Songbirds: Pioneering Women in Jamaican Music is the fourth book from Augustyn on Jamaican music and culture.
The book features dozens
of interviews with women who found a way share their talent in a culture and
industry that was marked by brazen displays of masculinity. They endured
harassment and received little or no pay to perform as backup or alongside or
in front of the male musicians. They sacrificed family and home for a life in
the spotlight, or they brought their babies with them on the road. They took
over the studio and made it their own, or they suffered unimaginable violence,
even murder. They changed the course of music all over the world. The book also
features over 100 exclusive photographs and memorabilia that supplements
personal narratives and archival material.
Heather Augustyn spent two years researching and talking
to such women as Millie Small of “My Boy Lollipop” fame who rarely grants
interviews, and she obtained photographs from her personal photo album. Others
include Enid Cumberland of Keith & Enid who is now in her mid-80s; Janet
Enright, the country’s first female guitarist who performed jazz in the 1950s;
Marcia Griffiths of the I-Threes, Bob Marley’s backup singers, and vocalist for
the Electric Slide, the staple of every wedding reception; members of the first
all-girl ska band, the Carnations, featuring the parents of Tessanne Chin,
winner of The Voice; Doreen Shaffer of the Skatalites; Patsy Todd of Derrick
& Patsy and Stranger & Patsy; Althea & Donna, and dozens of others.
Augustyn is also author of Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist,
McFarland 2013; Ska: An Oral History,
McFarland 2010; and Ska: The Rhythm of
Liberation, Scarecrow Press 2013. She is a correspondent for The Times
of Northwest Indiana and an adjunct professor at Purdue University’s North
Calumet campus. She lives with her husband and two boys in Chesterton, Indiana.
Songbirds Pioneering Women in Jamaican Music is available at skabook.com and amazon.com