Liner Notes for the Revolution
The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
-
- 36,99 €
-
- 36,99 €
Publisher Description
Winner of the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Winner of the American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation
Winner of the PEN Oakland–Josephine Miles Award
Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award
A Pitchfork Best Music Book of the Year
A Rolling Stone Best Music Book of the Year
“Brooks traces all kinds of lines, finding unexpected points of connection…inviting voices to talk to one another, seeing what different perspectives can offer, opening up new ways of looking and listening by tracing lineages and calling for more space.”
—New York Times
An award-winning Black feminist music critic takes us on an epic journey through radical sound from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé.
Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible, she asks, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry?
Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures—a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers. Zora Neale Hurston appears as a sound archivist and a performer, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer Black feminist critic of modern culture, and Pauline Hopkins as America’s first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism. She makes lyrical forays into the blues pioneers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, as well as fans who became critics, like the record-label entrepreneur and writer Rosetta Reitz. In the twenty-first century, pop superstar Janelle Monae’s liner notes are recognized for their innovations, while celebrated singers Cécile McLorin Salvant, Rhiannon Giddens, and Valerie June take their place as cultural historians.
With an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music—and who should rightly tell it—Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black women musicians as radical intellectuals.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brooks, a professor of African American studies at Yale University, offers in this enlightening survey a fresh perspective on more than a century's worth of Black female musicians. "Critics have casually glorified them as unparalleled innovators of popular vocalizing and yet rendered them unworthy of serious and sustained intellectual care for their creative labors," she writes. What follows is a mix of analysis, storytelling, and history. Brooks pays homage to early blues legend Ethel Waters, who could not read music but used her innate musicality to survive a racially discriminatory and male-dominated music industry for decades. Jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln is recognized for incorporating social commentary into her lyrics, style, and sound. Brooks also gives a nod to contemporary innovator Janelle Mon e, who in 2013 came out as pansexual and incorporated her sexuality into her work via a classic literary scene of female seduction, Homer's temptation of the sirens from the Odyssey. Brooks combines an impressive archive of musical works and the artists' own words to convincingly reveal how they each impacted popular culture. Music aficionados should take note.
