.ejlordi talks to danamo, the writer, podcast host, and former editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, about her new book and the art and politics of writing about Black women in music.
of the national anthem is still, to my mind, the best thing ever written about the singer.) Upon seeing her book’s working title change over time, from “She’s Every Woman: The Power of Black Women in Pop Music” to “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop,” I wondered how Smith was navigating the trend in music writing toward autobiographical accounts of listeners’ relationships with Black artists and away from historical appraisals of their work.
That was the part I really worked on. I didn’t want it to be pure memoir where, as you say, it’s, like, “When I was in the seventh grade, this book got me through it.” Because, to me, that shortchanges the woman, the artist. And I just did not want to do that. I just didn’t. The thing is, Danyel, that a lot of these things we would not know if you hadn’t asked people about them. A lot of it comes from your personal, original interviews with these people, and the questions you ask. Entertainment reporters tended to ask women artists the dumbest questions. So these women, in response, keep performing the same scripts. But you ask the best questions, so that you can tell the fuller story.
She’s so rarely talked about as a human. When you just do a search of Whitney Houston interviews and you see journalists talking to her—so many of the interviewers are hostile toward her. So many of them are disrespectful of her place in the universe. It’s awful. I wish somebodyask me about smoking crack on national television. I don’t know how anyone expected her to react. There’s so little empathy for her. Andbeen mad at Whitney Houston.
I remember seeing the program for that show around my grandmother’s house—I think it came to L.A.—and she’s standing with her arms above her head. She’s singing with her mouth open really wide, and she had been told throughout her career by directors, “You open your mouth too wide when you sing,” and all of these things. But that show was so successful. It was up on Broadway for a little more than a year. The reviews, from the New Yorkon down, were amazing. She toured the world with it.
You have to add in the ambition, you have to add in the work ethic, you have to add in the keep-going-ness of things, you have to add in the commitment, you have to add in the investment, monetary and otherwise. You have to add in the sacrifice of not being on the slide or the swings or going to prom.
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