How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History

 

Book review: How Women Made Music by NPR Music 

This book from the US-based public service broadcaster is a spin-off from a longstanding project aimed at putting women musicians centre stage. It proves its point with a rich, readable and revolutionary overview of numerous women musicians who have earnt their place in history.  

NPR is a public service radio network, and they are doing a public service with this book, appropriately subtitled A Revolutionary History. But the book is only a small part of what they are doing. In 2017 they launched a multi-platform series called Turning the Tables; this book is a selection of material from its various strands, supplemented with fifty years’ worth of coverage of women musicians.

Did you know there is no Wikipedia page for “Men in music”? But there is one called “Lists of women in music”. That tells you everything about how women musicians are viewed in our culture: not the default. 

How many women get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? How many women end up on the “best album” lists? We all know the answers to those questions: a minority. But this book is part of the answer to those answers. It’s about changing the balance.

So yes, the project includes a list called The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women and another called The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women+. But that’s not, the Afterword explains, about trying to create a new canon: it’s about trying to create a new conversation. That means ignoring the old hierarchies and starting again.

“Without a serious revision of the canon,” writes Ann Powers in the introduction, “women will always remain on the margins.”

Those lists give a taste of the breadth in the book, which spans eras and genres. So, along with originators like Bessie Smith and Rosetta Tharpe and originals like Kate Bush and Patti Smith, it looks at the artists who have been most influential in the new century – arguing that here, women have been leading the way. 

The choice of musicians is, understandably, biased towards the US (which means that race is a major sub-plot). Most of them were familiar to me; others weren’t, which means new music to explore.

Each of the book’s themed sections includes quotes from interviews, bite-sized commentary and longer histories/appreciations. Some of the content focuses on experiences specific to women (abortion, motherhood, misogyny); much of it is about experiences general to musicians. So for every “Who says girls can’t play rock’n’roll?” there are more discussions about race and class, tradition and innovation, politics and protest, songwriting and musicianship.

There are 143 featured artists – and a similar number of contributors, including journalists, scholars, memoirists, essayists and illustrators. All women.

I would love it if we got to the point where there weren’t any more books about “women in music”. But until the tables are truly turned, we’ll continue to need them. Meanwhile, this project might be part of making that change happen.

This review originally appeared on Louder than War.