Growing up in a conservative Christian household meant I often had to sneak around just to listen to music. But one day of adventuring stands out in particular—the day I first heard the intoxicating opening beat of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On.” An obsession with the female rapper’s voice is something I have in common with Kathy Iandoli, critically acclaimed music journalist and author of God Save the Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop.

Iandoli’s book details the rise of familiar figures like Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B but also takes readers back to the origins of women in hip-hop. Asserting that women have always been an essential part of the rap scene, Iandoli recounts the contributions of every female rapper, charting the challenges that women encountered as hip-hop gained popularity.

After detailing over a decade of rap history, Iandoli finallys asks: “Really, though, what is it like to be a female rapper? To be told you’re not pretty enough or sexy enough, then too sexy to the point of slutty? If your lyrics are too hard, you’re trying to be a man. . . . If your looks are too light, then you’re pandering to the mainstream and out to kill the last pure drops of hip-hop left. Do you band together and love each other, or do you disband and wage a war?”

Though much of God Save the Queens covers the beefs between female hip-hop stars, Iandoli also connects these women through their shared struggle for success. Moreover, Iandoli’s own career as a music journalist and D.J., grappling for respect as a woman in the world of hip-hop, mirrors those of the rappers she profiles, making her writing informed as well as empathetic.

Given the recent rise of Lizzo, it’s clear that the influence of women in hip-hop is far from over. Yet the history of the women who opened the door for artists like Lizzo has remained largely unacknowledged. God Save the Queens fills an empty space in music history, bringing the influence of some of the world’s most talented rappers to the forefront, giving them the platform they’ve always deserved.

So much has been written about the folk band the Weavers being blacklisted from performing in the 1950s that it obscures the far more important fact that they still became one of America’s most influential music groups. The Weavers launched in 1949 with Pete Seeger on banjo, Fred Hellerman on guitar and Lee Hays and Ronnie Gilbert on vocals. Each of the band members had deep political roots and regarded music as a benign form of propaganda for progressive causes. Seeger had joined the Young Communist League in 1937, when he was 18, and by the onset of World War II, he was already being shadowed by the FBI. Of all the left-leaning Weavers, he would be the most hounded.

The Weavers’ first steady gig was at the Village Vanguard in New York, where they were discovered by the noted bandleader Gordon Jenkins. Enthralled by their harmonies and exuberance, he signed them to Decca Records. From 1950 to 1952, the group scored a series of high-ranking pop singles, including “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” “Goodnight Irene,” “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Wimoweh.” These songs led to more bookings at major nightclubs around the country. However, as their fame increased, so did the hue and cry of both the conservative government and self-appointed blacklisters.

In Wasn’t That a Time, author Jesse Jarnow astutely chronicles how the Weavers lost gigs, quit working as a group, and dealt with internal dissension and government persecution. However, these musicians continued to bounce back into the spotlight at regular intervals up until the 1980s. Denied access to airtime on both radio and television, the Weavers became one of the first groups to deliver their music directly to the masses via live recordings on the then-new long-play vinyl albums. As to the many acts they influenced, Jarnow cites Harry Belafonte; the Byrds; the Beach Boys; Peter, Paul and Mary; Judy Collins; Jerry Garcia; Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. All of the members of the Weavers are gone now, but their music survives in virtually every political sing-along.

Drawing on interviews with members of N.W.A.—which founding member Ice Cube once famously called the “World’s Most Dangerous Group—their friends, families and musical associates, journalist Gerrick Kennedy vividly tells the fast-paced, captivating story of the group’s rise, fall and enduring legacy in Parental Discretion Is Advised.

With the staccato, sure-fire delivery of a rap artist, Kennedy chronicles the early lives of each of N.W.A’s members—Eazy-E, who died of complications of AIDS in 1995, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella—and how they came together to form N.W.A. Dre and Eazy met up as members of the World Class Wrecking Crew, mixing and sampling music at crowded venues around Los Angeles; the two saw rap as way of achieving a better life for themselves. The two eventually meet up with MC Ren, DJ Yella and Ice Cube, who writes many of the lyrics for the group’s biggest hits, including “F*ck Tha Police” and “Gangsta Gangsta.” When the group releases Straight Outta Compton in 1988, the album launches their careers even as it marks the beginning of the end for the group. Kennedy chronicles the now well-known story of Ice Cube’s financial disputes with Eazy and Dre and his subsequent move to a successful solo career, as well as the predatory management practices of their first manager, Jerry Heller. As Kennedy points out, N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton was a “sonic Molotov cocktail that ignited a firestorm with acidic lyrics which shocked the world.”

Kennedy’s compulsively readable book shines a glowing light on a brilliant group once accused of destroying America’s moral fabric but now occupies a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their astonishing contributions to music.

James Brown’s impact on American popular culture reverberates so deeply through music and race relations that writers are still attempting to uncover the man behind the legend. In Kill ’Em and Leave, acclaimed writer James McBride (The Color of Water) seeks to explain why, for African Americans, Brown remains the “song of our life, the song of our entire history.”

The troubled soul singer revolutionized American music—fusing jazz and funk, for example—but he didn’t appear on the cover of Rolling Stone during his lifetime, and music critics often treated him as a joke.

McBride’s portrait of Brown is part cultural history, part music criticism and part memoir—as a child, McBride stood across the street from Brown’s house in Queens, waiting for a glimpse of his hero. Drawing on interviews with the singer’s family and friends, many of whom have never before spoken on the record about Brown, McBride paints a gloomy portrait of a man haunted by the demons of insecurity and mistrust, a musician whose career ascended rapidly and descended just as quickly, and an individual who insisted that children stay in school and who left most of his fortune to provide financial aid to children caught in the web of poverty. Brown so distrusted banks that he hid money everywhere and, McBride writes, always walked around with $3,000 worth of cashier’s checks for the last 20 years of his life. 

Brown’s insecurity filtered down to members of his band, whom he mistreated, paid poorly and often spied on to see who was speaking badly of him behind his back; in short, McBride points out, he “dehumanized them.” In the end, Brown is a product of the South—a land of masks, in McBride’s words—where no one, especially a black man, can ever be himself.

McBride’s energetic storytelling, his sympathy for his subject and his deeply personal writing tell a sad tale of one of our most influential musicians.

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The story of how the Internet brought the imperious music business to its knees has never been told more succinctly and readably than it is here. Beginning his narrative in 1995, when the compact disc format reigned, Stephen Witt focuses on the transformative importance of four primary figures. They are Karlheinz Brandenburg, developer of the MP3 compression technology that enables the vast amount of digital sound data on a CD to be “squeezed” down to a more manageable size for easier playback and transfer; Doug Morris, the aggressive and musically adventurous head of Universal Music Group who presided over the volcanic rise of rap music; Bennie Lydell “Dell” Glover, an hourly worker at a CD manufacturing plant in North Carolina who sneaked thousands of copies of superstar albums out of the plant to post on the Internet before they were released for public sale; and “Kali,” a shadowy presence who, through a network of leakers like Glover, masterminded the Internet distribution of this enormous trove of pirated music.

The tragic flaw of the record companies—Morris’ chief among them—was believing they could ignore culture-shattering technology. After all, CD duplication had advanced to the point that they could manufacture albums for a few pennies each and sell them for $16.98 and up. Who’d want to disrupt such a cozy setup? So instead of coming to terms with this new world, the record labels fought back—quite ineffectually—with public relations campaigns and lawsuits against individuals, seeming like bullies every time they won. The upshot is that record stores have all but vanished and the CD is a withering format.

While Witt streamlines his account, he doesn’t oversimplify it. He covers the creation of iTunes and the iPod, the expansion of broadband, the brief but flamboyant life of Napster, Steve Jobs’ futile attempts to hire Morris and the wily Morris’ ability to prosper even as the empire he built crumbles. How Music Got Free cries out for a movie treatment like The Social Network.

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

As host of “The Thistle & Shamrock” on National Public Radio (NPR), Fiona Ritchie has bewitched many a listener with carefully curated playlists of traditional Celtic tunes, stories of her native Scotland, and, of course, that accent—mellifluous with a bit of a burr. No one is better qualified to take stock of Scots-Irish music than the NPR host, and in Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia, she does just that. Ritchie co-authored the book with Doug Orr, a longtime advocate of folk music who is president emeritus of Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Although their backgrounds are different—Orr is a North Carolina native—the two music lovers achieve perfect harmony on the page, offering in-depth perspectives on a migratory and enduring art form.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, known as the Minstrel of the Appalachians, performing at “Singing on the Mountain” at Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, ca. 1940. 

Beginning with medieval-era ballads, Wayfaring Strangers traces the history of Celtic music from its European roots to its arrival in America via Scots-Irish immigrants during the 18th and 29th centuries. Many of the new arrivals from the Old Country settled in the southern Appalachians, where their lonesome ballads and sprightly fiddle tunes became part of a rich mix of regional sounds. Meeting and melding with English, German, and African-American styles, their music became part of a blend that would provide the underpinning for bluegrass and modern folk. 

Naturally enough, Wayfaring Strangers lingers in the misty glens of Ireland and Scotland. Paying tribute to Celtic culture, the book provides plenty of background on the instruments, themes and song styles prevalent in those countries. Special sidebars spotlight the fiddle, the harp, and the bagpipes, as well as ballad types and traditions. The authors move smoothly through 400 years of history and arrive in contemporary times to consider the Scots-Irish-influenced music of Doc Watson, the Carter Family, Bob Dylan and Bill Monroe. Interviews with musicologists further clarify the musical ties between Scotland and Ireland, which are symbolized, respectively, by the thistle and the shamrock.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Doc Watson playing guitar in 1987.

“’Connection:’ how often we use this word,” Ritchie writes. “It holds the promise of tangled textures below the surface, of stories to be told, of discoveries to be made.” As it happens, she shares a special connection with her co-author. During her inaugural trip to the United States in 1980, Ritchie studied for a semester at UNC-Charlotte, where Orr, coincidentally, was a vice chancellor. Impressed with the city and its dynamic music scene, she settled there the following year. She found an early supporter in Orr, who was instrumental in establishing Charlotte’s NPR affiliate, WFAE-FM. Ritchie started out at the station as a volunteer and made her debut, at Orr’s urging, as a radio host in 1981 with “The Thistle & Shamrock.” Two years later, the show was launched nationally by Public Radio International. It’s now one of NPR’s most popular offerings.

No doubt it’ll be Ritchie’s voice fans hear in their heads as they read Wayfaring Strangers. Filled with maps, woodcuts, paintings, and photographs of impossibly picturesque Scottish and Irish locales, the book is a treasure trove of imagery and information. A companion CD with 20 tunes by folk favorites like Dougie McClean, Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie and Dolly Parton, who contributed the book’s foreword, is bound to inspire a bit of impromptu string-band jamming. Music lovers, prepare to be transported.

Photographs by Hugh Morton; © North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill