Contributors’ Notes

Bernhard Achhorner is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of Innsbruck. His research focuses on the intersections between music and identity, music, and politics, as well as music notation and performance. For the academic year 2017-18 he was a visiting research fellow at the “Center Austria: The Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies” at the University of New Orleans. Achhorner’s monograph about the functionalization of brass music for cultural, educational, and identity policy purposes in Nazi Germany was published in 2019. Currently, he is working as a research assistant at the University of Innsbruck for the DACH-project Writing Music. Iconic, performative, operative, and material aspects in musical notation(s).

Chris Anderton is associate professor of cultural economy at Solent University, Southampton, UK. He is the author of Music Festivals in the UK. Beyond the Carnivalesque (Routledge, 2019) and co-author of Understanding the Music Industries (Sage, 2013). He has presented and published internationally on music festivals, the music industries, and music history, and has guest edited issues of the journals Rock Music Studies and Arts & the Market. He is currently working (with James Hannam and Johnny Hopkins) on the book Music Management, Marketing and PR: Creating Connections and Conversations and is co-editing two further books: Media Narratives in Popular Music (with Martin James) and Researching Live Music: Gigs, Tours, Concerts and Festivals (with Sergio Pisfil). At Solent University he manages and teaches music business degrees and runs the in-house music organization Solent Music (solentmusic.com).

Rebeccah Bechtold is an associate professor of English at Wichita State University. Her research explores the representation of sound and silence in early American literature and culture. Her most recent work addresses the middle- and upper-class portrayals of working-class sounds—from street noise to the ever-pervasive street musician—in the northeastern United States.

Patrick Burke is associate professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is also affiliated faculty in American Culture Studies and Performing Arts. He is the author of Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (University of Chicago Press) as well as project director, researcher, and writer for the digital humanities project Music and Racial Segregation in Twentieth-Century St. Louis: Uncovering the Sources. His book Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2021.

Christine Capetola is a visiting assistant professor of communication and gender & sexuality studies at Tulane University. Her research mobilizes queer, Black, sound, affect, and performance studies to explore how both sound and feltness complicate ocularcentric notions of representation. Her book project, Sonic Femmeness: Black Culture Makers, Felt Histories, and Vibrational Identities, investigates how Black pop stars, activists, and intellectuals in the 1980s and 2010s used femmeness to navigate their historical moments of protest and pandemic. She is published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bitch Media and has work forthcoming in Oxford Handbook of Electronic Dance Music. She blogs about contemporary pop/R&B on her website, www.christinecapetola.com.

I. Augustus Durham is an assistant professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY, and his research focuses on Black study from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. His current book project interrogates how melancholy catalyzes performances of genius; in so doing, he employs psychoanalysis and affect theory to chronicle the relationship between the black feminine/maternal and her “son” through the politics of abstraction in the black literary and aesthetic canon. His work has been published in Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, and Journal of Religion and Health; he recently contributed an essay on the film Moonlight to an edited collection on the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney. Prior to this appointment, Durham was the president’s postdoctoral fellow in English at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Kevin Fellezs is an associate professor at Columbia University with a joint appointment in the Music and African American and African Diaspora Studies departments. He is the author of 2012 Woody Guthrie Book Award winner, Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk and the Creation of Fusion (Duke University Press, 2011), and Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific (Duke University Press, 2019). He has published articles in Jazz Perspectives, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Journal of Metal Music Studies, and in numerous anthologies.

Chandra Frank is a feminist researcher and independent curator who works on the intersections of archives, waterways, gender, sexuality and race. Her curatorial practice explores the politics of care, experimental forms of narration, and the colonial grammar embedded within display and exhibition arrangements. Frank earned a Ph.D. in media, communications and cultural studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and exhibition catalogues, including Feminist Review, the Small Axe VLOSA catalogue, The Place is Here publication and the collection Tongues. She recently co-edited a special issue on Archives for Feminist Review. Her curated exhibitions include Re(as)sisting Narratives (Amsterdam/Cape Town), Fugitive Desires (London), and Proclamation 73 (Durban) (co-curated with Zara Julius). Frank curated the 2016 Archives Matter Conference at the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths. Currently, Frank is a post-doctoral fellow at the Charles Phelps Taft Research Centre at the University of Cincinnati.

Nona Hendryx has spent her career tackling social issues, love, and politics in a multitude of interdisciplinary forms. Her group, Labelle, groundbreakers both as women and as African American artists, racked up gold albums, top 10 singles, and a worldwide platinum hit with the single “Lady Marmelade.” Next, the revolutionary art-rock, new-wave goddess embarked upon her own impressive solo career, which spanned eight studio albums and engaged her with collaborators, including Prince, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Vernon Reid of Living Color, George Clinton, and Bono. A passionate technology zealot, Hendryx co-founded Sistersmatr.org (Science, Music, Art, Tech, Robotics) Fab Lab program for Robert f. Wagner Jr. Art & Tech High School. An avid Afrofuturist, she will present ‘Nona Hendryx and The Disciples of Sun Ra’ in The Temple of Dendur at the NY Metropolitan Museum in February. And a play with music scored by Hendryx, “Blue,” heads to Broadway in the spring.

Ian Isiah is a bonafide NYC R&B sex idol. Raised in the heart of Brooklyn with a strong gospel stripe, he’s grown into the forefront of both fashion and LGBTQ movements. Seen as a creative leader and magnetic muse of the Hood By Air brand, you can find him singing hymns in a church or on a street corner as often as you can hear him emceeing one of NYC’s underground raves (Ghe20 G0th1 k, the Telfar brand afterparties). Ian has loaned his talents elsewhere as well, branding and performing his special bag of tricks at events for VirgilAbloh + Nike, Helmut Lang, Adidas, Century 21, Colmar and many others. Ian has toured with Blood Orange and is featured and singing on the latest album Angel’s Pulse + Hynes’ previous LPs Negro Swan, FreetownSound, following appearances on Chromeo, Theophilus London and SSION own records. Shugga Sextape Vol. 1 from 2018 took the music world by storm and featured looks in Vogue, The FADER, Pitchfork’s Rising, culminating in a performance at the 2019 Pornhub awards. With a new release on Chromeo’s Juliet Records/E One in the works for 2020, things are looking very exciting for the young rising star.

Robin James is associate professor of philosophy at UNC Charlotte and co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies. For the 2019-20 academic year she was visiting associate professor of music at Northeastern University. She is author of three books: The Sonic Episteme: acoustic resonance, neoliberalism, & biopolitics (Duke University Press, 2019), Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, and neoliberalism (Zero, 2015), and The Conjectural Body: gender, race and the philosophy of music (Lexington Books, 2010). Her work on feminism, race, contemporary continental philosophy, pop music, and sound studies has appeared in The Guardian, the LARB, BELT Magazine, The New Inquiry, the Noisey music channel, popula, “SoundingOut!”, Real Life, Hypatia, differences, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Perry B. Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the founder and co-director of The Sound of Victory, an interdisciplinary, multi-platform initiative dedicated to investigating the historical relationship between music, sound, and sport. Perry is also a research fellow with The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center, where she is working to design and implement a series of public-facing, interdisciplinary efforts dedicated to investigating gender inequality and diversity in popular music. As part of this effort, Perry is co-executive producing The New New, a new podcast and collaborative project with Gxrlschool that highlights artists, activists, and industry innovators challenging inequity through popular culture. Perry's doctoral dissertation, “How the Light Gets In”: Sexual Misconduct and Disclosure in the Music Industry, investigates sexism and the structural barriers within the industry that keep women from coming forward with experiences of sexual misconduct.

Alisha Lola Jones is assistant professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University (Bloomington). Her book Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (April 2020, Oxford University Press) breaks ground by analyzing the role of gospel music making in constructing and renegotiating gender identity among Black men. Dr. Jones' research interests include musical masculinities, global pop music, future studies, ecomusicology, music and theology, the music industry, musics of the African diaspora and research on music and foodways (gastromusicology). For more information about Dr. Jones, please visit DrAlisha.com.

Jason King is the founding faculty member at New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where he is associate professor, director of Global Studies, and director of Writing, History & Emergent Media Studies. He is a musician, DJ, performer, producer, arranger and songwriter, scholar, curator, journalist and the author of The Michael Jackson Treasures, a 2009 Barnes and Noble exclusive biography that has been translated into more than seven languages. He was the host and co-producer of NPR Music's Noteworthy, a series on the creative process of music superstars such as Dua Lipa, Alicia Keys, and Miguel, as well as the curator of NPR&B, NPR's 24/7 R&B radio channel. He is a regular contributor to publications such as Pitchfork, Slate, and NPR Music and he has been an expert witness in copyright infringement cases for Drake, Katy Perry, JAY Z, Timbaland, Lady Gaga, Madonna, and others.

Nicholas C. Laudadio is associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where his work focuses on pop music studies, science fiction, and contemporary new media and fiction. He has published recently in the journals Science Fiction Film and Television and in The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture; he is also a musician and producer.

Uri McMillan is associate professor of performance studies in the Departments of English and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (NYU Press, 2015), which was awarded the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association, the Barnard Hewitt Award and the Errol Hill Prize, both from the American Society for Theatre Research. He has published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory;GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; and ASAP/Journal and essays in museum/gallery based publications for the Studio Museum in Harlem, Aperture Foundation, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Madison Moore is an artist-scholar, DJ and assistant professor of queer studies in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. madison is the author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), a cultural analysis of fabulousness. He has performed at venues that include the Perth Festival, American Realness, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. madison is currently at work on a new book project on rave scenes and queer of color undergrounds.

Tavia Nyong’o teaches Black performance studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Amalgamation Waltz (2009) and Afro-Fabulations (2019). He writes on art, music, and culture for Art Forum, NPR, The Guardian, and other venues.

Shana L. Redmond (she/her)is a public-facing scholar and writer whose work has appeared in critical media and literary publications, including NPR, BBC 3, and Brick: A Literary Journal. In 2019 she contributed the liner essay for the vinyl release of the original motion picture soundtrack to Jordan Peele’s film, Us (Waxwork Records). She is the author of Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (NYU Press, 2014) and Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke UP, 2020). She is professor of musicology and African American Studies at UCLA.

Zandria F. Robinson, Ph.D., is associate professor of African American Studies at Georgetown University. A writer and sociologist working at the intersections of race, gender, popular culture, and the US South, Robinson’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Scalawag, Hyperallergic, Believer, Oxford American, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic. Robinson’s first book, This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South, won the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award from the Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Her second monograph, Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life, co-authored with long-time collaborator Marcus Anthony Hunter (UCLA), won the Robert E. Park Book Award from the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.

Gustavus Stadler is professor of English at Haverford College, where he teaches courses on U. S. literature, music, and sound cultures. His most recent book is Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life (Beacon, 2020). His writing for both general and scholarly audiences has appeared in such venues as Al Jazeera, Public Books, Social Text, Sounding Out!,avidly.com, and American Literature.

Bernhard Steinbrecher is post-doc researcher and lecturer in popular music at the Music Department of the University of Innsbruck. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Music Weimar. His scientific fields of interest are analysis, theory, and reception of popular music, particularly regarding notions of mainstream music, and the relation between its sounds and social, psychological, and aesthetic questions. He is currently leading a project on contemporary music reception practices of adolescents in Austria. Steinbrecher’s monography about the analysis and interpretation of popular music was published in 2016. He is member of the executive committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and has been teaching at the Universities of Vienna, Salzburg, and Innsbruck.

Meghan M. Sweeney is associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she teaches courses in children’s and adolescent literature and popular culture. She has published recent articles in Americana: the Journal of American Popular Culture and The Lion and the Unicorn. She is also the co-editor of a collection of essays on the cultural, economic, and aesthetic significance of campus spaces titled Remaking the American College Campus.

Alyxandra Vesey is assistant professor in journalism and creative media at the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on gender, music culture, and media labor. She is particularly interested in women + musicians’ pursuit of cross-industrial business ventures in order to maintain a living. She is currently working on a manuscript about the gender politics of music merchandising, and has also written about musicians’ work in television and film production. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, Television and New Media, Popular Music and Society, Studies in French Cinema, Spectator, Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Emergent Feminisms: Complicating a Postfeminist Media Culture, and Saturday Night Live and American TV.