Believer Issue 114 August / September 2017 : The Music Issue

The Believer, a five-time National Magazine Award finalist, is a bimonthly literature, arts, and culture magazine. In each issue, readers will find journalism and essays that are frequently very long, book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and interviews that are intimate, frank, and also very long. There are intricate illustrations by Tony Millionaire and a rotating cast of guest artists, poems, and regular columns by Nick Hornby and Daniel Handler.

The annual Music Issue features Karen Tongson on her namesake, Karen Carpenter, and how the particular whiteness of the Carpenters’ sound took off in the Philippines; Michael Snyder on a territory in northeast India in which contemporary Christian gospel is effecting near-total cultural assimilation; Phillip Pantuso on Guyanese songbird smugglers; Stephanie Elizondo Griest on dancers who place art above everything else in their lives; and Sandi Rankaduwa on the evolution of female emcees. There will also be (among other things) a special section on unreliable songwriters; a visual examination of Italo Disco’s map to humanity’s apotheosis via glitter and robot sex; and interviews with Enya, the LA Phil’s Deborah Borda, punk bassist Mike Watt, rapper and producer Lil B, and legendary rock muse Bebe Buell.