Turning the Tables: Mining the Archives to Reveal a Women's History of Popular Music

For decades, the story of rock ’n roll and other popular music forms has been told primarily by and about men. In addition, magazines and other publications devoted to popular music have released annual “Best of” lists, ranking musical acts by a variety of measures chosen by and mostly in celebration of men. The 2024 book and audiobook How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from National Public Radio, (HarperOne), managed to recenter the accepted history of contemporary Western popular music from a feminist standpoint. The idea was more corrective than combative — meant mainly to trigger public conversations that had not been had before.

This exercise showcasing women historians, musicologists, journalists, writers, critics, fans and musicians in conversation with each other, began as a five-year comprehensive, multi-voiced, multimedia, multi-disciplinary project for NPR Music called “Turning the Tables.” Its critical and popular success proved that such a history could be told as a modern women’s story. The project required deep dives into more than fifty years’s worth of broadcast interviews in the NPR News archive and in other archives. Researchers combed with and against the grain to reveal women whose talents, contributions and presence had been minimized or overlooked in previous music histories.

Co-creator Ann Powers hypothesized that the milestones of popular music history — the trends, technical innovations, and cultural and political moments of engagement and impact — would not be diminished by interrogating women’s accomplishments exclusively. Critical essays jumped genre and time, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to the Runaways and from Bessie Smith all the way to Taylor Swift.

This Roundtable discussion will feature the book’s editor, Alison Fensterstock, and contributors Jill Sternheimer, Francesca Royster and Gwen Thompkins. Rachel Lyons, curator of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Archive, will chair. The discussion will cover professional challenges and concerns of a feminist re-telling of popular music history via archival research. This panel features scholars who do not typically attend AHA conferences but are actively involved in writing or curating public history. The informality of a Roundtable discussion will allow for lively conversation intended to engage with university-based scholars who have long been concerned with conveying history to a wider public.