There is Dionne Warwick – known recently for her tweets, but not so much for the $2 million her special, “Dionne & Friends” (featuring Elton John, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight), raised for AIDS research. This is how Shine Bright ends up being conversational, despite encompassing several decades of nuanced, largely forgotten stories in fewer than 300 pages. From there and without a college degree she worked her way up the music journalism food chain, helped by the assistance and mentorship of veteran music journalists. She was working retail when she got her first freelance assignment in 1989 to review a Natalie Cole performance in Oakland.
In order to know how and why the book is so singular, you need to know Smith. Smith’s encyclopedic knowledge as a self-made pioneer in music journalism combines with extensive interviews, and behind-the-scene stories of some of the biggest cover stories of her era at Vibe to produce an essential and effervescent text for music lovers. Journalists are trained to leave themselves out of the story-but as the subtitle suggests, Shine Bright is a lovely and refreshing exception to that rule. Smith has said that Shine Bright is the book she was born to write, and her shimmering, witty language is proof that she’s right. Smith reflects on the songs and the women behind them as she reveals how they inspired her to grow from an ashy-kneed, Huffy-riding rebellious girl to become the first Black person and the first woman editor-in-chief of Quincy Jones’s groundbreaking hip-hop culture magazine, Vibe, at the height of the genre's global ascent. It features several mini-biographies of the most influential and underrated Black women in American culture, from the poet Phillis Wheatley to opera star Leontyne Price the Dixie Cups, who gave pop music “Chapel of Love” and “Iko Iko” to disco queen Donna Summer. It is also the overdue singing of a Black girl’s song, with perfect pitch. Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright: A Very Personal Story of Black Women in Pop is an entertaining blend of memoir, music history and journalism.
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