#064: There Is So Much More To It
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.
Today in the newsletter: A big one! I’ve got the latest edition of the "Notes On Process" series, this time with hip-hop writer Yoh Phillips. Interviews with VICE’sTshepo Mokoena; Katie Craik, the mastermind behind a brilliant new podcast called Stand By Me; an impressive new music scholar named Will Robin; one of the backers behind the relaunch of Wax Poetics, David Holt; and Mike Hilleary, the author of a new book all about music journalism. Plus: Lots and lots of links to click on. But first…
A Platform I Can Get Behind
Notes On Process: Yoh Phillips
The second edition of the column Notes On Process is here! In case you missed it the first time around, the idea is simple: I invite a writer to a Google Doc where I’ve copy / pasted one of their pieces and added a bunch of comments with flattery, jokes, and questions. They reply to my queries, and then we provide you with a link to the doc where all of our marginalia is visible. I’m hoping to provide a window into the writing and editing process, so that folks can see how great writers think about their work. Today, I’ve got former DJBooth senior writer Yoh Phillips talking about his 2019 piece “From Kendrick Lamar to Nipsey Hussle: Becoming a Community Angel.” You can check out the Google Doc here.
What do you make of this new column? Is there another format you’d prefer? Is there a writer whose work you're eager to see dissected? Let me know by replying to this email.
Reading List
Francesca Zambello on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s love of opera
Kao Kalia Yang writes movingly about the impact of country music on her life as part of a refugee family
New York celebrated NYC rap with a huge collection of features and a list of 100 defining songs
Matthew Daddona writes about how a group of Colorado inmates came together to record an album
Shawn Reynaldo on why music journalism wasn’t built for this moment
Tim Jonze remembers NME writer Dele Fadele
Jennifer Mota on how interdependent Black and Latinx communities and heritages created hip-hop culture and reggaeton
Elijah C. Watson on whether hip-hop shows can survive during the pandemic
Brady Gerber interviews Paper Mag commissioning editor Kat Gillespie
Winston Cook-Wilson writes for Audobon about the birdsong compositions of John Luther Adams
Q&A: Tshepo Mokoena
Tshepo Mokoena is VICE's Editorial Director, EMEA. Up until March of this year, she was Editorial Director for VICE UK, and spent two years running Noisey UK’s team of writers. (Before her time at VICE, Tshepo was at the Guardian.) In this excerpt from our interview, Tshepo talks about where she sees music journalism heading in the next few years.
I won’t pretend to know for sure. But I feel we’re about to transition into a new understanding of the role and purpose of the music journalist. Beyond the safest staff jobs, and the most well-connected freelancers tapped into the last cushy commissioning budgets, I think we’re going to see writer numbers decrease for a while. I’m not convinced that a baby being born this week could grow up and live comfortably as a full-time music journalist in 30 years, in the way we understand the profession today. There will always be a role for clever, empathetic and hard-working creative thinkers, able to parlay an artist’s work into stories for the public. But those may not all be written stories in print, and they may not all be buoyed by ad sales.
What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?
I want to see more empathy, patience, understanding—and actually good jokes, where they’re appropriate. I loved managing the writers at Noisey UK, who could sit, open-hearted, with artists and inspire beautiful conversations. A shout out to Emma Garland, Daisy Jones, Ryan Bassil and Lauren O’Neill for the care they put into their interviews. Of course, I would also like to see the right level of respect given to Black American and Black British musicians and industry workers. They have gifted the world so many genres and ideas over the years, often looking on as their ingenuity is repackaged for white audiences by white artists. That madness needs to stop—it’s boring.
Read the full interview with Tshepo here.
Podcasts!
Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael will host a new NPR podcast about the interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration called Louder Than A Riot
Tidal’s Chief Content Officer Elliott Wilson talks with In Search of Sauce
Fluxblog’s Matthew Perpetua talks with Graphic Policy Radio about music and comics
Sound Expertise has an interesting conversation about Steve Reich and the politics of race with Sumanth Gopinath
Classical music radio host Garrett McQueen talks about his recent firing on the latest edition of TRILLOQUY
Sound & Vision devotes its latest episode, in the wake of the fall of Burger Records, to discussing how to prevent sexual abuse
The Current Rewind will return for its second season with the story of Minneapolis’s First Avenue
Song Exploder is becoming a Netflix series
Q&A: Katie Craik
There have been a lot of new podcasts lately, but Stan By Me is easily one of the best. Katie Craik is the mastermind, and she describes it thusly: “We get together an artist and one of their biggest fans (of their choice) to discuss their shared history together, mostly through the fans’ eyes. We hear about specific moments and events from both perspectives, and uncover the effects they’ve had on each other over the years.” It’s a simple premise, but the wit and warmth of this show already has me hooked. If you’re looking to listen, start with the first episode… where Katie is the fan, talking to The Hoosiers’ Irwin Sparkes. In this excerpt from our interview, Katie describes why she started Stan By Me.
I decided to start the podcast due to not seeing anything about fans I could relate to. It took me a while to finally get it going (like three years haha), as I was looking for someone like-minded to develop it with me, and after a couple of false starts, I finally found that person in Matthew Kent, who helped shape the concept and will be continuing to help out going forward too.
I think Stan By Me will reveal things about fandom and the artist's relationship with it that most people had no idea existed and didn’t realise was even possible. I’d been a huge fan of a band in my teens, ran the fanclub, went to every show, but mostly all you see on TV or described in articles is the usual screaming fangirls for One Direction or the Beatles… posters on the wall and merchandise collections… Everyone understands that, but there is so much more to it!
Read the full interview with Katie here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by freelance writer Jesse Locke.
White Riot tells the powerful story of punks organizing against the far right in late ‘70s London. The grassroots organization Rock Against Racism was initially galvanized by Eric Clapton’s hateful onstage rant in support of the Conservative minister Enoch Powell. Under the direction of founder Red Saunders, RAR picked up steam as an intersectional zine and live event series with chapters spreading across the country to curb the rising tide of discrimination.
Director Rubikah Shah pulls together an impressive mix of archival images and interviews with key figures such as Saunders, The Clash’s Topper Headon, dub hero Dennis Bovell, and Pervez Bilgrani of the South Asian punk band Alien Kulture. They share the story of how RAR grew in strength and solidarity against the National Front party. London’s police force proved whose side they were on, introducing flimsy charges, such as “loitering with intent to steal,” to disproportionately target people of colour. One of the film’s most absurd moments shows the NF launching their own zine in a transparent attempt to be down with the kids. “Hello, fellow punks.”
The documentary closes on a triumphal note, showcasing RAR’s most ambitious outdoor event: the Carnival Against Nazis. Boasting a mixed bill of reggae group Steel Pulse (who perform onstage in KKK robes), X-Ray Spex, the perpetually overlooked Tom Robinson Band, and The Clash, they drew in an audience of 100,000 in support of their cause. The National Front lost the 1979 election, but their spectre looms larger than ever today. White Riot proves that ordinary people have always had the power to fight back.
Q&A: William Robin
William Robin is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Maryland’s School of Music, he’s about to publish a book on Bang on a Can, has a newsletter called Industry, and hosts a podcast called Sound Expertise. Oh, and he just became a dad. (It’s a wonder he ever sleeps.) Like Stan By Me, Sound Expertise is one of a number of great podcasts that have kicked off in the past few months. In this excerpt from our interview, William explains what it’s all about.
I’ve been preoccupied for a long time now with the question of how to translate complex academic ideas about music in a way that they are more understandable to a general audience. I’ve found that when you ask the typical musicologist about what they do, they explain their research in a way that’s much more easy to understand than what you might read of their work in a journal article or monograph.
So that’s what the podcast is, in essence: I talk to musicologists, music theorists, and ethnomusicologists (and the occasional critic) about their research. We go in-depth, but you don’t need any advance training in anything to pick up on what we talk about. I think there are a lot of people out there, especially musicians, who are eager to learn about what’s going on in the academy but don’t know where to start: Sound Expertise is one place to do so.
Read the full interview with William here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
One of this week’s causes worth supporting comes from Will Robin.
I live in the DC suburbs; fortunately there is no cash bail in Washington, but since the spring I’ve been regularly donating to Black Lives Matter DC’s legal defense fund, and you should do so as well.
Can’t Wait To See The New Golden God Scene
Q&A: Wax Poetics
If you read the newsletter closely, you’ll no doubt have seen the crowdfunding campaign for a relaunch of Wax Poetics mentioned in last week’s edition. It’s one of my favorite magazines of all time—it opened my ears to countless artists, labels, and genres. To find out more about the relaunch, I sent some questions to David Holt, one of the people behind the new edition, who explained how it came about.
About two and half years ago, I found a selection of old [Wax Poetics] copies at home whilst sorting some records and wondered what happened to it. From there we got in touch with the original founders and built a relationship. We ended up releasing two issues in Europe, one fresh and one a collection of classic articles that was distributed by Rush Hour Records out of Amsterdam, which is where we are based now. These were really successful and during this process the founders approached us about purchasing Wax Poetics, so myself and my business partner Alex decided to push ahead and rebuild the platform. Our whole thing was about being as true to the original ethos as possible whilst developing it to be in line with the modern publishing industry. We will continue to work with the founding Editor Brian DiGenti, who becomes our Editor-in-Chief, to ensure we keep the same editorial approach and standards as its previous incarnation.
Read the full interview with David here.
Academic Stuff
The latest edition of Leonardo Music Journal is now live
Call For Papers: Sounds of the Pandemic is accepting submissions until the middle of October
Hyde Park Jazz Festival is hosting an online program called Jazz Kitchen: A Woman’s Place on October 8
Call For Proposals: Radio and the Sound of Modernism is accepting submissions for its one-day conference later this year
Sound Studies has published several new articles in the past few weeks
Q&A: Mike Hilleary
Mike Hilleary is author of the new book On the Record: Music Journalists on Their Lives, Craft, and Careers. The book is an oral history featuring more than 50 great music writers. You name ‘em, Mike probably talked to ‘em. Beyond the book, Mike is a freelancer whose writing has appeared in GQ, Pitchfork, and many more. In this excerpt from our interview, Mike offers a tip to anyone thinking about writing a book right now.
Just start doing it, especially now. The world is in such a weird state right now with so much uncertainty on a day-to-day basis, if there’s something you can concentrate your energy into, to give you a sense of direction and purpose, that can only be a good thing. I think in a lot of ways we’re ingrained growing up that if we want something or we want to do something, we constantly need to ask for permission. At this point, asking for permission should be the last thing you should be worrying about.
Read the full interview with Mike here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
One of this week’s causes worth supporting comes from Mike Hilleary.
Mental health is a huge thing for me. Having dealt with depression, anxiety, and OCD since my teens, I would encourage anyone willing to just be mindful that in these incredibly stressful times, just look and be aware of the people around you. Be there as a support system, and support the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Bits, Bobs
Controversial jazz critic Stanley Crouch has passed away
The first issue of New Feeling, a publication run by a co-operative of Canadian music journalists, is now online
This archive of James Hamilton’s columns for Record Mirror is a goldmine of early writing about dance music
Every edition of dance music fanzine Faith is available for free online
Classical music documentary show Now Hear This has returned for a second season
Stereogum’s compilation ended up on the Billboard charts
Leor Galil and Philip Montoro have won first place in the Music Writing category at the 2020 AAN Awards
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The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! ICYMI: my new day job is at uDiscover Music, a branded content online magazine owned by Universal Music. This newsletter is not affiliated or sponsored in any way by Universal, and any links that relate to the work of my department will be clearly marked. Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time…