On Rhetoric and Black Music

Brooks, an assistant English professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, debuts with a rigorous analysis of how Black musicians shaped Black political and social discourse in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ranging from the ragtime of the late 19th century to the gospel music of the 1960s civil rights movement, Brooks dissects how Duke Ellington “articulated Black identity and history” during the Harlem Renaissance by exploring “themes of racial uplift” through new tonal registers; how John Coltrane and other “free jazz” pioneers used “growls, screams, hollers, and other unorthodox sounds” to reject Western rhythms during the Black Nationalist movement of the ’60s and ’70s; and how gospel singer Mahalia Jackson married blues music with Black gospel tradition for a sound that symbolized, and was used to fuel, the political activism of Black churches in the ’50s and ’60s. (Jackson’s refusal to play for racially segregated crowds also paved the way for some of the first integrated gospel concerts across the country, Brooks notes.) Lucidly anchoring his analysis in sonic studies—the study of how sound is produced and consumed—and sociohistorical context, Brooks reveals how music served to broaden boundaries of “what can be said—and to whom” and helped to spread changing ideas of Black identity, liberation, and protest. It’s a fascinating look at the complicated relationship between art, culture, and social change. (June)