Issues in African American Music
Power, Gender, Race, Representation

Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation is a collection of twenty-one essays by leading scholars, surveying vital themes in the history of African American music. Bringing together the viewpoints of ethnomusicologists, historians, and performers, these essays cover topics including the music industry, women and gender, and music as resistance, and explore the stories of music creators and their communities.

Revised and expanded to reflect the latest scholarship, with six all-new essays, this book both complements the previously published volume African American Music: An Introduction and stands on its own. Each chapter features a discography of recommended listening for further study. From the antebellum period to the present, and from classical music to hip hop, this wide-ranging volume provides a nuanced introduction for students and anyone seeking to understand the history, social context, and cultural impact of African American music.

PART I: INTERPRETING MUSIC

1. Performing Blues and Navigating Race in Transcultural Contexts (Susan Oehler Herrick)

2. New Bottle, Old Wine: Whither Jazz Studies? (Travis A. Jackson)

3. The Politics of Race Erasure in Defining Black Popular Music Origins (Portia K. Maultsby)

4. Negotiating Blackness in Western Art Music (Olly Wilson)

PART II: MASS MEDIATION

5. Crossing Musical Borders: Agency and Process in the Gospel Music Industry (Mellonee V. Burnim)

6. Industrializing African American Popular Music (Reebee Garofolo)

7. The Motown Legacy: Homegrown Sound, Mass Appeal (Charles E. Sykes)

8. Stax Records and the Impulse Toward Integration (Rob Bowman)

9. Uptown Sound—Downtown Bound: Philadelphia International Records (John A. Jackson)

10. "And the Beat Goes On": SOLAR—The Sound of Los Angeles Records (Scot Brown)

11. Tyscot Records: Gospel Music Production as Ministry (Tyron Cooper)

PART III: GENDER

12. Voices of Women in Gospel: Resisting Representations (Mellonee V. Burnim)

13. Are All the Choir Directors Gay? Black Men’s Sexuality and Identity in Gospel Performance (Alisha Lola Jones)

14. Women in Blues: Transgressing Boundaries (Daphne Duval Harrison)

15. Jazz History Remix: Black Women from "Enter" to "Center" (Sherrie Tucker)

16. The Reception of Blackness in "women’s music" (Eileen M. Hayes)

17. African American Women and the Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Genre in Rock ’n’ Roll (Maureen Mahon)

18. "Ain’t Nuthin’ But a She Thang": Women in Hip Hop (Cheryl L. Keyes)

PART IV: MUSICAL AGENCY—AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC AS RESISTANCE

19. The Antebellum Period: Communal Coherence and Individual Expression (Lawrence W. Levine)

20. Civil Rights Period: Music as an Agent of Social Change (Bernice Johnson Reagon)

21. The Post-Civil Rights Period: The Politics of Musical Creativity (Mark Anthony Neal)

Portia K. Maultsby is Laura Boulton Professor Emerita of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and Research Associate in the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University.

Mellonee V. Burnim is Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Adjunct Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, and Director of the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University.