Hidden Harmonies: Women and Music in Popular Entertainment - Paperback

by Paula J. Bishop (Editor), Kendra Preston Leonard (Editor)

Contributions by Christina Baade, Candace Bailey, Paula J. Bishop, Maribeth Clark, Brittany Greening, Tammy Kernodle, Kendra Preston Leonard, April L. Prince, Travis D. Stimeling, and Kristen M. Turner

For every star, there are hundreds of less-recognized women who contribute to musical communities, influencing their aesthetics and expanding opportunities available to women. Hidden Harmonies: Women and Music in Popular Entertainment focuses not on those whose names are best known nor most celebrated but on the women who had power in collective or subversive ways hidden from standard histories.

Contributors to Hidden Harmonies reexamine primary sources using feminist and queer methodologies as well as critical race theory in order to overcome previous, biased readings. The scholarship that results from such reexaminations explores topics from songwriters to the music of the civil rights movement and from whistling schools to musical influencers. These wide-ranging essays create a diverse and novel view of women's contribution to music and its production. With intelligence and care, Hidden Harmonies uncovers the fascinating figures behind decades of popular music.

Author Biography

Paula J. Bishop is a faculty member in the Music Department at Bridgewater State University. She has published on the Everly Brothers, duet practices, country music, Hawaiian music, and other aspects of American vernacular music. Kendra Preston Leonard is a musicologist and music theorist whose work focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and music and screen history. She is founder and executive director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive.