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Anna Harwell Celenza, "On the Record: Music that Changed America (Norton, 2026)
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Kristen Turner
Hello, my name is Kristen Turner and this is New Books Network. Today I'm talking to Anna Harwell Chilenza about her book on the Music that Changed America, published by Norton in 2026. There is no shortage of books on music and politics, but Chilenza uses an interesting premise for on the Record. Each of the 12 chapters discusses a different instance when music, as Chilenza writes, sparked debates in the halls of Congress. Arranged basically chronologically, Chilenza tackles some of the most powerful and contentious issues in 20th and 21st century American politics, from censorship to copyright law, from the civil rights movement to foreign policy during apartheid, Chilenza documents how music and musicians became part of American political life. However, the stories Chilenza tells are as much about music, such as the intertwined histories of the Star Spangled Banner and Lift Every Voice and Sing or the making of Paul Simon's album Graceland, as they are about US Legislation or American politics. Welcome Anna. It's great to talk to you today.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Well, I first sort of got interested in this topic through my students. This was when I was teaching at Georgetown University, and Georgetown is very much known for its Government and policy training. A lot of the students really do want to go and work in politics. And so a lot of my students often would ask, you know, hey, could we do a music and politics class? But I didn't want to just talk about the way music reacted to politics. And so I started to look around and it took quite a while, but I found sort of a whole body of work from classical music to jazz to hip hop to pop, where these were works that actually got debated and talked about in Congress. And it changed politicians minds about a wide range of issues. And so that was sort of the hook when I first started teaching the class. And then when I thought about putting this into a book, that was the hook for the book.
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Kristen Turner
So you said you really had to search for these different topics. You know, how did you find them? Because they are so broad ranging. There's not like a particular political issue that you focus on. So where did you find all this stuff?
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Some of them I knew about in advance. For example, I knew about the debates because I remembered them around Graceland and I remembered, you know, the cultural boycott and the issues that came up around that. Of course, the Star Spangled Banner didn't become the national anthem until 1931 because of Congress. So there were, you know, some works that were really quite obvious. And then there were other ones where it was sort of a hunch, I should note. These are all works that I really love. And so these are works that had. That I had taught perhaps in other classes. And so, you know, maybe in doing that research, you know, in to teach or write about these works in a different context, there was sort of like this inkling in the back of my mind that there had been something. And then, you know, at the very end it was really going in and just searching in the, you know, Congressional Record and looking for when musical works got brought up. So that took a lot of time. But I did find a range. Well, I will say, say one area that I thought I needed to include in this as well was country music. And I could not find a work that actually influenced politicians. There were a lot of politicians who played country music and enjoy country music. There were a lot of country music songs that reacted to politics, but I could not find one that was brought up during congressional debates.
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Kristen Turner
That's fascinating because I do think of country music as being a pretty political genre in one way or another. So it's interesting that by wanting to think only about music that's brought up in the Congressional record, that this whole genre that seems pretty Highly politicized, gets left out that it's just not part of those kinds of debates. That's fascinating.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
So, anyway, go find it, and if somebody finds it, send me the article. I'd love to read it.
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Kristen Turner
Well, you know, no book can be 100% comprehensive, so perhaps someone will find one. But I imagine if you couldn't find it, no one will because I know what a careful historian you are. I thought the opening chapter was fascinating. This was about, as you were mentioning, the Star Spangled Banner became the national anthem in 1931, but you paired it with Lift Every Voice and Sing, which is often called the black national anthem. And so that was an interesting pairing to begin with, but I also felt like it brought up two issues that are often brought up again in other chapters, and I was hoping you could talk about those. One is how race intrudes on so many of these stories in one way or the other. And the other was the effect of capitalism on this kind of cultural history and on these different debates. So maybe if you could give us kind of an overview about how those two issues interact in this. In this book.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah, so that was one of the things that, you know, even though each chapter is on this very distinct set of works and distinct issues, as I kind of started doing the research and writing the first drafts, I realized, no, actually there are some themes that run through. And one is the power of the corporate world. I also have done a lot of stuff with music policy and the music industry. And I think the big lesson from this is music industry. Isn't music capitalized and industry little. It's about music industry. And it really is the corporate side behind that. And the power that the corporate world has on sort of controlling what we get to hear and what we don't get to hear or what gets promoted or what doesn't isn't something that's just been around since the 80s. It's something that's been with us from the very beginning. And so what I thought was really fascinating was that right around the time that there were these debates in Congress about, well, you know, we need to really, you know, solidify what the national anthem is, you've got people really trying to promote Lift Every Voice and Sing as a possibility. And it's the publisher who kind of puts the chokehold on allowing the piece to be republished in various ways. And so. And that really kind of kept its circulation, you know, limited for quite a while. So, you know, that's. That's an example of that. But it. It happens throughout I mean, and I think one element to kind of talk about with this is a lot of times I'll have folks go, oh, well, protest music. I'm sure you're talking about protest music. And why isn't there any protest music today? And it's not that there isn't. There's tons of protest music. It's just the. The. We have these big monopolies on distribution now. And so a song has to appeal to everyone everywhere to kind of get an airing. We've lost because of the corporate world. We've lost, for a great extent, regional music. I mean, it's sort of refining itself on the Internet, but as far as with radio and with distribution, you know, if you can't appeal to the whole country, then you're probably not going to get distributed.
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Kristen Turner
Actually, that makes me think of during the sort of height of the Black Lives Matter protest, I had a student who was telling me all about all this music she was listening to. Protest music she was listening to. And I thought, I have not heard of any of this music and any of these people. And what was happening is that this music was being distributed over TikTok channels. Some of them were basically private only. That could only be accessed by other activists. And so while it was getting a national distribution, it was very tightly controlled, you know, based upon who. Who was, you know, on those TikTok things or who was doing Instagram, you know, those particular. Seeing those particular Instagram.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Well, and. And the musicians who wrote those songs were not getting paid. I mean, that's the other part of it, too, so.
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Kristen Turner
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was just. It was fascinating. They had this whole underground economy going on of political music that was largely absent from any kind of larger distribution or political debates or, you know, mainstream acknowledgment because. Because of that. So that is such a huge part of the story. And I guess we could continue with that. The obvious ways that corporate influence happens in music is through copyright law. And you have a couple of chapters that talk about copyright law, which I found particularly fascinating. And one of them was about the 1998 Copyright Extension act, where Gershwin. The Gershwin estate. But also you talk a lot about Duke Ellington became intertwined in the debates about this. You really. It becomes about. That chapter, becomes about comparing Gershwin and Duke Ellington as these towering figures in American music. But Gershwin is the figure that gets talked about in this debate, even though, you know, we have two people that, in terms of music, are quite similar to each other. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah. There's sort of. There's sort of two things going on in that chapter. So the. The title of that chapter is the Search for an American Sound. And it. The copyright that gets brought into that is that when these debates were happening about, should we do the copyright extension? You know, already Rhapsody and Blue has been protected for a long time. Does it really need to be protected for another 20 years? A lot of the argument that was made was, well, this is a great American work, and if we don't protect it, someone might sort of bastardize it or present works, change it in a way that will make it less American or less representative of American America. And what's interesting is the. The whole copyright extension debate was very much pushed, as you said, by the Gershwin estate, but also Disney, Walt Disney. And it was because Rhapsody and Blue and Mickey Mouse were about to go into the public domain. And so that's sort of what opens the chapter is, you know, what is this American sound? And then I go back to, well, what is the story that's told about Rhapsody in Blue, which is, you know, oh, he wrote it in six weeks and, you know, he listened to all of America and did this verse. And then kind of putting that in a cultural context. So, you know, if we look at Gershwin, if we look at when, you know, his song Suwannee became this huge hit in 1919, it was during the Red Summer where these lynchings were happening across the nation. And so he was engaging in a debate and a cultural issue and a social issue and sort of using it sort of for comedy. And then with Rhapsody and Blue there, the way Whiteman. And I'm not. I love Rhapsody and Blue. It's a great piece. But the way it got presented through Paul Whiteman was that, you know, we're going to sort of take jazz that came around 10 years ago, and we're going to clean it up and we'll make it American, you know, from being sort of black. And at the same time, you've got someone like Duke Ellington who's seeing this and going, wow, Rhapsody and Blue is a great piece. What is it that makes it American? Wait a second. I think I've got a different opinion of what's American. And so he starts to write these compositions that are sort of in dialogue with Rhapsody and Blue. So he does a Rhapsody Junior. He writes Creole Rhapsody. He writes Symphony in Black. And each of these you hear a little. He sort of signifies the clarinet line at the opening of Gershwin as if to say, look, I'm making a commentary on this piece, and he always does it right before he brings in a big blues section. So in the short film Symphony in Black, when he does it, it's right before Billie Holiday makes her film debut and sings. So there, as much as the. As Congress starts talking about copyright extension and uses Gershwin as the example of this is, you know, we have to protect American culture. You also have a musician like Duke Ellington who's saying, yeah, but wait, what is exactly American culture? And then it's sort of the chapter ends with you have Bernstein who then, you know, long after Gershwin's dead, who is sort of taking. Doing his take, sort of making it malarian, you know, extending it, adding even more instrumentation, this sort of thing. And then you have Duke Ellington, who responds to that and says, the American sound is not just this sort of classicized large orchestra version of Rhapsody and Blue. And if the audience has not heard it, you should listen to Duke Ellington's arrangement of Rhapsody in blue from 1963. It's like my favorite piece in the world. And he really is, I think, as I kind of talk about making a commentary on what is the American sound and basically saying there isn't one. It's constantly evolving, it's constantly changing. And so I think he's sort of pushing back against a Congress that wants to, you know, set in stone, these are the works that are American and these are the works that need to get protected.
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Kristen Turner
Also having to do with copyright. But a lot of other things is the. Is an issue. I think that to me, in my lifetime was the most debated or most debated in a public way in Congress about music. And that is the censorship and the debates over popular music and sort of public morality that was kind of sparked by the Parents Music Resource center, which was a Reagan arrow organization that was mostly run by the wives of important politicians. So they had an easy in to.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Tipper Gore. Tipper Gore was the great band leader. Yeah.
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Kristen Turner
Yes. Tipper Gore, who. Whose husband later becomes the vice president, who at the time was in Congress. Tipper Gore was the chairman or chair of this, this Parents Resource Music center, our Parents Music Resource Center. And it, it really did materially impact music business, the making of music. It. And it then sort of intersects also into the ways that copyright law is. Is interpreted because of these sort of cultural things that get brought up by these debates. So I think, you know, if you're going to talk about music and Congress, you have to talk about the pmrc. So can you talk about that a little bit and tell us more about that yeah, sure.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
That's in a chapter called Sonic Shift, When Politics Changed Music. And it happens sort of like two thirds or three quarters of the way through the book. So, you know, we've been seeing how throughout these chapters, how Congress is becoming more and more engaged. And this is where there's. The tipping point of it actually then starts to change the music itself. And the big issue there is so Tipper Gore and the wives of many other congressmen and lobbyists and this sort of thing. They were concerned because their young children were listening to this pop music that had sort of been suddenly pushed into the Spotlight because of MTV. So MTV comes around in 1981, and MTV actually wasn't. When it first hit the sound waves, it was very much about, let's kind of play the music from the fringes, you know. So it wasn't like playing the top 10. It was really bringing in videos that were seen as very creative and sort of challenging issues, culture stuff, gender, that sort of thing. And so what's fascinating is that then this music really takes off. So kids watch this videos, they get. They love the music, they start buying the music, and then the parents start paying attention to the lyrics. It was mostly the lyrics they had issues with. And so there is this public hearing that's called. Which is jokingly called the porn music hearing because basically. And it lasted, you know, many hours. And they brought in musicologists to attest that this music could be harmful to young minds. They brought in the head of the national PTA to talk, you know, about the problem with these music. And, I mean, we're talking about, you know, Cyndi Lauper was one of the ones that they were really horrified by, and a lot of heavy metal groups and things like that. And so it's kind of fascinating to me that they kind of. They so worried for their children that they felt like they needed to. What they wanted to do was, was put a label, which they got. It's called the PAL label. And we still. If you buy. I mean, not that anybody's buying CDs anymore, but if you were to buy a CD or a record and it's. It's. The lyrics are deemed to be challenging, or it deals with sexual things. It. You'll have that little yellow label on it, or if you're streaming, it'll be explicit. It'll tell you, you know, so that is. That is there because this happened in the 1980s, and it was kind of incredible that it happened. It did not have the effect. I think they were hoping in that when these. All these various. I mean, granted, it hurt them financially sometimes because some of these groups, their records were being sold at places like Walmart, and Walmart said, if it has the label, we're not selling it. And then you also would have small cities. So, for example, there was a county in Florida and there was a sheriff there that thought, well, if it's got the label, then it must be pornography, which means it's lewdness, which means we should just make that illegal. And so suddenly you have record store owners being arrested if they're selling the record. And so there were definitely some very bad implications in that way. But the other side of it was once it had that label, it sort of was like the Forbidden Fruit. And so a lot of kids who would have cared less about, you know, some of this music blamed right onto it was like, oh, I have to listen to it. So. So that was so. And though. So what is the effect, though, beyond that is that then it gets in the consciousness, well, there is music that can be bad for youth. And so then we start to see there were two cases where young men committed suicide and they had been fans of heavy metal music. And so their parents sue the record companies and sue the bands because they say, your music is clearly detrimental and you contributed to the death of our child. And so neither of those cases won in court, but they caused a lot of headaches for folks. And then it even gets so far. I mean, rap wasn't part of these earliest conversations. This happened, the PMRC happened right before rap sort of took off, at least its origins. And then. But then as we get into the later 80s, you have the PMRC getting interested in rap, not necessarily for their lyrics, but the fact that they're sampling. And so they are encouraging artists whose works were sampled to sue the rappers that took their songs. And so it goes on and on to the point that there are rappers who are brought up on criminal charges because their lyrics talk about doing crime. And so that. That, I think, is a real slippery slope. It's something we're still. Still dealing with in the United States. There's some states where you can't do that, like California, but there's some states where it's still allowed. And it's strange that it only happens with rap. I mean, you know, I don't see, you know, the folks that saying, I shot the sheriff suddenly being brought on charges. But a lot of rap musicians have been falsely brought up on charges this Father's Day.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Rated pg.
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Kristen Turner
Well, I I think it's strange but also easily understand. I mean in America, black musicians and black music are has have been deemed often demonized and rock was also considered an immoral form of music. And rock musicians were certainly not brought on charges were menaced sometimes, you know, with the law. So I think race is a lot of the reason for that. But also I think the other thing you talked about related to that that was happening around the same time as when racing when you're talking about, you know, rappers were being accused of stealing music. And so there's the one hand there, there some rappers were brought up on charges for, for the content of their lyrics. But then you also have copyright laws that or copyright cases where this very issue of of what does it mean to steal a piece of music or steal part of music comes up right in relation to sampling. Can you talk a little bit about then you know that becomes something that copyright law and legislation has to deal with. Can you, can you talk about those?
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah. So sampling is a practice and I would say it even grows out of if you think about jazz musicians in the 30s and 40s and 50s when they're soloing, they would often, you know, quote a piece a little bit, just like Ellington would quote Gershwin's Little Rhapsodyne Blue in his piece. And so then with the technology of the turntable, you've got sampling and you take it from a recording. So it's the same sort of thing. You're taking disparate pieces from different recordings from different times, and I think really creating a mosaic where these pieces are talking to each other. So it is a very sort of intellectual, fascinating thing. And by the time we get to the early 90s, you have these incredibly complex hip hop compositions that have like 30, 40 different samples. And they really are sort of making a statement then. And there wasn't this idea because these were just little snippets there, really. No one seemed for quite a while to be getting upset about this at all. It's not like using that sample was having an adverse effect on the original record. But then there was a tune called Alone Again that was, you know, a pop song, and it was sampled in a tune which was a parody of it called Alone Again. And the judge there was just not sympathetic to the use of a sample. And beyond saying, okay, this is copyright infringement, which is, you know, a minor offense legally. He said, I think you need to be brought up on criminal charges. I think this is theft. And so that suddenly put a screeching halt to a lot of use of samples. And then all. And then very quickly it was determined, well, wait, how do we. You know, there are certain payment systems if you do a cover of somebody's song or. Or if you do a parody of someone's piece. So what happens if you use a. A sample of a recording? And to this day, it's just. You have to negotiate the price. And so suddenly the expense of creating these records just went through the roof. And it has changed hip hop. I mean, you know, now if you use a sample, it's kind of like, you know, it's showing, wow, you must be very successful and be making a lot of money because it costs a lot to use a sample in a song. And so it has sort of divided the haves and have nots. And it's also created. You know, hip hop has sort of gone in different directions because that sort of complex counterpoint of sampling that was happening before is just financially impossible. And so it. It changed the music. Like, it truly changed the music. Yeah, yeah.
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Kristen Turner
And a great example of. Of commercial, you know, the capitalist system really influencing a whole artistic genre in a way that might not be as obvious to fans. But changed how musicians could make music in a really fundamental way and what they could and couldn't do.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah. And to this day, even in writing this book, there are six different songs where I quote, like a lyric or a line of lyric. I had to pay quite a bit of money for that to happen. So, yeah, it's going to be a while before my. Any royalties catch up to what it cost me to quote those lines. And so there were some, actually, that I didn't do. So, you know, where I would have liked to have discussed it a little bit more, but it was just the cost was prohibitive, so.
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Kristen Turner
Well, and another way that may not be obvious to readers, but. But if you know how the sausage is made, you realize, if you wonder,
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
why don't people just quote the lyrics? Why do they describe what they say? Well, that's why.
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Kristen Turner
Yeah, that's why. Him. One of the other things that I really liked about this book and that I think probably might have been difficult actually, and in writing it, is that you do deal with, in some cases, topics that have been talked about a lot, but you have found a way to talk about them that really is quite different. And the one that really jumps out to me like that is west side Story, just incredibly famous piece still done. There was a very big revival very recently. Just a beloved musical, then becomes a movie. And of course, there was a remake of the movie not long ago as well. So something that starts in the late 50s, early 60s, still very present today. And there is an issue with the representation of the Puerto Rican characters that comes up when it premiered and has become kind of a bigger and bigger issue as people become more and more interested in making sure that the representation of any particular cultural group is as authentic as possible. But that's not exactly what you're talking about in this chapter, because that has been discussed a lot, and that is a political issue. But when it came out, west side Story was really not seen as a commentary on ethnicity as much as it was a commentary on. On something. On another issue that was very present at the time. I would love you to tell readers about this because I think that has just really dropped off of the popular memory about that piece.
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Anna Harwell Chilenza
Piece, yeah, it was juvenile delinquency, you know, and that it really affected the way politicians started to think about what do we do when someone younger than 16 commits a serious crime? And so the most obvious that I sort of opened the chapter with is jfk. I mean, Kennedy when he was running for office. He wasn't really talking about Juvenile delinquency at all. You know, there were lots of other issues, but really just within a few months of coming to office, suddenly he creates this commission and they're revising law and they're connecting with all the different states about, well, what are the guidelines for, you know, prosecuting youth or dealing with youth delinquents? And when one of his, when, when his kind of legal advisor, they, they. He was asked one time, like, where did this come from? Why did, why did Kennedy suddenly become so interested in this topic? And he said, west side Story. So this is. And then, and then as, as we, as I go on there are. It affected local government in Washington, D.C. we see it come up in many debates within the Supreme Court, which is really interesting. And it kind of shifts to this thing that. Whereas this was a completely fictional work, the creators of it always said this is a completely fictional work. And originally it wasn't even about, you know, Puerto Rican, you know, versus American. I'm making my little hash mark things, you know, so gangs, it wasn't. It was supposed to be Jewish versus Catholic during Passover Easter. And so, so it was always about a conflict of two groups. And the important thing for them was conflict. That was what they were trying to show. And they were trying to show that this conflict was something that was the cause of and also the result of juvenile delinquency. I mean, that was something that they were sort of interested in. And so I try to show that. And I think another important element that I think was a little bit new, I hope that I brought to it, was that I think a lot of times, and Bernstein was very much responsible for this. A lot of times we think of all these, you know, you've got Bernstein and Roberts and Emmy Robbins and Arthur and Sondheim, and they're working together and there's this harmonious, like they're a team and they're creating this work. When you really go back and as you say, see how the sausage is made, they did not get along. They are. All of them are being sort of looked at by the House UN American Committee, you know, so they're being brought up during the Red scare. They're being threatened during the, you know, purple scare, you know, the. And so the lavender scare, you know, for being gay. And so that the conflict, I think that we, that we feel between the characters in this musical is also kind of a real life conflict between the four of them and their different visions of things. And I think that was for me an important element too, because I Think our own personal experiences and our own relationships with folks can come out in the works we create, and then that can affect the way those works are perceived and then passed on and performed. So I was trying to do some, you know, kind of thread that needle as we went through at the same time, too. I do think it's important for us to kind of call out what happened when they shifted from, like, their original idea right after World War II, when they were going to do this was it's going to be east side Story, and it's, you know, sort of Jewish versus Catholics and that sort of thing to 10 years later, because they dropped. They were like, we can't do this. And then they came back and as they kind of went back to the Romeo story, making it west side Story, they're searching for, well, what's going to be the thing that's most conflicting? And it was, oh, look, these articles. There's all these influx of Puerto Ricans in New York. And so they chose that topic. But honestly, I think the reason we have so much conflict is they kind of felt like maybe because in the original, the. It was the Jewish group that was the oppressed. They felt like that had represented their own experiences. So it didn't matter that they turned it to Puerto Rican. They're like, but we understand what that means. I think that happened. But they didn't, honestly. And I think there's. There's sort of a. So I do creative writing as well. And there's. When we talk about, well, can you write about people that are from a different culture than you are, and it should one or should one not, and that sort of thing. There is a way of thinking about it that I think plays a really important role here. And that is you can go in and be an invader, where you go into that culture and you go, oh, that's cool. I'm going to take that and use it. Or you can go in and be a tourist, where you go in and go. I realize I'm an outsider. I'm really interested in what is going on here. I. I know I can't fully be a part of this culture that I'm interested, but I. I really am fascinated and I want to learn as much as I can. And if you're a good tourist, because they're also bad. But if you're a good tourist and you do that long enough, there may come a day when you're actually invited in as a guest. And I think that's our goal in creating works. If we're gonna talk about other peop. You know, cultures that aren't our own, is that you wanna go in as a good tourist and hopefully stay there long enough to really be a part of it. Honestly, I think they were invaders. I think they just kind of went in, took what they needed, came out, and so it. That's why we still have conflict with that issue.
- [35:52]
Kristen Turner
Yeah. I think you are hitting on, like, a problem with a lot of art around the world, but certainly in America, which does contain a multitude of cultures, that people can equate the experience of oppression, as you say, and their experience of oppression as being gay Jewish, Jewish men is not the same. They couldn't just say, well, I understand all oppression because it's all the same. Because it's not the same to be a gay Jewish man and a Puerto rican immigrants in 1950s New York. And I think that happens a lot in American art where people assume their experience of oppression or of marginalization is the same as everyone's experiences, even if they might use some of the same strategies to deal with that experience. So I think that's an important insight into.
- [36:44]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah, I also think it's. It's. So I should say I think west side Story is amazing music. Right. So, you know, and. And so, yes, all those problems are there, but still amazing music, which is, I think, one of the things that also, music can really draw people in and that can be good in that it could, like, sometimes have us see juvenile delinquency in a different way. So in that way, west side Story was really good. It got people to really think about, like, what are the causes of this and that. But it can also send, you know, kind of perpetuate stereotypes and intensify stereotypes and then make them even more powerful, which is what happens. So in writing about these pieces, I found a lot of times it wasn't that I was like, good piece, bad piece, you know, it was more of, wow, these are pieces, you know, that are very powerful. And as I did this research, I was kind of fascinated by the complexity of it. And so I'm not saying we shouldn't do these works, but I do think. I think we need to listen more carefully. And I think that's one of the themes that goes through this whole book is I think because of technology, we're very used to just putting music on and having it in the background all the time. And I think because of that, we've just kind of let things slide sometimes. And I think we need to learn how to listen more closely. And not just to the music, but to what everybody. What we're saying to each other. I think we have. We've kind of put. We stopped listening. You know, we're hearing things, but we're not listening.
- [38:21]
Kristen Turner
Well, I felt like the chapter that was the most complex to me, and I. I mean, all of these have a lot of complexity built into it. Anytime you talk about how culture works within a larger context, it can become very complicated very quickly. But the one that really stood out to me was one of the later chapters, which was on the album Graceland, made by Paul Simon, which is one of his great albums, if not his most respected album in his long career. And he. He collaborated with South African musicians to make that album. He recorded the bulk of the kind of foundational tracks for that album in. In South Africa. But he did it when there was a cultural boycott supported by the African National Congress to try to encourage the apartheid government to dismantle apartheid. And I think there you really get into how many. How complicated it is when a blunt instrument like a cultural boycott is trying to be used to dismantle something that, you know, the. I think probably the vast majority of the people of the world thought was a terrible thing. But also. But it really material affects individual people in very. In very different ways to the point where there. There is no good answer. There is no right or wrong answer. There's no. People on the ground don't agree, people from the outside don't agree. And they all have. There's all something right about their arguments, and there's all something that doesn't work about their arguments. And I think that chapter really digs into that. Can you talk more about the specific specifics of that example?
- [40:05]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Yeah, sure. Well, the first. So it's.
- [40:09]
Prime Video Sponsor
Okay.
- [40:10]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
So one of the complexities is that the African National Council, which represented black South Africans in general, and then there were other political parties too, but that was the big one, was very distraught, for correct reasons with apartheid and how it was becoming ever worse. And you have Nelson Mandela, who's been imprisoned, and then, you know, various political parties that are not white are then outlawed. And so it's, you know, people are being pushed out of their homes and put into sort of tribal areas. And so there's a lot of horrible stuff that's happening in South Africa. And I think if I can. If I can make a case for why I think Graceland is so important, is it did everybody was focusing on all the horrible things happening in South Africa. And what Paul Simon did because he heard Some South African music. And it kind of blew his mind. And he was like, I had no idea. This is so amazing. I want to, like, create with these people. You know, I was talking before about invaders and, you know, good tourists. Paul Simon was a good tourist, in my opinion. Like, he truly, you know, he. He listened to a lot before he went. He really wanted to work with these people. You know, there was no way they were taken advantage of intellectually or financially. They were paid, you know, very, very, very well. And they also got credit for the music, you know, for their contributions to writing the songs and stuff, and royalty. So there. That. I will lay that out there like that. But as the ANC said. Yeah, but he's. He came and he recorded in South Africa, and we were trying to do this cultural boycott. And when he comes in and does that, he messes everything up. I think the biggest issue was people, what does it mean to have a cultural boycott? Like, how is a cultural boycott powerful? By cutting off. Like, by cutting off the culture it does. Is that really the thing? Like, should people not be talking to each other or hearing artistic works or sharing intellectual ideas? I think that what happened. And you can see, because the cultural boycott, it wasn't the only boycott. It got put in as one element of all of these economic boycotts. And so I think people were looking at culture and music and the arts and stuff as an economic powerhouse. And so I think for the anc, it was like the cultural boycott. If you come in here and you make a record that's gonna, you know, legitimize South Africa and that's gonna, you know, help the government. And I think Paul Simon was saying, I'm not given. There's no way money's coming into the South African government from this. The only people making money are, you know, these artists from it. And it's not about economics or politics. It's about the art, you know, And I shouldn't have to ask someone's permission to sing a song with someone. So those are kind of the ways it's set up. What I tried to do in this chapter, I do have an opinion. It's probably already come through by me talking about it, but I tried not to make. I tried not to sort of completely take a side. I really tried to show. Because I think a lot of times we get to the issue and we talk about the album, but there's not a lot of talking about how did the album actually get made and how many times did people come together and what were the relationships and what did the artists say about how they work together? And what were the. You know, the songs that were made? And what did Nelson Mandela think of the. You know, how did he see this album as actually helpful helping his cause? And so that's what I tried to do with this chapter, is just show the complexity of it. And. And, you know, so people. And I've had folks read it and go, yeah, clearly he shouldn't have gone to South Africa. But at least we have this good album. And then I have other people that go, the ANC was completely wrong. And, you know, so I think people will also read into it what they. What they want to read into it.
- [44:13]
Kristen Turner
We also have the counter example of Sun City in that chapter, which was not a whole album.
- [44:21]
Announcer
Right?
- [44:21]
Kristen Turner
It was just a song.
- [44:22]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
No, they actually did the song, and then they did the whole album, which is also Sun City, which was very quickly produced. And, I mean, that's a big difference, too. Like, it took years to make Graceland. And it was. There was really a lot of attention to production of it and everything. And with Sun City, it was like, okay, we're about to put the album out. Anybody else have a tune? You know, one song was written and recorded the day before. And so I think there's a difference there. And I think that you've also got. The whole issue with Sin City is that from the beginning, it was, we are creating a political album against apartheid, and we're going to teach everybody how bad apartheid is. And so I think the goals of the two albums are very different. You know, Paul Simon was, I'm gonna go and try to make the best music I can and have this amazing experience with these musicians that kind of blow my mind. And I think that that's one of the reasons the album has done so well. And there's, like, a joy and discovery in it. Whereas Sun City was all right, we're gonna. You know, we're gonna tell it. I think sometimes when you. When your whole goal is I'm gonna be political. Yeah, maybe it's political, but a lot of times, musically, artistically, it loses something. And I'll just be honest with you. I don't like Sun City at all. I really. I will just say I don't. I don't think it's a good album as a whole, even though, you know, Miles Davis is on and things like that. But I do. I do think that Graceland is, like, an amazing work of art.
- [45:55]
Kristen Turner
It's interesting that Sun City, a overtly political piece and album that was I think partially made to conform and to talk about the cultural boycott, you know, disappears almost without a trace. It's not disavowed by the anc, but it's Graceland becomes something that is associated with post apartheid is South Africa, certainly not with Sun City at all. But there is another piece of overtly political art that, that I think is much more successful than Sun City. And that you say maybe the piece more than any other song, changed America. And that is the song Strange Fruit, which is about lynching. And so another thing about race, another thing about, you know, another song about the violence of racial hatred and racial animus, which is certainly part of apartheid. What is it about Strange Fruit that makes it for you more than any other song, one that changed America?
- [46:58]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Well, I should, I should begin by, I think oftentimes people go, Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit. And Billie Holiday's performance is what really, you know, drew attention to it. And, you know, she had a, you know, a performer. The performance has a. Plays a huge role in how the song is presented to the world. But it was written by Abel Meeropol, who was white, he was Jewish, he was the son of Russian immigrants, he was a communist, he was a card carrying member of the Communist Party. And he taught high school in the Bronx. And he was horrified by what was happening with lynchings in the United States. And what I try to do with that chapter is show just the buildup that happens in the 30s because it was getting much, you know, worse again. And of course, this is the same time that we're making the national anthem, you know, the Star Spangled Banner our national anthem. And it's the same time that Porgy and Bess is coming out. And, you know, so there are all of these various ways that this is being discussed. And the first thing I would say about Strange Fruit is it was written first as a poem called Bitter Fruit. And it is one of the most powerful protest poems, I think, ever written. And it's because of the way Meryl Poll would, you know, set with the lyrics, what we now call the lyrics. But the original poem, you would have, you know, a beautiful line like the smell of magnolia is sweet and fresh. Then the next line will be and then the smell of burning flesh. And so he, he juxtaposes, you know, he'll set an image in your mind that is beautiful and idyllic, and then he juxtaposes it with the most ugly kind of, you know, sensory in a similar sensory way. And that just creates a huge power to it. And then he, shortly after he published it in 1937 as a poem, he set it to music. He and his wife sang it at communist rallies. The Communist party was very much for, you know, racial equality and gender equality and economic equality. And you know, it was, it was also sung by other folks. But then he, you know, heard Abel Meeropol, heard about Cafe Society, which was the first racially integrated Club Mike Club in New York, and thought, well, this would be, this could be a place where the song could take off. And Billie Holiday was the house singer. And you know, they present it to her and she's like, I don't know, you know, and then she decided to sing it and she really made it her own. And she made it went from being a song about the horrors of lynching as seen by, you know, a white vic, you know, a white person who is so horrified that that this could be happening in humanity to being. When Billie Holiday sang it, suddenly it was a song of witnessing. And I think. And that word witness gets you. People go, have you witnessed, you know, Billie Holiday singing the song? And I think that then really launches it. And the reason I say it's, it's really powerful is it gets brought. I mean people send, you know, there are organizations that send recordings of Billie Holiday singing it and printed music to congressmen and senators as time and time again they're voting on anti lynching legislation. And it's failing time and time again to the point that in 2005 the Senate apologized for never passing a federal anti lynching law. And I should say I had written the chapter as, isn't this horrible that we have never like that the song never had an impact. And then yay. In 2022, the Emmett Till anti lynching act got passed. And then I suddenly had to step back. I had to rewrite the chapter because I realized no, it got there. It just was very slow, you know, like the seeds had been planted. But it really took to the sort of post Obama era and in 2022, thanks to Kamala Harris putting it forward and then Biden as president signing into law for us to have a federal law that says you can't lynch people.
- [51:23]
Kristen Turner
Well, it does also show us the sort of how long political activism has to remain focused on a particular issue before legislation is passed. Because as long as it took to get an anti lynching law, there's plenty of other laws that have taken gener, you know, really literally generations to pass. And it's again about having a song like Strange Fruit meant that every time it came up, people are like, oh, yeah, that is horrible. And you know, it just moves the, the needle a little bit more until the next time it comes up. It always comes up with this incredibly powerful witness, as you say, in that performance of that song by Billie Holiday, or she had several.
- [52:06]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
And there were. And I talk about other performances of it as well, but. But yeah, I mean, that's the one that sort of stands out. And then Nina Simone, once she goes political and, you know, she does a recording of it and that really took off. And so a lot of people know Nina Simone's vers. But yeah, I mean, and the other thing, I mean, just talk about protest music. So that is an early chapter, strange fruit, chapter five. And then I talk about protest songs in the 60s and 70s later. And I think this plays into kind of one of the things you were talking about that you've got to. It's not. You can't just sing a song and change the world or fix the world. And you know, one of the point I make is in the 1960s and 70s, I talk about a few songs. I talk about Blowing in the Wind with Dylan, I talk about Mississippi Goddam with Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye's what's Going on and then Helen Reddy's I Am Woman. And the fact that this really did influence a lot of audiences. And as they listened to these songs and sang these songs together, they created a real sense of strength and unity. And it had a power. It made you feel like change is happening. But I think the most obvious example is I Am Woman by Helen Rennie. That really helped us, you know, kind of push into Roe v. Wade and getting all of that passed and abortion rights. And we saw what happened just a few years ago where that all went away. And I think one of the points I try to make is, you know, protest songs can really create a sense of unity. They do have a sense of power, but they, on their own, they're. They can't maintain the change. You know, they can't maintain change and they can't promise that, you know, once change has come that it won't disappear.
- [53:52]
Kristen Turner
Unfortunately, there are many other chapters that we did not get a chance to talk about. We could really make a three hour podcast to go through each one of these chapters. Of the ones we haven't talked about. Is there one that you feel like, oh, I'd really like listeners to know about this chapter?
- [54:09]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Well, yeah, I would say the second chapter in the book is called the Unanswered Question. And so for those of us in classical music. You know, Ives comes to mind because it's about his work. And I try to, as I did with Rhapsody and Blue, I really try to put that. That composition in the context of its time, but also just Ives as a person. And I mean, we often talk about. Oh, and he also sold insurance, but he. If you read, like, the copy he wrote for his insurance agents to, like, share as they were selling, like, the writing, the composing of music and the belief in what he wanted to have in America, which was direct democracy, and his very active participation in the political world and trying to really engage with politicians. I would hope people would give that chapter a glance, especially if they're going to teach Ives. I think it's not to toot my own horn, but I do think it's a chapter that might help students have a deeper understanding of the power of
- [55:18]
Kristen Turner
Ives music and the power of music that is not in the mainstream of the way that classical music normally expresses itself. And I think that's a great example of one of those pieces and the way that you express. Explain it for sure. Well, I wish we could talk about all the chapters, but as our time is drawing to a close, I know that you mentioned, I think in the acknowledgments that this book took a lot longer to write than you thought it would. It was. It was a difficult book, I'm sure, just to research such disparate topics. It's like you wrote a short book 12 different times. And so I know it was a very. A very taxing project, but now that it has finally come to a close, what are you working on now?
- [56:04]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
So right now I'm finishing up a short biography for Reaction Press on George Gershwin. And I've also been asked to be sort of the, I guess, scholar in residence for the bar Music Festival 2027, which is Gershwin. So putting together a volume for that. And then. So I also, at my appointment here at Johns Hopkins is. I'm in the writing seminars department, which is actually the creative writing department. And then I have a joint appointment teaching music history at Peabody. And so I also am working right now on just the very beginning of a novel. And it is kind of. It was inspired by one time I was in a class and a student asked, well, what do you think would have happened to Mozart if he lived? Like, what do you think he would have done? And the kind of response was, what if he went to America? So I'm working on a novel about, like, he doesn't really die. He comes to the us.
- [57:10]
Kristen Turner
So a nice alternate history. Then what happens?
- [57:13]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Exactly.
- [57:14]
Announcer
It's great.
- [57:15]
Kristen Turner
No footnotes.
- [57:15]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
I get to make it all up. It's really good.
- [57:19]
Prime Video Sponsor
Yeah.
- [57:19]
Kristen Turner
It must be a very different kind of writing than the biography of Gershwin. Well, it's been wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Kristin Turner and I'm the host of New Books in Music, a podcast of the New Books Network. And I've been talking to Anna Harwell Cholenza about On the Record Music that Changed America, published by Norton in 2026. Thank you so much.
- [57:46]
Anna Harwell Chilenza
Thank you.
- [57:47]
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