Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound

Description

An award-winning Black feminist music critic takes us on an epic journey through radical sound from Bessie Smith to Beyonce. 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 Beyonce 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 Cecile 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. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Author’s Note Introduction Side A 1. Toward a Black Feminist Intellectual Tradition in Sound 2. “Sister, Can You Line It Out?”: Zora Neale Hurston Notes the Sound 3. Blues Feminist Lingua Franca: Rosetta Reitz Rewrites the Record 4. Thrice Militant Music Criticism: Ellen Willis & Lorraine Hansberry’s What Might Be Side B 5. Not Fade Away: Looking After Geeshie & Elvie / L. V 6. “If You Should Lose Me”: Of Trunks & Record Shops & Black Girl Ephemera 7. “See My Face from the Other Side”: Catching Up with Geeshie and L. V. 8. “Slow Fade to Black”: Black Women Archivists Remix the Sounds Epilogue: Going to the Territory Notes Acknowledgments Credits Index