#112: A Lot Of Ego There
A Lot Of Ego There
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. And if you're not already subscribed to the newsletter, you can do so at musicjournalisminsider.com.
Today in the newsletter: Interviews with entertainment reporter Tirhakah Love; opera fan Alison Kinney; and scholar Dan DiPiero, who's writing a book about improvisation. Plus! Jokes about my old friend Jeff Weiss, reading recommendations, and more! But first…
Having Edited Jeff Weiss… Can Confirm*
Source
Reading List
- Emma Garland talks with Dan Ozzi about his new book, Sellout: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994 – 2007)
- Kara Bodegon talks about music journalism during COVID
- Alex Pareene imagines what a James Bennet-led Rolling Stone might have looked like
- Jude Noel dives into the world of Soundcloud rap
- Ashley Hiruko and Isolde Raftery report on the sexual misconduct allegations against Ken Stringfellow of the Posies
- Leor Galil surveys 50 years of music writing at Chicago Reader
- Rebecca Jennings looks at what happens when your favorite thing goes viral
- Eamonn Forde explores the lucrative afterlives of music estates
- Jayson Buford pens a withering review of Rolling Loud Festival
- Eric Weisbard offers an unruly history of American music writing
Q&A: Tirhakah Love
Tirhakah Love is an entertainment reporter at The Daily Beast. He's previously been published in outlets like the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Los Angeles Times. He properly began his career, though, at MTV News, at a moment when it was focused more on longform writing. In this excerpt from our interview, Tirhakah explains how his approach has changed over the past few years.
I’ve gotten better at knowing how much I can actually get done with intense focus. I read a book a couple years back that a friend recommended to me called Deep Work, and it put me on to the idea of tracking how much I can get done in an hour, then two, and so on. I really internalized it and found that the amount of work I could get done in like 4-5 hours was enough to sustain a living. With the reporting gig, that’s shifted a little, just in the sense of having to constantly schedule interviews and stuff like that but, still, in terms of writing, I can get a lot done in a couple of hours.
The other major thing that’s shifted—and maybe this is a residual impact of my increased rate of production—I don’t put so much pressure on one individual piece. I used to get a little stuck in the idea that every piece needed to be some magnum opus; that it needed to showcase all of my talents and greatness or whatever. But that was bullshit, people weren’t even reading my work like that, and I’m not really sure they are now, ya know? A lot of ego there. I sorta sat back and thought to myself, I know I’m good, I know I’m getting better as long as I exercise this muscle as much as I can. Not everything has to read like fucking James Baldwin or, ya know, Greg Tate.
Read the full interview with Tirhakah here.
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Solid Point TBH
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Podcasts!
- Dr. Fredara Mareva Hadley talked about her research on Black churches on SoundLore: Folklore & Ethnomusicology
- Bent By Nature is a new podcast celebrating the influential KCRW DJ Deirdre O’Donoghue
- Twenty Thousand Hertz profiled a variety of movie, TV, and video game voice actors
- Will Robin discussed his book about Bang on a Can on New Books in Music
- Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder will host a three-part series for Atlas Obscura on how to craft a compelling interview-based podcast
Q&A: Alison Kinney
Alison Kinney is the author of the new book Avidly Reads Opera. The book draws on excerpts from Alison's previous writing about opera, but also incorporates plenty of new material. Her work on music, culture, and history has appeared at the New Yorker, VAN Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, and many more. In this excerpt from our interview, Alison explains how she came to write about opera in the first place.
I came to opera as a complete amateur; for that matter, I have an auditory processing disorder, so music has always been a difficult and puzzling medium for me. I have to listen extra hard, and I know that what I hear can't necessarily be generalized to the public. So I don't write criticism (though I have opinions, of course!); I'm interested in opera's communicative powers, its relationship to larger cultural events, and how people respond to it, for good and for bad. As an amateur, I can welcome the learning process without any claims to mastery over the experience, and I encourage other newbies to approach it the same way. I listen and write about opera to open up my world, to make it a little bigger and brighter, not because I'm an expert.
Read the full interview with Alison here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is about A Night in 67. It's by Ana Leorne.
Can a festival kickstart a movement? On October 21, 1967, the third edition of the Festival de Música Popular Brasileira shook Brazil to the core, trailblazing new musical paths in a country about to endure a military dictatorship.
At the time, Brazilian popular music was fragmenting: there was the traditional MPB, with touches of Bossa and a thorough revisitation of the Jobim catalog; the Jovem Guarda, catering to audiences that simply wanted to do the twist or the French yé-yé; and the emerging Tropicália, which would eventually become Brazilian music’s most celebrated export. The birth of Tropicália is often said to have happened that very October evening.
Two moments in A Night in 67 are key to understanding this turning point: one is Caetano Veloso's exhilarating performance of "Alegria Alegria" (as the lyrics go, "without handkerchief and without documents"); the other is Os Mutantes backing Gilberto Gil's "Domingo no Parque," which must have landed like the uncanniest of musical UFOs. They would all meet again the following year for Tropicália Ou Panis et Circencis, the movement's breakthrough moment.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Michael Hann:
My son nearly died of meningitis as a baby, and seeing it up close, you realise how much of a lottery surviving that disease is. So I would love it if people would give to the Meningitis Research Foundation. My son, by the way, is now 17, and I hate the music he likes, which is as it should be.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Pivoting To Video
- Rick Beato responds to Ted Gioia's recent article outlining 12 predictions about the future of music
- MTV has a new show called Lifestyles of the Biggest Standoms
- ARTV argues that fandom culture is ruining music
- Hrishikesh Hirway explains what you discover when you really listen
- 12Tone explains why the human voice is the most important musical instrument
- Spectrum Pulse's YouTube account was hacked
Trivia Time
What group graced the cover of the first issue of dance music magazine Mixmag? (Hint: It was published in 1983.)
Bits, Bobs
- Tony Rettman details his "adventures in the sleazy world of punk rock academia"
- The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism is accepting applications for its 2022 edition
- Suzanne Boles explains how to deal with getting sick as a freelancer
- Music Tech has gotten a redesign
- Mya Abraham has a good tip for freelance journalists
TFW When You're Editing Jeff Weiss*
Source
Q&A: Dan DiPiero
Dan DiPiero is a musician and lecturer of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University. Right now, he's putting the finishing touches on his book Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life. In addition to that work, he's also the host of the new podcast Public Cultural Studies, a show that features interviews with scholars who have "widely divergent, interdisciplinary interests." In this excerpt from our interview, Dan explains the upcoming book.
There’s been a lot of work published in the past ten years that treats improvisation as an almost magical social resource—something from which we can draw lessons so that we can use those lessons to re-imagine social relations. In some ways, this is very appealing. In other ways, I noticed that it directly mirrors the kind of language used by lots of neoliberal corporations, who talk about improvisation the same way they talk about developing any skill that’s supposed to help you innovate or problem solve in the business sphere. That connection remains really disturbing for me. But rather than seeing this corporate use of improvisation as somehow less “authentic” or ideal than a free jazz performance, for instance, I think we’re obligated to seriously consider the ways in which so-called neoliberal improvisation is well and truly improvisational, just as much as what we’re doing in a jazz performance or a real-time dance. Taking this possibility seriously is where I start the study.
The book is split into two parts: the first studies the music of Eric Dolphy, a Norwegian free jazz group called Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo. The second part examines improvisations in everyday practices like walking, baking, working, listening, and perceiving. My conclusion ultimately is that improvisation is not a special activity at all, but the thing that happens any time we’re in a contingent situation. And since we’re always in contingent situations, we’re always improvising. In a certain sense, then, my project aims to dissolve the concept of improvisation into nothingness. But at the same time, I don’t think of this as a nihilistic exercise; to me, it’s an invitation to pay attention to our own improvising in new ways. The book should be out sometime in the fall of 2022, and I’m really excited to share it with people.
Read the full interview with Dan here.
Academic Stuff
- New issues: Twentieth-Century Music, Journal of World Popular Music, Metal Music Studies
- Call for Papers: Music Studies and the Anthropocene: Ruptures and Convergences (Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2022)
- The Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize for best postgraduate student essay in popular music research has been awarded to Rachael Drury
- The Global Musical Modernisms blog is looking for new contributors
- Call for Papers: Journal of Sonic Studies is planning a special issue on Sound in the (Post-)Soviet Realm (Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2022)
- Call for Proposals: The 58th Conference of the Royal Musical Association (Abstract Deadline: December 20)
Those Asterisks: A Note About Jeff Weiss
When alerted to the fact that I was going to joke publicly about editing him, Jeff Weiss asked for it be made clear that I only edited him in the very distant past and that “my copy is immaculate now.”
The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! In case you’ve missed them, I’ve published a number of special features in the newsletter, including articles about music journalism history, what music journalism will be like in 2221, and much more. You can check out all of that here.
I also do a recurring column in the newsletter called Notes On Process. The premise is simple: I share a Google Doc with a music journalist where we go into depth on one of their pieces. It hopefully provides an insight into how music writers do their work. You can check out all editions of Notes On Process, including the latest one with Danyel Smith, here.
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Trivia Time Answer
The group featured on the cover was Shalamar.
A Final Note
Thanks for reading! Full disclosure: My day job is at uDiscover Music, a branded content online magazine owned by Universal Music. This newsletter is not affiliated or sponsored in any way by Universal, and any links that relate to the work of my department will be clearly marked. Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time…