Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture with Mark Anthony Neal

Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture

In this week’s episode, Tim and Jeremy are joined by writer and scholar Mark Anthony Neal. Mark’s 1999 book ‘What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture’ is a crucial text for us here at Love is the Message, so it was fantastic to have him join the show to discuss his life and work in music. We discuss how the Black popular music of the past 60 years provides an insight into black socio-political life, via Gospel, Soul, Hip Hop and more. Mark explores how his upbringing in the South Bronx, from spending Sunday mornings with his parents to heading to the Apollo to see the Jackson 5 and Aretha, shaped his view of the Black public sphere. The interview provides Jem and Tim with the opportunity to trace their interest in the progressive potential of the 1970s back to the slave experience, the development of spirituals that became a channel for acts of resistance, the African American church’s reversioning of Christianity as a space of Black communion and expression, the importance of the jook and the rent party for expressions of Black pleasure. These spaces contributed to the shaping of an increasingly radical Black politics, from the burgeoning civil rights movement to Black Power, with rhythm and blues, soul and funk. We discuss the late-80s turn toward commodity culture within Hip Hop and consider what happened politically to black musicians into the 90s.

For patrons, Mark, Tim and Jeremy also discuss early disco, Black dance music and Saturday Night Fever; consider the aspirational, entrepreneurial mindset of many of the 70s pioneers; and the role of sampling as an act of Black archival work undertaken by caretakers of Black musical lineage, bringing us right up to the listening practices of today.

Mark Anthony Neal is the Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University host of the weekly webcast ‘Left of Black’ in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. He is the author of ‘What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture’, ‘Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic’, ‘Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation’, ‘New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity’ and ‘Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities’.

Produced by Matt Huxley.

Become a patron to hear an extended version of this conversation by visiting patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.

Check out the back catalog, reading lists, playlists and more at our website: https://www.loveisthemessagepod.co.uk/

And listen along our Spotify playlist featuring music from the series at: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ZylmJYk5SxyyTI2OQp0iy

Tracklist:

The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight

The Jackson 5 - Dancing Machine

Eugene McDaniels - Headless Heroes

Eric B. And Rakim - Paid in Full

Ray Charles - (Night time Is) The Right Time

The Isley Brothers - Fight the Power

Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On

Sly & The Family Stone - Stand!

Bessie Smith- Back Water Blues

LL Cool J - The Boomin' System