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Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
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73
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
83/100Critics
40/100Scholars
98/100Author:
Daphne A. Brooks
Publisher:
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Date:
February 23, 2021
A Yale professor of African American Studies argues that acclaimed Black entertainers have also been radical intellectuals, challenging the culture industry to catch up. Informed by the overlooked contributions of women who wrote about the blues, rock and pop, Brooks explores the contribution of Black women musicians from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé.
What The Reviewers Say
For a critic, there’s maybe nothing so central but also confounding as the question of taste—why we like what we like, and whether it’s something we decide for ourselves, based purely on our own freedom and idiosyncracies; or if our tastes can be shaped and even scripted, influenced by earnest argument, entrenched biases or cynical manipulation.
The book is almost too constellatory to fully describe: its first half offers several chapters of groundwork, exploring the breadth of Black women artists’ culture-making over the course of the last one-hundred-plus years; its second half takes the baton with a focus on a handful of musicians and the critics, artists, and fans who have tried, with varying degrees of success, to frame their legacies. Brooks moves deftly between eras, from early-twentieth-century blues and vaudeville to Lemonade-era Beyoncé, just as she moves between language dense with academic conventions and playful, music-critic prose. The material is too expansive to be contained by any single mode.
... a rich reimagining of the archive as both concept and wellspring, specifically in the creation, performance, and reception of blues music by Black women.
A spirited study.
