The Blackness of Rock: Revisiting Histories of Race, Gender, and Genre

Catalog description

This course explores the history of rock music by focusing specifically on the innovations and contributions of black musicians. The course will address itself to the legacies of race records, the uninterrupted appropriation of black sounds by white artists (think Elvis), and the further complications introduced by the British Invasion, all while focusing on individual artists such as Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Jimi Hendrix. The course will highlight and offer hands-on explorations of the innovations brought to rock music by these black artists. And, because the guitar is such an iconic instrument in rock, the course also will introduce students, through a series of labs, to the gear that makes these sounds possible. Understanding how amplifiers, effects pedals, and guitars interact and produce radically divergent sounds depending on how they are set up will offer insights into the artistry of these early rock musicians. Understanding the circuits, and how using (and abusing) them in particular ways is part of the materiality of rock's sound, will help shed light on the extent to which creative engagement with technology determined particular sonic pathways within the genre (distortion, overdrive, fuzz, feedback, etc.). And, these innovations literally shaped the future of rock, providing a foundation of sound and style and a particular relationship to gear that extends into the present. The final unit of the course will explore the racial politics, gender dynamics, and industry structures that have buried the black histories of rock and sidelined women's crucial contributions to the genre, contributing to rock's framing and marketing as a (mostly) male, white genre. The course will also ask how black musicians who perform rock today, such as Tosin Abasi, Lenny Kravitz, Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes,…