Letter from the Editor in Chief

This issue is my last as editor in chief of Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, bringing to a close a long period of my life and work. Beginning in 2007, I spent seven years working as managing editor under Suzanne G. Cusick, three more under Ellie Hisama (including WAM 19, which I guest edited as a festschrift in honor of Suzanne), and now five years as editor in chief. As managing editor, the most rewarding part of the job was seeing the issue make it into print—a genuine, tangible object existing in the world. Working more closely with the individual authors as editor in chief, however, my deepest and most powerful reward has been the opportunity to see these articles improve over the long process from submission to publication. I take deep joy in the clarity, the persuasive power, and the incisive interventions of the work WAM has published. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with so many talented, committed scholars; collectively, their intellectual generosity and desire to publish their work in its strongest possible form have been not only a reward for hard work done but also a down payment in the expansive future of feminist music scholarship.

I am really delighted to announce an incoming team of coeditors: Lisa Barg, Kimberly White, and Vanessa Blais-Tremblay. In their safe hands I anticipate a bright future for WAM. I thank the selection committee, Suzanne G. Cusick, Olivia Bloechl, and Yun Emily Wang, for their hard work and discernment. I also thank Tes Slominsky for her work as book review editor. Tes is also stepping down After several years of work for the journal, and we welcome Laura Risk into the book review editor's role.

The articles in this current issue span large geographical and temporal fields—from South Africa to Europe, Asia, and North America, from 1694 until 2021—but they share an interest in the power of musical sounds, sonic practices, and identity categories, including gender and race, to shape personal experience and institutional history. I hope that you read them all, cite them promiscuously, take inspiration from them, and then send your eventual articles to WAM to repeat the cycle.