" On Rhetoric and Black Music is a brilliant, resonant story of Black music and meaning-making, of Black sonic and social worlds. Earl Brooks invites us to hear the expressive force and persuasive power in our musical tradition. That power might manifest in a poignant lyric, a piano trill, a blue note, or a wordless moan?and in all the conversation, contemplation, inspiration, creation, and community that emerge with these sounds. Alongside the rhetorical quality of Black music, I am moved by the musical quality of Brooks's own rhetoric. He writes with great beauty, clarity, agility, and melody?a singing book."?La Marr Jurelle Bruce, author of How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity "Earl H. Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music offers a brilliant new way of thinking about the contributions of Black musical artists. He provides a rhetorical analysis of the musical artistry of Harriet Tubman, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, and Mahalia Jackson.
His analysis demonstrates that Black music is not just or only entertainment but a lifeline, a 'sonic lexicon' which articulates the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped Black people's cultural and political development."?Geneva Smitherman, University Distinguished Professor Emerita, Michigan State University, and author of My Soul Look Back in Wonder: Memories from a Life of Study, Struggle, and Doin Battle in the Language Wars "Scholar and musician Earl Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music marshals the author's scholarly curiosities and musical prowess into a unique, multisited study, impressive in its historical reach and capacious in its genre coverage. Excellent for teaching courses on Black music, American music, and cultural studies, this book takes on the spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and gospel and analyzes them with an original take. With this study, Brooks establishes a compelling multidisciplinary voice in several fields?one that readers will find accessible and illuminating."?Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., author of Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present "Deeply imaginative, thoroughly researched, and theoretically sound, Earl Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music challenges conventional thinking about the discursive practices that underscored the ideology, movement, and activity that framed the larger historical span of the struggle for social change and racial reconciliation in America. Brooks offers new readings into how musical sound persuaded, informed, and motivated Black America during key historical periods by anchoring his theoretical framework in an examination of the cultural work of five key sound identities that were central to the progression of American music: Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson.
This alone makes this work a must-read!"?Tammy L. Kernodle, former president, Society for American Music "Brooks reveals how music served to broaden boundaries of "what can be said?and to whom" and helped to spread changing ideas of Black identity, liberation, and protest. It's a fascinating look at the complicated relationship between art, culture, and social change."? Publisher's Weekly.