#181: One Thing I Know For Sure
One Thing I Know For Sure
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 dance music expert Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, Bolivian music writer Javier Rodríguez-Camacho, grime champion Silhouette Bushay, and Chicago stalwart Mark Guarino. Plus! Reading and podcast recommendations! And more! But first…
The Eternal Question
Source
Reading List
- Neil Kulkarni has thoughts about Britpop nostalgia
- The Pudding says female songwriters are underrepresented in the pop world
- Aisha Durham and Regina Bradley sound off on hip-hop and feminism
- Michael Tedder talks about his new book on music and MySpace
- Tamar Herman challenges her biases as a K-pop journalist
- Kyle Denis considers the state of the slow dance
- Marc Hogan, Jill Mapes, and Marina Kozak look at the ticketing industry
- James Akenson explores the sacred and profane in country music
- Eamonn Forde excoriates the NME partnership with Ladbrokes
- Jaron Lanier explains what musical instruments have taught him
Lede Of The Week
It started after my mother died. - Jaron Lanier
Q&A: Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta
Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham. He writes prolifically on electronic music, and his new book is Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor. In this excerpt from our interview, he explained the easiest thing about the process of writing the book.
OK, nobody get mad at me, but: writing. Not just any writing, though: storytelling. Keeping a daily fieldwork blog gave me a ton of experience in writing narrative; it became an essential part of how I processed and remembered my outings to electronic music events. After months of working that way, I got to the point where I would already be thinking about how I would be structuring the narrative of my night out while I was still on the dancefloor (or on the way home). I developed a good sense for how to pick out memorable and engrossing moments and connect them into something that flows and satisfies.
What was the hardest thing about the whole project?
Revising! I absolutely hate revising work. I’m getting better at it (I didn’t really have a choice), but I used to really struggle with it. Partially, this has to do with how I used to draft out my writing: I would write out my first draft agonizingly slowly, but the result would be almost print-ready. Maybe it’s a neurodivergent thing, but I couldn’t just write quick, fragmented prose and then weave things together over multiple passes; instead, I needed to be completely happy with the wording, structure, argumentation, and citations before I could move on. One trick I developed to help me with this is that I would enclose not-yet-perfect text in square brackets, usually summarizing the point I want to make in simple prose, almost like a note to myself. Somehow, knowing that the square brackets would be immediately visible reassured me that I wouldn’t submit a draft with embarrassingly undercooked prose.
When feedback asked me to completely restructure a chapter, it would sometimes be overwhelming and cause me to freeze. This began to change when I started using Scrivener (not a paid promotion!) to help me break down and re-organise long texts, and since then I use it to move from detailed outlines to a structured document. Something about breaking down a large document into little “windows” into the text makes the whole process less stressful and daunting for me.
Read the full interview with Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta:
Support trans kids, now more than ever! For the past few years, for my birthday I’ve been asking people to make donations to organizations that support trans kids, youth, and their families. I don’t think I need to explain why; we are in the middle of an anti-trans moral panic that closely resembles what was happening to queer folks in the 1980s and 90s, when I was growing up as a queer kid. I want this generation’s LGBTQ+ kids to find their community and support networks more easily than my generation did, so that they can survive into adulthood. It’s as simple and as urgent as that.
Here are a few places to direct your support for trans youth:
Your local Drag Story Time! Check your local library and LGBTQ+ organizations for event listings. Give them a call and ask them how you can help.
UK: Colours Youth Network; Mermaids
CANADA: LGBT Youthline
USA: The Trevor Project
Look up your local community defense organizations. If you’re having trouble finding them, you can reach out to your local anti-fascist and/or anarchist group and ask them what initiatives are going on to protect trans & queer events.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Shots Fired
Source
Podcasts!
- Jim Farber talks glam rock and much more on Rock’s Backpages
- Andy Zax visits with Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions
- Audrey Golden chats about the women of Factory Records on The Music Book Podcast
- Sidedoor explores the sound of dinosaurs
- Nicole Duncan-Smith is the latest guest on ImmaLetYouFinish...
Q&A: Javier Rodríguez-Camacho
Javier Rodríguez-Camacho is a Bolivian music writer. He has been active as a podcaster, journalist, and critic since 2006. He is the author of Testigos del fin del mundo, a retrospective of Latin indie music in the 2010s. Between 2014 and 2020, he was a staff writer at Tiny Mix Tapes, and since 2020, he’s published the newsletter Visiones Incomunicadas. He is also an associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. In this excerpt from our interview, Javier talks about where he sees music journalism headed.
The development of generative AI and recommendation algorithms like the one TikTok has will likely benefit artists with established catalogs. Big players will remain big while the pond depletes for everyone else. Under those conditions, it’s hard for me to see a path for media focusing on emerging or niche artists, let alone attaining a scale that could sustain a business. However, I am not sure social media and streaming platforms will remain the way they currently are by the end of the decade. The climate crisis and the retreat of venture capital will probably have a say on that. Nonetheless, I am certain music journalism will continue to have a place. Perhaps in the form of smaller conversations, inhabiting closely-knit communities instead of the ever-scalable fiction we’ve been led to believe by tech start-ups. How that works as an economic reality is still an open question. One thing I know for sure: Diderot was writing about music in 1750 and we will be writing about music in 2050.
Read the full interview with Javier here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Javier Rodríguez-Camacho:
I wanted to highlight a cause in Bolivia, but the banking system makes international donations very hard. It is not much better in the case of Colombia. Luckily, there are several great causes worth supporting in the US. The Trevor Project offers suicide prevention counseling and assistance to LGBTQ youth. They are based in the US and provide 24/7 crisis support by phone, text, or chat. You can also train to become a counselor and organize a fundraiser in your community.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Stuff You Gotta Watch
Stuff You Gotta Watch celebrates music journalism in video form. This week’s column is by Ana Leorne.
The year is 1982. Long Island suburban radio station WLIR chooses to rebrand by refusing to comply with increasingly suffocating corporate mergers, instead embracing the New Wave arriving from across the Atlantic. That’s no small thing. Forever remembered as the station that broke U2 in the United States, WLIR's programming helped bridge the gap between the two sides of the pond, presenting the fresh sounds of bands like The Cure, Spandau Ballet, The Clash, The Pretenders, and Adam & The Ants to the American public. Moreover, it proved to be the perfect companion to a music-oriented TV channel that had just begun operations. As publicist Michael Pagnotta argues, "I don't think MTV would've been possible in the way that it was if WLIR hadn't pre-existed it."
New Wave: Dare to Be Different tells the story of those dizzying days through loads of video footage and extensive interviews with broadcasters, fans, producers, DJs, and many others who, one way or another, played a crucial part in turning WLIR into a cherished radio station for millions. There's also valuable testimonies from the artists themselves, with the likes of Joan Jett, Midge Ure, Billy Idol, Thompson Twins, and many more explaining the importance WLIR had in their careers.
Trivia Time
What journalist once described the lyrics of Nigel Blackwell, frontman of Half Man Half Biscuit, as "the antithesis of most rock songs, and iconoclastic in their total avoidance of cliche"?
Q&A: Silhouette Bushay
Silhouette Bushay is a researcher, writer, and film documentary writer/director, as well as a senior lecturer at the University of East London in the School of Education and Communities. She is a huge advocate of employing hip-hop pedagogy and creative arts for education. In this excerpt from our interview, she explains why she finds this area of research so interesting.
It has been nine years since the release of the documentary Through the Lens of Hip Hop: UK Women, and there is still a huge academic void in research/scholarship examining the particulars of Black British girls' experiences, perspectives, and knowledges. The same can be said for hip-hop music and culture in the UK, and Grime music and culture generally. I recall having a brief conversation with Dr. Joy White, who encouraged me to expand my study to explicitly include Grime: it made so much sense as 1) it is music and culture created by Black British people; and 2) I live and work in East London – birthplace of Grime.
Read the full interview with Silhouette here.
A Cause Worth Supporting
From Silhouette Bushay:
There are many different causes that I think are really important and deserve support, however, this week I would like to shine the light on the charity Cancer Research UK. There is high probability that in all our lifetimes we will be impacted by cancer personally or through someone we love. I come from a long and wide line of cancer survivors/warriors—and I have been treated for breast cancer.
Check out all of the causes highlighted by folks I’ve interviewed.
Real Scenes
- Stevie Chick on slowcore
- Marci Robin on spa music
- John Chiaverina on Baltimore club
- Constanza Eliana Chinea on two Dominican American promoters in Los Angeles
- Daniel Dylan Wray on Bentley’s
Bits, Bobs
- The Internet Archive now has more than 250,000 hours of live music available for download
- Rhett Brinkley and Lindsey Millar won first prize in the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s awards for music journalism
- Syrian Cassette Archives discusses their work
- Brandon Hill won an award for his journalism on Black music in Boston
- Josh Terry has some advice on interviewing
This… Makes Sense?
Source
Q&A: Mark Guarino
Mark Guarino is a journalist and playwright. He started as the pop music critic for the Daily Herald outside Chicago, a position he held for 11 years before serving as Midwest Bureau Chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years. He is currently a producer with ABC News. In 2023, the University of Chicago Press published his first book, Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival. In this excerpt from our interview, Mark explains how he came to this subject for the book.
I was a music critic in Chicago in the mid to late 1990s. That was an incredible moment here because you had all these great rock bands exploding nationally, but you also had this emergent underground country rock scene happening as well. I wrote at length about those bands for the Daily Herald and other outlets and I became one of the contributing writers for the original No Depression.
I found the music exciting and the scene really fun. But I also later realized Chicago was ahead of the curve of the Americana scene we’re seeing today. Many of the seminal artists were here, Bloodshot Records was the first to recognize the movement, the clubs became headquarters for experimentation and collaboration, and the audience went along with the ride. It had all the factors required for the perfect storm of creativity that soon spread nationwide.
Soon after that I started looking backward to figure out why that music had such a natural home here and what I discovered is that Chicago was always a place for country and folk musicians to come here and do their own thing; starting as far back as the 1920s it had laid the groundwork for the commercialization of country music as a genre nationally and since then became home for leading figures who enjoyed the creative freedom they weren’t finding in Nashville or New York or Los Angeles.
Read the full interview with Mark here.
Academic Stuff
- New issues: Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, Perspectives of New Music, The Soundtrack, Punk & Post-Punk, Musicologica Austriaca, Contemporary Music Review, and SMT Newsletter
- Call for Papers: Music and Arts in Action [Proposals due October 15]
- Call for Papers: Laughter in Music [Proposals due September 15]
- Call for Papers: Opera Journal [Submissions due October 1]
- Call for Papers: Jazz Futures Conference [Proposals due September 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
Ben Myers was the Guardian journalist arguing for better appreciation of Half Man Half Biscuit.
A Final Note
Thanks for reading! Big shout out to James Lamont for their help on the newsletter this week. 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...