Timeless advice for creators
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Seventy-Seven Scrapbooks: Six Days in the Life of a Pop Musicologist
Well, that was a week.
I went to Washington, D.C. to give a paper at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) conference and do research at the Smithsonian. The research is for Sway, my book arguing that promotion didn't just circulate American music, it shaped artists' images, legacies, and sometimes the music itself. The Ellington chapter is that argument made concrete, and Ellington's archives are at the National Museum of American History in D.C. So I went early. I got back in the stacks.
It started at the Lincoln Memorial at dawn and ended at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on a Saturday afternoon. In between: five days of archive work, a major conference presentation, and an NPR Tiny Desk story I'm still thinking about.
Let me take you through it.