Afro-blue: improvisations in African American poetry and culture

2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (09) ◽  
pp. 41-5136-41-5136
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Poetry

The Kinkiness of Turquoise

Groove Theory ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 182-223
Author(s):  
Tony Bolden
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
American Poetry ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Vocal Technique ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Bessie Smith ◽  
Critical Methods

This chapter showcases Betty Davis’s transposition of women’s blues into rock-inflected version of funk. Bolden advances two key arguments. First, Davis reprised the sexual politics and rebellious spirit exemplified by singers Bessie Smith and Ida Cox, for instance, and reinterpreted those principles in modern America. Second, Davis’s eroticism and sui generis style of funk, which she expressed in her recordings and onstage, reflected a sexual politics that served as a counterpart to those of black feminists writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and many others who were publishing coextensively. But whereas black feminist writers often wrote about black women in previous generations, Davis not only addressed contradictions that black women encountered in contemporary street culture; she also represented such X-rated sexual desires as sadomasochism in her songwriting. In addition, the chapter provides biographical information that contextualizes Davis’s route to the music industry, and Bolden uses critical methods from scholarship on African American poetry to illuminate Davis’s vocal technique. 

The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African-American Poetry, 1930-1946

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
William J. Maxwell ◽  
James Edward Smethurst
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Poetry ◽  
Literary Left
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