How Women Made Music

Editor Alison Fensterstock and contributors Gwen Thompkins and Melissa A. Weber discuss the new book The book covers the contributions of women artists and how they have shaped the music industry.

Drawn from NPR Music’s acclaimed, groundbreaking series Turning the Tables, the definitive book on the vital role of Women in Music—from Beyoncé to Odetta, Taylor Swift to Joan Baez, Joan Jett to Dolly Parton—featuring archival interviews, essays, photographs, and illustrations.

Free and open to the public; donations gratefully accepted.

The Andre Callioux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice is accessible to community members who require mobility-related ADA accommodations. Parking near the venue is free, though somewhat limited. The nearest RTA stop is at N. Broad and Columbus

Alison Fensterstock is a former music critic for the Times-Picayune and Gambit weekly and a current columnist at 64 Parishes. She's the editor of NPR Music's "How Women Made Music" (2024) and is currently working on a biography of cartoonist and music writer Bunny Matthews.

Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans-based journalist, writer and PhD student in History at Tulane University. Her research interests are rooted in the historic rise of jazz and other New Orleans-centric music forms as essential expressions of personal and societal freedom worldwide. Since 2012, she has been the executive producer and host of the public radio program Music Inside Out, which showcases the unusually varied musical landscape of Louisiana. Thompkins was the longtime senior editor of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon and later NPR’s East Africa bureau chief, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Following a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, she has contributed stories and interviews to The New Yorker online, The Oxford American, NPR Music, WXPN’s World Café, The Massachusetts Review, and other outlets. Currently, she’s writing a book based on the Music Inside Out interviews. Find the full archive at: musicinsideout.org, and learn more at https://musicinsideout.wwno.org/

Melissa A. Weber is an artist-scholar and music historian whose areas of interest and expertise include 20th century popular music, the music and culture of her native New Orleans, and archives. She serves as curator of the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, a unit of Tulane University Special Collections.

As an adjunct professor, she teaches History of Urban Music at Loyola University New Orleans. She has presented her work and research at meetings for the American Musicological Society, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, National Council for Black Studies, and Society of American Archivists, among others.

In her spare time, and under the moniker of DJ Soul Sister, she has hosted her Soul Power show on WWOZ FM New Orleans community radio station for 30+ years. As a performance DJ, she has performed with artists ranging from Questlove to George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic.

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