TALKING MUSIC CRITICISM

A few weeks ago, I was invited to be on a panel about music criticism for the LITLIT book festival in Los Angeles. I was joined by my friend and colleague, Karen Tongson, as well as Tyson Cornell of Rare Bird and Karla Nielsen from the Huntington Library. It was an opportunity not just to reflect on nearly 30 years of writing about music but just thinking about the notion of taste and how I used to argue over music in a way that I simply don’t care to anymore because I feel like the world is better when we allow each other to like-what-we-like without judgment.