In this Book

summary
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.

Table of Contents

Download PDF Download Full Book Download EPUB Download Full EPUB
  1. Cover
  2. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Title, Copyright, Dedication, Acknowledgments
  2. pp. i-viii
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. ix-x
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Introduction: Eccentric Performance and Embodied - Music in the Post-Soul Moment
  2. pp. 1-33
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. One: Becoming Post-Soul: Eartha Kitt, the Stranger, and the Melancholy Pleasures of Racial Reinvention
  2. pp. 34-59
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Two: Stevie Wonder's "Quare" Teachings and Cross-Species Collaboration in Journey through the Secret Life of Plants and Other Songs
  2. pp. 60-87
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Three: "Here's a Chance to Dance Our Way Out of Our Constrictions": P-Funk's Black Masculinity and the Performance of Imaginative Freedom
  2. pp. 88-115
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Four: Michael Jackson, Queer World Making, and the Trans Erotics of Voice, Gender, and Age
  2. pp. 116-141
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Five: "Feeling Like a Woman, Looking Like a Man, Sounding Like a No-No": Grace Jones and the Performance of "Strangé" in the Post-Soul Moment
  2. pp. 142-165
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Six: Funking toward the Future in Meshell Ndegeocello's The world has made me the man of my dreams
  2. pp. 166-185
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Epilogue: Janelle Monáe's Collective Vision
  2. pp. 186-192
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 193-228
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 229-242
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 243-256
  3. open access
    • PDF icon Download
Back To Top