The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s

Emily J. Lordi

Published by Duke University Press 2020

The Meaning of Soul

Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s

Emily J. Lordi

In the series Refiguring American Music

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012245

Overview
Contents

About this book

Examining the work of Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Solange Knowles, Flying Lotus, and others, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of soul, showing how it came to signify a belief in black resilience enacted through musical practices.

Author / Editor information

Emily J. Lordi is Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University and the author of Black Resonance and Donny Hathaway Live.

Reviews

“Emily J. Lordi’s The Meaning of Soul will likely be the most important book I'll read this decade. Lordi reminds us that to hear soul, one must actively listen to the winding ways of black folk. Lordi is the greatest listener this nation has created, and this book will remind us that liberation starts with black sound.”

-- Kiese Laymon

“An exquisite work of sound scholarship, The Meaning of Soul offers a new narrative of soul music that compels us to rethink what we have missed about the genre and the political moment it inhabited. It at last articulates a usable, inclusive definition of soul, filling a critical gap in our understanding of black music and sociopolitical experiences in the United States and across the diaspora."

-- Zandria F. Robinson

“Emily J. Lordi incisively and insightfully takes up the daunting task of resurrecting, dissecting, and disentangling soul’s wide-ranging legacy, spillage, and overlap in black popular culture, black academia, and radical black politics. Her generation-leaping contrasts of the soul and ‘post-soul’ era’s most spiritualized and radicalized avatars from James Brown to Beyoncé serve up poignant and often piquant musicological reveals about classic, epochal recordings of Civil Rights-era and contemporary vintage. Lordi illuminates the evolutionary artistry that ensures the poetics, production, and ethos of soul kulcha sustain staying power as a haunted (and hainted) arbiter of black resilience, resistance, and embattled maroon futurism. With wit, detail, and ruminative verve Lordi narrates and interrogates how the journey of the soul meme’s movements within musical blackness navigates a crossroads full of split desire for both incendiary grassroots action and an infinity of intimate release.”

-- Greg Tate

"Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon."

-- Kirkus Reviews

"The Meaning of Soul is a thoughtful, lively journey through rich musical archives that expands the definition of what it
means to be a soul artist."

-- Rachel Jagareski Foreword Reviews

"Lordi vividly illustrates that soul artists offer models of black resistance, joy, and community through their songs. This is a must-read for musicologists, critics, and fans of soul." (Starred Review)

-- Publishers Weekly

"Lordi’s book is essential reading, for she brilliantly guides us to reconsider the meaning of soul and to redefine it."

-- Henry Carrigan No Depression

"A strong choice for libraries supporting African American studies or popular American music programs."

-- Jeffrey Hastings Library Journal

"Detailing not only the evolution of the genre but of the criticism surrounding it, The Meaning Of Soul is a heartfelt appreciation as well as a welcome addition to the scholarly soul canon."

-- Michael A Gonzales The Wire

"Few cultural theorists listen to music this well or joyfully; few critics place their judgments and pleasures within as persuasive a theoretical framework."

-- Keith Harris CityPages

"With welcoming prose that belies its density, The Meaning of Soul focuses on ostensibly unconventional creative choices: soul singers’ covers of songs written by white artists; ad-libs, improvisations, and mistakes; the uses of falsetto and the 'false endings' that trickle throughout the oeuvres of many Black artists. She is attentive to the significant contributions of the female architects of the genre. . . . Lordi gives a deft, concise accounting of soul music’s political and social milieu."

-- Danielle A. Jackson Bookforum

“Meaning of Soul is a needed corrective, challenging how scholarship and much of popular culture remembers the soul music era. Lordi refuses descriptions of the era that only allow its brightest stars and biggest names full consideration.... Her work serves as an exemplar for inclusive genre analysis that makes room for musical possibility.”

-- Fredara Mareva Hadley Journal of Musicological Research

"Lordi’s love for soul music, vibrant writing, and analytical acumen coalesce in a book that is difficult to put down. Readers are unlikely to hear soul music the same way ever again. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers."

-- S. Graham Choice

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Keeping On Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 From Soul to Post-soul A Literary and Musical History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2 We Shall Overcome, Shelter, and Veil Soul Covers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
3 Rescripted Relations Soul Ad-libs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
4 Emergent Interiors Soul Falsettos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
5 Never Catch Me False Endings from Soul to Post-soul Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
Conclusion: “I’m Tired of Marvin Asking Me What’s Going On” Soul Legacies and the Work of Afropresentism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 232

eBook

Published: July 24, 2020
ISBN: 9781478012245