Joni Mitchell: Chords of Inquiry
Her Life and Music Author: Yamily Habib
HighlightsWeaves Joni Mitchell’s life story using her own words—drawn from six decades of lyrics, interviews, and public reflections—offering an intimate, first-person lens rarely seen in music biographies.
Combines lyrical prose with rigorous research, blending cultural history, gender politics, and musicology to paint a nuanced portrait of Mitchell’s artistry and the world that shaped her.
Avoids gossip and sensationalism, instead centering Joni’s interior life, creative process, and emotional evolution across time.
Explores how Joni’s music mirrored and resisted the sociopolitical tides of her era, including postwar gender norms, second-wave feminism, and the folk revival.
Written by a diasporic woman of color, the book brings a fresh, cross-cultural perspective to an iconic figure long filtered through predominantly male and Western critical frameworks.
New Book ReleaseJoni Mitchell: Chords of Inquiry is not just another biography—it’s a lyrical, investigative journey into the mind and music of one of the most influential and enigmatic artists of our time. While countless writers have chronicled Joni Mitchell’s life through the lens of fame, romance, or scandal, this book takes a radically different approach: it listens.
Drawing from six decades of interviews, lyrics, public statements, and archival context, Chords of Inquiry weaves together Mitchell’s own words to construct a narrative that is as complex, poetic, and fiercely honest as the artist herself. Rather than retelling her life in neat chapters, the book mirrors the rhythm of her creative evolution—unfolding like a Joni Mitchell album: rich with contradiction, beauty, heartbreak, and defiance.
Through meticulous research and immersive storytelling, the book places Joni’s personal journey within the larger cultural and political movements that shaped her, offering new insight into how she both influenced and resisted the times she lived through. From the windswept prairies of Saskatchewan to the smoky coffeehouses of Toronto and the rebellion of Laurel Canyon, this is the first biography that attempts to understand not just what Joni Mitchell did, but how she felt.
No sensationalism. No filters. Just Joni—through her chords, her poetry, and the lens she gave us all along.
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