Da Capo Gifts for Music Historians
A long-overdue corrective to the history of rock ‘n’ roll and alternative music, repopulating it with the extraordinary Black artists and influential figures who steered its course, from an author, journalist, and front woman of the British post punk band Big Joanie.
The history of rock and roll and alternative music is often told in bold, sweeping, isolated moments that are removed from the context of their time. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the stories we tell center primarily on the achievements of white men like Elvis Presley, The Ramones, Nirvana, and David Bowie. White men who were the stars, white men who supposedly changed the game, white men who seemingly were at the forefront of every musical innovation in the 20th and 21st centuries. These rock and roll retellings perpetuate the belief that white men were the most important people to wield a guitar, strut on stage, or pound out a pummeling drumbeat. What is missing in these stories is everything in between—the people, the places, and the scenes that connect the dots—and you can’t tell the history of any music scene, let alone alternative music, without the Black community.
From the genre’s earliest moments, Black musicians—like gospel entertainer Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1930s-40s and rock and roll legend Chuck Berry in the 1950s—have consistently pushed musical boundaries that forever impacted the music that followed. Throughout the decades, numerous Black entertainers continued to add their take on rock and alternative genres, expanding and building on what was already there to create what we know as alternative music today: look no further than the electric fire of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar licks in the ’60s, the kaleidoscopic melee of hardcore and reggae that was Bad Brains in the late ’70s, and the funkadelic swagger of Living Colour in the ’80s.
We Were Here tells the story of Black artists performing in alternative genres from punk to rock and roll, indie to new wave, alongside their Black fans. Through brand new interviews and meticulous research, Phillips documents the history of Black people’s influence on these genres, highlighting the key players, assessing the legacy of their work, and drawing attention to those who have been obscured from history. We Were Here centers their voices and attempts to right the wrongs of the past. Along the way, Phillips infuses her own coming-of-age story as a Black female musician in the punk scene, alongside a cultural analysis of rock and alternative music history.
Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) was one of the most misunderstood artists of the last sixty years. For most of her life—and even in the decades since her passing—she was primarily known as the widow of the late John Coltrane. John Coltrane is widely seen as being one of the greatest tenor saxophonists and composers of the 20th century, with a fervor and devotion approaching sainthood. Yet ever so slowly, that level of love and appreciation is also being bestowed upon pianist, organist, harpist, and composer Alice Coltrane.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane is the first full biography of this remarkable, groundbreaking artist, and is an elegant, deeply researched corrective to the historical—and critical—record. It elevates Alice Coltrane to her proper place, both alongside her husband as one of the greatest musical visionaries of the 20th century, and also as a singular artist in Western music, one who became a spiritual leader in her lifetime.
In the years since her passing, she has become a great influence on a new generation of musicians, especially women, people of color, and artists who seek to combine jazz with other musical forms, be it modern classical, electronic, Indian music, and more. Cosmic Music also unearths previously unknown connections between Alice Coltrane and other generational icons, from Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, and Nina Simone to Mother Teresa and Doja Cat.
In Alice Coltrane’s music, one can perceive the transformation of Black American music in microcosm, the gospel roots giving rise to jazz and bebop, then intermingling with soul and R&B, and then onto rock, modern classical, psychedelia, and new age. Cosmic Music, based on extensive research and scores of new interviews by music journalist Andy Beta, is the definitive account of a visionary whose influence is only just beginning to be appreciated in full.
“More than a biography, It’s No Wonder is a long-overdue act of recognition.”–Booklist (starred review)
The biography of Sylvia Moy, Motown’s first certified female in-house producer and songwriter, and one of the authors behind classic hits like “My Cherie Amour,” “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” and a slew of other time-honored tunes.
Imagine a world without the music of Stevie Wonder. A world without hits like “I Was Made to Love Her” and “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day.” That’s the world we would live in had it not been for Sylvia Moy, a woman whose legacy has been carefully tucked away within the annals of music history—until now.
It’s No Wonder examines the groundbreaking career of the pioneer who battled sexism and broke down barriers to become Motown’s first certified female in-house songwriter and producer. As the lone woman in a room full of men, the odds were stacked against Moy from the start. Amidst racial strife at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, most African American women who were allowed into the music industry could only dream of a career as a singer. Nevertheless, the Detroit native found unprecedented success as both a songwriter and producer. In addition to single-handedly saving Stevie Wonder’s early career at Motown, Moy solidified herself as one of the label’s most prolific composers, penning many of Wonder’s classic hits as well as songs for other Motown acts like “Honey Chile,” “It Takes Two,” “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You),” “My Baby Loves Me,” “(We’ve Got) Honey Love,” “Forget Me Not,” “With a Child’s Heart,” and countless others.
Meticulously researched and fiercely feminist, It’s No Wonder is a historical corrective that restores Sylvia Moy to her rightful place at the forefront of music history.
The untold story of the extraordinary people who inspired Christopher Isherwood’s characters in Cabaret, the landmark Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film, and the vibrant Bohemia that escaped from Berlin or endured under the Nazi regime.
Even diehard fans of Cabaret remain unaware that Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, celebrated as one of the best novels of the 20th Century, is based on a true story—and real people, from the larger-than-life landlady to the immortal, flighty, fantastical Sally Bowles, whose escapades in 1930s Weimar Berlin were comically exaggerated in one of the most memorable characters in Broadway history.
In a novelistic style that captures the joyful art-making and wild final parties of a democratic Germany before Hitler, Life is a Cabaret is a group biography of these enigmatic and provocative muses. Thanks to exhaustive research, investigative reporter Brian Fairbanks recounts the weird and wondrous lives of Jean Ross (the real Sally, a brilliant writer, free-loving film critic secretly working for Stalin’s communists), Wilfrid Israel (who saved more Jews than Oskar Schindler), Gerald Hamilton (a gay conman with questionable Nazi ties), and all of the others immortalized in the iconic, eternal Berlin Stories. Fairbanks unearths belief-defying details of survival, tragedy, sex, and brilliant art from these people and the world they inhabited—a world with illuminating, and at times disturbing, parallels to the one we live in today.