Sounding Like A No-no: Queer Sounds And Eccentric Acts In The Post-soul Era Project Muse Upcc Books

__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. Black popular music and offbeat performance, from Eartha Kitt to Meshell Ndegeocello | 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. This book 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 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 Introduction : Eccentric Performance And Embodied Music In The Post-soul Moment -- Becoming Post-soul : Eartha Kitt, The Stranger, And The Melancholy Pleasures Of Racial Reinvention -- Stevie Wonder's Quare Teachings And Cross-species Collaboration In Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants And Other Songs -- Here's A Chance To Dance Our Way Out Of Our Constrictions : P-funk's Black Masculinity And The Performance Of Imaginative Freedom -- Michael Jackson, Queer World Making, And The Trans Erotics Of Voice, Gender, And Age -- Feeling Like A Woman, Looking Like A Man, Sounding Like A No-no : Grace Jones And The Performance Of Strang In The Post-soul Moment -- Funking Toward The Future In Meshell Ndegeocello's The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams -- Epilogue : Janelle Mon E's Collective Vision. Francesca T. Royster. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.