One of the exciting things about the academic career path is the chance to plot a new course forward every September and January. Each semester gives professors the opportunity to design new syllabi–fourteen weeks of readings and discussions follow, organized around a specific topic or theme.
This past semester, Dr. Guy designed and led an interdisciplinary graduate seminar titled “Nasty Women Don’t Get the Blues (But They Write About Them).” With only one exception (Guy himself), every reading assigned to the class had been written with a critical feminist orientation, taking up a musical figure, genre, or time period. By organizing them this way, Guy asked an important question: What does a black feminist musicology look like?
Over the last few months, Guy, a group of graduate students, and an esteemed roster of special guests via Skype worked on that question and many more emerged. What type of reclamation could such a disciplinary intervention make? Was black feminist musicology a hermeneutic, a set of discourses, or something else entirely?
In the interest of continuing the conversation and allowing our readers the chance to respond and develop answers to these questions (and questions of their own), Guy is sharing the full “Nasty Women” syllabus below. Let it serve as a reminder of what a musicology class can be and encourage your further course planning…for the summer and beyond.
Nasty Women Don’t Get the Blues (But They Write About It)
Contemporary music scholarship has seen the rise of a body of criticism written primarily (though not exclusively) by black women on a wide range of topics and with an eclectic, theoretical purview. This criticism, which I distinguish from more compensatory models, attempts to explain the cultural work that music performs in the social world. The analytical frameworks they forward seek to explain what various styles and musical gestures mean and how they generate and achieve their signifying affect. It exposes some of the critical spaces left by earlier models and methods, first, by identifying a work’s significant musical gestures and then by positioning those gestures within a broader field of musical rhetoric and conventions. Next, these conventions are theorized with respect to broader systems of cultural knowledge, such as the historical contexts in which a musical text or style appeared and the lived experiences of audiences, composers, performers, dancers, and listeners. Taken together, this new black feminist music criticism leaves no aspect of the musical process—creation, mediation, or reception—untouched. This analytical project provides alternative ways for scholars of black music history to access and discuss some of the historically and socially contingent meanings generated by a musical style and its surrounding practices.
Beginning with the early twentieth century journalism and scholarship of figures like Nora Douglas Holt and Maud Cuney Hare, and then moving through the groundbreaking work of Eileen Southern, Portia Maultsby and Hazel Carby, we’ll read the following authors, among others: Farah Griffin, Shana Redmond, Salamishah Tillet, Gayle Murchinson, Gayle Wald, Daphne Brooks, Tammy Kernodle, Emily Lordi, Jennifer Lena, Lisa Jones Brown, Joan Morgan, Thulani Davis, dream hampton, Regina Bradley, Kyra Gaunt, Imani Perry, Maureen Mahon, Francesca Royster, L.H. Stallings, Ingrid Monson, Shana Goldin Perschbacher, Deborah Smith Pollard, Elizabeth Mendes Berry, Tsitsi Jaji, Ann Powers, Angela Davis, Carol Muller, Nichole T. Rustin, Eileen Hayes, Monica Hairston and Sherrie Tucker. These writings will move us through numerous theoretical paradigms, genres and musicians. If there is no knowledge without the knower, how do the experiences and written mediations of these writers broaden and deepen our understanding of music’s important work in the twentieth and twenty-first century?
Making Theory Feminist; Making Theorists Subjective
Sylvia Wynter, “Interview”
Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”
Hazel Carby, “White Women Listen”
Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” and “Defining Black Feminist Thought”
Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools”
Sherry B. Ortner, “Making Gender”
Susan McClary, “Paradigm Dissonances”
Guthrie Ramsey, “Who Hears Here: Black Music, Critical Bias and the Musicological Skin Trade”
Genre and Theoretical Turns
L.H. Stallings, Introduction, Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures
Francesca Royster, “Introduction: Eccentric Performance and Embodied Music in the Post-Soul Moment”
Hazel Carby, “It Just Be’s That Way Sometime”
Sherrie Tucker, “Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies”
A Slave
Farah Jasmine Griffin, “When Malindy Sings”
Nell Painter, “Early American White People Observed” in The History of White People
Kira Thurman, “Singing the Civilized Mission”
Treva B. Lindsey and Jessica Marie Johnson, “Searching for Climax: Black Erotic Lives in Slavery and Freedom”
Laurel Thatcher Urich, “A Quilt Unlike Any Other: Rediscovering the Work of Harriet Powers”
Daphne Brooks: Black/Performance/Theory
Daphne A. Brooks, “Our Bodies, Our/Selves” and “Re-imagining the Black Body (Politic) in Williams and Walker’s In Dahomey” in Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910
Modern Black Bodies Moving
Susan McClary and Robert Walser, “Theorizing the Body in African American Music”
Jayna Brown, “Introduction, “Babylon Girls: Primitivist Modernism, Anti-Modernism, and Black Chorus Line Dancers,” and “Translocations: Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, and Valaida Snow” in Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern
Art Music Discourse and the Black Moderns
Rae Linda Brown, “The Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago and Florence B. Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement”
Jacqueline Dje Dje, “Context and Creativity: William Grant Still in Los Angeles”
Carol Oja, “New Music and “The New Negro”: The Background of William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony”
Nora Douglas Holt, excerpts of her music criticism
Radical Blue(s)prints
Angela Davis, “Introduction” and “I Used to be Your Sweet Mama” in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
Zora Neal Hurston, “Characteristics of Negro Expression” and “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals”
Maud Cuney Hare, Negro Musicians and Their Music, excerpt
Jazz(y)
Hazel Carby, “Playin’ the Changes,” in Race Men
Tammy Kernodle, “Black Women Working Together: Jazz, Gender and the Politics of Validation”
Lisa Barg, “Gender, Arranging and Collaboration: The Weston-Liston Relationship”
Farah Jasmine Griffin: Inter-media and Inter-disciplines
Farah Griffin, “Rollin’ with Mary Lou,” in Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II
Farah Griffin, “Abbey Lincoln: The Dawn of a New Day,” in If You Can’t Be Free be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday
F.J. Griffin’s Women’s Pedagogical Legacies: Emily Lordi and Salamishah Tillet
Emily Lordi, Donny Hathaway Live
Emily Lordi, “Introduction: and “Signature Voices: Nikki Giovanni, Aretha Franklin, and the Black Arts Movement” in Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature
Salamishah Tillet, “Strange Sampling: Nina Simone and Her Hip-Hop Children”
Rocking Out of Place
Maureen Mahon, “Reclaiming the Right to Rock” and “Living Colored in the Music Industry” in Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race
Kyra Gaunt, “YouTube, Twerking, and You: Context Collapse and the Handheld Copresence of Black Girls and Miley Cyrus” in J. Warwick and A. Adrian, eds., Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity
Sexual Healing
Gayle Wald, “Shout, Sister, Shout (1940-1946)” and “Little Sister (1947-1949)” in Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Kelefa Sanneh, “Revelations: A Gospel Singer Comes Out”
Shana Goldin Pershbacker “The World has Made Me the Man of My Dreams: Meshell Ndegeocello and the ‘Problem’ of Black Female Masculinity”
Hearing Diaspora Scripts
Katrina Dyonne Thompson, “The Script: Africa was but a blank canvas for Europe’s imagination” in Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery
Tsitsi Ella Jaji, “Stereomodernism: Amplifying the Black Atlantic” in Africa in Stereo: Modernism Music, and Pan African Solidarity
Shana L. Redmond, “Introduction” and “Soul Intact: CORE, Conversions, and Covers of “To Be Young Gifted and Black” in Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora
Hiphop-nitized
Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Treva Lindsey, “If You Look in My Life”: Love, Hip Hop Soul and Contemporary African American Womanhood”
Lisa Jones, “Pussy Ain’t Free” in Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex and Hair
Imani Perry, “The Venus Hip-Hop and the Pink Ghetto,” in Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop
Regina Bradley, “Gettin’ in Line: Working Through Beyonce’s Formation” online
Selected/Supplemental Books List
Naomi Andre, Karen M. Bryan, and Eric Saylor, Blackness in Opera
Franya J. Berman, Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane
Rashida K. Braggs, Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II Paris
Daphne A. Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910
Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern
Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby, eds. African American Music
Hazel Carby, Race Men
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Natalie Crawford, eds., New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement
Aimee Meredith Cox, Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship
Maud Cuney Hare, Negro Musicians and Their Music
Angela Y Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Brenda Dixon Gottchild, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool
Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in American Culture
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Digging: The Africanist Presence in American Performance
Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Who Set You Flowin’?: The African American Migration Narrative
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II
Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday
Eileen M. Hayes and Linda F. Williams, Black Women and Music: More than the Blues
Jerma A. Jackson, Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age
Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music and Pan-African Solidarity
Margo Jefferson, On Michael Jackson
Bernice Johnson Reagon, ed., “We’ll Understand it Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers
Lisa Jones, Bulletproof Diva: Tales of Race, Sex and Hair
Tammy L. Kernodle, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams
Queen Latifah (with Karen Hunter), Ladies First: Revelation of a Strong Woman
Jennifer C. Lena, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music
Emily Lordi, Donny Hathaway Live
Emily Lordi, Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature
Maureen Mahon, Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race
Jacqui Malone, Steppin’ on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance
Paige A. McGinley, Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism
Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa
Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction
Joan Morgan, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Carol Ann Muller and Sathima Bea Benjamin, Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz
Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands
Jeannie Gayle Pool, American Composer Zenobia Powell Perry: Race and Gender in the 20th Century
Shana Redmond, Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora
Teresa L. Reed, The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music
Hildred Roach, Black American Music: Past and Present
Francesca T. Royster, Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era
Nichole T. Rustin and Sherrie Tucker, Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies
Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans and Readings in Black American Music
L.H. Stallings, Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures
Katrina Dyonne Thompson, Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery
Gayle F. Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Helen Walker Hill, From Spirituals to Symphonies: African American Women Composers and Their Music
Jacqueline Warwick and Allison Adrian, eds. Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music (Kyra Gaunt article)
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