#095: Live Music Is Best
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.
Today in the newsletter: Interviews with writer, researcher, and teacher, Brittnay L. Proctor, PhD; co-founder and director of Alternative Classical, Hannah Fiddy; Dr. Crystal S. Anderson, author of Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop; and author of Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil, Juan Diego Diaz. Plus! A new Notes on Process column with Alan Licht and much more! But first…
James Caan, Music Critic
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Reading List
- Dean Van Nguyen writes about the socialist streak in hip-hop
- Miranda Reinert explains orgcore
- Rob Harvilla argues that Soundscan changed our understanding of pop music
- Ted Gioia explains the origins of his newsletter name, The Honest Broker, and reveals his fascinating early life as a fixer
- M.I.C explores the Black origins of shoegaze and dream pop
- Cat Zhang asks, “What is Asian American music, really?”
- Larry Fitzmaurice writes about revisiting record reviews
- Cara Buckley highlights a mysterious foundation making enormous donations to classical music organizations during the pandemic
- Ryan Leas asked 86 artists to pick their favorite Bob Dylan song
- Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren uncover the environmental impact of the guitar industry
Q&A: Brittnay L. Proctor, PhD
Brittnay L. Proctor, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and teacher interested in the intersections of Blackness, gender, and sexuality in Black popular music. Next week, she’ll be participating in a roundtable event called “Say it Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies” with some of the preeminent scholars in the field. In this excerpt from our interview, Brittnay explains what she’d like to see more of in music scholarship today.
I wish there were more black scholars/black writers writing black music scholarship. I think our work has not been supported in the same way as white scholars writing about black music. When I write about black popular musicians of the twentieth century, my work comes off as “me-search,” whereas white scholars who write about the same topic get to position themselves as objective and rigorous. There is no question that scholars bring themselves into their research; that who we are shapes how we write this work.
Read the full interview with Brittnay here.
Notes On Process: Alan Licht
The latest edition of Notes On Process is here! The idea of this column is simple: I invite a writer to a Google Doc where I’ve copy-pasted one of their pieces and added a bunch of footnotes 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. The goal is to provide a window into the writing and editing process, so that folks can see how great writers think about their work.
This edition focuses on Alan Licht’s 2003 feature on Lou Reed for The Wire. Alan has a new book out today (!) called Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians, 2000–2020, which features in full the interview Alan did with Reed.
You can check out the Google Doc here.
Time For Another Reboot?
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Podcasts!
- Imani Danielle Mosley discusses the music of Benjamin Britten and British identity on Sound Expertise
- Jeremy Gilbert goes on a whirlwind tour of folk music on #ACFM Microdose
- Afropop Worldwide looks at how money and music are intertwined across the continent
- Hit Different is a new weekly podcast, hosted by three Australian music journalists
- The team behind Dad Bod Rap Pod sits down for an interview about the podcast
- A Taste of Country has launched a podcast version of their Secret History of Country Music column
- Dawnie Walton joined Fresh Air to talk about her oral history novel The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
“Everything Was On Fire”: Brazil’s Most Influential Music Magazine
Last week, I published the latest in a series of articles on music journalism history. Freelance writer Beatriz Miranda wrote about Bizz, one of Brazil’s most influential music magazines. Here’s an excerpt:
The year was 1985. After two decades of a suffocating civil-military dictatorship, Brazil was finally ready to breathe again. The country was gradually moving towards democracy, and artists were free to express themselves without the risk of arrest. Censorship, finally, was no longer a concern among non-governmental media outlets. And the kids? They were eager for new music. Not the kind their parents listened to. Something their generation could genuinely relate to.
The convergence of these factors couldn’t have been more opportune for the birth of Bizz, one of the most important music magazines in Brazil and the longest-lasting of its kind. From 1985 to 2001, Bizz helped shape the cultural identity of Brazil’s youth by shining a light on Brazilian rock, aka Brock.
Read the full article about Bizz here.
Q&A: Dr. Crystal S. Anderson
Dr. Crystal S. Anderson is Affiliate Faculty, Korean Studies, at George Mason University and the author of Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop, a book that looks at the unique intersections of the two. In this excerpt from our interview, Crystal explains how she came to the subject for the book.
Anyone who has listened to K-pop and black music can recognize the influence. Music journalists would also mention the similarities between K-pop and Motown music production, describing both as hit factories. However, after doing a deep dive into discographies of K-pop artists with long careers, I found not only a consistent engagement with black popular music, but consistent engagement throughout their careers. Unlike what some describe as cultural theft by white artists of black music in the 1950s and 1960s, I found authentic engagement. The music was not watered down and they worked with black creatives to make the music. Moreover, K-pop draws on multiple genres from different eras, which made me think Korean artists were genuine students of R&B.
Read the full interview with Crystal here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From James Grier, author of Musical Notation in the West:
There are many worthwhile causes out there, and to focus on one seems inadequate; so I will go in what might seem like a different direction: purchase a ticket for a live performance of music, whether something being streamed, or, when it is safe, an actual concert. When I belonged to the Toronto Musicians’ Association, Local 149 of the American Federation of Musicians, their motto was “Live music is best.” It still is and those of us who love music need to advocate for its continued existence.
Made-Up Dreams
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Pivoting To Video
- Grady Smith rates country music album covers
- Sound Field explores how Beethoven’s “Für Elise” became so popular
- How It’s Made runs through how French horns are created
- FACT has a new documentary on women in Indian electronic music
- Rick Beato explains why music is so boring today
Q&A: Hannah Fiddy
Hannah Fiddy is co-founder and director of Alternative Classical, an organization creating and promoting new approaches to classical music. She’s also a freelance classical music consultant. Her work, in short, is all about envisioning an inclusive and exciting future for classical music. In this excerpt from our interview, Hannah describes what she’d like to see more of in music journalism right now.
One answer I have to this is that almost all of the voices within the classical music and opera industry are very similar—people of a certain age with similar backgrounds, outlooks and interests. I see myself as a slightly different voice with different interests and I would like to see even more voices from more kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds. I set up Humans of Classical Music earlier this year partly for this reason. Every Thursday there is a new recommendation for a piece of classical music from an actor, podcaster, musician or comedian. There is still a feeling that you have to be a critic or a musicologist to talk about classical music and I want to show that you don’t need to have a music degree and you don’t need to ‘understand’ everything. We have an emotional response to classical music as much as any other genre, and that isn’t any less valid than a more analytical approach.
Read the full interview with Hannah here.
Trivia Time!
According to The Guardian, what percentage of women account for all timpani and percussion positions in London’s seven top orchestras? Catch the answer at the bottom of the newsletter.
Bits, Bobs
- Pitchfork celebrated 25 years by launching a “reviews explorer,” looking at its reviews section “by the numbers,” and revisiting its most important reviews
- Joe Muggs has some advice for those starting out in music criticism
- Classical music critic Michael Fleming and electronic music pioneer Joel Chadabe have passed away
- The archives of The Boston Phoenix are now online
- DIRT is aiming to fund itself largely through NFTs
- Huck design director Fabrizio Festa talks about the magazine’s recent redesign
- New newsletter: ex-directory is bringing together “dispatches from emerging and established markets, underground collectives and virtual reality” on a weekly basis
Q&A: Juan Diego Diaz
Juan Diego Diaz is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at University of California, Davis. He’s the author of the recent book Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil, which is based around an enormous amount of fieldwork in Brazil. In this excerpt from our interview, Juan explains what the book is all about.
Africanness in Action is primarily about music makers. It walks readers through the lives, motivations, aspirations, struggles, and craft of a diverse group of black musicians from Bahia, Brazil. We learn about the creative process of music from the stage of design through those of composition, rehearsal, performance, and revision. At a more abstract level, the book connects the artistic work of these musicians with their discourses about Africa, more precisely, with their own ideas about what “African” sounds are or should be. The book is thus concerned with broader issues of cultural production and identity in the black Atlantic, with blackness, and African ancestry in Brazil.
Read the full interview with Juan here.
Academic Stuff
- New issues: Music and the Moving Image, Twentieth-Century Music, and Critical Studies in Improvisation
- Women in Global Music (WIGM): Network Launch will take place over two weekends, starting June 11 and 12
- 78-88: Prince, The First Decade: An Interdisciplinary Conference will take place this week (Online)
- The podcast Sound Expertise is looking for voicemail contributions to an upcoming episode on how scholars weathered the past year
- Registration for the Virtual American Musical Instrument Society Conference is open (Online, June 4-6)
- Black Opera Research Network will host two online panel discussions in June
- Call for Papers: INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology is preparing a special issue on Music, Art and Mental Health in the Time of Global Crisis; email insam.journal@gmail.com for details (Abstract deadline: July 1)
- Say it Loud: Black Voices in U.S. Popular Music Studies will take place next Monday
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Trivia Time Answer
In a recent Guardian piece, Emily Gunton wrote that woman make up 3% of all timpani and percussion positions in London’s top seven orchestras. Emily found that “there are more men called David with jobs in percussion than there are women.”
Do you have a question you’d like to see included in Trivia Time? Hit reply and let me know.
The Closing Credits
Thanks for reading! Full disclosure: My day job is at uDiscover Music, a branded content online magazine owned by Universal Music. This newsletter is not affiliated or sponsored in any way by Universal, and any links that relate to the work of my department will be clearly marked. Feel free to reach out to me via email at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com. On Twitter, it’s @JournalismMusic. Until next time…