Sounding Like a No-No

by Francesca T. Royster

Sounding Like a No-No traces a rebellious spirit in post-civil rights black music by focusing on a range of offbeat, eccentric, queer, or slippery performances by leading musicians influenced by the cultural changes brought about by the civil rights, black nationalist, feminist, and LGBTQ movements, who through reinvention created a repertoire of performances that have left a lasting mark on popular music. The book's innovative readings of performers including Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Stevie Wonder, Eartha Kitt, and Meshell Ndegeocello demonstrate how embodied sound and performance became a means for creativity, transgression, and social critique, a way to reclaim imaginative and corporeal freedom from the social death of slavery and its legacy of racism, to engender new sexualities and desires, to escape the sometimes constrictive codes of respectability and uplift from within the black community, and to make space for new futures for their listeners. The book's perspective on music as a form of black corporeality and identity, creativity and political engagement will appeal to those in African American studies, popular music studies, queer theory, and black performance studies; general readers will welcome its engaging, accessible, and sometimes playful writing style, including elements of memoir.

Genres: Music

267 pages, ebook

First published November 28, 2012

Reviews

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

very inspiring subject matter, makes me wanna write, also great stuff on how stevie wonder was even weirder than we thought (in a good way)

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and elegantly structured analysis of gender, race and queerness in post-Soul black music. Royster’s book perfectly balances theoretical work with insightful textual analysis and (occasionally) personal experiences, yielding a study that is both very readable and packed with scholarship.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful!

[Pamster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dang this is SO GREAT. Her close read of Eartha Kitt totally hooked me, and I few through the rest of it. I kept marveling at sentences. Yeah it is academic, but it's also totally merged with the personal. And she brings together all these different things, like performers/texts/movies/novels/poems/moments/WHATEVER that you hadn't maybe thought about connecting and gives you this broader view. Love. Also I did not know George Clinton and Iggy Pop had discussed having a wedding. THAT IS WAHT I'M SAYING, THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT YOU LEARN HERE.

[Kentsoul · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you make a book about pansexuality in music so sexless? Strictly for beginners.