Music: A Subversive History

By George Grella

NOV 2019 | Music

Songs about fucking and killing—that would have also been an appropriate subtitle for this scintillating new book from Ted Gioia. He’s already written three valuable books about the place of music in society and human experience, Healing Songs (2006), Works Songs (2006), and Love Songs: The Hidden history (2015). Music: A Subversive History builds on those by digging down into the fundamental nature of music, how it is made and how it affects us.

Music of Harry Partch, Vol. 3: Sonata Dementia, Bridge Records (2019)

By Jude Thomas

NOV 2019 | Music

Beyond the accuracy of the playing, the fidelity of the recording, and the delight of hearing Partch himself interpret a rare work, the album demonstrates how Partch’s music and legacy have persisted and changed in the 45 years since his death.

Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers

By Yvonne C. Garrett

FEB 2020 | Books

Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime By Women Writers is a patriarchy-challenging collection of noir by women. Not all of these tales are told from a woman’s perspective, nor are they all presenting a feminist perspective, but most are wonderfully wrought, chilling tales of revenge, redemption, the evil that men do, and just what these women do about it.

“POETRY AS FORCES” AFTER Cecilia Vicuña

By Andrea Abi-Karam

APR 2019 | Critics Page

The "about to happen" / "poetry as forces" when Cecilia Vicuña says that the lies (the words, the language) of the Chilean dictatorship murdered & tortured thousands of people I remember the power of the word & i remember the power of poetry—"made of forces"—that holds something in the action of language