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

by Daphne A. Brooks Harvard University Press 2/23/2021, paperback SKU: 9780674292208   Winner of the Josephine Miles-PEN Oakland Book AwardWinner of the MAAH Stone Book AwardA Rolling Stone Best Music Book of the YearA Pitchfork Best Music Book of the Year 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