#175: Execution Ballads
Execution Ballads
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 emo expert Chris Payne, execution ballads scholar Una McIlvenna, and Sacred Harp enthusiast Esther Morgan-Ellis. Plus! Reading and podcast recommendations! And more! But first…
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Reading List
- Harmony Holiday considers how we sing about the unspeakable
- Scott Woods interviews Rock and the Beat Generation author Simon Warner
- Niko Stratis discusses transness in remote Canada
- Jay Caspian Kang looks at the world of battle rap
- Sowmya Krishnamurthy says the relationship between journalists and PR will get worse before it gets better
- Evan Osnos finds out what it takes to book a pop star for your party
- Andre Gee uncovers a horrific set of allegations against Adam22
- Shaad D’Souza explains why pop stars are plundering the past
- Cherie Hu is guest editing Resident Advisor this month
- Julyssa Lopez tells the story of a high school mariachi team
Lede Of The Week
Every weekday at 5:30 a.m., while most of his San Antonio, Texas, neighborhood is still asleep, Albert Martinez gets into his silver Nissan Sentra and starts the drive to Uvalde, 70 miles to the west. - Julyssa Lopez
Q&A: Chris Payne
Chris Payne is the author of Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008. Chris worked for Billboard from 2013 until he was laid off in 2020 during the pandemic. Soon after, he began work on the book. In this excerpt from our interview, Chris explains how he went about getting a book contract.
The book started off as a totally DIY project, just me on my computer, during the pandemic. I actually did about 40 interviews, including some bigger names, before I had an agent or anything like that. At first, I cold-pitched a bunch of agencies but got crickets. The best approach if you don't have any contacts at literary agencies—which I didn't—is to reach out to people who've had books published similar to yours. That, along with early interviews for the book, led to interest from three literary agencies, two of which were particularly interested.
Once I picked my agent, Alyssa Reuben, we fine-tuned my proposal and presented it to publishers for auction in early 2021. For the morning of the auction, I scheduled some routine doctor’s checkup just so I wouldn’t be staring at my email all day. Dey Street, who’d done Meet Me in the Bathroom a few years prior, came through with the best offer… a pretty ideal match for a book like mine.
Read the full interview with Chris here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Chris Payne:
I found out about and first donated to the New York Abortion Access Fund around the time it became apparent that Roe v. Wade was in serious danger, which has obviously come to fruition. It supports those who are unable to pay for an abortion in New York state, including people who are traveling from states where abortions are harder to arrange, which feels really important.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Drip King-Level Tweet
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Podcasts!, Pt. 1
- Derrick Gee talks with Sasha Frere-Jones about how to listen to music
- Gary Suarez chats with the folks behind The Blog Era
- Love Life One Hour spends some time dissecting AI and music
- Sidedoor celebrates the Smithsonian’s dedication to recoding the world
- Popcast has added a video component to their podcasts
Q&A: Dr. Una McIlvenna
Dr. Una McIlvenna is Honorary Senior Lecturer at Australian National University. Her research focuses on early modern cultural and literary history, and she is the author of Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900. In this excerpt from our interview, Una explains what made this area of research so fascinating to her.
Historians are supposed to always look for “change over time,” but honestly, what fascinates me is how LITTLE change we see over time with this phenomenon. For centuries, despite major social and political upheavals like the Reformation or the French Revolution, people all across Europe sang about criminals being executed in incredibly similar ways. The ballads look similar, with the same kinds of sensationalist headlines: the account of the events is “shocking” or “lamentable,” and the news is “true” and “new”….
While I do a lot of qualitative analysis of things like lyrics and melodies, I’ve also made some important findings through good old fashioned quantitative research on Excel spreadsheets, which allowed me to discover, for example, that the reason that execution ballads disappeared was because of the move from public executions to “private” executions within the prison walls. Once that happened, there was a notable drop-off in the numbers of execution ballads that were printed. There seems to have been a strong correlation between witnessing the execution and wanting to sing about it afterwards.
Read the full interview with Una here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by Ana Leorne.
Brazil is not only made of samba and bossa nova; it also subsists on myriad underground genres that help shape the country's character. Carolina Pfister's Viva Viva offers a glimpse of one, painting a raw and compelling portrait of the São Paulo punk scene that instantly pulls us into the eye of hurricane.
Filmed between 2003 and 2005, Viva Viva's visual and stylistic directness often feels as punk as the subjects it portrays. For over an hour and a half, the documentary takes us on a voyage from the outskirt slums to the city center, capturing vivid landscapes and candid snapshots that subvert the usual exported Brazilian clichés.
The documentary ties everything together with first-person testimonies from Simone, Clemente, Elisa, Toca, Úlcera, and numerous others keeping this subculture of dissent alive, as well as music from local bands like Retórica, Menstruação Anárquika, or Dominatrix.
Bits, Bobs
- Faber has announced a number of changes to its editorial team
- Interviews from the documentary The Legend of the Dew Drop Inn have been digitized
- Mark Braboy, Matt Chapman, Micco Caporale, Philip Montoro, and Jake Austen won Peter Lisago Awards
- Mick Hutson and John Lomax IV have passed away
- Matty Karas has stepped back from writing the MusicREDEF newsletter
- Bandlab has offloaded Uncut
Trivia Time
How long was Matty Karas the editor of MusicREDEF?
Podcasts!, Pt. 2
- Sound Opinions announced its 2023 prize winners
- Sarah Esocoff launched Sounds Gay
- Robin James explains why 97X WOXY was so important
- You’re Wrong About welcomes Allyson McCabe to talk about her new book
- Emma Warren discussed her new book on RA Exchange
Real Scenes
- Richard Villegas on cumbia in Colombia
- Cary Baker on the high desert of California
- Catalina Maria Johnson on regional Mexican music
- Dalia Al-Dujaili on rap in Iraq
- Jim Beaugez in Mississippi
SecondChandelierSounds
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Q&A: Esther Morgan-Ellis
Esther Morgan-Ellis is Associate Professor of Music History and Assistant Director of Academic Engagement at the University of North Georgia. Esther’s research focuses on “participatory music-making of the past and present,” including “the US community singing movement, 20th-century sing-along media, old-time music, and Sacred Harp singing.” In this excerpt from our interview, Esther explains what she’d like to see more of in music-related scholarship.
I always want to see more interdisciplinary awareness and collaboration. Scholars in all music disciplines seem bizarrely blind to the work going on in other parts of their own departments. I am proud of the extraordinary diversity of fields represented in our Oxford Handbook of Community Singing, and I hope it will serve as a model. I always try to engage a range of disciplines in each of my projects. I cite relevant research no matter what field it comes from. A couple years ago, I heard a musicologist make the claim in a conference presentation that nothing had been written on the topic they were addressing, and I had to immediately email them the collected works of a music education scholar who had written dozens of things on exactly their topic. I would love to see that sort of omission disappear.
What's one tip that you'd give a student considering a life in music scholarship starting out right now?
The only good reason to go to grad school is that you want to learn more and be in an academic environment. Do not go expecting to have a career in academia, and definitely do not go without a good stipend or guaranteed teaching opportunities. However, I never try to talk students out of going to grad school. I loved being in grad school and had countless amazing opportunities. I actually had no intention of going into academia until my last year or so, but I never regretted spending seven years surrounded by brilliant and interesting people doing incredible things. While I would have more money now had I gone straight into some other career, I would not be richer.
Read the full interview with Esther here.
Academic Stuff
- New issues: Popular Music, Music and Letters, Notes, Music and the Moving Image, International Journal of Music in Early Childhood, Intégral, and American Music
- Call for Chapters: This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Star Documentary [Abstracts due June 30]
- Registration is open for Music and the Internet
- Call for Papers: Retrofuturism 2.0 Symposium [Proposals due June 16]
- Call for Submissions: Jazz and Culture [Proposals due June 15]
The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! In case you’ve missed any special features, I’ve published a number of them 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 here.
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Trivia Time Answer
Matty Karas began as editor of MusicREDEF in 2014.
A Final Note
Thanks for reading! I make playlists every single week. Check them here! And 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...