Glam “Heroines”. Gaps in Glam Historicisation from Black Self-Feminised Musicians to the Herstory of Glam Rock

The narration of glam music, especially glam rock, as queer is countered by a canonisation of male white icons in pop musicology, which is illuminated and expanded in this article. Early glam performances by self-feminised Black musicians (Ward 1998) as well as the music making of female agents of glam rock are at the center of this exploration. Firstly, an outline of the current gender and race specific remembrance of glam rock is given. Secondly, the “glamorous” origins of glam music are questioned with Ward; musical canon of glam is also re-arranged regarding the category of gender by adding the basic biographies of two further female heroines, Bobbie McGee and Cherrie Vangelder-Smith. They are present in digital (DIY) media within practices of affective archiving (Baker 2015), which enable lyrics interpretation in this paper.

A Different Country?

The chapter focuses on Lil Nas X and his record-breaking hit “Old Town Road” (2018), which combines stylistic elements from country and trap music. The song received immense attention in early 2019 after Billboard discreetly removed it from its Hot Country Songs chart, a decision that was interpreted by some as racially motivated. The chapter investigates how Lil Nas X’s musical eclecticism and queer cowboy iconography raises questions pertaining to the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the country and hip hop genres. First, it critiques the popular narrative that his widespread success following the Billboard incident is indicative of the declining authority of the music industry in the face of the democratizing effects of digital technologies. Then, it turns its attention to the official movie, Old Town Road, in which Lil Nas X is joined by guest artist Billy Ray Cyrus. Particular focus is devoted to the intersectional aspects of masculinity, which are elucidated through a discussion of how certain sounds and vocal characteristics become constructed and experienced as racially coded. Finally, drawing on perspectives from queer of color critique, the chapter explores the idea that Lil Nas X’s queer tactics both stand as a corrective to accounts of the past that bypass the contributions of black musicians in the development of country music (and black cowboys’ participation in the Old West) and introduces new ways of moving past dominant social constraints.

The Racial Challenge

After the US Civil War, African American musicians and intellectuals had increasingly turned to European classical music as a tool of socioeconomic advancement while acknowledging the importance of antebellum vernacular music for defining racial identity. Violinist and composer Will Marion Cook (1869–1944) used the platform of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to demonstrate Black achievement in the arts. Meanwhile, Jeannette Thurber and Antonín Dvořák had opened the National Conservatory to Black students free of charge, thus expanding educational opportunities for talented Black musicians. The premiere of the New World Symphony in December 1893 reignited a widespread and vicious public debate about the place of Black music and musicians in American national life.

Groove Theory

Tony Bolden presents an innovative history of funk music focused on the performers, regarding them as intellectuals who fashioned a new aesthetic. Utilizing musicology, literary studies, performance studies, and African American intellectual history, Bolden explores what it means for music, or any cultural artifact, to be funky. Multitudes of African American musicians and dancers created aesthetic frameworks with artistic principles and cultural politics that proved transformative. Bolden approaches the study of funk and black musicians by examining aesthetics, poetics, cultural history, and intellectual history. The study traces the concept of funk from early blues culture to a metamorphosis into a full-fledged artistic framework and a named musical genre in the 1970s, and thereby Bolden presents an alternative reading of the blues tradition. Funk artists, like their blues relatives, tended to contest and contextualize racialized notions of blackness, sexualized notions of gender, and bourgeois notions of artistic value. Funk artists displayed contempt for the status quo and conveyed alternative stylistic concepts and social perspectives through multimedia expression. Bolden argues that on this road to cultural recognition, funk accentuated many of the qualities of black expression that had been stigmatized throughout much of American history.

Policing Black sound: performing UK Grime and Rap music under routinised surveillance

The recent sounds of BLM protests can be thought of as reconstituting George Floyd's extinguished voice - amplifying his solitary protest against restraint through creating a ruckus that interrupted the wider silencing of Black voices. UK Grime and Rap music is another way in which these silences are being challenged today, in the face of all the attempts to police it and close it down, and to restrict the artistic freedom of young Black musicians, especially as expressed in Drill music. Policing Black sound is part of the wider policing of the black body - and restrictions on Black music are discussed in relation to the many laws on anti-social behaviour that have been enacted since New Labour's first creation of ASBOs. David Starkey's fear about whites becoming black is linked to a long-held fear on the right about the potentially corrupting effect of Black music on white listeners, and its perceived threat to the status quo - the spread of a 'dub virus'.

‘The Performance of Servitude’: Gendered and Racialised Representations of Citizenship at the Bahrain National Museum

This chapter explores a wedding exhibit near the entrance to the Customs and Traditions Hall in the Bahrain National Museum in Manama, Bahrain. It uses an African diaspora framework to analyse the mannequins and images that depict an olive or light-skinned bridal party and black musicians who accompany her during the most festive moments of the ceremony. Drawing from the work of historian and philosopher Michel Foucault on governance and power and sociologist Tony Bennett, it argues that the exhibit serves as both a parable of Bahraini society and as a way of naturalising and validating racial and gender hierarchies. The museum helps to shape the world of a population of subjects by functioning as part of the contract between a nation-state (embodied by a dynastic monarchy) and its citizens (non-royals).

Blake Meets Sissle

This chapter describes Eubie’s first meeting with Noble Sissle; Sissle’s early life and training; Sissle and Blake’s initial song writing; and their efforts at pitching their song “It’s All Your Fault” to singer Sophie Tucker, who made it a local success. The chapter also discusses Eubie’s travel to New York to join Sissle as assistant to James Reese Europe; his work leading Europe’s band to entertain New York’s society at dinners and parties; and the racism he encountered while performing. Furthermore, the chapter explores the recording of “Charleston Rag”; the outbreak of World War I and Eubie’s lack of desire to serve abroad; the good treatment of black musicians in France as opposed to what they encountered at home; and the death of Europe and its impact on Sissle and Blake.