A Seat at the Table by Amy Raphael; Wayfaring Stranger by Emma John – review

Candid interviews with women in music and a personal exploration of the bluegrass scene in America are impressive and entertaining

Amy Raphael’s A Seat at the Table: Interviews With Women on the Frontline of Music is a (sort of) follow-up to her 1995 book, Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock, which carried extensive first-person interviews with the likes of Björk, Courtney Love and Kim Gordon, and a foreword by Deborah Harry. The new collection features 18 artists including Héloïse Letissier (Christine and the Queens), Kate Tempest, Ibeyi, Tracey Thorn, Nadine Shah, and Alison Moyet, as well as producer Catherine Marks, Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo, and more.

Here, Raphael reflects on the myriad changes over the past 25 years in society, the music industry, #MeToo, technology and social media, observing: “The mid-90s now seem not like a different country, but a different universe.” While there were other artists Raphael would have liked to include in the new collection (it shares a title with Solange Knowles’s 2016 album), time with A-listers tends to be limited and therefore limiting. As it is, there’s a diverse mix of well-known artists and emerging talents. As with Bollocks, all subjects had copy approval so they could talk without fear of being misrepresented.

The result is a series of wide-ranging, deep-dive, soul-baring interviews, full of candid, intimate, spiky meditations on inspiration, artistry, sexuality, race, love, self-doubt, abuse, defiance, and everything in between. There’s Letissier on being empowered by drag culture: “I gave a name to my anger.” Shah on sexism: “I met more than one arse-slapping pervert along the way.” Tempest on discovering hip-hop and spoken word: “I’d found it. The thing. My thing.” Moyet on ageism: “Pop music is the only arena in which it is assumed that your creativity decreases as you age.” Amfo on being fist-bumped when everyone else gets a handshake: “Don’t dehumanise me … because I happen to be a black person.” Rereading Never Mind the Bollocks together with A Seat at the Table, it’s clear that Raphael had carved a vital space for female artists to “woman-spread”, as it were, and speak freely. Women in music taking up space, making some noise – the female voice turned up louder.

Even if you have only the sketchiest notions about bluegrass (people who resemble extras from Deliverance playing banjos fast?), there’s much of interest in Wayfaring Stranger. Writer and classically trained violinist Emma John spent a year in the Appalachian mountains exploring this country roots form, which developed in the 40s: “The sound of an America of long ago: of railroads and prison gangs, of church revival and illegal liquor … An antique hybrid blending of Celtic and country sounds with blues, jazz, gospel”.

While John does not flinch from prominent disturbing issues (racism, guns, Trumpism, the neo-Nazi parades in Charlottesville), her aim was to immerse herself, not stand apart. “I felt like an anthropologist stumbling across an uncontacted civilisation,” writes John, as she reveals a vibrant secret world, replete with history, creativity, and sub-genres (fast jams, slow jams, progressive grass, hardgrass, spacegrass), as well as passions, rivalries and charismatic characters – not least the “father of bluegrass”, Bill Monroe, who died in 1996.

In communities so isolated that her arrival makes headlines in newspapers, John takes her “fiddle” (actually a centuries-old violin) to participate in “circles” of ever-welcoming “picking” friends anywhere she can (festivals, barns, dive bars, basements), pushing herself not just to equal the skill and pace of bluegrass, but embrace its spirit.

In this way, Wayfaring Stranger goes beyond being an entertaining informative book about a niche musical genre: it becomes the story of John’s personal mission to shake off a kind of existential stiffness – an inhibiting perfectionism – to rediscover not just her passion for music, but also for life. She concludes that, though she arrived on the bluegrass scene a “stranger”, she wasn’t allowed to stay one for long. Books like this work best when they manage to pull in even the most casual reader, saturating them in the colours, emotions and sensations of hidden subcultures, and John more than delivers. If someone doesn’t make a film out of this, they’ll have missed a “picking” trick.

• A Seat at the Table: Interviews With Women on the Frontline of Music by Amy Raphael is published by Little, Brown (£14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

• Wayfaring Stranger: A Musical Journey in the American South by Emma John is published by W&N (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

Contributor

Barbara Ellen

The GuardianTramp

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