A new book, “How Women Made Music”, is inspired by NPR’s multi-platform series “Turning the Tables”. The book offers a window into the lives, struggles, and triumphs of the women who have defined musical eras, featuring excerpts from 50 years of NPR’s archival interviews, essays, and lists. Scott Brocato recently spoke with NPR music correspondent and critic Ann Powers, and editor Alison Fensterstock, about the book.
Scott Brocato:
First, talk about "Turning the Tables”, and how it came about. Ann, let's start with you. It started from a conversation you had back in 2015?
Ann Powers:
Yes. So Alison and I were hanging out in New Orleans, and we've just seen the amazing left-handed guitarist Barbara Lynn play a show. And we got to talking about how when we looked at lists of greatest guitarists, or read, you know, kind of histories of the period when Barbara Lynn emerged and had hits, she was rarely mentioned. That got us thinking about how often that happened with women artists and even the artists who are mentioned in lists and histories: they're often sort of relegated to the side, you know? And we thought, why does this keep happening? I mean, it was the 21st century. Why are women still considered kind of a novelty in music, even the greatest women? Why is Joni Mitchell #8 on a list and not number one?
And what we concluded was that we wanted to do an experiment, which was trying to tell the whole of popular music history through only the lens of women artists. And that is the kind of heart of “Turning the Tables.” We've had many seasons of it, and now this book collects work from all of those seasons. And Alison went back into the NPR archive, which is 50-plus years of interviews with women artists. So I think we accomplished our goal.
Scott Brocato:
Alison, talk about that process as the editor and going back through that huge archive of material. How long did it take and did you have a big team?
Alison Fensterstock:
Well, yeah, we had the amazing NPR archivists at headquarters and working remotely, just going through this amazing trove of interviews with artists, which was like time travel in a way. Because you have going back to the very early 70s, NPR was always doing one-on-one interviews with musicians. So you get, like, a remote someone did on her tour bus with Tammy Wynette in 1971, and you get Patti Smith in 1976 talking about kind of like becoming like a rock front person, as opposed to a poet. So they're in the moment. They're talking with, like, the energy and vitality of, like, whatever is newsworthy that's making them being interviewed at the time.
And then we put them sort of next to written pieces from the different seasons of the "Turning the Tables” series that they would kind of have almost a call and response with, like across time and genre and space, to kind of create a book that I think sort of references itself in a lot of ways and opens up a different way of looking at the history of popular music.
Scott Brocato:
Ann, you write in the book's introduction that “the very idea of ‘women in’ music has shifted in the years that 'Turning the Tables’ has existed”. How so?
Ann Powers:
There's been a real sea change. Look at the top of the charts. Look at who's filling arenas and stadiums, and obviously we can talk about Taylor Swift. We talk about Beyoncé. We can talk about Chappell Roan as the greatest sensation of this year, 2024. But we also have to talk about women throughout many different genres: in jazz, even in country, which remains...a little male-dominated. We still have these artists like Lainey Wilson. And I just feel that women are kind of like, owning this moment.
And it's equally true about women writing about music, women working in media, in broadcast. It just feels like a great moment now. As Alison sort of suggested earlier, we are always travelling through time, and I've seen I've been through moments like this before. So is it a sea change or is it a temporary turning of the tide? I'm not sure, but I'm hopeful.
Scott Brocato:
Well, in the book you included a list of the 100 Greatest Albums Made by Women. Talk about the origin of that list and how it's evolved. It first came out in 2017, correct?
Ann Powers:
Well, I have to kind of playfully correct you, ‘cause it's 150 albums. And in fact, that difference between 100 and 150 kind of captures the spirit of the whole "Turning the Tables” project, because in fact we were working and trying to narrow things down. We'd had almost 100 women, most of them people who worked at partner stations across the country voting on these albums. And some of the votes were so close and we just couldn't...we just could not condense it.
So one day, out of sheer desperation, I said “Hey, let's make it 150!” And I think there was something about 150 that kind of bursts the doors open. It in itself was an innovation, to do a list of that many albums. And we also said upon publishing the list, hey, we want you to argue with us. And after the list was published, we immediately started publishing essays by women who objected to their favorite albums being left off and arguing for other albums. And that is really the spirit of this project. We never wanted to feel like it's completed. There's always a new argument to be made.
Scott Brocato:
At the top of the list is Joni Mitchell's “Blue”. Talk about the importance and influence of Joni Mitchell as an artist. I know, Ann, you've written a book about her (“Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell”). Talk about how her album "Blue”, in particular, is such an influential album.
Alison Fensterstock:
Well, Ann’s the one who just wrote a traveling biography of Joni Mitchell; but I would say, I mean, she landed, I think rightly, at the top of the list. She's also one of the only artists that had more than one album on the list. I think we were saying earlier Aretha Franklin had three, John Mitchell had two...
Ann Powers:
Nina Simone, I think, had two...
Alison Fensterstock:
Yeah, two. So this is sort of rarefied company, even in people who made a great list. But when you talk about sort of recasting the history of popular music, the people who spurred the great innovations of it, are the women and not the men, Joni is the great singer-songwriter confessional revolution of the late 60s and early 70s. I think even compared to the men that we think of as the epitomes of that, she is sort of above and beyond with her poetic fluency and her guitar work. She is sort of the great empath poetess of the 20th century. And it's just that's the album that I think so many young people have, like, curled up at night in their bedroom with feeling like she is singing from, like, deep inside their organs.
Ann Powers:
You know, I thought a lot about legacy in writing that book, “Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell.” I thought a lot about her legacy. And one beautiful thing that's happened as I've been out on tour promoting that book is that a lot of women—and men--come up to me and they say, “Can you sign this book for my mother? She turned me on to Joni Mitchell.” And also, “Can you sign this book for my daughter? She's just getting into Joni Mitchell”. So I feel like this is at the center of the work I do: thinking about how we keep music alive across generations.
The idea of timelessness is...I don't necessarily believe everything is of its time. But music, even an album like "Blue", it changes over time. It has different meanings for different generations. And it's so beautiful to me that transmission from an elder to a younger person, and the celebration that we're seeing for Joni now that she's back. You know, she's going to play the Hollywood Bowl pretty soon. That is a beautiful example of what I'm talking about.
Scott Brocato:
Ann Powers, Alison Fensterstock, thank you for joining us to talk about “How Women Made Music”, your latest book, with KRWG Public Media.
Ann Powers:
Thanks so much.
Alison Fensterstock:
Yeah, thank you.
