#167: One Thing At A Time
One Thing At A Time
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 culture journalist Hannah Edgar, experimental music expert Cisco Bradley, and Maltese music researcher Philip Ciantar. Plus! Reading recommendations, techno, and much more! But first…
The Pipeline Is Real
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Reading List
- Tamar Herman talks about free K-pop fan labor
- Lisette Arevalo, Pablo Valdivia, and Ana Pais tell the story of the first Puerto Rican reggaeton archive
- Jay Papandreas waxes rhapsodic about used record stores
- Jennifer Gerson finds out what it means to be “too opinionated” in country music
- Ady Thapliyal says Arab pop has always been global
- John Cotter describes hearing loss
- Grayson Haver Currin writes about the sound of melting ice
- Gil Kaufman explains why Jamie Lee Curtis can’t go see Coldplay at noon
- Jelani Cobb pens an elegy for hip-hop
- Courtney Love ponders why women are so marginalised in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Lede Of The Week
“I got into this business to write great songs and have fun. I was a quick learner. I read every music magazine I could get my hands on and at 12, after digesting many issues of Creem, I decided to base my personality on Lester Bangs, the rock critic raconteur; his abiding belief in the transformative power of a great rock song matched mine.” - Courtney Love
Q&A: Hannah Edgar
Hannah Edgar is a Chicago-based culture journalist, researcher, and radio producer. They write music criticism for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader, and regularly contribute to many more outlets, in addition to writing program book materials for various symphonies. In radio, Hannah has produced programs for Sound Opinions and Nerdette. In 2015, they served as the inaugural Andrew Patner Fellow at WFMT, Chicago’s classical station, for whom they still write as a freelancer. In this excerpt from our interview, Hannah explains how their approach to work has changed in the past few years.
Not as much as I’d like! I used to think I’d rather duck out of journalism overall than be freelance. (I was among the exceedingly fortunate folks who did have a full-time job in the field, however briefly, but I voluntarily left.) But after falling back in love with journalism over the course of the past two years, I think freelancing is the best way—maybe the only way—for me to nourish that love rather than watching it putrefy.
As I alluded to before, my work habits leave a lot to be desired, but since 2020/21 or so I’ve kept certain promises to myself. One is that social commitments are non-negotiable. If I’ve made plans with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, and a work thing pops up, unless the assignment will pay a make-or-break amount, I’m passing on the opportunity. Two: I have been bad about this lately, but if I’m not on assignment Friday through Saturday night, I try to observe Shabbat, which in my case means no work for 24 hours. (I’d like it to someday mean no social media or laptop time, either, but… one thing at a time.) I converted during the pandemic and my faith is important to me, not least of all because I’m still growing in it.
Not to get too real in a newsletter, but both of those changes are directly related to a slew of personal losses I experienced between 2015 and 2020. I know your twenties are all about hustle culture or whatever, but I’m not going to prioritize a job above being with loved ones who could disappear at any moment. When I stray too far into the no-man’s-land of overwork, that conviction recenters me.
Read the full interview with Hannah here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Hannah Edgar:
A cause worthy of your dollars is the Miles Hall Foundation, which advocates for nonviolent intervention for people experiencing mental health emergencies. The foundation was started by the family of my classmate and neighbor Miles Hall, who was killed by my hometown’s police force while experiencing a mental health crisis. The Halls have since showed up for other families affected by police brutality all over the San Francisco Bay Area; thanks to their advocacy, the bill supporting the 988 crisis hotline in California bears Miles’s name. They are amazing people and I’m honored to know them.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Be The Change You Want To See
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Podcasts!
- Where Were You in ‘92? looks at how pop music tackled AIDS
- Sidedoor tells the story of a very special violin
- The second season of California Love focuses on k-pop
- Louder Than A Riot has returned for its second season
- Rachel Brodsky and Aviv Rubenstien have launched *IN SYNC
Q&A: Cisco Bradley
Cisco Bradley is associate professor of history at the Pratt Institute. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront. He is also editor of jazzrightnow.com. He founded the Free Jazz Oral History Project in 2016 and is Chairperson of New Revolution Arts, Inc., a non-profit organization that supports experimental music in New York City. In this excerpt from our interview, Cisco talks about what made him so interested in the topic of his new book.
Music is the most developed American artform. We should have a lot more pride about what we have accomplished in this regard and value and support our cultural output far more than we do. This book is in some ways a love letter to what is possible. There are many reasons for why the U.S. has historically undervalued its own culture and specifically its music, beginning with the fact that Black Americans have been so central to every stage of American musical development. This country continues to channel money, both public and private, into classical European music—it’s often so colonial—while ignoring its own creations like blues, jazz, rock, and so on. We are running away from ourselves. At some point we need to stop and look right at ourselves in the mirror and embrace ourselves as a culture.
Read the full interview with Cisco here.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by Ana Leorne.
Though its exact origins in Germany remain somewhat fuzzy, the term “techno” was apparently first used in Frankfurt in the early ’80s, when DJ Talla 2XLC—then working at a store called City-Music—began sorting electronically-produced records into a separate category called “techno.” Talla eventually founded Technoclub in 1984, a club project dedicated exclusively to electronic dance music, and the madness quickly extended to other major cities, including Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg.
This story marks the beginning of Maren Sextro & Holger Wick’s We Call It Techno!, a journey through the history of a sound so influential that it not only managed to crossover from the underground to the mainstream, but also played a key role in the cultural reunification of a post-Berlin Wall Germany.
More than a simple documentary, We Call It Techno! offers a comprehensive analysis of the birth and dissemination of the genre in Germany. Built around interviews with some of its key players, like Wolfgang Voigt, DJ Hell, Triple R, Cosmic Baby, and Tanith, the film also includes a very special treat in the shape of previously unseen footage from the very first edition of Berlin’s Love Parade.
Trivia Time
Who founded the German electronic music magazine Groove?
How Do You Do, Fellow TikTokers
- @abigyesandasmallno tells the story of a band that desperately wanted to get on the cover of Rolling Stone
- @why_wear_that has a February fashion round-up
- @mazbouq explains bar heel transposition
- @thechrismichael says drum & bass is unlike anything else
- @gee_derrick does some detective work on the audio set-up of Instagram’s CEO
Bits, Bobs
- Syncopated Times has launched a GoFundMe campaign
- Hannah Ewens started a newsletter
- The Jazz Book of the Year (2022) Bash! will take place next weekend
- Rock Docs has joined Treble Media
SKOTUS
Source
Q&A: Philip Ciantar
Philip Ciantar is associate professor of music at the University of Malta. His research subjects are largely Andalusian music, music and colonialism, the transmission of musical knowledge, and musical analysis in world music studies. In this excerpt from our interview, Philip discusses his research.
My research is currently focused on Maltese popular songs of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1964, Malta gained independence from Britain and many of these songs express a renewed national conscience—a kind of rediscovery of the nation’s daily life, its customs and, also, its natural environment. Along with this, I continue with my research on music in Libya with a focus on related ethnographic sources written by Italian scholars who lived, worked, and/or visited Libya when this was an Italian colony.
What would you like to see more of in music-related scholarship right now?
I would like to see music-related scholarship reaching a wider range of people and, possibly, enhance their lives. Areas of music scholarship such as applied ethnomusicology are at the forefront in such initiatives. Projects rooted in the theory and method of ethnomusicology, for instance, are reaching out to and being beneficial to refugees, inmates, and young people in schools. I still think, though, that we can do much more in this regard.
Read the full interview with Philip here.
Academic Stuff
- New issues: Music and Letters
- The Prince #TripleThreat40 symposium will take place later this month
- Call for Papers: The Soundtrack is preparing a special issue on “Screenwriting Sound and Music” [Abstracts due April 15]
- Call for Papers: New Sound International Journal of Music [Abstracts due April 20]
- Registration is now open for Black British Music: Sacred and Secular Study Day
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
DJ T. was the founder of Groove, the long-running electronic music magazine.
A Final Note
Thanks for reading! I make playlists from time to time. Check them out if you’re interested. 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…