Your Source for 'Ff'lo

Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter, William R. Bauer
This was the book club selection for the second half of the year, suggested by one of the regulars who is writing a book about Black entrepreneurs in the music industry. Betty Carter (born Lillie Mae Jones) was a bebop singer who was fiercely independent, even creating her own record label (Bet-Car) because she didn't want to be told whom to work with. Bauer is an academic, and as a result the book was pretty dry. The musical analyses were completely impenetrable to me; even our book club host, a jazz musician, found them hard to read. I have to admit that Bauer's largely sympathetic portrayal of Carter still left me feeling that I wouldn't have wanted to spend much time with her. Her early singing reminded us all of Sarah Vaughan. 

The Name of This Band Is R.E.M., Peter Ames Carlin
Even though R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands (and one of the few rock bands I like), I hadn't read much about them. Turns out there are a lot of books about this band, and Carlin lists several in his bibliography. It turns out that a good thing to do during a pandemic is research a book: People are available for video interviews, a lot of sources can be accessed online, etc. I thought that Carlin found a good balance between describing the band members and describing the music they made. He didn't try to psychoanalyze them or assign them a place (e.g., best American rock band) in history. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm also relistening to all of their albums in order of release, starting with the EP Chronic Town. We just finished the last of the IRS albums (Document). 

Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico, Noé Álvarez
I think that maybe Álvarez was trying to do too many things with this book. Álvarez was raised by farm workers of Mexican descent in Yakima, Washington, and stories of his paternal grandfather, an accordionist who left women and children in Mexico and the U.S., loomed particularly large. In an effort to become closer to his roots, Álvarez takes up the accordion. He also visits two areas where the accordion is a prominent part of the local traditional music: Louisiana and San Antonio. Then he goes to the Mexican state of Michoacán, where his grandfather was from. In between (and not as interesting) are repeated meditations on family, masculinity, culture, and migration. The interviews with accordion players (and one maker) and the descriptions of life in rural Michoacán are the best parts.  

Malinalli, Veronica Chapa
Another in the mini-genre of modern updates of legendary women, usually with a heavy dose of fantasy/magic. Malinalli is one of many names for the  Indigenous woman who served as an interpreter to Hernán Cortés. In Chapa's version, Malinalli was born to upper middle class parents; her twin brother was sent away to school (the terribly named House of Magical Studies), and she was trained as a priestess, where her facility with languages is first noted. She is kidnapped and sold into slavery, eventually winding up with Cortés. This is Chapa's first novel, so I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads, but it's more like 2.5. There are many similar stories that are better written.