What builds a house into a home? A meditation through sound in pre-cut plywood, an ultra tiny home for the mind.
—interactive sound art piece by Daphne Carr, 2016.
First installation, ALPHA 2016 (Camp Ramblewood, Maryland)
Lake, interior, and vertical images: BY-NC Daphne Carr
I’m a dedicated, long time editor who shows a loving but firm hand in shaping prose. Show me your style guide, publication, or other target text, and I’ll help you get your work to that standard.
I’ve edited for magazines and newspapers, trade books, academic journals, and the underground DIY press worlds.
I have also edited for institutions, including grants for major arts organizations, proposals for new media companies, and copy for organization websites.
My specialty areas for editing include:
• Technical writing for arts organizations, liberal/left political and social justice organizations, and media companies (proposals, grants, reports)
• Creative non-fiction writing (book and essay manuscripts, long format journalism)
• Humanities and social science academic work (book and paper manuscripts, grants, thesis and dissertation proposals, and thesis and dissertation manuscripts)
My working style:
I work with a client to establish the type of edit needed, time frame for the editing process, and style of communication needs for edits. From there, I propose a working framework. Once it is approved, we move forward together to fulfill the task.
What does editing mean?
Here are definitions for a three tiered-system of editing, from Arthur Plotnik’s The Elements of Editing:
Light edit: Correct capitalization, grammar, numbers, punctuation, and spelling. Also repair nonsensical or potentially libelous statements.
Medium edit: A light edit plus also working the prose to ensure the active and concrete statements, clearly structured paragraphs, and, in the main, accurate information.
Heavy edit: Light and medium edits plus rewriting some sections, eliminating material, including transitions, and verifying the accuracy of information.
A “copyedit” usually mean a light to medium edit. A “substantive editing” is a medium to heavy edit. For those struggling with English grammar and usage, it is likely to be a medium to heavy edit.
Style guides: Chicago (16th Edition), MLA, AP, and AAA
“A good song reminds us what we’re fighting for,” ~ Pete Seeger
The core of my life has been my desire to share music and music writing with others to encourage critical thought and inspire change. I’ve done this first as a feminist historian, scholar, writer, and curator on music topics, and then as an activist guitarist, singer, band leader, and instrument teacher. Today I am both of those things, and an organizer too. I consider the merger of my scholarship with on-the-ground performance of music as activism to be my most important life’s work. I am constantly humbled by the magnitude of Pete Seeger’s work in this realm, and hope to continue his work, albeit with a more cosmopolitan, plugged in and contemporary sensibility.
To that end, I am a student and practitioner of the following music activism skills:
• music as tactic for direct action (project managing, strategy)
• live music event booking and production
• activism on music as labor on the working lives and conditions of performers and songwriters
• songbook production (selection, chords, design)
• music advisory for grassroots organizations, social media campaigns, and actions
• instrument, song, and street performance workshops
• talks on the history of music as social justice and movement music history
• writing about contemporary and historical music in social movements
SOME WORK THAT I’VE BEEN THANKFUL TO DO
Music group coordinator, People’s Climate March (Fall 2014)
Occupy Wall Street Music Working Group co-organizer (NYC)
Guitarmy co-organizer and member
Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, instructor, lecturer, advisory committee member
Recent work:
Netroots 2015: panelist, “People’s Climate March: music and art in service of social movements”
Netroots 2015: moderator, “Women on the musical frontlines”
Netroots 2015: moderator, “How to start a riot: Grrls, queers, and other rabble rousers”
For more than ten years I have written music and culture features, interviews, essays, and reviews for a variety of online, print, and trade publishing titles. I’ve focused avant pop & rock-derived musics, experimental, classical, and generally “out” cultures when doing review work. In the last ten years I’ve gotten more pop and more commercial in my listening while trying to remain true to underground/DIY music and ethos. I’ve got a lot to say about Nicki Minaj and Pitbull these days, but also about Downtown Boys and Blackfire.
I tend towards topics that engage music and politics, subculture, technology, the music industry, and the hidden/underrepresented histories of minoritized peoples in music.
Bylines include: Pitchfork, Newmusicbox.org, Spin.com, Capital NY, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Flaunt, MOJO Magazine, Village Voice, LA Weekly, & Seattle Weekly, among others.
I’ve done some more advertorial style content work for eMusic.com & Rhapsody.com, including a several year stint as Rhapsody’s classical editor.
The Archive includes:
Work at New Music Box, including a month-long guest columnist spot on music and labor
Capital New York, including an anthologized piece about Nicki Minaj
Flaunt, including an anthologized piece about women in pop
Spin.com on Depeche Mode, which counts in large amounts
Neon: The Light Of The Wildwoods (Summer 2007)
George F. Boyer Museum
3907 Pacific Avenue Wildwood, N. J. 08260
This was an exhibit on the neon sign heritage of the four communities that make up The Wildwoods in Southern New Jersey.The exhibit included a history of neon sign making, a hands-on exhibit on the materials of neon sign making, a display of original documentary photographs of the Wildwoods’ neon signs, and a photo album of the complete archive of the community’s neon signs as they existed between 2005-2007. An earlier version of this exhibit existed at the Doo Wop Preservation League Museum in Wildwood, NJ. Special thanks for this go to Anthony Canzano at the George F. Boyer Museum and to Fred Musso, local neon sign maker.
I’m a veteran editor and writer who has covered the intersections of music, feminism, politics, and culture for more than 15 years.
I’ve done so as an award winning arts writer whose work has appeared dozens of publications, several anthologies, and a National Book Award-finalist collection, Out of the Vinyl Deeps.
I’ve also served as a managing editor for a book series (Best Music Writing) and an academic journal (Current Musicology), and section editor for an independent bi-monthly magazine (Stop Smiling).
I’ve also had a busy and successful career editing work for others, be it academic, creative, or technical writing.
Selected writing
“How to get involved in politics right now: take these musicians’ leads” Pitchfork, November 2016
“For You I Would: The “I” In Nine Inch Nails” The FADER, Fall 2013
In Spring 2015, I curated a special exhibit at the Museum at Bethel Woods: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect: The Rise of Electronic Music Culture in America.
This 2,000 sq foot exhibit focused on the history, aesthetics, and communities that fostered electronic dance music in America. With music, lights, interactive festival artworks, costumes, and artifacts from disco, rave, club, and electronic music culture, the exhibit was a trip through 35+ years of an under-reported musical culture.
The museum is on the historic site of Woodstock, and is dedicated to the preservation of American music subculture. This was their first guest curated exhibit, and first exhibit on contemporary music cultures.
Bethel Woods Museum PLUR exhibit site
The Sound of New York City video piece on the PLUR exhibit
Times Herald-Record feature on the PLUR exhibit
Digital Economies and the Politics of Circulation
“Cultures of Musical Circulation” exhibit, April 2009
As part of the 2009 Digital Economies and the Politics of Circulation conference at Columbia University, I put together an exhibit titled Cultures of Musical Circulation. Faculty, fellows, and students from the CU ethnomusicology program contributed ethnographic materials on the changing face of musical exchange and circulation. I was especially pleased with a series of photos of noise cassettes from Dr. David Novak’s dissertation fieldwork collection (second image).
