How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music

Drawn from NPR Music’s acclaimed, groundbreaking series Turning the Tables, the definitive book on the vital role of Women in Music—from Beyoncé to Odetta, Taylor Swift to Joan Baez, Joan Jett to Dolly Parton—featuring archival interviews, essays, photographs, and illustrations.

Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music brings this impressive reshaping to the page and includes material from more than fifty years of NPR’s coverage plus newly commissioned work. A must-have for music fans, songwriters, feminist historians, and those interested in how artists think and work, including:

• Joan Baez talking about nonviolence as a musical principle in 1971

• Dolly Parton’s favorite song and the story behind it

• Patti Smith describing art as her “jealous mistress” in 1974

• Nina Simone, in 2001, explaining how she developed the edge in her voice as a tool against racism.

• Taylor Swift talking about when she had no idea if her musical career might work

• Odetta on how shifting from classical music to folk allowed her to express her fury over Jim Crow

This incomparable hardcover volume is a vital record of history destined to become a classic and a great gift for any music fan or creative thinker.

1144948244

How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music

Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

• Joan Baez talking about nonviolence as a musical principle in 1971

• Dolly Parton’s favorite song and the story behind it

• Patti Smith describing art as her “jealous mistress” in 1974

• Nina Simone, in 2001, explaining how she developed the edge in her voice as a tool against racism.

• Taylor Swift talking about when she had no idea if her musical career might work

• Odetta on how shifting from classical music to folk allowed her to express her fury over Jim Crow

This incomparable hardcover volume is a vital record of history destined to become a classic and a great gift for any music fan or creative thinker.

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Overview

Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

• Joan Baez talking about nonviolence as a musical principle in 1971

• Dolly Parton’s favorite song and the story behind it

• Patti Smith describing art as her “jealous mistress” in 1974

• Nina Simone, in 2001, explaining how she developed the edge in her voice as a tool against racism.

• Taylor Swift talking about when she had no idea if her musical career might work

• Odetta on how shifting from classical music to folk allowed her to express her fury over Jim Crow

This incomparable hardcover volume is a vital record of history destined to become a classic and a great gift for any music fan or creative thinker.

Product Details
About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063270336
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	39,071
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 7.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

In July 2017, NPR Music launched Turning the Tables—a groundbreaking, celebratory, and provocative multi-platform series examining the important and equal role women play in popular music. Now in its fifth season, Turning the Tables has reached millions of listeners and is considered one of NPR Music’s most successful, critically acclaimed programs. How Women Made Music is the book that continues this vibrant conversation and finally presents women at the center of the discussion about popular music.

ANN POWERS has been a music critic for more than thirty years, working for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and other publications. In the decade she has worked with NPR, she has written extensively on music and culture and appeared regularly on the All Songs Considered podcast and on news shows including All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Her books include a memoir, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music; and Piece by Piece with Tori Amos. Powers lives in Nashville.

From the B&N Reads Blog

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All The Right Notes

I could not be more thrilled to return with another mixtape of music audiobooks. Sure, it’s easy to dive in on artists I know and am a huge fan of, but part of the fun of a great music book is being able to go deeper on artists and/or genres that I haven’t really spent much […]

★ 08/12/2024
Fensterstock, a contributor to NPR’s Turning the Tables, a “multiplatform series” that celebrates the women who shaped American popular music, draws from it and more than 50 years of the station’s coverage in a rich and resonant collection of essays, interview excerpts, and ephemera. The tone of the entries varies widely: Michelle Mercer fondly captures how Ella Fitzgerald became a “folk hero synonymous with cassette technology” with a 1972 commercial in which a recording of her high notes shattered glass (“Only Ella Fitzgerald, in the living, singing flesh, could have become the Memorex Lady. She was an American original”), while Harmony Holiday paints a visceral, uneasy picture of how Tina and Ike Turner’s abusive relationship turned live performances into spectacles of “eroticized violence” in which the audience unconsciously takes part (onstage, Tina is “mimicking sex, pretending she doesn’t hear or notice him slyly threatening her life onstage”). Other essays explore musicians’ intimate influences on listeners, including how Kate Bush’s The Dreaming (1982) gave shape to Ann Powers’s conflicted feelings about shame and femininity. Spanning from Joan Baez to Rihanna, the collection captures the varied ways women have innovated the American musical landscape, in the process powerfully giving due to music as a cultural artifact, a public artistic expression, and a site of personal meaning. It’s a buoyant, welcome ode to some of the most influential songstresses of the 20th and 21st centuries. Photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Spanning from Joan Baez to Rihanna, the collection captures the varied ways women have innovated the American musical landscape, in the process powerfully giving due to music as a cultural artifact, a public artistic expression, and a site of personal meaning. It’s a buoyant, welcome ode to some of the most influential songstresses of the 20th and 21st centuries.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Almost every reader is likely to find a host of new names to check out... An indispensable survey of the too-often neglected role of women in creating the music we all listen to." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The project endeavors to correct the persistent marginalization of women and nonbinary artists in the music world... Full of photographs and other visuals, this is not a book on women in music; it is the book on women in music." — Booklist (starred review)
"Essential, definitive reading for anyone who listens to music or cares about women — which is, in short, everyone. Simply put, I wanted this book not to end." — Sheila Weller, bestselling author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation.
“Just reading this made me want to dance! A reminder that women have built many revolutions, credited or not, and we will continue to revolt, innovate, and shine.” — Lindy West, author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
“Somehow both appropriately broad and perfectly detailed, a beautiful, easily digestible book…. Also guess what, you don’t have to be a woman to enjoy it!” · — Yasi Salek, host of Bandsplain and 24 Question Party People
“If what neuroscientists tell us is true, that music is a social/emotion-delivery device…truly a woman's voice, words, rhythms, and melodies are best adapted to express what it feels like to be a human. This welcome book taps us on the back to remind us of the many underappreciated musicians whose work found its way into our own self images.” — Susan Rogers, legendary producer, neuroscientist, and author of This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You
"HOW WOMEN MADE MUSIC: A REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY is a rich harmony of different writers paying homage to some of the greatest musicians of our time....It will change the way you experience their music forever." — Liz Garbus, documentary film director and producer of What Happened, Miss Simone? and Harry & Meghan
"With the rabble-rousing How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music, Alison Fensterstock has assembled a Turning the Tables greatest-hits compilation, with bonus tracks culled from half a century of NPR chatter with tuneful women." — Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

★ 2024-08-16
A wide-ranging exploration of the role of women in popular music over the last century.
The book draws on the NPR project “Turning the Tables,” created by Ann Powers, Jill Sternheimer, and Alison Fensterstock, to document how women have been “musical pathfinders, innovators, and standard-bearers.” The text of the book consists mainly of segments from that show, along with bits from other NPR shows like “All Things Considered,” some only a few sentences long. They cover female artists from 1920s pioneers like Bessie Smith and Mother Maybelle Carter to midcentury icons including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Barbra Streisand, rock stars Janis Joplin and Diana Ross, right up to modern-day chartbusters Beyonce and Taylor Swift, with lots of others from every school of music. And there is a fair bit of attention paid to non-U.S. performers such as South Africa’s Miriam Makeba, Iceland’s Björk, and Brazil’s Gal Costa. Of the longer essays, some are largely biographical, while others record the artist’s impact on the writer’s own life. The shorter ones vary between interview snippets and comments on specific records, the latter drawn from two lists created for the radio show (and included in the book) of “greatest albums” by women—one covering the whole history of recording, the other from the 21st century. Omissions are inevitable in such an ambitious project, but almost every reader is likely to find a host of new names to check out. Recommended for anyone who takes music—especially women’s music—seriously.
An indispensable survey of the too-often neglected role of women in creating the music we all listen to.

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