At 05:00 PM 4/22/99 -0400, Carl wrote:
> HOWEVER: Your question about whether
> Aretha rather than Joni was the key gender-revolutionary in sixties
> pop was already creeping into my head as I wrote that last post. I'd
> certainly *prefer* to say it was Aretha - but I wonder if she had the
> same women-can-be-auteurs impact? Perhaps, but this requires further
> thinking and historicization; I've just realized that maybe before
> deciding exactly whose gender-bar-breaking was the most definitive
> (and I do think this is, as Music Trivia games go, an important one),
> I should read one of those late-90s books about women-in-music that
> I've been semi-avoiding. Any recommendations for the best one?
I don't have a recommendation since I've been avoiding them too. I would
recomend Dave marsh's liner notes essay to the Aretha box, however--it does
a great job of portraying her as an artist in charge of her own art. Of
course, you're probably right that Mithchell was percieved in more of an
auteur sense, but this may say more about critical perception than actual
fact, about the critical biases in favor of album acts over singles acts,
of white women in favor of black women, of what's >presented as<
all-by-myself art vs.collaborative art. --david cantwell
