The Unnamed Press – förlag

When Paul Simon first heard the Zulu accordion flourish that would open his multi-platinum album Graceland, he told Joe Boyd that it seemed to proclaim, “You haven’t heard this before!” Yet the “world music” boom of the 1980s that Simon’s album helped to usher in had roots that extended back through the decades and across continents: tango on the eve of World War I, Latin dance across the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, reggae in the ’70s, pre-War samba and pre-Beatles bossa nova, Eastern European ensembles filling capitalist concert halls during the Cold War, Indian ragas changing rock and roll in the 1960s, gypsy music inspiring classical composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.  As far back as 1853, the music that had intrigued Simon had captivated London during a Zulu choir’s extended run there. (Only Charles Dickens dissented.) Like that of other far-flung musical traditions sweeping the globe, the story of Zulu music and its relationship to neighbors, invaders, appropriators, and admirers—from brutal 19th century massacres to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”—is more controversial, colorful, and complex than many imagine. 

Joe Boyd was part of a small group of label heads and journalists who chose “world music” as their marketing slogan in the 1980s. Already the legendary producer of artists including Pink Floyd, The Incredible String Band, Soft Machine, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Toots and the Maytals, and many others, Boyd had little idea how fast and how wide those simple words would spread, or how far back the history went. He would soon learn, producing pathbreaking music in Cuba, Brazil, Bulgaria, Mali, Hungary, Spain, and India under his label Hannibal Records. 

Following the success of his book White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, a self-published smash hit, Boyd now sets out to explore the stories behind the world music he had helped to popularize. He has traveled across continents and interviewed dozens of musicians, producers, and academics, and spent years reading, listening, and writing. The one-of-a-kind result is And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: a riveting, symphonic, globetrotting tour of the music that shapes our world.

“The mystery is how I managed to survive, and whether or not Maddie Twist remains alive and well and living like Brel in Paris, or beyond.”

Adele Bertei’s memoir Twist threads together the tapestry of her troubled childhood in the 60s and 70s, through the eyes of her alter ego Maddie Twist. Her beautiful mother suffers delusions of grandeur brought on by schizophrenia, bringing wonders and horrors to the Bertei home. Soon, Bertei and her two younger brothers become wards of the state of Ohio and by the time she is of middle school age, Maddie Twist has moved through—or run away from—two Cleveland foster homes and a detention home for teenagers. 

At the Marycrest School for Wayward Girls, she finally finds some stability, but after she is caught kissing another girl, she’s on the run again, this time landing herself in a maximum security reformatory school for girls, all before her fifteenth birthday. With each new posting, Maddie discovers sanctuary and solidarity amongst her peers—the outcasts, while adapting to fit her surroundings, and steadily gaining trust in her own voice. As Maddie Twist ages out of the system and finds herself with a surprising new community, her only constant is a ribbon of music that weaves itself around her heart, as a beacon towards another life. She can sing, and she is certain that will be the thing to save her: “If there really is a God, well then, that God must be music.” 

In frank prose without an ounce of self-pity, Twist is an episodic survival of the fittest, navigating the crooked rivers of poverty, race, sexuality, and gender. It is a world of little girl gangsters, drag queen solidarity, wild roller-skating, and magical thinking. As the creator of the band the Bloods, the first out, queer, all-women-rock band, Bertei has made a career as a singer, songwriter, writer, and director. With Twist, Bertei gives us a story of violence and madness, of heartbreak and perseverance, and, ultimately, redemption.

Living in the pre-war, Upper East Side building Benjamin’s grandfather built, with two children no longer at home and professional lives never fully realized, perhaps being New Yorkers is the most that the Sterns will ever be. But Benjamin''s younger brother Spence, founder and CEO of hearing aid company Belphonics, has an idea for a new product line that comes from the brothers'' shared history of rock and roll and CBGB''s, the club that they visited often in their youths, and where, Spence believes, his hearing was permanently damaged. 

In proposing that Benjamin join him in the new venture, Spence also hopes that it might salvage Benjamin''s and Dita''s tenuous financial position. However, they both know that getting involved in Spence''s schemes often comes at a high price. That same evening the Sterns have their daughter Alessandra over for dinner, only for the news of Benjamin’s potential new job to be upstaged by the appearance of their other child, seventeen-year-old Giorgio, whose violent adolescent behavior resulted in his being sent away for most of high school. 

Now seventeen, he steps through their front door without warning, a still very troubled young man. As Benjamin and Dita find themselves reckoning with the choices they have made, a sudden shift in perspective offers Giorgio’s voice, whose declaration that his name is not, in fact, Giorgio, sparks the retelling of his troubled past—one for whom all the Sterns must come to share some measure of responsibility. 

A debut novel from poet and memoirist Jonathan Wells, The Sterns Are Listening explores a family on the verge of both collapse and regeneration. Brimming with affection and humor for its characters, it nevertheless traces a courageous path to the deeply uncomfortable heart of the matter, one that might just give the Stern family a shot at redemption.