I wouldn’t exist without her

Our new book, 'How Women Made Music,' is almost here.

View this email online September 28, 2024 by Ann Powers NPR Music’s first book, How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History, comes out on Tuesday, and it’s got us thinking about what gives us life. Oumou Sangare performs at the Africa Music festival in Delft, Netherlands, in August 1993. Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images Hello fellow musical flame-keepers, Last week, at Nashville’s annual roots-tending music confab AmericanaFest, I kept hearing variations on a particular phrase: I wouldn’t exist without her.  Lori McKenna said it before singing “Mercy Now” at the tribute to folk doyenne Mary Gauthier, who mentored the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter when she was just a young mom on the Boston coffeehouse scene. So did Creekbed Carter Hogan, a young trans artist who stole the show with his rendition of the torch song “Slip of the Tongue.” For him, Gauthier’s insistence on writing from the heart of her queer experience — even in Nashville, long before anything like an LGBTQIA+ showcase existed at fests like this one — was the element that made it possible to breathe at all, as a musician anyway. Later, Katie Crutchfield echoed these sentiments while discussing Lucinda Wililams in an onstage interview with me, explaining how the songs on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road taught her fundamental uses of metaphor and lyrical space. And in a different onstage conversation, the fest’s breakthrough artist Jobi Riccio talked about how her guitar playing changed after a mentor taught her Joni Mitchell’s complicated tunings. Mentor, space clearer, paragon, paradigm shifter: These are some of the words that describe artists who bear others into existence. Not literally, of course. All of the people I’ve mentioned would likely be making music and certainly be living their lives if the elders they credit had never crossed their paths. Yet in that hyperbolic exclamation, I wouldn’t exist, I hear the love that nourishes legacies. The most personal and dynamic aspects of an artist’s impact have little to do with the canons and halls of fame who might enshrine her work; they happen at that hand-to-hand level, sometimes through real human exchange, often when a listener or a reader or a viewer has her perspective rearranged by a work, lives inside it, finds herself by absorbing those brush strokes, that rhyme scheme, those chords.  I’m thinking about what matters in legacy-building right now because Turning the Tables, the project I helped found at NPR Music, is taking an exciting new form this week. How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History will be published this Tuesday, October 1, condensing that series dedicated to uplifting the stories of women and other marginalized people within a book’s pages – and simultaneously expanding its scope with material from more than 50 years of NPR interviews with women artists.  The book’s editor, Alison Fensterstock, calls it “the zine of my dreams,” and it does have that handmade feel: It’s richly illustrated, with short bursts of text punctuation longer entries, and each piece speaks to those around it. I’m really proud of this book, and excited that it honors the many writers and artists included (though, of course, I’m sad that it couldn’t be five times its size to accommodate all the equally fantastic Turning the Tables material that still lives on the web). When I read it, what I feel is that sense of creative spirits finding their mortal forms through encounters with each other, in real time and across history. I just have to open the book to encounter examples of this. I let the pages part midway through and find Joni Tevis’s excellent meditation on the songs of Gillian Welch; just a few pages earlier, I can read Jewly Hight’s account of country founder Maybelle Carter, a consummate crafter whose mark is strong on Welch’s songs. I read on, and contemplate how Francesca Royster’s beautiful memoir of learning queer pride through the songs of Tracy Chapman answers Karen Tongson’s heartfelt account of the weave of culture and community across generations of Indigo Girls fans. Flipping back a few chapters I find Sheila E. talking about inspiring young girls as a pioneering woman drummer; flipping forward, I discover Sasha Geffen’s sharp analysis of St. Vincent as a guitarist who’s established new ways of understanding that essential instrument. The goal of Turning the Tables was always to establish this kind of unbound dialogue — to show that popular music can be understood by focusing wholly on women artists, and that new insights emerge when voices (of artists and listeners alike) from one era are juxtaposed with those from another. Women’s work has always survived on the strength of one practitioner’s messages to her real or spiritual daughters. It’s written on recipe cards, stitched into quilts — and embedded in piano arrangements or a singer’s way of wailing. “Revolution” means change, sometimes violent, but it also marks the turn of the spinning wheel… or a young girl’s record player.  I wouldn’t exist without her rings in my head again. This book wouldn’t exist without the myriad artists who’ve inspired all of us for most of our lives and the hundreds of women who contributed to our series. My deepest investment in Turning the Tables centers on music writing itself, the quixotic practice that’s preoccupied me for much of my life. During the project’s lifetime, a new generation of women, non-binary and trans writers has emerged to enrich and sustain it, even as the two realms that sometimes reluctantly claim it — media and academia — have faced perilous challenges. So many amazing writers have contributed to Turning the Tables; in How Women Made Music, their words are matched and enhanced by the work of NPR journalists and hosts who are also part of this ongoing endeavor. Many of the people whose names appear in the book now have books, podcasts, documentaries and prestigious jobs of their own. They would have done this work, I’m sure, whether or not Turning the Tables had come to be, but I’ll flatter myself by saying that we contributed in some small way to its formation. In a time when planned obsolescence seems like the coin of the media realm, seeing their words collected within one volume reminds me of how women continue to save each other over time.  In the first weeks of October, Alison and I will be venturing out to celebrate this book and all it represents in events taking place in cities across the country. (Come see us on the road! Tour dates are below, and you can pre-order the book here.) I’m really looking forward to talking with an array of contributors who’ll take the stage at these events. Most of all, though, I’m hoping someone will be in the audience who is just starting to think about how to write about music, or to make it in a way that’s true to them, and that our conversations might clarify something, or embolden them in unexpected ways. Music and the love of it is always coming into existence. It’s uniquely renewable because it’s always made in community, even when only one person’s playing, or listening, or writing about it. The echoes stir us to life and keep it going. Newsletter continues after sponsor message More stories from NPR Music Speaking of legacies, the siblings of the paradigm-shifting producer SOPHIE faced a serious task after her tragic death in 2021: to complete her final album, still in process when she passed. Our resident SOPHIE expert Hazel Cills talked to them about honoring the artist’s spirit.  Nate Chinen spoke with composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek during the lead-up to the U.S. premiere of their new opera, The Listeners, which centers on a mysterious hum that only some of the population (and maybe, some of the audience) can hear.  A sad coincidence connected Lara Downes and the poet-musician Aja Monet: When they met to talk for Downes’s NPR show Amplify, both women had very recently lost an important elder — Downes’s mother and Monet’s grandmother. The instant bond this established shaped a remarkable conversation about grief, bloodline and community. The biggest album in the country this week is a 10-year-old mixtape by Travis Scott that finally got pressed onto vinyl. Stephen Thompson tells us how that works. Deena Prichep profiled the composer behind one of the most-heard songs of our era – “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys," a catchy little tune that soundtracks countless tiktok and instagram videos of low-stakes hijinks. NPR Classical New tipping expectations ... Here are a few things that have stirred my heart this past while: Carter Hogan wrote a beautiful essay of his own about playing at the Mary Gauthier tribute. And if you don’t know Mary’s work, check it out. She’s one of the best folk storytellers living. Here’s her book and here is a playlist of her songs.  I haven’t seen the Demi Moore body horror movie The Substance, and tbh I don’t know if I will, but I did recently watch John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, a very entertaining earlier spin on midlife crisis that may have partially inspired it. I recommend this trippy Rock Hudson vehicle. It’s my Criterion Channel pick this week.  Speaking of legacies, I loved Daphne Merkin’s recent essay on why some artistic reputations grow long after an artists’ death, framed by the works of the German painter Paula Mohderson-Becker. And speaking of delving into history, no current rocker does so with as much flair as J.D. McPherson. I’m thrilled that he has a new album out this week. It’s called Nite Owls.  As we honor the past, it’s crucial to remember that humans have done a lot of damage across its vast expanse. symbiont, the new album from two of my folk-adjacent faves, Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin, mines indigenous and African diasporic songlines to offer a way to confront that legacy and cope in the present. It’s an electrifying listen. I was keeping my ears peeled for buzz at AmericanaFest and the biggest generator was definitely Jobi Riccio. If you haven’t listened to this razor-sharp songwriter and guitarist's 2023 album Whiplash, definitely check it out. More music’s coming from Jobi soon. Like every serious music lover I know, I’m super stoked to listen to Wesley Morris’s new Audible podcast on the divine Stevie Wonder. For the lactose-inclined, I must recommend this blue cheese with juniper berries that came in a remainders box from our local cheesery The Bloomy Rind. Just be careful and don’t crack your teeth! Introducing NPR Music+, a new way to support what you love and explore new music and conversations sponsor-free. NPR Music+ includes two podcasts with one convenient subscription: All Songs Considered and Alt.Latino, both sponsor-free. Learn more and support us at plus.npr.org/NPRmusic Get NPR Music+ Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from Central Florida Public Media (edit station). Need a new playlist? 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