, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Nov 2021 08:00:00 +0000

One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry—as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry.

In Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s (W. W. Norton, 2021, in arrangement with Saqi Books), Raphael Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newspapers); nightclub singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya (the first woman to lead an Egyptian theater company) and her great rival, Oum Kalthoum (still venerated for her soulful lyrics); and other fabulous female stars of the interwar period, a time marked by excess and unheard-of freedom of expression. Buffeted by crosswinds of colonialism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, “religious” and “secular” values, patriarchy and feminism, this new generation of celebrities offered a new vision for women in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas and Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

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William Robin, "Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Presenting eclectic, irreverent marathons of experimental music in crumbling venues on the Lower East Side, Bang on a Can sold out concerts for a genre that had been long considered box office poison. Founded in 1987 by three composers who met while students at Yale--David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe--Bang on a Can has become a multifaceted organization with a major record deal and a virtuosic in-house ensemble that changed the landscape of avant-garde music in the United States. Will Robin's book, Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace (Oxford University Press, 2021), tells the story of Bang on a Can's first fifteen years. He contextualizes Ban on a Can's development in a time when traditional funding sources for classical music were disappearing and major institutions were often unwilling to take a chance on contemporary music. In the wake of the unexpected popularity of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, classical presenters looked to contemporary music for relevance and record labels scrambled to reap its potential profits, all while government funding was imperiled by the evangelical right. As the title indicates, at heart, Industry is about the classical music industry at a time when it faced enormous challenges and how Bang on a Can maneuvered through this minefield.

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David Pearson, "Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

In Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020), musicologist David Pearson explores the changing landscape of punk in the United States in the 1990s. Pearson examines how the 1990s underground punk renaissance transformed the punk scene into a site of radical opposition to the American empire. Nazi skinheads were ejected from the punk scene; apathetic attitudes were challenged; women, Latino, and LGBTQ participants asserted their identities and perspectives within punk; the scene debated the virtues of maintaining DIY purity versus venturing into the musical mainstream; and punks participated in protest movements from animal rights to stopping the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal to shutting down the 1999 WTO meeting. Punk lyrics offered strident critiques of American empire, from its exploitation of the Third World to its warped social relations. Numerous subgenres of punk proliferated to deliver this critique, such as the blazing hardcore punk of bands like Los Crudos, propagandistic crust-punk/dis-core, grindcore, and power violence with tempos over 800 beats per minute, and So-Cal punk with its combination of melody and hardcore. Musical analysis of each of these styles and the expressive efficacy of numerous bands reveals that punk is not merely simplistic three-chord rock music, but a genre that is constantly revolutionizing itself in which nuances of guitar riffs, vocal timbres, drum beats, and song structures are deeply meaningful to its audience, as corroborated by the robust discourse in punk zines.

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Caroline A. Kita, "Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater" (Indiana UP, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

During the mid-19th century, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner sparked an impulse toward German cultural renewal and social change that drew on religious myth, metaphysics, and spiritualism. The only problem was that their works were deeply antisemitic and entangled with claims that Jews were incapable of creating compassionate art. By looking at the works of Jewish composers and writers who contributed to a lively and robust biblical theatre in fin de siècle Vienna, Caroline A. Kita's Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna: Composing Compassion in Music and Biblical Theater (Indiana UP, 2019) shows how they reimagined myths of the Old Testament to offer new aesthetic and ethical views of compassion. These Jewish artists, including Gustav Mahler, Siegfried Lipiner, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Stefan Zweig, and Arnold Schoenberg, reimagined biblical stories through the lens of the modern Jewish subject to plead for justice and compassion toward the Jewish community. By tracing responses to antisemitic discourses of compassion, Kita reflects on the explicitly and increasingly troubled political and social dynamics at the end of the Habsburg Empire.

Lea Greenberg is a scholar of German studies with a particular focus on German Jewish and Yiddish literature and culture; critical gender studies; multilingualism; and literature of the post-Yugoslav diaspora.

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Adesola Akinleye, "(Re:) Claiming Ballet" (Intellect Books, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

(Re:) Claiming Ballet (Intellect Books, 2021) by Dr. Adesola Akinleye explores the history of movement through ballet, representation, and the future of dance. Though ballet is often seen as a white, cis-heteropatriarchal form of dance, in fact it has been, and still is, shaped by artists from a much broader range of backgrounds. This collection looks beyond the mainstream, bringing to light the overlooked influences that continue to inform the culture of ballet. Essays illuminate the dance form’s rich and complex history and start much-needed conversations about the roles of class, gender normativity, and race, demonstrating that despite mainstream denial and exclusionary tactics, ballet thrives with “difference.”

With contributions from professional ballet dancers and teachers, choreographers, and dance scholars in Europe and the United States, the volume introduces important new thinkers and perspectives. An essential resource for the field of ballet studies and a major contribution to dance scholarship more broadly, (Re:) Claiming Ballet will appeal to academics, researchers, and scholars; dance professionals and practitioners; and anyone interested in the intersection of race, class, gender, and dance.

For her choreographic work, Akinleye has been awarded ADAD Trailblazer, Bonnie Bird, New Choreography Award and One Dance UK Champion Trailblazer. For her work in community dance and education she was awarded Woman of the year in Community Dance by the Town of Islip, New York. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), Royal Society of Arts (RSA). She holds a PhD from Canterbury Christ Church University, and MA (distinction) in work-based learning Dance in Community and education (2007), and an MA in Film (distinction) 2020 from Middlesex University. Akinleye is also a certified Gyrotonic® and Gyrokinesis® instructor.

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Alex E. Chávez, "Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño" (Duke UP, 2017)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

In Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke UP, 2017), Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeño, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself—from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas—Chávez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States’ often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chávez's writing, we gain an intimate look at the experience of migration and how huapango carries the voices of those in Mexico, those undertaking the dangerous trek across the border, and those living in the United States. Illuminating how huapango arribeño’s performance refigures the sociopolitical and economic terms of migration through aesthetic means, Chávez adds fresh and compelling insights into the ways transnational music-making is at the center of everyday Mexican migrant life.

David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements.

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Peter Toohey, "Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

What do you do when you're not asleep and when you're not eating? You're most likely waiting--to finish work, to get home, or maybe even to be seen by your doctor. Hold On is less about how to manage all that staying where one is until a particular time or event (OED) than it is about describing how we experience waiting. Waiting can embrace things like hesitation and curiosity, dithering and procrastination, hunting and being hunted, fearing and being feared, dread and illness, courting and parenting, anticipation and excitement, curiosity, listening to and even performing music, being religious, being happy or unhappy, being bored and being boring. They're all explored here. Waiting is also characterized by brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. They can radically alter the way we register the passing of time. Waiting is also the experience that may characterize most interpersonal relations--mismanage it at your own risk.

Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting (Oxford UP, 2020) contains advice on how to cope with waiting-how to live better-but its main aim is to show how important the experience of waiting is, in popular and highbrow culture, and, sometimes, in history. Detouring into psychology, neurology, ethology, philosophy, film, literature, and especially art, Peter Toohey's illuminates in unexpected ways one of the most common of human experiences. After reading his book, you'll never wait the same way again.

Reyes Bertolin is a professor of Classics at the University of Calgary.

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Joseph L. Clarke, "Echo's Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

A room’s acoustic character seems at once the most technical and the most mystical of concerns. Since the early Enlightenment, European architects have systematically endeavored to represent and control the propagation of sound in large interior spaces. Their work has been informed by the science of sound but has also been entangled with debates on style, visualization techniques, performance practices, and the expansion of the listening public.

Echo's Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) explores how architectural experimentation from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries laid the groundwork for concepts of acoustic space that are widely embraced in contemporary culture. It focuses on the role of echo and reverberation in the architecture of Pierre Patte, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Carl Ferdinand Langhans, and Le Corbusier, as well as the influential acoustic ideas of Athanasius Kircher, Richard Wagner, and Marshall McLuhan. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories of media and auditory culture, Joseph L. Clarke reveals how architecture has impacted the ways we continue to listen to, talk about, and creatively manipulate sound in the physical environment.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture.

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Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite, "A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History Of 309" (UP of Florida, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Told in personal interviews, A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309 (University Press of Florida, 2021) is the collective story of a punk community in an unlikely town and region, a hub of radical counterculture that drew artists and musicians from throughout the conservative South and earned national renown. The house at 309 6th Avenue has long been a crossroads for punk rock, activism, veganism, and queer culture in Pensacola, a quiet Gulf Coast city at the border of Florida and Alabama. In this book from Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite, residents of 309 narrate the colorful and often comical details of communal life in the crowded and dilapidated house over its 30-year existence. Each voice adds to the picture of a lively community that worked together to provide for their own needs while making a positive, lasting impact on their surrounding area. Together, these participants show that punk is more than music and teenage rebellion. It is about alternatives to standard narratives of living, acceptance for the marginalized in a rapidly changing world, and building a sense of family from the ground up.

Learn more about the 309 Punk Project here.

Scott Satterwhite is a historian, educator, and journalist who teaches writing and literature at the University of West Florida.

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Mike Dines et al., "The Punk Reader: Research Transmissions from the Local and the Global" (Intellect, 2019)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Intellect’s Global Punk Series (2019-present) has produced edited collections of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work into local, national, global, and trans-global punk scenes. Series editors, Russ Bestley, Mike Dines, Alistair “Gords” Gordon, and Paula Guerra discuss the inception, creation, and production of the series in this New Books Network Interview. In addition to the punk series, they discuss the Punk Scholars Network, additional books on punk coming out on the imprint, and DIY Academic publishing. Volumes 1 and 2 of the series are currently available and the next two titles will be out this fall. Scholars interested in participating in the series or learning more about the PSN can contact Dines (M.Dines@mdx.ac.uk) or Bestley (r.bestley@lcc.arts.ac.uk).

The Punk Reader: Research Transmissions from the Local and the Global (2019) is the first edited volume to explore and critically interrogate punk culture in relation to contemporary, radicalized globalization. Documenting disparate international punk scenes, including Mexico, China, Malaysia and Iran.

Trans-Global Punk Scenes (2021) brings together contributors from a range of disciplines to examine the global influence of punk in the new millennium, with a focus on punk demographics, the evolution of subcultural punk styles, and the notion of punk identity across cultural and geographic boundaries. International in scope and analytical in perspective, the chapters offer insight into punk scenes in New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Ireland, South Africa, Mexico, the UK and US, Siberia and the Philippines.

Punk Identities, Punk Utopias: Global Punk and Media (December 2021) This new volume in the acclaimed Global Punk series extends the critical inquiry to reflect broader social, political, and technological concerns impacting punk scenes around the world, with international contributors, ranging through topics from digital technology and new media to gender, ethnicity, identity, and representation.

Punk! Las Américas Edition (December 2021) This book challenges the dominant vision of punk – particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism – by analyzing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of 'America', a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes and despairs of late twentieth and early twenty-first-century experience. Compiling academic essays and punk paraphernalia (interviews, zines, poetry, and visual segments) into a single volume, the book seeks to explore punk life through its multiple registers, through vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays, and underground literary expression.

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Anne Bogart, "The Art of Resonance" (Methuen Drama, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Anne Bogart's The Art of Resonance (Methuen Drama, 2021) locates the essence of theatre in the experience of resonant vibration among performers and between performers and audience members. The point of art, Bogart argues, is not to express oneself, but rather to create the conditions for "re-sounding," a process that requires both fully engaged performers and a fully engaged audience. Bogart draws on examples from music to physics to neuroscience in a book of essays that is animated by the same restless curiosity that characterizes her ground-breaking directing. This is a book for anyone interested in the profound question of why we are drawn to the theatre both as artists and as audiences.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Panayotis F. League, "Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Oct 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2021) explores the legacy of the Great Catastrophe—the death and expulsion from Turkey of 1.5 million Greek Christians following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922—through the music and dance practices of Greek refugees and their descendants over the last one hundred years. The book draws extensively on original ethnographic research conducted in Greece (on the island of Lesvos in particular) and in the Greater Boston area, as well as on the author’s lifetime immersion in the North American Greek diaspora. Through analysis of handwritten music manuscripts, homemade audio recordings, and contemporary live performances, Dr. Panayotis League traces the routes of repertoire and style over generations and back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, investigating the ways that the particular musical traditions of the Anatolian Greek community have contributed to their understanding of their place in the global Greek diaspora and the wider post-Ottoman world.

Panayotis League is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Director of the Center for Music of the Americas at Florida State University.

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Shayna Maskell, "Politics as Sound: The Washington, DC, Hardcore Scene, 1978-1983" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Washington, DC is known as the birthplace of hardcore punk. The raw, innovative, new sound coming out of the nation’s capital in the late 1970s is examined in Shayna Maskell’s Politics as Sound: The Washington, DC, Hardcore Scene, 1978-1983 (U Illinois Press, 2021). Maskell examines the DC hardcore scene between 1978 and 1983, focusing on the bands Bad Brains, Minor Threat, State of Alert (S.OA.), Government Issue (G.I.), and Faith. She explores the culturally, historical, and political impact of DC as the site for the emergence of hardcore punk. A brief history of Washington DC situates the scene in a broader cultural narrative that moves beyond just the music’s aesthetics. Focusing on race, class, and gender in the hardcore scene and specifically on the ways in which the scene embodied and embraced white, middle-class masculinity, Maskell presents the complicated and at times contradictory representations of these signifiers that were born out of hardcore. Maskell uses interviews with participants, albums, and ephemera—zines, posters, flyers—to document and analyze this historical moment. Maskell's work is a strong examination of hardcore and its broader impact in the punk subculture, especially when it intersects with race, class, and gender.

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J. P. M. Drury and S. A. M. Drury, "Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical" (Peter Lang, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Hamilton: An American Musical made its record-breaking Broadway debut in 2015—but the musical has reached far beyond typical Broadway audiences to pave a path into political discourse, pop culture, classroom curriculums, and the broader conversation about contemporary American politics. What led to this chain reaction of popularity, and how does it continue to influence these cultural and political dynamics? Jeffery and Sara Mehltretter Drury work to answer these questions using the tools of rhetorical criticism by bringing together a collection of essays in their book, Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical (Peter Lang, 2021). This volume is part of the Frontiers in Political Communication series at Peter Lang Publishers—a book series that aims to produce timely scholarship at the very cutting edge of political communication, emphasizing “how citizens, governments, and the media interact is the communication process.” Dr. Sara Mehltretter Drury is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric, and the Director of Democracy & Public Discourse at Wabash College. Dr. Jeffery Mehltretter Drury is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Wabash College. Their combined expertise has helped to produce an edited volume that invites the reader to join the deep analysis of the musical Hamilton.

The book is structured around three major themes in the realm of rhetorical criticism: public memory, rhetoric and social identity, rhetoric of democracy and social change. Each section of the book presents multiple interpretations of the musical in order to present new perspectives in understanding Hamilton’s relevance to politics and culture. Public memory centers on the narrative concepts of Hamilton and how it addresses American myths regarding the American Dream and the foundation of America. Rhetoric and Social Identity approaches race and gender within Hamilton, including the juxtaposition of portraying the nation’s white founders as people of color on stage. This section examines the musical’s accessibility to communities across America to discuss both historical and modern-day political conflicts. Rhetoric of Democracy and Social Change evaluates Hamilton’s influence in contemporary politics in how it normalizes political debate by humanizing historical political figures. By utilizing academic theories and analyzing multifaceted aspects of the musical, Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: An American Musical welcomes a variety of arguments to encourage its readers to engage in the ideas, arguments, and representation of American history in a contemporary context.

Shaina Boldt assisted with this podcast.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Franz Nicolay, "Someone Should Pay for Your Pain" (Gibson House Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Franz Nicolay's Someone Should Pay for Your Pain (Gibson House Press, 2021) is a moving, funny, and sometimes brutal novel about the life of a touring musician. Rudy Pauver is a punk-turned-singer-songwriter now roughly ten years past his peak. He draws a small but steady crowd in bars and venues far from the beaten track, all while enduring the thundering success of his one-time protege Ryan Orland. Nicolay brings his decades of experience as a musician to this novel, which teems with perfect tiny details of the rigors of touring. This is a coming of middle age story for anyone who's ever wondered what goes on in the van during the long stretches between the glamorous heights of a musician's life.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Mary Gauthier, "Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting" (St. Martin's Essentials, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day.

Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn’t until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination.

In Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting (St. Martin's Essentials, 2021), Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together.

The Associated Press named Mary Gauthier one of the best songwriters of her generation. Her album Rifles & Rosary Beads was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Folk Album and Record of the Year by the Americana Music Association. Her songs have been recorded by dozens of artists, including Boy George, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Bettye Lavette, Kathy Mattea, Amy Helm and Candi Staton. Saved by a Song is her first book. She lives in Nashville.

Morris Ardoin is author of STONE MOTEL – MEMOIRS OF A CAJUN BOY (2020, University Press of Mississippi), which was optioned for TV/Film development in 2021. A communications practitioner, his work has appeared in regional, national, and international media. He divides his time between New York City and Cornwallville, New York, where he does most of his writing. His blog, Parenthetically Speaking, can be found at www.morrisardoin.com. Twitter: @morrisardoin

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Robin Wallace: Inspired By Beethoven

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Baylor University musicologist and the author of Hearing Beethoven Robin Wallace chats with Howard about the magic of Beethoven, weaving personal sentiments with professional insights to explore his unparalleled musical legacy.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Caseen Gaines, "Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way" (Sourcebooks, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 04:00:00 +0000

Caseen Gaines' Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Sourcebooks, 2021) is a rollicking, entertaining, and fascinating cultural history of the 1921 Broadway musical Shuffle Along. Created by Black writers and composers and performed by an all-Black cast, Shuffle Along was one of the early cultural milestones of the Harlem Renaissance, not least because it launched the career of Josephine Baker. While it was beloved in its time, the humor of Shuffle Along came to be seen as offensive in subsequent decades, and it has not been staged in its original form since it closed almost 100 years ago. Gaines makes a compelling case for Shuffle Along's place in the American musical theatre canon as a flawed but inspired work of Black creativity.

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Janaki Bakhle, "Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition" (Oxford UP, 2005)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Janaki Bakhle's book Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (Oxford UP, 2005) is a provocative account of the development of modern national culture in India using classical music as a case study. The author demonstrates how the emergence of an “Indian” cultural tradition reflected colonial and exclusionary practices, particularly the exclusion of Muslims by the Brahmanic elite, which occurred despite the fact that Muslims were the major practitioners of the Indian music that was installed as a “Hindu” national tradition. This book lays bare how a nation’s imaginings—from politics to culture—reflect rather than transform societal divisions.

Dr. Pankaj Jain is a Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at FLAME University, where he is heading the Indic Studies Initiative in the FLAME School of Liberal Education.

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Patricia Bickers, "The Ends of Art Criticism" (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Crisis? What Crisis? At a time where there are repeated claims of the impending demise of art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2021) dispel these myths by arguing that the lack of a single dominant voice in criticism is not, as some believe, a weakness, but a strength, allowing previously marginalised voices and new global and political perspectives to come to the fore.

Patricia Bickers speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about her time as the editor of Art Monthly, the changing role of art criticism, the politics of speaking and writing about art, the art school, the relationship between artists and critics, the academicisation of critical discourse, the relationship between art history and criticism, and.. the art of the interview.

Some of the works mentioned in the conversation:

The Freeze exhibitions
That Jerry Saltz tweet
Richard Serra, Weight and Measure
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Black Trans Archive
Pilvi Takala, The Trainee
Cameron Rowland, 3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73
The Art Monthly Talking Art anthology of artist interviews: Volume 1, Volume 2

A bonus episode with an extra 20 minutes from the conversation is available on Pierre’s website.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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Angela Williams, "Hip Hop Harem: Women, Rap and Representation in the Middle East" (Peter Lang, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Although hip hop culture has widely been acknowledged as a global phenomenon that has spread far beyond its roots in American African-Caribbean-Latinx cultures, there are few studies that have examined the participation of women in global hip hop, and even fewer that examine the reception of female artists by other women. Angela Williams's book Hip Hop Harem: Women, Rap and Representation in the Middle East (Peter Lang, 2020) explores the social reception of seven prominent female rappers from the region: Shadia Mansour (Palestine), Malikah (Lebanon), Soultana (Morocco), Soska (Egypt), Myam Mahmoud (Egypt), Amani (Yemen), and Justina (Iran), who use their music and personal styles to give voice to themes of self-determination and liberation within their own lives.

Easily accessibly by undergraduates, Hip Hop Harem is an important work that allows Middle Eastern Muslim women to participate in knowledge creation about themselves in the western academic tradition, rooted in Third Wave Feminism and post-colonial theory.

Christopher S Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas.

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Mark A. Johnson, "Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. Among many forms of resistance, African Americans used their musical and theatrical talents to challenge white supremacy, attain economic opportunity, and transcend segregation. In Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932 (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), Dr. Mark A. Johnson argues that African Americans, especially performers, retooled negative stereotypes and segregation laws to their advantage. From 1877 to 1932, African Americans spoke at public rallies, generated enthusiasm with music, linked party politics to the memory of the Civil War, honored favorable candidates, and openly humiliated their opposition.

Dr. Mark A. Johnson is Lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

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Malcolm James, "Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, introduces the concept of sonic intimacy to think through the social, cultural, and political importance of three key moments in the history of British music. The book blends the history of music, society, and technology to show the moments of community and resistance fostered by the vibe of sound systems and the hype of Jungle Pirate Radio, along with the advent of new modes of engagement fostered by Grime on YouTube. With important implications for the future of critical scholarship, as well as our current cultural context, the book is essential reading for cultural studies and social science scholars, as well as for anyone interested in music and culture.

Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art.

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Diana Deutsch, “Believing Your Ears: Examining Auditory Illusions” (Open Agenda, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Aug 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Believing Your Ears: Examining Auditory Illusions is based on an extensive filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at UC San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music. This conversation provides behind the scenes insights into her discovery of a large number of auditory illusions, including the so-called Octave Illusion, which concretely illustrate how what we think we’re hearing is often quite different from the actual sounds that are hitting our eardrums.

Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Joseph Curtin, “The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled” (Open Agenda, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and master violinmaker and acoustician Joseph Curtin, recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. This in-depth conversation explores Curtin’s long quest to characterize the sound of a Stradivari violin and the rigorous series of double-blind tests he and his colleagues developed to probe whether or not professional musicians can really tell the difference between a Stradivari and a modern violin. The conversation also covers violin acoustics and how Joseph Curtin marries acoustic science to the art of violin making and merges time-honoured techniques with new materials and design.

Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Jessica Hopper, "The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic" (MCD x Fsg Originals, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Throughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examined women recording and producing music, in all genres, through an intersectional feminist lens. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (MCD x Fsg Originals, 2021) features oral histories of bands like Hole and Sleater Kinney, interviews with the women editors of 1970s-era Rolling Stone, and intimate conversations with iconic musicians such as Björk, Robyn, and Lido Pimienta. Hopper journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl's empowering insurgence; decamps to Gary, Indiana, on the eve of Michael Jackson's death; explodes the grunge-era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love; and examines the rise of emo. The collection also includes profiles and reviews of some of the most-loved, and most-loathed, women artists making music today: Fiona Apple, Kacey Musgraves, M.I.A., Miley Cyrus, Lana Del Rey.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Pablo Palomino, "The Invention of Latin American Music" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Pablo Palomino's The Invention of Latin American Music (Oxford UP, 2020) reconstructs the transnational history of the category of Latin American music during the first half of the twentieth century, from a longer perspective that begins in the nineteenth century and extends the narrative until the present. It analyzes intellectual, commercial, state, musicological, and diplomatic actors that created and elaborated this category. It shows music as a key field for the dissemination of a cultural idea of Latin America in the 1930s. It studies multiple music-related actors such as intellectuals, musicologists, policymakers, popular artists, radio operators, and diplomats in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and different parts of Europe. Palomino proposes a regionalist approach to Latin American and global history, by showing individual nations as both agents and result of transnational forces—imperial, economic, and ideological. The author argues that Latin America is the sedimentation of over two centuries of regionalist projects, and studies the place of music regionalism in that history. The book will be published in Spanish in 2021 by Fondo de Cultura Económica as La invención de la música latinoamericana."

Patricio Simonetto a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of the Americas (University College London).

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Cynthia J. Becker, "Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity Through Music and Visual Culture" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

For more than thirteen centuries, caravans transported millions of enslaved people from Africa south of the Sahara into what is now the Kingdom of Morocco. Today there are no museums, plaques, or monuments that recognize this history of enslavement, but enslaved people and their descendants created the Gnawa identity that preserves this largely suppressed heritage. This pioneering book describes how Gnawa emerged as a practice associated with Blackness and enslavement by reviewing visual representation and musical traditions from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Cynthia J. Becker addresses the historical consciousness of subaltern groups and how they give Blackness material form through modes of dress, visual art, religious ceremonies, and musical instruments in performance. She examines what it means to self-identify as Black in Morocco (a country typically associated with the Middle East and the Arab world), especially during this time of increased contemporary African migration, which has made Blackness even more visible. Her case studies draw on archival material and on her extended research in the city of Essaouira, site of the wildly popular Gnawa World Music Festival. Becker shows that Gnawa spirit possession ceremonies express the marginalization associated with enslavement and allow these unique communities to move toward healing, even as the mass-marketing of Gnawa music has resulted in some Gnawa practitioners engaging Blackness to claim legitimacy and spiritual power.

This book challenges the framing of Africa’s cultural history into “sub-Saharan” versus “North African” or Islamic versus non-Islamic categories. Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity Through Music and Visual Culture (U Minnesota Press, 2020) complicates how we think about the institution of slavery and its impact on North African religious and social institutions, and readers will better understand and appreciate the role of Africans in shaping global forces, including religious institutions such as Islam.

This interview is part of an NBN special series on “Mobilities and Methods.”

Cynthia J. Becker is associate professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. She is the author of Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity. Her writing has been published in many journals and edited volumes, including Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa.

Alize Arıcan is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University's Center for Cultural Analysis. She is an anthropologist whose research focuses on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration in Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has been featured in Current Anthropology, City & Society, Radical Housing Journal, and entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

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Andrew F. Jones, "Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Music from East Asia has recently been making its way round the world on waves created and mediated by new technologies and global interconnections. This may seem like something very novel, but as Andrew Jones shows in Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s (U Minnesota Press, 2020), popular music from this region – and here specifically varieties of Chinese music – has been riding revolutionary technological and socioeconomic currents for a long time.

Events during the 1960s, that quintessentially musical decade, prove this, and Jones’ book asks the key questions about genre and periodisation which help us understand whether there was a ‘global 60s’, while also examining the geopolitical currents connecting and dividing Taiwan, China and Hong Kong at this time. The book is thus not only a rich source of insights into stars such as Grace Chan, Teresa Teng and Taiwanese folk troubadour Chen Da, but also offers a whole framework for understanding the shifts in globalisation and communication which continue to shape our soundscape today.

Ed Pulford is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups.

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Kate Kennedy, "Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney" (Princeton UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

The First World War poet and composer Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) spent the last fifteen years of his life confined in a Kent mental hospital before dying prematurely of tuberculosis. How good was Gurney's war poetry, and has his music stood the test of time? Why did try to re-write Shakespeare's plays? How far do recently uncovered archives transform our understandings both of Ivor Gurney's troubled life and his remarkable work?

Kate Kennedy of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing discusses her ground-breaking biography of Ivor Gurney Dweller in Shadows (Princeton 2021) with Duncan McCargo, in an unusual podcast that includes readings of his poetry, and two specially recorded examples of his music. The podcast opens and closes with Kate Kennedy (cello) and Simon Over (piano) performing Gurney's song Sleep. We also hear Simon accompany Dominic Bevan as he sings Severn Meadows, a rare example of Gurney setting his own words to music.

Rare treats lie in store for the listener.

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Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, "Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Brooke McCorkle Okazaki’s Shonen Knife’s Happy Hour, part of the 33 1/3 music history and culture series, is a joyful romp through the career of the internationally successful Japanese trio, Shonen Knife. The book focuses on the intersection of food, gender, and music for these pioneers of what Okazaki calls “josei rock,” in other words, music by women in the Japanese scene that does not fit into heavily produced and marketed categories such as “girls bands” and “idols.” The book combines history, musical and lyrical exegesis, visual analysis, and interviews to create a layered portrait of an influential and important artist. What we learn is that Shonen Knife is in many ways a study in contrasts and deliberately clashing aesthetics, mixing cute and cool, playing with gender roles and consumerism, bending genres, appropriating Orientalist stereotypes, and singing in English. As Okazaki shows, Shonen Knife’s music, videos, and on-stage personality manage to be subversive and, in a word, punk. As the title of chapter 5 indicates, this is a book about “food, music, and transnational flow.”

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese and East Asian history in the Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University.

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Ruth Ahnert et al., "The Network Turn: Changing Perspectives in the Humanities" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

We live in a networked world. Online social networking platforms and the World Wide Web have changed how society thinks about connectivity. Because of the technological nature of such networks, their study has predominantly taken place within the domains of computer science and related scientific fields. But arts and humanities scholars are increasingly using the same kinds of visual and quantitative analysis to shed light on aspects of culture and society hitherto concealed. Written by Ruth Ahnert, Sebastian Ahnert, Nicole Coleman, and Scott Weingart, The Network Turn: Changing Perspectives in the Humanities (Cambridge UP, 2021) contends that networks are a category of study that cuts across traditional academic barriers, uniting diverse disciplines through a shared understanding of complexity in our world. Moreover, we are at a moment in time when it is crucial that arts and humanities scholars join the critique of how large-scale network data and advanced network analysis are being harnessed for the purposes of power, surveillance, and commercial gain.

Ruth Ahnert is Professor of Literary History and Digital Humanities, Queen Mary University of London.

Sebastian Ahnert is University Lecturer, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.

Nicole Coleman is Digital Research Architect, Stanford University Libraries.

Scott Weingart is Director of the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Notre Dame.

Katie McDonough is Senior Research Associate, The Alan Turing Institute.

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Candace Bailey, "Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Dr. Candace Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens of these musical pursuits, uncovering the ways that music's transmission, education, circulation, and repertory help us understand its meaning in the women's culture of the time. Bailey pays particular attention to the space between music as an ideal accomplishment—part of how people expected women to perform gentility—and a real practice—what women actually did. At the same time, her ethnographic reading of binder’s volumes, letters and diaries, and a wealth of other archival material informs new and vital interpretations of women’s places in southern culture. A fascinating collective portrait of women's artistic and personal lives, Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-century South (University of Illinois Press, 2021) challenges entrenched assumptions about nineteenth-century music and the experiences of the southern women who made it.

Dr. Candace Bailey is professor of music at North Carolina Central University.

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Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barrett, "Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

In Punks in Peoria: Making a Scene in the American Heartland (University of Illinois, 2021) Jonathan Wright and Dawson Barret explore do-it-yourself scene built by Peoria punks, performers, and scenesters in the 1980s and 1990s. Peoria, Illinois the quintessential Midwest town, where "if it could play in Peoria, it could play anywhere," was fertile ground for the boredom- and anger-fueled fury of punk rock. From fanzines to indie record shops to renting the VFW hall for an all-ages show, Peoria's punk culture reflected the movement elsewhere, but the region's conservatism and industrial decline offered a richer-than-usual target environment for rebellion. Eyewitness accounts take readers into hangouts and long-lost venues, while interviews with the people who were there trace the ever-changing scene and varied fortunes of local legends like Caustic Defiance, Dollface, and Planes Mistaken for Stars. What emerges is a sympathetic portrait of a youth culture in search of entertainment but just as hungry for community—the shared sense of otherness that, even for one night only, could unite outsiders and discontents under the banner of music. Punks in Peoria examines the rich history of this punk scene, including a soundtrack to listen along.

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Benjamin Steege, "An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

“What are we thinking about when we think about music in non-naturalistic terms?” asks Benjamin Steege—Associate Professor of Music Theory, Columbia University—in his new book An Unnatural Attitude: Phenomenology in Weimar Musical Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2021). This deceptively subtle question exercised the minds of some of Europe's most delicate musical thinkers at a time of great social and political upheaval, and continues to be of interest to musicologists today. Putting a little-discussed set of German-language primary sources into historical context (among others, the writing of Günther Anders (né Stern), Gustav Güldenstein, and Herbert Eimert) and expertly introducing them to an Anglophone audience, Steege explains the shared interests of a post–World War I constellation of musical thinkers whose disinterest in psychological and music-historical orthodoxy coalesces into a vital, if not entirely homogeneous, program for the phenomenology of music. Enriched by convincing music-analytical examples, careful handling of philosophical terms of art, and an ethical sensitivity not unlike that of its historical interlocutors, Steege's book—and the writers whose work it examines—is sure to draw attention from music historians and historians of philosophy alike, who will question the relative unfamiliarity of its subject matter and set out to reach out across this gap to explore the models of historical listening it offers.

Eamonn Bell (@_eamonnbell) is a postdoctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin in the Department of Music. His current research project examines the story of the compact disc from a viewpoint between musicology and media studies.

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Jeanne Pitre Soileau, "Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children's Folklore and Play" (UP of Mississippi, 2016)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Children’s folklore is simultaneously a conservator of tradition and a site for creativity and innovation. For over five decades, Dr. Jeanne Pitre Soileau documented and collected the jokes, chants, rhymes, and games that that she observed on school playgrounds throughout her career as a public school teacher in southern Louisiana. From the early days of integration to the first decade of the 21st century, Dr. Soileau has taken note of the evolving forms in which children’s play take and its reflections of contemporary times. Her book, Yo’ Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Lousiana Children’s Folklore and Play (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), examines forty-four years of children’s folklore and play collected in southern Louisiana schools. The book has won the 2018 Chicago Folklore Prize for excellence in folklore scholarship and the 2018 Opie Prize for the best published scholarly book on children’s folklore.

In this podcast, we hear about Dr. Soileau’s early fascination with the sounds of children chanting and handclapping at Louisiana school playground and her subsequent efforts to collect and document them and mores. She shares the playground jokes she heard, the “dozens,” an African American insult ritual with specific patterns with “clean” and “dirty” versions. We also discuss chants and ring games that were played among girls, some of which had origins from the late 19th century, but still expressed expectations of womanhood. The rhymes and playing that children engaged with were often reflective of current trends and popular culture. While the 21st century saw the rise of electronic media in the play of children, traditional rings games and chants still persisted on the playground. Such inventions did not replace these familiar games, but simply added to them, allowing for a different type of creativity and play for children.

Dr. Jeanne Soileau was born in New Orleans and taught public school and university classes in Louisiana for forty-seven years. Though retired, she continues to collect and study children’s folklore. Her upcoming publication What The Children Said: Child Lore of Southern Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi, 2021) will explore children’s play and its influence on learning about race, history, and sexuality.

Nancy Yan received her PhD in folklore from The Ohio State University and taught First Year Writing, Comparative Studies, and Asian American studies for several years before returning to organizing work.

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Assaf Shelleg, "Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project" (Oxford UP, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project (Oxford UP, 2020) offers the first in-depth study of the development of art music in Israel from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. In a bold and deeply researched account, author Assaf Shelleg explores the theological grammar of Zionism and its impact on the art music written by emigrant and native composers. He argues that Israeli art music, caught in the tension between a bibliocentric territorial nationalism on the one hand and the histories of deterritorialized Jewish diasporic cultures on the other, often features elements of both of these competing narratives. Even as composers critically engaged with the Zionist paradigm, they often reproduced its tropes and symbols, thereby creating aesthetic hybrids with 'theological stains.'

Drawing on newly uncovered archives of composers' autobiographical writings and musical sketches, Shelleg closely examines the aesthetic strategies that different artists used to grapple with established nationalist representations. As he puts the history of Israeli art music in conversation with modern Hebrew literature, he weaves a rich tapestry of Israeli culture and the ways in which it engaged with key social and political developments throughout the second half of the twentieth century. In analyzing Israeli music and literature against the backdrop of conflicts over territory, nation, and ethnicity, Theological Stains provides a revelatory look at the complex relationship between art and politics in Israel.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com.

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Caroline Seymour-Jorn, "Creating Spaces of Hope: Young Artists and the New Imagination in Egypt" (AU in Cairo Press, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 04:00:00 +0000

It is now just over a decade since protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square started Egypt's chapter in the events of the Arab Spring. Much has been made in western criticism of art and culture's role in the revolution, but the everyday cultural production of studio artists, graffiti artists, musicians, and writers since has attracted less attention. How have artists responded personally and artistically to the political transformation ? What has social role of art been in these periods of transition and uncertainty? What are the aesthetic shifts and stylistic transformations present in the contemporary Egyptian art world?

Caroline Seymour-Jorn speaks with Pierre d'Alancaisez about her many years of research in Cairo that goes beyond the current understandings of creative work solely as a form of resistance or political commentary, providing a more nuanced analysis of creative production in the Arab world. Caroline suggests that young artists like Hany Rashed or The Choir Project have turned their creative focus increasingly inward, to examine issues having to do with personal relationships, belonging and inclusion, and maintaining hope in harsh social, political and economic circumstances.

Caroline Seymour-Jorn is professor of comparative literature and Arabic translation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the author of Cultural Criticism in Egyptian Women's Writing, 2011.

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Katherine K. Preston, "George Frederick Bristow" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

George Frederick Bristow, born in 1825, was a significant musical figure in the United States from the 1850s until his death in 1898. Now, almost one hundred years after his birth, Katherine Preston has just written his first biography--George Frederick Bristow (University of Illinois Press, 2020)-- as part of the American Composers Series.

Bristow led a professional life that today’s classical musicians would surely recognize. He patched together a living from performing, composing, conducting, teaching, church jobs, and even some business ventures and celebrity endorsements. He composed in every major genre of the period and wrote "Rip Van Winkle," the first grand opera by an American composer. Preston situates his life within the booming musical economy in New York and his music within the critical and artistic currents of the nineteenth century, while illuminating the little-known creative and performance culture that Bristow helped define and create.

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Richard Thompson, "Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975" (Algonquin Books, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Richard Thompson's Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975 (Algonquin Books, 2021) gives fans of his music a tale as rollicking and entertaining as the reels and ballads he recorded with the band Fairport Convention. Fairport Convention was one of the central bands in the British Folk Rock scene, blending traditional English songs and melodies with the energy and irreverence of rock and roll. Thompson's memoir of his time with the band discusses the process of recording their classic albums, as well as run-ins with figures like Buck Owens, Nick Drake, and Jimi Hendrix. He also discusses his childhood in post-war London, his relationship with his then-wife and collaborator Linda Thompson, and his search for spiritual purpose, which he eventually found in Sufi Islam.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Mark Mordue, "Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave" (HarperCollins, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave (HarperCollins, 2020) is the first volume of a long-awaited, near-mythical biography of Nick Cave by award-winning writer, Mark Mordue.

A beautiful, profound and poetic biography of the formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story. This is a portrait of the artist as, first, a boy, and then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

As well as a powerfully compelling biography of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is a fascinating social and cultural biography, a vivid and evocative rendering of a time and place, from the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta, to the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet and the manic, wild energy of nights at the Crystal Ballroom.

Mark Mordue is an award-winning Australian writer, journalist, editor, and teacher. In addition to Boy On Fire, his new biography of the young Nick Cave, Mark is the author of Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip, a roadtrip memoir, and Darlinghurst Funeral Rites, a poetry collection. Mark is co-winner of the 2014 Peter Blazey Fellowship, which recognises an outstanding manuscript in the fields of biography, autobiography or life, and is winner of the 2010 Pascall Prize: Australian Critic of the Year. His work has consistently appeared across mainstream, alternative and literary publications. Mark has also been the editor of three national magazines in Australia: Stiletto in the 1980s; Australian Style in the 1990s; and Neighbourhood Paper from 2017 to 2019. His poetry, fiction, essays and memoir work have appeared in Australian literary journals including HEAT, Meanjin, Griffith Review, and Overland. Mark teaches at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Dr Matthew Thompson is a literary nonfiction specialist who recently moved from rural Australia to the Pacific Northwest of America. He is the author of MAYHEM, Running With The Blood God, and My Colombian Death. For more information visit https://matthewthompsonwriting.com/

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David Arditi, "Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

How does the record industry work? In Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), David Arditi, Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at University of Texas at Arlington, analyses the ideology of getting signed and getting a record contract to show the alienating and exploitative effects of the record industry on musicians and the making of music. The book blends ethnographic fieldwork with critical theoretical analysis, looking at a range of issues in music, from the ‘strained solidarity’ of being in a band, the negative impact of competition and competitiveness in the music industry and in society, to longstanding issues about copyright. The book is essential reading across arts, humanities and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music today.

Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art.

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Claudrena N. Harold, "When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras" (U Illinois Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel, When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras (U Illinois Press, 2020), focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured the music. Harold details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music, and revisits the debates within the community over groundbreaking recordings and gospel's incorporation of rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, and other popular forms. At the same time, she details how sociopolitical and cultural developments like the Black Power Movement and the emergence of the Christian Right shaped both the art and attitudes of African American performers. Weaving insightful analysis into a collective biography of gospel icons, When Sunday Comes explores the music's essential place as an outlet for African Americans to express their spiritual and cultural selves.

Adam McNeil is a third year Ph.D. in History student at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

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Douglas W. Shadle, "Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony" (Oxford UP, 2021)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Most music students have been taught that the New World Symphony was the first piece of classical music written in an American national style which Antonín Dvorák invented when he utilized influences from Black music in the second movement. The impression most textbooks leave is that this innovation was instantly approved by composers and critics alike, and that American classical music was born through Dvorak’s intervention. Like most myths, this bears only a slight resemblance to the truth. Douglas W. Shadle sets the record straight in Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony (Oxford University Press 2021). He tells the story of the symphony’s genesis and the controversy among critics and listeners over Dvorák’s ideas. Most importantly he delves deeply into the complex interactions between race and music that define the New World symphony and American musical identity.

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W. Patrick McCray, "Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture" (MIT Press, 2020)

caleb@newbooksnetwork.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Artwork as opposed to experiment? Engineer versus artist? We often see two different cultural realms separated by impervious walls. But some fifty years ago, the borders between technology and art began to be breached. In Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (MIT Press, 2020), W. Patrick McCray shows how in this era, artists eagerly collaborated with engineers and scientists to explore new technologies and create visually and sonically compelling multimedia works. This art emerged from corporate laboratories, artists' studios, publishing houses, art galleries, and university campuses. Many of the biggest stars of the art world—Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneemann, and John Cage—participated, but the technologists who contributed essential expertise and aesthetic input often went unrecognized.

Coming from diverse personal backgrounds, this roster of engineers and scientists includes Frank J. Malina, the American rocket-pioneer turned kinetic artist who launched the art-science journal Leonardo, and Swedish-born engineer Billy Klüver, who established the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T). At schools ranging from MIT to Caltech, engineers engaged with such figures as artist Gyorgy Kepes and celebrity curator Maurice Tuchman.

Today, we are in the midst of a new surge of corporate and academic promotion of projects and programs combining art, technology, and science. Making Art Work reveals how artists and technologists have continually constructed new communities in which they exercise imagination, display creative expertise, and pursue commercial innovation.

Mathew Jordan is a university instructor, funk musician, and clear writing enthusiast. I study science and its history, in the hope that understanding the past can help us make sense of the present and build a better future.

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New Books in Music

Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

Christopher Freeburg, "Soul: A Brief History of Black Cultural Life" (Yale UP, 2026)

Ashley Kahn, "Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland" (Atria Books, 2026)

Erin Osmon, "Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

Robyn Hitchcock, "Stranded in the Future" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Musical Pripetshik: Lyrics and Melodies of Traditional Yiddish Folksongs

Mhoze Chikowero, "The Military Entertainment Complex: Chimurenga Afrosonic Making of Zimbabwe" (MIT Press, 2026)

Scott Peeples, "How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan" (Reaktion, 2026)

Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture

Christopher Campo-Bowen, "Visions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Elijah Wald, "Rock ‘N’ Roll: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Stacey Copeland, "Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Yiddish Tangos and Klezmer Mambos

Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill, "Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story" (Da Capo, 2026)

George Grella, "Minimalist Music" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Alexandre Frenette, "Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy" (Princeton UP, 2026)

A.D. Carson, "Owning My Masters (Mastered): The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna

Philip Norman, "Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles" (Da Capo Press, 2026)

Introducing Periodically: A UC Press Journals Podcast with Journals Director David Famiano

Hamsa Stainton and Anna Lee White, "Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras" (Routledge, 2026)

Street Level: HUD at 60

Olivia Rodrigo Blends Past and Present in Her New Album

James O'Leary, "The Middlebrow Musical: Between Broadway and Opera in 1940s America" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Anna Harwell Celenza, "On the Record: Music that Changed America (Norton, 2026)

Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)

Ginger Dellenbaugh, "Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

Mary R. Lanni, "Using Nursery Rhymes with Today’s Kids: Their Legacy and Evolution" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Andrea Zarafshon Moore, "Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory" (Fordham UP, 2025)

Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

Samuel Markind, "Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain" (JHU Press, 2025)

The YIVO Sound Archive at 40: A Celebration

Mary Lucia, " What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Nicholas Tochka, "The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson, "The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments" (Reaktion, 2026)

The Lost World of African American Cantors 1915–1953

Brook Flagg, "I Go There with You: The U2 Sites of Southern California, from Significant to Sacred" (Nine Criteria, 2025)

The Barton Brothers, Mickey Katz, and Others: Yiddish-English Bilingual Parody Songs

Daphne A. Brooks, "Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince" (Duke UP, 2026)

David Arditi, "Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok" (Anthem Press, 2026)

Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine" (U California Press, 2026)

Daniel Rachel, "This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika, and the Third Reich" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Marty Friedman with Jon Wiederhorn, "Dreaming Japanese" (Permuted Press, 2024)

Melissa Auf der Maur, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir" (DaCapo, 2026)

The 50th Anniversary Tour of Patti Smith's Horses: A Conversation with Caryn Rose

Martha Feldman, "Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome" (Zone Books, 2026)

Mike Huguenor, "Elvis Is Dead, I'm Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records" (Clash, 2026)

Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley

Podcast Intellectuals Podcast Panel #1 with Benjamen Walker and Fanny Gribenski

Austin McCoy, "Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made" (Atria/One Signal, 2026)

Ani DiFranco and Lauren Coyle Rosen, "The Spirit of Ani: Reflections on Spirituality, Feminism, Music, and Freedom" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Ailbhe Kenny, "Music Refuge: Living Asylum through Music" (Oxford UP, Press 2025)

Maurice Rafael Magaña, "Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico" (U California Press, 2020)

Michael Glover Smith, "Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think" (McNidder and Grace, 2026)

Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape" (UNC Press, 2023)

Paul Rees, "Raised on Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine and Payola - the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986" (De Capo, 2026)

Ian Gittins, "The Cure: A Perfect Dream" (Gemini Books, 2025)

Areum Jeong, "K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)

Hilary French, "Ballroom: A People’s History of Dancing" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

Bill Kopp, "What's the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums" (Hozac, 2025)

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: ﻿﻿Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

163* The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)

M. Hinds and J. Silverman, "Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black" (U Iowa Press, 2020)

Kay Dickinson, "Fernando: A Song by ABBA" (Duke UP, 2025)

Ben Ratliff, "Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening" (Graywolf Press, 2025)

Christopher Lynch, "Formulating Foster: Stephen C. Foster and the Creation of a National Musical Myth" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Lukas Foss: A "New American Music Series" Gallatin Lecture, April 15, 1982

Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)

"Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg" (Akashic Books, Ltd., 2016)

Rob Harvilla, "60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (Twelve, 2023)

Caitlin Vincent, "Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)

Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Andy Cowan, "B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop" (Headpress, 2023)

Jane Eisner, "Carole King: She Made the Earth Move" (Yale UP, 2025)

Max Brzezinski, "Under Pressure: A Song by David Bowie and Queen" (Duke UP, 2025)

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

Renee Lapp Norris, "Opera Parody Songs of Blackface Minstrels (1844–1860)" (A-R Editions, 2025)