Kandia Crazy Horse moves to Village Voice...

One of my favorite music writers, the award-winning Kandia Crazy Horse, editor of Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock and Roll, late of BlueGum, and previously a freelance journalist, will be joining the staff of The Village Voice as Senior Associate Editor next month. This is exciting news, and I'll be looking for her writing on all things rock, and southern, country fried, as well as whatever other topics a Senior Associate Editor pens about from a Village Voice desk.

Ah, yes, and if that weren't enough I hear she's also been appointed an Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University during the Spring 2009 semester. She'll be teaching a course called "Roll Over Beethoven: Black Rock and Cultural Revolt."

From that course title it may be apparent that Crazy Horse is an advocate of black rock. While some folks think that area of cultural production began with Living Color, or the AfroPunk community movement, African American involvement in the rock genre considerably predates those phenomenon. Crazy Horse has been a long-time chronicler of black rock and southern rock, making the connections between black musicians and listeners and the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd within the racial complexities of southern music history and culture. She's also been a major proponent of Joi, and other acts that have been rejoining musical territories that were/are torn asunder by the racial political of commercial radio. Crazy Horse is outspoken, often unapologetically so, opinionated, poetic, lyrical, and passionate about music. It's an important combination.

A short bio of Crazy Horse from the Anschutz site:

"Kandia Crazy Horse is an independent writer and editor specializing in rock music criticism, black feminist theory and cultural studies. Her work appears in publications including the Village Voice and popmatters.com. Kandia is a contributor to The Blues (HarperCollins, 2003), the companion volume to Martin Scorcese's series on the roots music genre, and has edited a collection on black musicians' rock experiences, Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock & Roll (2004). Her current research project, entitled The Dirty South, promises to make original contributions to multiple fields of inquiry - part memoir, part investigative journalism."

Endnote:
• A bibliography of some of Crazy Horse's writing from Rock's Back Pages.
• Rob Field's audio interview with Crazy Horse from Bold As Love.
• Pre-Rip It Up publication interview with the ever direct Crazy Horse at RockCritics.com.
• Crazy Horse riffing on the up and coming Earl Greyhound, 18 months ago in the pages of The Village Voice.
• Crazy Horse choice offerings from her stint at the southern alternative weekly, Creative Loafing.
• (Added 8/15/08) I almost neglected to add one of the more interesting reads on the recent female British soul mimicry invasion (everything but the burden, indeed) Crazy Horse's 9 May 2007 San Francisco Bay Guardian article, "Digital Venuses: UK pop starlets vie for America's heart of darkness."