Doing the 4 New Feeling Fandom issue roundtable questions
New Feeling is a cooperatively-run Canadian indie music website. Longtime subscribers know that I've watched the outlet for a while, though I've never been directly involved.
In an article called "Balancing Love and Critique: A New Feeling Roundtable" from their recent issue titled "Fandom", New Feeling featured four contributors discussing what they describe as "tension inherent in this work", i.e. in music journalism. I don't identify with most of this preamble, but I do agree with the last part that I bolded:
"as journalists we are expected to be objective and unbiased in our writing, often represented as “authorities” on music, and yet none of us would be here today if it wasn’t for our own passion. That passion can be a very flawed thing: unchecked it can turn to favouritism or a conflict of interest, and too little can turn to cruelty or a complete disengagement with the people and communities at the heart of these sounds."
New Feeling said that "each participant in the roundtable (Tom Beedham, Sarah Chodos, Michael Rancic, and Daniel G Wilson) was asked to think of a question to help drive the conversation". I'll answer the four questions and add one of my own at the end.
What motivated [you] to start being a music journalist?
I don't call myself a music journalist. My path to Rhythm Changes is quite different than the ones that the music journalists who write for New Feeling have taken. My interest in starting Rhythm Changes wasn't to express my opinions about music. It wasn't to write for a bunch of other outlets, or to print zines in my scene, or to pitch editors or take assignments. I was interested to participate more in the Vancouver jazz scene after an absence of several years. It felt like a homecoming, to the scene in which I was raised throughout my adolescence, that I wasn't sure would work. I wanted to try it.
How do you separate your personal feelings of an artist as a fan of their work, from how you report on and write about them as a journalist?
Although I don't give this concept much thought, I admit that Chris Fraser has already booked some guests on the Rhythm Changes Podcast with whom I had internally refused to make an episode during my time hosting the show. But you can assume that if I've published about someone, I haven't spent much time at all thinking about it.
I hope that as a music writer my words are interpreted as just those of one person and not given additional weight. Is there a way of writing that best conveys this?
I think this question ended up being an invitation for the New Feeling folks to bask in clout, maybe "ironically" but nevertheless. I don't believe "a platform" gives someone "power", but I could buy that people who become self-identified music journalists are people who generally believe that.
What are your thoughts in terms of the challenges of talking about something only from an aesthetic perspective and what were moments that inspired you to think of this ephemeral stuff we listen to in more material terms?
When I meet older musicians, I understand that the good stuff is the story of the social ties that bind them, not only the music they left along the way.
Here's my question:
When was the last time you interacted with a stranger in the offline world who thanked you for your work?
