New Books in Music

Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and
Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the
University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about⁠ Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork⁠
(University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into lesbian radio history
and its evolution into queer feminist podcasting today, exploring the
politics, aesthetics, and cultural activism embedded in queer feminist
soundwork. Through deeply personal and archival explorations, Stacey
Copeland traces the emergence of queer feminist soundwork—a unique blend
of community-led storytelling, political resistance, and creative
expression rooted in feminist and LGBTQ+ activism. At the heart of the
book lies a powerful idea: sound is not just heard but felt, connecting
generations through shared voices and struggles. In conversation with
award-winning and cutting-edge queer and feminist podcast producers from
across Canada and the U.S., Lavender Sounds invites us to turn a
feminist embodied ear to the past to uncover the ways gender, race, and
sexual orientations are embedded in our everyday media listening
practices. From pioneering Canadian radio shows like Vancouver's The
Lesbian Show and Montreal's Dykes on Mykes to today's queer chumcasts
and audio documentary, Lavender Sounds is a journey through auditory
landscapes where joy, protest, intimacy, and identity intersect. This
book opens a vibrant conversation about how radio and podcasting are
vital tools for marginalized communities to connect, create, and claim
space in the media world.
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Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of
the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A
pioneer in children’s music and an innovative educator, Jenkins recorded
forty albums and influenced countless children and adults over a
sixty-year career. Gayle Wald places Jenkins’s life and work within the
larger contexts of the civil rights movement, the folk revival, and the
changing worlds of children’s education and entertainment in This is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University
of Chicago Press, 2025). Committed to civil rights, Jenkins infused her
beliefs in social justice and our shared humanity into her work with
children and her compositions. She viewed music as a way for children to
come together and establish connections with each other rather than as a
gateway to musical achievement or literacy. Based on dozens of
interviews including with Jenkins and her life partner Bernadelle
Richter, Wald traces Jenkins’s life from her childhood in segregated
Chicago, her involvement with the integrated folk music scene, and her
successful career as a music educator. This is Rhythm was given special recognition by the 2026 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award.
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This panel discussion will explore the remarkable influence of Latin American music and dance on the culture of Yiddish speaking communities in the United States. Ronald Robboy will discuss Latin American musical influences upon Yiddish theater composers, including Sholom Secunda, Abraham Ellstein, and Alexander Olshanetsky; Sonia Gollance will discuss the popularity of dances like the Tango and Mambo in the Borscht Belt, as exemplified by movies like Dirty Dancing and Mamboniks; and Josh Kun will discuss the influence of Latin American music on post-war Jewish music and the influence of Jewish music on U.S. Latino/a artists.

This event forms part of Carnegie Hall’s Nuestros sonidos festival.

This panel discussion originally took place on March 10, 2025.
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With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an
icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the
ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero as he glided through six
decades of musical trends with nary a lapse in taste. Not to say he ever
played it safe. What other guitarist can lay claim to performing with
opera star Luciano Pavarotti, mainstream television personality Kelly
Clarkson, and professional degenerates like Guns N’ Roses with equal
grace and wit? Or as Beck himself once quipped, “I’m an awkward son of a
bitch when it comes to doing the expected.”

In Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story (Da
Capo, 2026)​, Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill return to chart the
unexplored life of rock’s greatest and perhaps most enigmatic
instrumentalist. Culled from approximately 30 hours of interviews with
the late guitarist himself, numerous conversations with those closest to
him, and extensive research, the book sheds new light on the genius
that Jimmy Page once said, “shifted the whole sound and face of electric
guitar music.”
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Minimalist Music
(Bloomsbury, 2026) looks critically into the music's past, shows how
the genre thrives across styles, and points the way toward minimalism's
ongoing future.

Minimalism as a genre is best defined not by any style or flavor but
by its means. Certain rhythms and chords in other music may identify
things like jazz or bossa nova or reggae; take those same elements and
put them through the processes of minimalism and you have minimalism
with the hues of other musics.

A still young genre with ancient roots, minimalism is much less any
kind of style than a practice, a manner of making music. Reviving those
means and applying them to contemporary sounds and experiences, the
pioneers of minimalism created a new and avant-garde music that
immediately communicated its power to listeners of all kinds. The global
appeal of minimalism and the way the methods adapt to myriad styles
open up a view into how music actually works as an art and an
experience, how through time it connects in a fundamental way to how we
as humans listen.

George Grella, Jr. has written about music and culture for over
thirty years for print and online publications, and has contributed to
the Grove Dictionary of Music and the Library of Congress' National
Recording Registry. He is Music Editor at The Brooklyn Rail, publishes the Kill Yr Idols newsletter, and is the author of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (Bloomsbury, 2015). He has played jazz, classical, and improvised music from CBGB to Carnegie Hall.

George Grella on Bluesky and Kill Yr Idols newsletter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World
(Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio
107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.
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