Black Women's Liberation Movement Music

Reiland Rabaka is one of America's foremost scholars of the African American experience. That he has turned his gaze to black women and music can only be cause for excitement, as all his previous works carry the label: SOTA, or state of the art. Given the depth and scope of this work, it will readily become a standout 'reference' work. This represents an amazing accomplishment, even by Rabaka's standards. William E. Cross, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Denver and author of Shades of Black Black Women's Liberation Movement Music is in some ways an extension of themes that have figured prominently in Professor Rabaka's previous books including The Hip Hop Movement, Hip Hop's Inheritance, Hip Hop's Amnesia, Civil Rights Music, and Black Power Music! In all, Rabaka speaks as a sociologist, musician, and social historian to confront head-on the tacit and pervasive marginalization and erasure of women's agency in the tides of progressive social change, especially as these tides manifest themselves in music; and in all he dismantles the strategies of erasure and highlights a dazzling tapestry of Black women's crucial contributions. But in this book, those themes find their fulfillment or even culmination. Although scholarly and popular study of this watershed period in cultural history has focused on men (White and Black), Black Women's Liberation Movement Music demonstrates compellingly that the liberation movement of Black women, including its music, was a primary agent if not the primary agent of transformational societal changes during the period 1960-80. I recommend this beautifully structured and eloquently argued study to anyone interested not only in the Black Women's Liberation Movement, but also in other movements including the Black Power movement, the women's liberation movement, and the sexual revolution. John Michael Cooper, Professor of Music, Southwestern University