2026 is shaping up to be a year for incredible music books. Some of the best non-fiction books are projects where the writer is stepping up to fill a gap, to document the undocumented (or insufficiently chronicled), to tell a story that hasn’t been told adequately, to share a subject the writer is insanely passionate about. All of the above are true in two new fantastic books: Andy Beta’s “Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane” and Adele Bertei’s “No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene.” In both cases, these are sprawling, immersive volumes, authored with obvious knowledge and deep understanding, but written in an engaging, open style that’s clearly meant to engage readers and bring them closer to each book’s respective subjects.
“Cosmic Music” author Andy Beta was a teenage punk rock kid bragging about his diverse musical tastes — he was into John Coltrane — when someone tipped him off to Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda,” telling him, “‘You’ve got to hear it. It’s, like, the most beautiful music in the world.” At the time, Beta thought to himself, “Wow, John Coltrane’s sister also made jazz music? This is a really talented family.” It was the golden age of music discovery, where music fans relied on personal discovery or recommendation — in Beta’s case, he admits that if Kurt Cobain mentioned a record, he would go and buy that record, but that story isn’t shameful, because plenty of previous generations did the same exact thing.
