Issues in African American Music

Book info: Issues in African American Music (Hardcover, 418 pages) – Routledge, 2016. Language: English.

Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation is a collection of twenty-one essays by leading scholars, surveying vital themes in the history of African American music. Bringing together the viewpoints of ethnomusicologists, historians, and performers, these essays cover topics including the music industry, women and gender, and music as resistance, and explore the stories of music creators and their communities.

Revised and expanded to reflect the latest scholarship, with six all-new essays, this book both complements the previously published volume African American Music: An Introduction and stands on its own. Each chapter features a discography of recommended listening for further study. From the antebellum period to the present, and from classical music to hip hop, this wide-ranging volume provides a nuanced introduction for students and anyone seeking to understand the history, social context, and cultural impact of African American music.

"With this latest edition of their landmark collection, Portia Maultsby and Mellonee Burnim have once again shown why they have been leading ethnomusicologists for decades. Deftly organized and updated with robust case studies, Issues in African American Music documents the fruit of the interpretive turn in African American music studies, joining historical inquiry with powerful, smartly argued opinion. This book will define the field for the next generation of scholars, activists, students, and fans."

―Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop

"This indispensable anthology builds on the scholarship of Maultsby and Burnim's first volume, expanding its critical and theoretical scope and reach. By focusing on ways to approach reading multiple genres, as well as the intersecting politics of black music and mass culture, the impact of gender on black musicking, and the trajectories of black sonic activism, Issues in African American Music underscores the lasting influence, centrality, and historical depths of these expressive forms that sit at the heart of American culture."

―Daphne Brooks, author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910

Portia K. Maultsby is Laura Boulton Professor Emerita of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and Research Associate in the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University.

Mellonee V. Burnim is Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Adjunct Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, and Director of the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University.