New Books in Music

The real story behind the origin of gangsta rap is difficult to discern. Between the bombastic rhetoric and imagery, the larger-than-life characters, and the subsequent success of many of the individuals, it is hard to know exactly what to believe. Ben Westhoff’s new book, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur and the Birth of West Coast Rap (Hachette Books, 2016), sets the record straight with a clear account of the rise and dissolution of N.W.A., the founding of Death Row Records, and the events that led up to the deadly beef between Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. Based on scores of interviews with the principals, Westhoff provides a definitive account of 1990s gangsta rap’s birth and growth. It offers clarity on the confusing turn of events and explores in rich detail the murders of Tupac and Biggie. Westhoff’s book also provides a great opportunity to reflect on the legacy of gangsta rap, especially after the film Straight Outta Compton and the transformed images of Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre. Ben Westhoff is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Vice, Pitchfork, and The Wall Street Journal. He spent three years as the music editor at LA Weekly and is the author Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, and Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop. His website can be found at http://benwesthoff.com. Richard Schur is the host of this podcast and is Professor of English at Drury University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

On today’s program we will be speaking with David W. Stowe about his recent book Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Song of Exile weaves together the 2,500-year history of one of the most famous psalms in the Hebrew Bible; it examines the entire psalm, including the more obscure last stanza; and it draws on historical and interview research with musicians who have used Psalm 137 in their music. David W. Stowe earned his PhD from Yale University in 1993. He is currently interim chair of the English Department at Michigan State University. During the 2012-13 academic year, Stowe held a research fellowship in Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, where he researched and wrote an initial draft of this book, Song of Exile, which presents the cultural history of Psalm 137. Among his other books, he wrote No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (UNC Press 2011). He also wrote How Sweet the Sound: Music in the Spiritual Lives of Americans (Harvard UP, 2004), which won the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

In Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2016), Jack Hamilton examines major American and British recording artists of the 1960s to explain what happened during the decade to turn rock-n-roll white. By pairing musicians such as Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan or The Beatles and Motown, Hamilton explores the connections among artists and how artists influenced each other across racial and musical distinctions. Hamilton’s well-researched text seeks to expand how we think about the rock and roll canon and challenge how we think about music during the time period. He explores the ways in which rock and roll critics rebranded rock and roll as white and promoted and sold it as authentic to fans. Hamilton’s book challenges the racial categories of authenticity in the 1960s, and challenges readers to hear music differently. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

In Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan, 2013), Alisa Solomon, Director of the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone. She examines the pre-history of the first adaptations, the core story of the development of the broadway musical, and the fascinating afterlife of the musical including adaptations in Israel and Poland. This book is a great read and the essential volume on Fiddler on the Roof. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Punk has long been viewed as a subculture of anger, disruption, and alternative political and lifestyle choices. In The Politics of Punk: Protest and Revolt from the Streets (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) David Ensminger examines the various ways in which punk has created connections to various activist communities. Using interviews with musicians and subculture participants, oral histories, observations, and popular media reports, Ensminger follows the money trail, exploring where punk as a subculture has influenced communities and challenged dominant narratives. Ensminger positions punk’s beginnings in the larger political and social culture, connecting punk activism to the communities of which it was a part. He examines how punks were grassroots activists in ways that are often overlooked in traditional histories of the movement. Ensminger’s book appeals to scholars and readers interested in punk culture, popular music, activisms, and popular culture as Ensminger’s engaging work adds to the growing history of punk. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

What do the musical compositions of Bach, Gershwin, and the Beatles all have in common? Besides being great pieces of music, according to Andrew Schulman, they promote healing in intensive care (ICU) settings. Schulman is a classical guitar player and performer and author of Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Picador, 2016). Schulman did not receive training as a music therapist and only began working in ICUs after he had a near-death experience at one. Waking the Spirit offers a gripping account of his medical journey and his decision to give back to others. As a result of his collaboration with his former doctors, Schulman became what he terms, a “medical musician.” During the podcast, Schulman briefly describes his journey and reflects upon what he has learned about music from working in the ICU. He also talks about how his work in the ICU has made him a better concert performer. In our conversation, we explore how music heals, what forms of music seem most suited for healing, and the role of musicians and music therapists in ICUs. Andrew Schulman is the resident musician in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York City and Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He is the founder and artistic director of the Abaca String Band. He is also a solo guitarist and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Improv Comedy Club, and the White House. He lives in New York City with his wife, Wendy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

In her new book The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press, 2016), Michelle Cruz Gonzales tells her story as a member of a feminist hardcore punk band. The band, Spitboy, emerged in the early 90s in the Bay Areapunk scene. The book provides an insider’s view of the scene, what it was like touring, and how a young Xicana found herself in a genre of music that typically identifies itself as male and white. Gonzales reflects on the gender and racial politics that shaped punk music and explores her political and racial awakening while performing in the band. She discusses how audiences responded to an all-women band and the roots of Spitboy’s conflict with the riot Grrrl bands. The Spitboy Rule is an unflinchingly honest look at Gonzales’s life in Spitboy and offers tremendous insight into the 90s punk scene. The podcast delves deep into all of these questions and explores Gonzalez’s recent career as a professor and writer. Michelle Cruz Gonzales writes memoir and fiction and teaches English at Las Positas College. Born in East LA in 1969, MCG grew up in Tuolumne, a tiny California Gold Rush town. She played drums and wrote lyrics for three bands during the 1980s and 1990s: Bitch Fight, Spitboy, and Instant Girl. Gonzales currently lives in Oakland, California with her family. She blogs at https://pretty-bold-mexican-girl.com and some of her solo music can be heard at https://soundcloud.com/michelle-gonzales-52. Richard Schur, Professor of English at Drury University, is the host for this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Paul Roquet’s wonderful new book begins with an offering of jellyfish and proceeds to teach us how to read the air. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) looks carefully at the phenomenon of ambient subjectivication or, the emergence of self with and through ambient media in modern Japan. Beginning in the 1970s, atmosphere was becoming ambient, according to Roquet, and the emergence and proliferation of new techniques of ambient subjectivication reflected a shift in how the person was understood, away from collective self-understanding and toward a model rooted in a liberal ideal of autonomy and self-determination. Each chapter of the book looks at some specific way that music, film, video, and literature from the 1970s onward have incorporated forms of ambient subjectivication, from the Erik Satie boom and the birth of environmental music of the late 1970s to the music of artists like Hatakeyama Chihei (whose 2006 Minima Moralia I highly recommend!), to films like Ichikawa Jun’s Tony Takitani, and much much more. The book is also a gateway into a world of arresting and inspiring electronic media, and I recommend reading with an internet connection at hand to explore experiences like Ryoichi Kurokawa’s rheo: 5 horizons, Tsuchiya Takafumis’ Apoptosis, and Ise Shoko’s Noema while you work through Roquet’s text. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Noriko Manabe’s new book is a compelling analysis of the content, performance style, and role of music in social movements in contemporary Japan. Paying special attention to the constraints that limit and censor people–both ordinary citizens and musicians–from speaking out on sensitive political issues, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (Oxford University Press, 2015) focuses on the music of post-Fukushima antinuclear protests. Manabe looks carefully at the roles and motivations of musicians in Japan who have become involved in protest movements and demonstrations that reach across a range of physical and virtual spaces. This book will be of interest to any readers eager to learn more about modern Japan, protest movements, music, and the histories of nuclear power and its discontents. Make sure to check out the companion website, which includes lots of multi-media materials that articulate with the chapters of the book! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Few composers dominate a genre of music as completely as did Scott Joplin. From the publication of his iconic Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 onward his ragtime compositions came to serve as the soundtrack of his age. Yet Joplin aspired to be recognized not just as a successful writer of popular tunes but as a respected composer of classical music, an ambition that led him to write a ballet and two operas. In a new edition of his biography of Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, the eminent ragtime scholar Ed Berlin reveals many new details that sharpen our understanding of Joplin’s life and the times in which it was lived. Tracing his life from his childhood in rural Texas to his death in New York City in 1917, he describes Joplin’s career as a musician and composer, setting it within the context of an African American community seeking to define its place within American society. Through his extensive research, Berlin sheds new light on Joplin’s personal life, his business affairs, and the public reception of his music, helping us to better understand the impact and legacy of this great American artist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music