This woman's work : essays on music

This woman's work Essays on music

Book - 2022

"Edited by iconic musician Kim Gordon and esteemed writer Sinéad Gleeson, this powerful collection of award-winning female creators shares their writing about the female artists that matter most to them. This book is for and about the women who kicked in doors, as pioneers of their craft or making politics central to their sound: those who offer a new way of thinking about the vast spectrum of women in music. This Woman's Work: Essays on Music is edited by iconic musician Kim Gordon and esteemed writer Sinéad Gleeson and features an array of talented contributors, including: Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa... Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li, and Zakia Sewell. In this radical departure from the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman's Work challenges the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Women have to speak up, to shout louder to tell their story--like the auteurs and ground-breakers featured in this collection, including: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson; Megan Jasper on her ground-breaking work with Sub Pop; Margo Jefferson on Bud Powell and Ella Fitzgerald; and Fatima Bhutto on music and dictatorship. This Woman's Work also features writing on the experimentalists, women who blended music and activism, the genre-breakers, the vocal auteurs; stories of lost homelands and friends; of propaganda and dictatorships, the women of folk and country, the racialized tropes of jazz, the music of Trap and Carriacou; of mixtapes and violin lessons."--Publisher's website.

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Subjects
Women in the music trade.
Music > Social aspects > History.
Feminism and music.
Sex role in music.
Women musicians > Social conditions.
Essays.
Genres
Essays
Published
New York : Hachette Books 2022.
Language
English
Edition
First hardcover edition
Physical Description
257 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780306829000
  • Introduction
  • Fan Girl
  • Songs of Exile
  • The Highway
  • Praise Poem for Linda
  • Music on the Internet Has No Context
  • Double-Digit Jukebox: An Essay in Eight Mixes
  • Broadside Ballads
  • My Brilliant Friend
  • Diaphoresis
  • Sonic Seasonings: The Genius of Wendy Carlos
  • Losers
  • Valentina
  • Country Girl
  • What Is Going On in Rap Music, the Music Called "Trap" and "Drill"?
  • Auld Lang Syne in July
  • Hearing Voices
  • Notes on Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

The 16 writers in this excellent female-focused essay collection evoke the mystery of music with indelible precision. Fatima Bhutto considers how for her Pakistani father, exiled in Syria, Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" is about not only a man far from his home but also a lost homeland. Bhutto wonders, "What is it about song that threatens dictators so much?" The passage of time changes the resonance of music. As Leslie Jamison confesses, listening in her bedroom to the Indigo Girls' "Galileo" as a 10-year-old is quite different from hearing it 30 years later as a divorced mother. Some of the most moving pieces are also the most personal, such as Ottessa Moshfegh's gentle homage, "Valentina," to the life-long impact her piano teacher had on her. Here, too, are Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson, Jenn Pelly on Lucinda Williams, Margo Jefferson on Ella Fitzgerald, Liz Pelly on Sis Cunningham, Rachel Kushner on Wanda Jackson, and Simone White on trap and drill music. A fresh and affecting look at women and music.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Musician Gordon (Girl in a Band) and essayist Gleeson (Constellations) join forces for this powerhouse collection that puts in the limelight "music's ability to connect us to the recurring highs and lows of human life." Liz Pelly's "Broadside Ballads" is an insightful examination of the lesser-known members of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger's Almanac Singers, including Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, an "organizer, music teacher and performer." Jenn Penny's "The Highway" is a rewarding look at Lucinda Williams's career singing "sweet odes to fellow misfits." Fatima Bhutto's "Songs of Exile" is a lucid account of "anthems of resistance," and is Simone White's "What Is Going On in Rap Music, the Music Called 'Trap' and 'Drill'?" smartly explores the genres' relationship with criticism: "Criticism will not and cannot fuck with trap." Some pieces feel a bit arcane, as in Juliana Huxtable's "Praise Poem for Linda," a somewhat clunky analysis of music writing, but the work as a whole strikes a chord: "We can't help but surrender to what moves us in the sound even if it seems contradictory or irrational; in fact, our experience of music is full of contradictions," Heather Leigh writes in the introduction. The result is a collection worth tuning in to. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

From editors Gleeson (Constellations: Reflections from Life) and former Sonic Youth bassist/vocalist Gordon (Girl in a Band: A Memoir), this poetic collection of essays about women in music introduces listeners to several performers. Liz Pelly's "Broadside Ballads" is the best of the bunch, a captivating recounting of Agnes "Sis" Cunningham's protest music in the 1950s and 60s as she worked in conjunction with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Ottessa Moshfegh writes a beautiful piece about taking piano lessons as a very serious child. Jenn Pelly writes about Lucinda Williams and Rachel Kushner about country singer Wanda Jackson. "Diaphoresis" by Margo Jefferson compares African American jazz greats, particularly Ella Fitzgerald, to Greek deities. Multiple narrators serve the volume well by lending the different essays changing voices, and the pacing is excellent. Listeners will want to seek out the music of the women in the essays. VERDICT A varied and fascinating look at a myriad of women who have experienced or influenced music in different ways told by a number of talented women authors; this excellent audio production belongs in all music collections.--B. Allison Gray

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