Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions
About the Book
After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre. Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster's book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner's first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros" Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X's “Old Town Road." A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.
About the Author
Francesca T. Royster is a Professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in English Literature in 1995. At DePaul she teaches courses on African American Literature, Queer Writers of Color, and Writing About Music. She’s written scholarly work on Shakespeare, Black Lesbian Country music fans, Prince, and Fela Kuti on Broadway among other topics. Her recent special issue of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, on the future of Country Music, "Uncharted Country: New Voices and Perspectives in Country Music Studies,” co-edited with Nadine Hubbs, won the 2021 Ruth Solie Award from the American Musicological Society. Her creative work has appeared in Feminist Studies, Slag Glass City, LA Review of Books, The Huffington Post, The Windy City Times, Chicago Literati, and The Oxford American. Her books include Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era (University of Michigan Press, 2013), Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions (University of Texas Press, 2022), and Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance (Abrams/ Overlook Press, 2023). Her book, Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions was recently awarded the 2023 Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the 2023 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and the 2023 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award, from The American Musicological Society.
Her newest book in process is Listening for My Mother: Travels in Music from Chicago to Bahia, a combination of memoir, travel writing and cultural history about mourning and healing in Women's Music in the Black Diaspora
She’s lives in Chicago with her partner Annie, her daughter Cecelia and two pups.
About the Award
The award aims to encourage more publishing and reading of books about popular music from all over the world and to showcase the combination of passionate writing and scholarship across journalism and academia, which marked pioneer music critic Ralph J. Gleason’s work.
Ralph Gleason was a highly perceptive critic of jazz, pop, and rock music whose words withstand the passage of time and perceived the importance of artists like Bob Dylan and Miles Davis. He cofounded Rolling Stone magazine, was one of the first mainstream writers to cover the mid-1960’s San Francisco music scene, pushed the San Francisco Chronicle into the rock era, and cofounded the Monterey Jazz Festival.
In 1990 the award’s original sponsors were Rolling Stone, BMI, and New York University. Its new incarnation is administered by an advisory board representing the Pop Conference, in conjunction with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and NYU’s Clive Davis Institute.
Learn more about the 2023 Winners here.