Universal Mother, Sinead O’Connor, and the Healing Power of Song

Join us in conversation with renowned songstress and author, Adele Bertei, as we weave our way through the life and times of Sinead O’Connor, courage in the name of justice, and the healing power of song.

Adele is an anti-disciplinary author, director, performer, and composer currently residing in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of Peter and the Wolves (Smog Veil, 2020), Why Labelle Matters (University of Texas Press, 2021), Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood (ZE Books, 2023), and Universal Mother (Bloomsbury 33 1/3, 2025).

 

Bertei was an original member of the critically lauded Contortions, produced by Brian Eno on the seminal No New York LP. Reading prose and poetry, she opened for writers such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Kathy Acker among many others. Bertei acted in several underground films, including a lead role in Born In Flames by Lizzie Borden.

 

Bertei was lead singer in the Bloods –America’s first openly queer band of women, and has performed and recorded as a backing vocalist and touring vocalist for artists such as Tears for Fears, Thomas Dolby, Culture Club, Whitney Houston, Sandra Bernhard and Sophie B. Hawkins among many others.

 

New York City's Museum of Modern Art recently acquired films of Bertei reading her poem The Ragazzi Manifesto in 1978, and The Offenders by Scott and Beth B., where Bertei plays the lead.

 

She has created and facilitated songwriting workshops for homeless youth at My Friend’s Place in Hollywood, and as a member of Wayne Kramer’s Jail Guitar Doors, teaching songwriting to the incarcerated at the Twin Towers facility in downtown LA, and at Century Women’s Regional Center at Lynwood, the largest women’s jail in the nation.

 

Her next book, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene, will be released in early 2026 by Faber & Faber UK.

 

Thanks to my producer and editor, Lucas Bakker @Iamlucasbakker- whose original music and soundtrack weave the Blue Medicine Journal podcast all together!