sign in sign up
<<
Home , Dirty Computer, Disrespectful, Emotional Violence, Florence Ballard, Good as Hell, Go Insane

I'M EVERY (BLACK) : NEGOTIATING INTERSECTIONALITY IN THE INDUSTRY

Jacqueline P. Hudson

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2021

Committee:

Katherine Meizel, Advisor

Lee Nickoson Graduate Faculty Representative

Radhika Gajjala

Angela Nelson © 2021

Jacqueline P. Hudson

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Katherine Meizel, Advisor

Black women singers have often been lauded and emulated for their musical talents, but also have been regulated to the lower level of societal hierarchy in the . They had to endure racialized and gendered power structures in the field that positioned white men at the top where they had the authority to make music-industry related decisions, white women who achieved success often on the backs of black women’s labor, and black men who took credit in the music-creating process. While this is standard in the music industry for quite some time, there has been long history of this hierarchy in social phenomena such as the institution of slavery, the women’s suffrage movement, the , and the second/third/ fourth-wave feminist movement. In both the music industry and social history, black women had to create and maintain agency against these power structures. This dissertation explores how the concept of intersectionality, coined by critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, informs the way black women singers navigated their identity through the music industry. Incorporating historical context of the social phenomena that was mentioned above, this dissertation also takes a cross section of black women singers from both different eras and genres of music (Willie Mae

“Big Mama” Thornton, , Jackson, Janelle Monáe, and ) in illustrating the narrative on how that they used their personal intersectional experiences in the music industry to fight against and in the music industry. iv

This is dedicated to all black women who continue to be in the fight to be respected.

Protect black women. v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank my dissertation committee (Dr. Angela Nelson, Dr. Radhika

Gajjala, and Dr. Lee Nickoson under the leadership of my incredible chair, Dr. Katherine

Meizel.) for their guidance and encouragement throughout the doctoral process. Thanks to my parents Edward Hudson and Consuelo Hudson for exposing me to as a child. My sister, Jephreda L. Hudson – thanks for being a listening ear, a strong supporter and my pop culture comrade (I also appreciate you for bringing out the welcome mat while I complete the two rounds of internship in Nashville). I also couldn’t have made it without my BFF, Tony

Brown who was available to give me those pep talks when I needed it and kept reminding me that I can do this. Phyllis Johnson, my academic mentor, who saw something in me that I did not see in myself. I also want to thank a few people from my days at Interscope/Geffen/A&M

Records: Caryn Lee, Tommy Marshall, and Doug Daniel. I appreciate you three for your unwavering support and helped me find a way to use the music business in academia. Thanks to my Sorors at the Toledo Alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. for their sisterly comfort. Lastly, I would like to posthumously thank my grandparents, Eddie L. and Dorothy M.

Fraction for all their support since I was born. (I know that you are both looking down smiling.) vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Literature Review...... 2

Intersectionality...... 2

Intersectionality in the Music Industry ...... 7

Chapter Outline ...... 11

CHAPTER ONE. WILLIE MAE “BIG MAMA” THORNTON ...... 14

Black Women, Queens, and Entertainment ...... 14

Ma Rainey, , and : Early Age of the

Recording Industry...... 18

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton: Early Life ...... 25

Thornton’s Music Recording Career ...... 28

Big Mama Thornton and : “Hound Dog” ...... 30

The Show Must Go On ...... 34

Black Women’s Contributions to Rock’n’Roll...... 37

Black Women and White Men: The Relationship ...... 39

The Exploitation of Black Women’s Bodies ...... 41

Big Mama Thornton and : “Ball and Chain” ...... 43

Black Women and White Women: The Relationship ...... 46

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton: The Later Years ...... 49

Conclusion ...... 52

CHAPTER TWO. NINA SIMONE ...... 53

Introduction ...... 53 vii

Nina Simone: Her Life in the South ...... 54

Simone’s Journey to the Northeast and Her Self Discovery ...... 60

She’s Black and She’s Proud ...... 71

“Mississippi Goddamn” and ...... 74

Nina Simone and Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement ...... 77

“Four Women” and Beauty Standards in Black Women ...... 85

Taking a Stance and Creating Her Own ...... 89

Conclusion ...... 93

CHAPTER THREE. ...... 95

Introduction ...... 95

Goin' Back to (and ) ...... 97

Janet Jackson and - Their Relationship in the Entertainment Business .... 99

Janet’s in Control ...... 103

Janet, Black Women, and Second-Wave ...... 109

janet.: “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby!”...... 114

Intersectionality at Super Bowl XXXVIII ...... 118

Her Career Post-Super Bowl ...... 121

Conclusion ...... 122

CHAPTER FOUR. JANELLE MONÁE AND LIZZO ...... 125

Introduction ...... 125

Janelle Monáe: Her Musical Beginnings ...... 127

From Kansas City to to ...... 128

viii

Metropolis: The Chase Suite, The ArchAndroid, and and the

Fourth-Wave Feminist Movement ...... 130

Dirty Computer: Redefining Identity and Sexuality in the Music Industry ...... 135

Wondaland Arts Society: Janelle Monáe Creates an Arts Collective ...... 137

Lizzo’s That 100% Bad Bitch ...... 140

#blackgirlmagic...... 141

Lizzo: Blame It on Her “Juice” and She’s Feeling “” ...... 143

Conclusion ...... 148

CONCLUSION ...... 150

WORKS CITED ...... 155

ix

LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page

1 Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton ...... 31

2 Nina Simone...... 75

3 Janet Jackson ...... 113

4 Janelle Monáe ...... 132

5 Lizzo ...... 146

1

INTRODUCTION

Big Mama Thornton. Nina Simone. Janet Jackson. Janelle Monáe. Lizzo.

These black women singers reflect a wide range of the music genres they each performed during different time periods of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They also engage with various ideologies about being a black woman in the music industry. A few of these artists are subtle in communicating the message in their music; others are very explicit. It reveals how

American historical and cultural phenomena interconnect with their music when they address racism and sexism in their repertoire. Movements like abolition, women’s suffrage movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the second and third wave feminism marginalized black women, and their roles in leading and making change have been under recognized. These historical events also indirectly had a lasting effect on how the music industry suppressed black women’s creativity both inside and outside of the field. From not getting the credit for originally performing a very popular to being criticized about image, black women singers have faced racial and gendered power structures of music record labels who were (and still are) primarily run by older, white men.

Janet Jackson made the call for equality to induct more women into the Rock and

Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF) during her acceptance speech as an inductee herself in 2019. Her charge to the RRHOF governing body sparked an interest in the composition of its current rosters. An .org article written by David C. Barnett included a study by Evelyn McDonnell, music writer and journalism instructor at Loyola Marymount University, who analyzed the representation in the Hall of Fame and discovered that less than eight percent of the inductees 2

were women (Barnett 2020, www.npr.com). Representations of black women were even less. In 2019, Jackson became the eighth black woman to be inducted into the RRHOF as a single performer since the inception in the selection process of its inductees in 1986. In its first year, the inductees included both black and white men. The first woman inducted as a single performer was a year later in 1987; she was the only woman inducted in that class. There was not another black woman inducted as a single performer until four years later in

1991 with LaVern Baker. The RRHOF also has an early influencers category that honors “artists who pre-date the birth of rock & roll, but have had a profound impact on music's evolution and its iconic artists” (2020, www.rockhall.com). As of 2020, there have been only six black women, including and , inducted as single performers into this category out of thirty-three total inductees while there are no black women honored in their musical excellence category. These facts led me to consider not only gender, but also racial inequality in the music industry as a whole. The imbalance in the content of the RRHOF inductees is only a small fraction of the larger issue in the lack of recognition of black women’s contributions to .

Literature Review

Intersectionality

But this absence has been a part of a larger issue in American culture which include the profound impact of social, political, and economic oppressions on black women living in

America. These oppressive systems are connected to both their race and gender which are not mutually exclusive. This can be attributed to the demographics of the major gatekeepers of scholarship in the field of American Studies: white men. They created a single view of the

American experience, focusing on white perspectives and omitting the existence of other social 3 groups who are part of the American landscape. This erasure was affirmed through American political and social movements like abolitionism and the Civil Rights Movement and through capitalist power structures that are also governed by white men. White women and black men scholars in the past have contributed scholarship to the field. Like white men, they also have focused on their own respective viewpoints of the American experience and ignored other social groups. For these specific social groups of scholars, black people are usually mentioned through the lens of black men and it is through the lens of white women that women are the subject of conversation. Patricia Haden, Donna Middleton, and Patricia Robinson explained in the essay,

“A Historical and Critical Essay for Black Women,” from Words of Fire: An Anthology of

African American Feminist Thought why black women are not valued like the other social groups particularly white men:

Black women are separated from black men in the same way that white women

have been separated from white men. But we are even less valued by white and

black males because we are not white. The American Dream is white and male

when examined symbolically. We are the exact opposite - black and female - and

therefore carry the stigma, almost religious in nature, of the spurned and scorned

and feared outcast. (1995, 179)

The American experience encompasses a wide range of historical, social, and cultural phenomena, including phenomena that profoundly impact black women – slavery, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s liberation movement, but scholarship from black women scholars has not been widely included in these conversations in American Studies.

Where do black women scholars fit in this space? Unfortunately, black women scholars have been positioned at the lower levels of the intellectual hierarchy for a very long time. Black 4 women have been subjected to this hierarchy platform from the days of slavery to present-day wage disparities.

To address these lacunae, black women scholars have introduced and deeply explored one of the most important ideas in the study of culture and identity: intersectionality.

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that explains how a person’s social identities can create a combined form of discrimination and how these intersecting identities affect individuals and institutions in promoting social equality. Critical race theory scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to illustrate how race and gender have together shaped black women’s experiences through the legal system. Crenshaw argued in “Demarginalizing the

Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,

Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” that black women were subjected to a “single axis framework” (1989, 314) in which they are viewed as having separate experiences in race and gender situations as opposed to having an experience in which both oppressive systems are intertwined. When she asked by Ira Madison III, one of the hosts of Keep It, a where pop culture and entertainment are intersecting with politics and society, “When you coined the term

‘intersectionality’ 30 years ago, what was it like politically for you then in that space when you were thinking of this word and like really first bringing it to the forefront and discussing it with people?” Crenshaw answered:

When I first used the term to capture the experience that black women were facing in employment when they were being discriminated against not just as women and not just as black people, but as black women, you know, specifically. I was confronting the fact that judges just didn’t seem to understand that discrimination on the basis of race didn’t just include experiences that black men faced, but also included women and gender discrimination didn’t just address the ways the white women experienced it, but also, you know, the ways women who were not white experiences. So in a way, it was kinda shocking to see how uninformed courts were. And importantly, (laughs) how important courts were because they were the ones that were deciding whether a black woman who 5

couldn’t get a job, say, at GM or couldn’t get promoted in an industrial space that had jobs for white women that were secretarial or front office, but they were NOT about trying to hire any black women in that pool. And they had jobs for black people, but they were heavily industrial jobs, you know, the dirty floor jobs. They weren’t hiring women for that. Getting the courts to see that, that in fact was discrimination. It was discrimination within discrimination. And so, I was like “Ok, what are they not understanding? How can I explain it, you know, in a way that makes sense? What are some easily accessible metaphors that I can use to provide remedial training? You know, for supposedly very smart people. Cuz they are not being very smart about this. So, the intersection just seemed to be an accessible way of explaining an idea that black women have been talking about for a century, but it hadn’t percolated up in a way that judges could actually understand it. So, that was the point, basically, to create a tool or a prism, something that they could look through to say, “I don’t understand what you’re saying, black women. So, explain to me like a seven-year-old. Like, here’s intersectionality, I’m explaining to you like a seven-year-old. You, going through this intersection and you got racism, and you got sexism, and you happened to encounter both of these at the same time as these black plaintiffs are? Then, you’ve experienced an injury. So, that was the point. (2020, www..com)

Important frameworks of scholarship about black women’s existence in American culture also include black feminist theorist bell hooks’ black feminism and sociologist Patricia Hill

Collins’ black feminist thought. hooks described black feminism as the junction in fighting against the struggle to end racism with the struggle to end sexism, and to understand the black female experience and her relationship to society as a whole only by examining both the politics of racism and sexism from a feminist perspective (1981, 13) and argued that sexism as well as racism is “an oppressive force in the lives of black women” (1981, 15). In Black Feminist

Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of , Collins explained that

African American women view critical social theory as bodies of knowledge and sets of institutional practices that handles questions facing U.S. black women as a collective because they remain oppressed by injustice (2000, 9) and that economic exploitation, political suppression, and stereotypical images were factors in the oppression of black women (2000, 4-

5). hooks, Crenshaw, and Collins all agreed that racism and sexism should not be treated as 6 separate oppressive systems, but interlocking ones. hooks ended the introduction in Ain’t I A

Woman saying:

...the struggle to end racism and the struggle to end sexism were naturally intertwined, that to make them separate was to deny a basic truth of our [black women] existence, that race and sex are both immutable facets of human identity. (1981, 13)

They are black women scholars whose contributions in scholarship to the American Studies field highlight the intellectual impact of social, political, and economic oppressions of black women living in the by using different historical events to discuss black women’s struggles against power structures in race and gender.

Plus, these black women scholars have written texts about other black women being marginalized for both their race and gender and have addressed marginalization and discrimination in different spaces, such as the legal system and music festivals. There were court cases that addressed different ways that society has failed to recognize the complexity in the experience of black women. For example, in a case Crenshaw made famous, DeGraffenreid vs.

General Motors, the court ruled against the plaintiff (who were a group of black women who sued for past discrimination against black women) citing that the company did hire women – granted, they were white – and no sex discrimination happened. The court suggested the plaintiff to combine the complaint of race discrimination with other claims against the company, but the plaintiff argued that the complaint included both race and sex discrimination (Crenshaw 1998, 316). And Eileen M. Hayes has examined the spaces of music festivals; to fulfill the lack of women’s music festivals catered to women of color, she writes

Marquita Thomas created Serafemme, a one-day music festival which the majority of the performers were black women. Thomas conceived this festival to develop a safe, creative space for black lesbians to express themselves through empowerment (Hayes 2010, 90-92). 7

Intersectionality in the Music Industry

Scholars like Eileen Hayes, Daphne Brooks, and Maureen Mahon have filled the void by speaking up about black women’s roles (or the lack of) in music, and often speaking from experience about oppression, domination, or suppression. They have written about the intertwined construction and performance of race and gender in the music industry. For this project, I use the black women singers who were mentioned at the beginning of this introduction

(Big Mama Thornton, Nina Simone, Janet Jackson, Janelle Monáe, and Lizzo) as case studies to conceptualize how these black women singers used their artistry to push through the power structures in the music industry which were, and still are, very racialized and gendered. Mahon discussed Thornton’s difficulties in establishing her place as a black woman in the history of . Juxtaposing context from different historical events from both the seventeenth

(e.g., slavery) and twentieth (e.g., the women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement and the women’s liberation movement) centuries that deeply affected black women and the text from these black women scholars will assist in addressing similarities that occur in the music industry.

Brooks wrote about Simone in which she analyzed Simone’s artistry through the lens of a black woman performer and detailed how Simone used creative freedom on her own terms to interpret music in expressing the injustices of black people in a space where she was normally the object of oppression. Other writers like Christine Capetola, Cassandra L. Jones and Vanessa Okoth-

Obbo described Jackson, Monáe, and Lizzo as black women singers who reimagined sexuality and self-confidence during both the second and third-wave feminist movements.

Intersectionality plays an integral part in my project because Thornton, Simone, Jackson,

Monáe, and Lizzo, all black women, created their artistry through and image to resist the racial and gendered power structures in the music industry. Not only did they had to encounter 8 patriarchal relationships with music industry professionals (e.g., music producers, executives), but some of them had to face racialized musical competition with white women.

Anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Maureen Mahon developed scholarship on the construction and performance of race and gender in music. In her book Right to Rock: The Black

Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race, she described rock [music] as[also] a sharply racialized and gendered terrain (2004, 205) and discussed how black women rockers faced race and gender bias in the mainstream rock scene (2004, 216). Mahon also disclosed that the recording industry creates a separate and unequal place for . Black artists and executives work within a restricted range of creative possibilities, control fewer economic resources, and have limited decision-making power (2004, 147). This is even more true for

Thornton, Simone, Jackson, Monáe, and Lizzo. These women recorded for white-owned record labels and primarily produced music with white and/or black men. They had to navigate from many challenging situations in order to create the end product. For example, Mahon wrote in

“Listening for Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s Voice: the Sound of Race and Gender

Transgression in Rock and Roll” that Thornton “tapped into a liberated black through which she freed herself from many of the expectations of musical, lyrical, and sartorial practice for black women” (2011, 1). Another example was the way Janet Jackson was marketed musically to the public. Like her older Michael, Jackson was considered a “crossover” artist. The process of being crossover is when an artist initially targeted to one audience becomes popular with another (2011, 158). In Jackson’s example, she became very successful with her third , Control, at first with black audiences. Then, her existence as a black woman on mainstream radio and music charts put her in a different category and she ceases to be black in the music industry sense of the word (Mahon 2011, 163). In a contemporary space, Monáe 9 endured many unsuccessful meetings with record label executives (more than likely they were men - white and black) who wanted to change her vision about her music, but she did not relinquish that creative control.

Like Mahon and Hayes, music scholar Daphne Brooks analyzed the interlockings of race, gender, and performance in popular music culture. Her research mostly focuses on the positionality of the black women’s bodies as it relates to their specific performances of race and gender in the space of different music genres. They have used these performances as forms of resistance against social and political domination. There has been a double standard brought up by scholars on the subject that Simone, as a black woman, was criticized for her reported difficult off-stage behavior, but a counterpart of hers, (a black man), rarely got the same treatment. This also happened in the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) where Mahon detailed in

Right to Rock the internal gendered conflict within the members saying that men expected women to agree with their decisions in the operation of the organization (2004, 219) because black men place racism over sexism and fail to realize the intersection of these systems of oppression. Thornton, Simone, and Jackson provide numerous examples of this resistance in their performances of music and image. It can be traced back from where “consciously rebellious black women experienced the theme of resistance […] so thoroughly intertwined in the fabric of daily existence” (Davis 1995, 215) to “viewing black feminist work as not just creating agency and subjectivity in art and media […] of lived experiences that move beyond mere survival toward fulfillment (Hobson 2005, 148). In her dissertation, Staging Intersectionality: Power and

Performance in American Cultural Texts, 1855- 2019, Alexandra B. Reznik applied a cross section of black women singers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (

Greenfield, the first prominent Black woman singer-celebrity in the antebellum period; Pauline 10

Hopkins, a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novelist and ; Dianthe Lusk, a fictional character in Hopkins’s 1903 serialized novel Of One Blood; soprano Sissieretta Jones and stage hand Eva Shoe, as represented in Tyehimba Jess’s contemporary ) to illustrate how they use “modesty and sexuality as resistance strategies to challenge and affirm subjectivity” (Reznik 2019, 6) but Reznik used R&B/pop singer Beyoncé Knowles-Carter in her project as an example to show how black women singers also “embrace the sexualized stereotypes of Black women by wearing leg and chest-baring leotards while proclaiming women’s empowerment” (Reznik 2019, 6). The black women in this project utilized the some of the same plans in their career trajectory when they were faced with racialized and gendered frameworks in the music industry. They have used these performances as forms of resistance against social and political domination. Thornton, Simone, Jackson, Monáe, and Lizzo provide numerous examples of this resistance in their performances in forms of their music and image.

Black women’s erasure in social phenomena like slavery, the women’s suffrage, the Civil

Rights Movement, and both second and third wave feminist movements contributed to historical context that established music industry’s racialized and gendered hierarchical networks. The relationship between Thornton and , a leader, and Jerry Leiber and Mike

Stoller, writers of Thornton’s song “Hound Dog,” exemplify the white man/black woman dynamic. Janis Joplin’s cover of Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” parallels the relationship between white and black women in the women’s suffrage movement where black women’s voices were not heard as loud as their white counterparts. Simone’s involvement in the Civil Rights

Movement illustrates how black women received little recognition from external forces on the contributions they made for racial equality. The second wave feminist movement paved the way for Jackson to declare her independence from her manager father to take control of her career 11 and was empowered by her sexuality during the early 1990s around the same time the third-wave feminist movement began. Janelle Monáe redefines sexuality and true career ownership while

Lizzo promotes body positivity, which are a few aspects of the fourth-wave feminist movement.

Both artists continue to “[ing] a new generation of black female recording artists who are willing to do battle with lovers and friends in order to gain some kind of personal agency”

(Brooks 2008, 185).

Chapter Outline

Chapter One discusses black women’s historical experience in the form of intersectionality during slavery and the women’s suffrage. I discuss black women experiences in slavery which were primarily with white men and their direct experiences in the women’s suffrage with white women. I use these examples as a basis to interpret the dynamics in the experiences how Thornton worked with white men producers/artists and competed with white women singers in the music industry which will include examples of Big Mama Thornton’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin.

Chapter Two discusses black women’s historical experience in the form of intersectionality during the Civil Rights Movement. I discuss black women experiences during the Civil Rights Movement which were primarily with black men. I use these examples as a basis to interpret the dynamics in the experiences how Nina Simone worked with black men producers/artists and competed with white women singers in the music industry. Examples include Simone’s working relationships with record label owners/producers/manager husband, the double standard of being a problematic artist as a woman, and her involvement in the Civil

Rights Movement. 12

Chapter Three includes how the second-wave feminist movement paved the way for

Janet Jackson transforming from the “obedient child” of a famous musical family to craving out her own career. I detail how she broke free from her manager father, recorded a breakthrough album, and explored sexuality in her music in subsequent projects. The chapter also includes

Jackson’s experience on how she faced major blowback from the music industry as a black woman contrary to , a white man, from the “wardrobe malfunction” incident at the Super Bowl in 2004.

Chapter Four includes contemporary black women singers, Janelle Monáe and Lizzo, to examine how intersectionality evolved in the twenty-first century. I discuss their experiences working with white and black men producers/artists and competed with white women singers in the music industry. I highlight that Monáe and Lizzo, both black women who are two different artists sonically and visually. I achieve this by examining Monàe’s musical sound as well as her image as pansexual, and often dressed in tailored suits in the beginning of her career, and Lizzo’s rise to popularity in mainstream music as a black woman who is full-figured while the majority of her audience is white. I use their individualities to navigate through these same racialized and gendered hierarchies in the music industry like I explained in the case studies of Thornton,

Simone, and Jackson. Lastly, I explain how the advent of digital (e.g., the Internet, social media) has shifted the course of examining intersectionality in this space.

The Conclusion presents conclusions of my project and bring in observations about the expansion of intersectionality in the music industry.

Discussions about how race (privileged in discourse by black men) and gender

(privileged in discourse by white women) fit into the conversations about these events seldom include black women because they embody the intersection of being black and a woman. 13

Scholarship has entailed the African American experience that shaped and explored by the interconnectedness among systems of oppression such as race, gender, social class, and sexuality while redefining black women’s resistance toward them (Collins 1998, 59). While there have been many strides in the advancement of black women singers’ agency in their musical careers over the past hundred years, there is still a bit of resistance from the people who primarily run the music industry – older, white men. Agency means an individual’s or social group’s will to be self-defining and self-determining (Collins 2000, 298). This is also reflected in the lack of mainstream audience’s acknowledgement of black women singers’ labor in the music industry. receives from mainstream audience. This dissertation examines how black women have created and maintained agency through intersectional performativity in their lyrics and image as acts of resistance against the racial and gendered hierarchical structures of the music industry. This dissertation also illustrates the similar obstacles they faced being black women in the industry even though each one represents a different era and a different . My project includes the effects of historical events had on black women, but it specifically covers the contributions of

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Nina Simone, and Janet Jackson, Janelle Monáe, and Lizzo in resisting against the many power structures in the music industry. Their careers highlight how these structures are not separate, but intertwined. 14

CHAPTER ONE. WILLIE MAE “BIG MAMA” THORNTON

Sitting by my window, And I was looking out at the rain. Sitting by my window Babe, And I was sitting down, looking out at the rain. You know something struck me, Clamped on to me just like, just like a ball and chain. – “Ball and Chain” (Thornton 0:24-1:10) Black Women, Blues Queens, and Entertainment

Though it might seem like a later development, the expression of black women’s perspectives through song, and the expansion of the narrative of creative control within the music industry hark back to the early 20th century. During the 1920s and 1930s, men music producers and record label heads in the music recording business were in positions of power where they managed black women singers’ musical productivity during the beginning of their careers. However, black women singers like Gertrude “Ma” Rainey were leading forces in recording and performance in popular music culture. Angela Y. Davis in her book, Blues

Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday argued that black feminist historical traditions tend to exclude ideas produced by and within poor and working-class communities, where women historically have not had the means or access to the publication of written text (1998, xi-xii). But some poor black women did have access to the publication of oral text: recording. They used their own experiences as the source for material in their music. Women blues singers such as Rainey used “vocal power, slides, and vocal inflections” to express “pain, anger, or joy in a manner that left about the emotional content of the song,” according to scholar Daphne Duval Harrison (2017, 243-244) in “Women in Blues: Transgressing Boundaries.”

Rainey used her performance for a meaningful purpose by singing about love and sexuality as well as the black experience in the rural South during the early part of the 20th 15 century. Sandra R. Lieb argued in of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey that Rainey’s music “constitutes a message to women, explaining quite clearly how to deal with reverses in love and how to interpret other areas of life” (1981, xvi). Rainey was also known to take command on stage and in business, considering that composition of her backup band and those conducted business with her were men. Another blues singer, Bessie Smith, also used her own agency to express her experiences as a black woman through music, to create space for narratives that told the realities of black women’s lives, and to advocate for their agency. Coretta Pittman described Smith’s performances, in “Bessie Smith’s Blues as Rhetorical Advocacy,” as a way to

“stress independence, fearlessness, and sexual freedom, implicitly arguing that working-class women, did not have to alter their behavior in order to be worthy of respect” (2013, 145).

Harrison further described how black women blues singers discussed topics in their like

“mistreatment, desertion, infidelity, revenge, sex, alienation and their responses to these external forces” (1988, 39) and created in their lyrics and performances a singular perspective of the black woman in American society. Their views were based on a “world that did not protect the sanctity of black womanhood, as espoused in the bourgeois ideology; only white middle- or upper-class women were protected by it” (Harrison 1988, 64). Their outlook as black women were also rampant in the operations of the music industry, but it began before the rise of record labels in another avenue: the theatre. Both Rainey and Smith were both part of The Theatre

Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) which was a precursor to the operations of the record industry in how black performers, particularly black women singers, were treated by men in the creative process. Also known as Toby Time, it was established by black vaudeville performer

Sherman H. Dudley and was an organization which provided outlets (e.g., theatrical venues) for black vaudeville performers during the 1920s. But white theater owners had possession of the 16 majority of existing venues. At first, Dudley bought and leased theaters in the Washington, D.C. and Virginia area. Then he expanded the scope of theater occupancy in the Midwest and the

South. Under Dudley’s leadership, Toby Time was allowed to book these black performers in a series of black-owned theaters without any external resistance. Among these performers were black women singers Mamie Smith and in addition to Rainey and Smith. Like their musical male counterparts in Toby Time, these women endured bad touring conditions such as difficult schedules and inadequate (or no) housing with little to no pay. These unfair conditions lead Rainey and her fellow performers to call TOBA, “Tough on Black Asses” (Reich 1997, www.chicagotribune.com). Black audiences of these shows paid twenty-five cents to a dollar for a variety show and were rewarded with two to four hours of nonstop entertainment like dancing , comedians, blues singers, light classics singers, snake or magic acts, and a band

(Harrison 1988, 17).

As in the music industry in later decades, the theater owners in the TOBA would have business entanglements with white men stockholders. These stockholders who owned and managed similar theatres were also part of the association. They made the decisions regarding the operations of the theaters like ticket sales and compensation for the performers. Like the record companies that manifested in the late 1910s and early 1920s to capitalize on the emergence of black women blues singers, white theater owners capitalized on the burgeoning market of black talent in the entertainment industry with the opening of various theaters in different parts of the country. The expansion of these theaters did not help black talent. In fact, these white theater owners exploited them and tried to disrupt the business of TOBA. Black women got the brunt of this exploitation as the calls for work asked for a specific type of a black woman with a light skin complexion and straight type. Despite the limitations, black women 17 still wanted to work in the entertainment industry to “pursue the glamour and glitter which they perceived that the TOBA offered” (Harrison 1988, 33).

The popularity of these performance acts was based on the need for entertainment for black Americans who took part in the Great Migration, a movement which they moved from the rural South to cities of the Northeastern, Midwest and West sections of the United States from the early part of the twentieth century until the . These black Americans wanted to escape poor living conditions, racial discrimination, and segregation rooted deep in the South. Black women who moved from the South usually took jobs as domestics in wealthy, white households or as factory workers in manufacturing plants. Many did not succeed in these positions (e.g., employers took advantage of them financially or other identity groups did not want to work with them) and these failures sometimes put themselves in uncompromising situations. But some black women found some success finding work in other industries, in like factories and particularly in entertainment. In addition to moving physically, black Americans moved other facets of their lives to the North (the Midwest or the West). One was music. The jazz and blues scene from the South moved to cities like and New York. Black Americans also created institutions to accommodate their religious, social, and cultural needs (Harrison 1988, 20) which were churches, burial societies, fraternal orders, theaters, halls, and clubs (Harrison 1988,

20-21). Black women emerged from these institutions to venture out in order to pursue singing/dancing aspirations in the entertainment world. The typical black woman emigrant left home at the age of fifteen or sixteen, around 1915-1920, seeking the better life that itinerant laborers and songsters described in their stories and songs about the cities (Harrison 1988, 64).

The treatment of black women in entertainment was not any different from that is domestic and manufacturing jobs. Young black women were taken advantage by unsavory venue 18 owners with horrible working conditions and even more horrible compensation. In addition to their families, the black media questioned the morality of these black women due to the type of work they chose to do. In the book Black Pearls, Daphne Duval Harrison explained an article from a newspaper that described black girls reportedly being sought because the wealthy white men clientele disapproved of the cozy relationships that developed between white prostitutes and black male players (1988, 22). TOBA vaudeville tours lasted from the early 1910s to the

1920s, but the rise of radio and recording music led to their demise. In spite of the decline of these tours, one performer, Ma Rainey, pivoted to ways in order to work with these new technologies. She continued to record for in which she was able to reach mainstream (white) audiences without changing her style of “country, deep South tradition of minstrelsy, blues, and vaudeville” (Lieb, 1981, 41) while she was able to keep her original audience. Rainey’s navigation as a black woman between performing on the vaudeville circuit and recording for a major music label at the time was a start of a revolution in recognizing intersectionality in the music industry.

Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith: Early Age of the Phonograph Recording Industry

Ma Rainey was one of the first black women who set an example for creating her own narrative through music in the entertainment industry. Born Gertrude Pridgett in Columbus

Georgia, Rainey (1886-1939) began performing at an early age at church and minstrel shows.

After marrying Will Rainey at the age of eighteen, they started a performance company and toured as a song-and-dance act as “Ma and Pa Rainey,” but also performed with another, much bigger company named Rabbit’s Foot Company. Throughout her career, she collaborated musically primarily with black men. She performed in shows with pianist (and gospel pioneer)

Thomas Dorsey, recorded music with trumpeter , and worked with Paramount 19

Records producer J. Mayo Williams. Like Rainey’s, most women’s blues songs in the 1920s were composed by others, usually men, but they represented a distinctly female interpretation

(Harrison 1988, 111). Though she worked with men a majority of time, she was able to make a name for herself in the entertainment industry. After she signed with Paramount Records in

1923, she joined TOBA as one of the premier acts that drew big audiences, because she maintained a bond with them; she understood their lives and had the ability to interpret them through the blues she sang (Harrison 1988, 36). She continued to perform throughout the 1920s in places in the Midwest like Chicago and Cleveland, and in the South, in places like Alabama and . There was a complicated relationship between Rainey, as a black woman, and the white men of recording industry, a kind of a relationship that continues to this day. Who really was in control of her career: Rainey or Paramount Records? Daphne Duval Harrison provided a perspective in her book:

The record industry did not develop Rainey as an artist; she was already an artist when they ‘discovered’ her; the industry merely preserved the wax a voice that would serve as a striking example of the of the black experience. (1988, 39)

The phonograph industry started to take notice when black audiences gravitated towards the few recorded blues rolls that were available to listen during the 1910s. But it was the rolls that featured white singers who had shown interest and performed blues music originally sung by black artists, according to jazz and race records scholar Ronald Foreman (1968, 24) where the music became more popular. While the phonograph companies were looking at profit, black

Americans were looking for opportunities outside of stage performances which at the time was their primary outlet to get their music out to the masses. In fact, in the 1920s, many black women were sought after and often exploited by burgeoning recording companies (Davis 1998, xii). In addition to “fighting” against members of their own communities with their music, black women 20 artists were subjected to whatever type of music white record producers and label heads wanted them to record. Additionally, the phonograph companies were not interested in the actual performers, but the type of material they recorded. In other words, blues was deemed reproducible only within the cultural borders of their site of origin (Davis 1998, 141). For example, W.C. Handy tried to convince the record companies that black women blues singers had an established market of black consumers who wanted to buy their recordings. In 1919,

Handy repeatedly approached the companies and were rebuffed by managers who claimed that black women’s voices were unsuitable, or that their diction was different from that of white women, or that they could not fill the requirements (Levine 1977, 224-225).

When the demand for black recording artists by the black audience rose, phonograph companies (later to be known as record companies) rushed to capitalize on this phenomenon, for example, General Phonograph’s , founded by Otto K. E. Heinemann, a German

American, in 1918. As previously stated, record companies were not at first convinced that black women singers could adequately create an image that would compel black audiences to buy their music. On the other hand, and music Perry Bradford, who also performed on the vaudeville circuit, believed otherwise. His plan was to convince a photograph company to sign up a black women singer for his songs in order to win a big audience (Harrison 1988, 45).

He found his blues singer in a fellow performer in the vaudeville industry named Mamie Smith.

They visited a number of recording studios in in New York City until Bradford found an A&R () representative at Okeh to give him and Smith a chance to record some music. Once the recording was finished, Okeh decided to release a couple of its songs, “That Thing Called Love” and “You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down” with little promotion. 21

But the music caught the attention of the black press and black audiences alike. There is a story that Smith was not the first artist in mind to record “Crazy Blues.” It was actually Sophie

Tucker, a Ukrainian-born American singer, who was scheduled to record the song, but fell ill.

Bradford persuaded Okeh executive Fred Hager to use Smith instead, but the record label resisted at first because Hager was nervous about a boycott from white communities if Okeh goes with Smith. Seeing this positive feedback from “That Thing” and “You Can’t Keep” prompted Okeh to get Bradford and Smith back into the studio to record again. Unlike for the previous songs recorded, Okeh executed heavy promotion for the song, “Crazy Blues.” The song became a bigger hit for Bradford and Smith. As a result of this success, Mamie Smith was propelled into the limelight by the rave reviews appearing in the black press and she was credited as the first artist of the race to record popular songs (Harrison, 1988, 47). While on a successful promotional tour to support the music, the staff at Okeh Records connected Smith’s music to her stage performances. Smith also recognized this and tried to craft a larger-than-life with extravagant outfits and props at her shows. She said about other people’s expectations:

They have heard my phonograph records and they want me to hear me sing these songs the same as I do in my own studio in New York…Another thing, I believe my audiences want to see me beautifully gowned, and I have spared no expense or pains. (Foreman 1968, 59).

The success of Mamie Smith’s version of Perry Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” created an opportunity for other black women to record for big and small photograph companies during the

1920s. (In fact, that song became the watershed mark of the first blues recording and the first blues recording by a black artist.) But the opportunity soon became a problem for black women.

In Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Davis argued, “that the women were given priority over men as recording artists attests to the reductive marketing strategies of the then-embryonic recording industry, strategies we still reflected today in the industry’s efforts to categorize, or in 22 effect, to segregate culturally, different genres of music (1998, xxi). With the success of Mamie

Smith, other record companies, Paramount, and Columbia, began to scout black women blues singers to record with them. But their aim was not to discover talent; their bottom line was to make a profit at the expense of paying their artists’ compensation. Let us touch on Black Swan.

Owned and operated by black Americans, the label was founded by black music publisher and insurance executive Harry Pace after his partnership with W.C. Handy ended.

Black Swan Records was a formidable competitor to Paramount and Columbia, but was only able to stay in operation for a short time (it was bought out by Paramount and was dissolved shortly soon after). In the beginning, Black Swan prided itself of knowing what type of music to promote to the black listening audience. But the producers wanted to create music that would cater to the mainstream (white) audience as opposed to those black listening audiences and rejecting Smith’s “homegrown” voice in order to accept Ethel Waters’ “compatible” (Lewis

1981, 174) one. Prominent political activist Chandler Owen compared Paramount’s buyout of

Black Swan Records was an example of a “merger between the lion and the lamb, with the lamb winding up in the lion’s belly” that posed the “effective end of Black Swan, not the propitious beginning of a new era” (Suisman 2010, www.neh.gov). Foreman agreed with Davis that “the industry’s general policy was to record Negro performances of whatever music and entertainment events were likely to find patrons” (1968, 273). But it is reported that Ethel

Waters, who recorded on the Black Swan label, demanded that she be paid a higher rate than what she was receiving originally. To understand more specifically the disparities that black women had to face in the early days of the recording industry, it is essential to provide examples a couple of black who battled against these power structures. 23

Ma Rainey was a pioneer as a black woman performer who navigated an entertainment industry filled with a majority of men. Her social legacy continued through other black women singers who followed in her musical path. Bessie Smith, a reported protégé of Rainey’s, survived a similar life and musical career trajectory as her mentor’s. Hard times for city and country folk are depicted not only in the prison blues, but in others that discuss employment, disease, and poverty. (Harrison 1988, 70). Angela Davis agreed with Daphne Duval Harrison that black feminist historical traditions tend to exclude ideas produced by and within poor and working- class communities, where women historically have not had the means or access to publish written texts (Davis 1998, xi-xii), but found other ways to express themselves. Born in

Chattanooga, in 1894 Smith faced much family tragedy when most her relatives died by the time she reached into her teens. From 1912 to 1919, she managed to find jobs as a performer (first as a dancer) at different touring companies like the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and

TOBA, the same ones where Rainey performed. Then, she began to craft an act of her own at the

81 Theater in Atlanta, but also made a name for herself in the South and East Coast. After her reputation as a good performer solidified, Smith was pursued by Frank Walker, a Columbia

[Records] scout who had heard her several years earlier in an Alabama mining town (Foreman

1968, 24). Like other record labels during this time, Columbia took the same approach by creating music by saturating the market with black women blues singers to make a profit, not necessarily to appease the demand from the black listening audience. Another similarity to

Rainey is the lyrical content of Smith’s music. About her lyrics, Harrison wrote:

[Smith’s blues songs] covered many of the same themes as did Rainey’s; she could sing about violence or the threat of prison without any hint of tears or remorse, or loneliness and abandonment with a wrenching mournfulness. Her blues emanated from the violence and the complexities of the urban experience and its effects on black women. (Harrison 1988, 53) 24

Even though Smith was lauded for her songs about “her identification with the anxieties, alienation, and the disaffection of the urban black woman” (Harrison 1988, 53) and “made the blues into women’s music, a site for the elaboration of a black cultural consciousness that did not ignore the dynamics of gender” (Davis 1998, 142), critics and fans disapproved of her as being too ‘rough’ in her performances. But Smith supporters like blues singer Eva Taylor defended her by explaining that Smith was indeed rough, but she was not what people portrayed her to be.

Taylor continued to say that Smith was a good person, but knew how to conduct herself in certain situations or environments. Blues women like Rainey and Smith challenged the racial and gendered hierarchies in the forms of fickle record companies (the majority owned by white men), white women singers adopting their singing styles (not giving the credit to black singers), and black (in romantic relationships). Even with their successes, both Rainey and Smith faced opposition because of their “deviant” behaviors like expressing their sexuality with both men and women and their right to have a good time. Both women also fought for African

American women’s empowerment through the lyrics in their songs, demonstrating that self- reliance is one of the most important tools for surviving in a male-dominated culture (Harrison

1988, 101). Not only did black women singers faced criticism from some members of their communities, but they also faced opposition from many of their artistic and cultural contemporaries. For example, black intellectuals described the music from women artists like

Rainey and as “low” culture because they presented and embodied sexualities associated with working-class black life, and because the music what they were singing was not classified as dignified like sculptures, painting, literature, and (Davis 1998, xiii). On the other hand, blues women were expected to deviate from the norms defining orthodox female behavior, which is why they were revered by both men and women in black working-class 25 communities (Davis 1998, 38). As Davis explained at the end of the first chapter of Blues

Legacies:

They forged and memorialized images of tough, resilient, and independent women who were afraid neither of their own vulnerability nor of defending their right to be respected as autonomous human beings. (1998, 41)

For example, Bertha ‘Chippie’ Hill sang in “Trouble in Mind Blues” (1926) that there are better days ahead after encountering many disappointments expressed in the following lyrics:

Now I’m blue, yes. I’m blue, but I won’t be blue always. Because the sun is going to shine in my back door someday. (2:22-2:42)

While it seemed that the record companies were signing black women artists at an alarming rate in the early 1920s (striking while the iron was hot), the interest in black women singers from record companies soon began to decline when men country artists like Jimmie

Rodgers started to adopt blues music in the mid-1920s. The decline of black women blues singers towards the end of the 1920s was the result of the change of taste in music by both black and white public. In order to stay profitable in the market, record companies had to find male artists in folk singers and Southern preachers to increase their inventory of black artists which included Blind Lemon Jefferson, , Reverend J.M. Gates, and Reverend Sutton

Griggs (Oliver 1984, 146 and 268). This “renaissance” of men blues singers marginalized black women artists like Ma Rainey to struggle in finding work in the theater and motion picture industry (Davis 1998, xiii). Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith were black women singers who emerged from humble beginnings to challenge racialized and gendered musical outlets like TOBA and photograph companies to showcase their musical work.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton: Early Life

As Rainey was to Bessie Smith, Smith was an early influencer on Willie Mae “Big

Mama” Thornton, a black woman who became an American R&B singer and songwriter and 26 paved the way for rock ‘n’ roll artists in the 1940s and . Dalton Anthony Jones explained that Thornton “was looked upon as their heir apparent, indeed a direct descendant of the powerful blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s and managed to shatter the lines of sonic apartheid in the recording and broadcasting establishments, asserting a presence that had long been subordinated” (2015, 65). Thornton endured many obstacles as a black woman singer in a predominately white and male space. Born in Ariton, Alabama (a small town seventy miles south of Montgomery) in 1926, she possessed a strong will at a very young age growing up in a country where the fall of the economy and the rampant racism existed. The Thornton household was heavily involved with the church where her father was a Baptist minister and her mother sang in the church choir. Thornton would sing in the church sometimes herself, but not as much as her mother. She received her nickname “Big Mama” early because she was really tall as a young child. While caring for her sick mother, Thornton started her music career by learning how to play the harmonica her older brother threw away. After her mother died, she left school to help support the family by taking a washing job at a local pub. Harrison described in Black

Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s the typical life trajectory of a black woman, like Thornton, who grew up in the South having dreams of becoming an entertainer. It usually revolved around a peasant economy that involved her in sharecropping to help her family as a young child, married in her early teens, and then moved to the city to become a domestic worker (1988, 68).

After convincing a pub owner to hire her, Thornton’s entrance into a singing career started with a chance to sing when the regular vocalist at the pub was unable to perform. She patterned her singing style by listening to Bessie Smith; Thornton explained that Smith “sung from their heart and soul and express themselves” (Spörke 2014, 7). Even though she watched other singers 27 perform like most blues did during that time, Thornton created her own way of singing. She elaborated even further about her singing style:

Back in them yesteryears when I was comin’ up, listening to Bessie Smith and all, they sung from their heart and soul and expressed themselves. That’s why when I do a song by Jimmy Reed or somebody, I have my own way of singing it. Because I don’t want to be Jimmy Reed, I want to be me. I like to put myself into whatever I’m doin’ so I can feel it. (Spörke 2014, 7).

After performing successfully in her hometown, she took a chance to leave Alabama by joining a music revue to escape the harsh realities of living in a dirt-poor town in order to make her own way. This revue consisted of comedians, musicians, and dancers traveling from Birmingham to

Montgomery to Macon, . Thornton honed her performance skills with the combination of singing, dancing, telling jokes and playing the harmonica and the drums.

But it was hard to make money during those days. One reason is that some thought that the content of their music was inappropriate. Along with her fellow performers, she had to wait until early part of the morning to perform in clubs where blacks were allowed to come after the whites left at midnight. But some of them still had trouble because those whites would come to the black club and there was not much room left. That situation left Thornton to miss out on an opportunity to make some income. So, Thornton supplemented her income by performing vehicle maintenance and shoe care work. She also faced the harsh realities of being a black woman in the deep South. At times, Thornton did not have money to fulfill her basic needs and had to ask for assistance. Sometimes, she did not get the help that she needed (e.g., food, a place to stay). But she did not complain about it nor did she dwell on it. She smiled through the obstacles she endured at that time. In the early 1940s, Thornton decided to stay in ,

Texas after performing at a show there to pursue a career in music where the city started to become a “hot spot” for a new type of music called “” or R&B music. This new 28 term was coined by an editor at Billboard magazine named Jerry Wexler to replace the outdated music category called “race records” which were records that catered to African Americans from the 1920s through the 1940s. A contained music genres such as blues, jazz, gospel and oftentimes comedy. On the other hand, R&B music “combines blues and jazz, characterized by a strong backbeat and repeated variations on syncopated instrumental phrases usually with vocals” (2010, www.theurbandaily.com). Wexler later became a well-known music industry player at and was responsible for the careers of artists such as , Led

Zeppelin, and Aretha Franklin.

Thornton’s Music Recording Career

Thornton initiated her career by recording two songs for a small record label, E&W, but did not include her name on either recording. These recordings were part of a called The Stars. In addition to recording music in Houston, Thornton performed singing gigs regularly at local venues like the Eldorado Ballroom where major (and local) jazz and blues artists made stops to perform in the Third Ward, a community in Houston known for its large black population. During one of her performances, she caught the eye of , owner of

Peacock Records and an artist manager. He signed Thornton to a five-year record deal at

Peacock and had her play at his music venue, Bronze Peacock Club. While Thornton was at

Peacock, Robey (along with Evelyn Johnson) expanded his empire to include a booking agency called Buffalo Booking Agency in order to have his artists perform at music clubs in different states. Thornton’s relationship with Robey was not a pleasant one. Known for participating in

“masculine behavior” like heavy drinking and dressing in khaki pants and men’s shirts, both

Robey and Johnson wanted Thornton to look more “feminine” by trying to get her in dresses and hired a stylist, but she vehemently opposed these suggestions. Her attire always led to people 29 questioning her sexuality. Most assumed that she was a lesbian, but reports from other music artists whom Thornton worked with could not confirm that accusation. The research of ethnomusicologist Eileen Hayes counterclaimed this label, noting that lesbian feminism emphasized (during Thornton’s lifetime) the universal woman while dismissing other female- gendered experiences like race and class (2007, 158). Thornton declined to conform to how the record label wanted her to dress. This refusal was an example of resistance against social domination by the black man who owned the record label. Thornton continued to record with

Robey at Peacock Records for several years, but did not produce any successful records.

Things changed for Thornton when Johnny Otis, who was a multi-hyphenate in the early stages of rock ‘n’ roll and discovered artists such as and Little Esther. When Otis made a tour stop in Houston, he made a deal with Robey to take Thornton and other artists on the road as part of the Rhythm & Blues Caravan music revue and to record music in .

Eventually, the master recordings would go to Robey. This turned out to be a successful strategy because Thornton entertained the audience in various cities with her spectacular voice and show(wo)manship. This was one of the methods that increased Peacock’s legitimacy as a viable independent record label in the music business. As the artists continued to tour, they made a stop at the famous Apollo Theatre in New York City. With no official hit single under her belt,

Thornton would sing a cover of Billy Ward and the Dominos’ “Have Mercy Baby” at these shows. The audience reception was so enormous for the first few shows that Otis decided to put her on last to perform. Even with the success that Thornton had, she continued to have outside pressure to conform to societal ideas that she needed to wear a dress. She begrudgingly complied, but she added a little of her style by wearing cowboy boots underneath her dress. 30

Feeling confident from performing successful shows, Thornton decided to play the harmonica during one of the shows and Otis was surprised by this discovery. She recalled about that night:

Why didn’t you tell me you could play that thing?” Johnny Otis asked. “Well, you didn’t ask me. All you wanted me to is stand up and sing. (Spörke 2014, 24)

Thornton received many requests to change who she was as a music artist with regards to music and image, but she did not comply because she wanted to create her own artistry and career path.

Big Mama Thornton and Elvis Presley: “Hound Dog”

White music artists like Elvis Presley have been praised for their contributions by to

Rock-n-Roll by music critics and audiences alike. Elvis has been celebrated for covering

Thornton’s “Hound Dog”, for example. But black women artists like Thornton have been regulated to the role of victim in Rock-n-Roll history: the ripped-off African American on whose unacknowledged shoulders subsequent generations of rock and rollers stand (Mahon

2011, 4). Plus, any acknowledgment of black women’s contributions to the inception and development of Rock-n-Roll is either condensed into a few sentences or omitted completely in the history of the music genre. Even though Thornton was a songwriter herself, Johnny Otis encouraged her while on tour in 1952 to record “Hound Dog” with Jerry Lieber and Mike

Stoller, two white men from Los Angeles who became very prominent songwriting and record producing partners. Otis invited Lieber and Stoller to meet him in the garage of his house during one of his band’s rehearsals. He wanted the team to listen to them rehearse to see if they could 31

Fig. 1 Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton/Pictorial Press Ltd write songs for some of his band members. Both men were stunned by the stature of Thornton, but became inspired to write a perfect song for her. Stoller recalled of that initial meeting:

We saw Big Mama and she knocked me cold. And she was mean, a ‘lady bear’ as they used to call ‘em. She must’ve been 350 pounds and she had all these scars all over her face […]. She was a wonderful blues singer with a great moaning style, but it was as much her appearance as her blues style that influenced the writing of ‘Hound Dog’ and the idea that we wanted her to growl it, which she rejected at first, her thing was ‘Don’t tell me how to sing no song’. (Spörke 2014, 25)

Scholar Charles Fairchild further described Thornton’s voice performance in the song as

“intimate, improvisatory, and unadorned by heavy effects” and “hitting the downbeat at different points of the verse each time, creating a subtle and constant tension between the vocal lines and so often characteristics of interwar and late-1940s blues” (Spörke 2014, 25). A year later, “Hound Dog” was released on Peacock Records with Lieber and Stoller as and

Johnny Otis as producer. The song became a nationwide hit despite the “rawness of the sound, 32 combined with the sexuality of the lyrics” (Spörke 2014, 26) and was popular on the black charts. “Hound Dog” was an example of the most-used subject black women was used in their music: that was the “doggone man” trope where black women used blues music to seek solace through audacious schemes which included signifying, going off with other men, or using gypsy magic, or supernatural powers (Harrison 1988, 79). The song also gave Thornton and Peacock

Records national attention from the music industry. Soon came the tour to support the record, but most of the time Thornton was one of the few women or the only woman on the tour. But her meteoric rise to the top of the charts did not last long. Thornton’s recording of “Hound Dog” was a moderate success, but not with the pop charts because it was considered a race record. Ronald

Freeman, Jr. explained in his 1968 dissertation, Jazz and Race Records, 1920-1932: Their

Origins and Their Significance for the Record Industry:

In settling on the categorial description of the description of the recordings made by and for Negroes, the industry moved toward a term, “race records,” likely to stimulate attention, enjoy understanding, and imply a producer’s particular accommodation of the wishes of Negro patrons. (119)

An example of the disparity in the success of a song by a white male artist and a black woman artist is illustrated in the performance of “Hound Dog” on the Billboard charts.

Thornton’s “Hound Dog” achieved the number one spot on Billboard’s R&B chart in 1953, but

Elvis Presley’s version in 1956 became more successful as it went to number one on Billboard’s

R&B, pop, and country charts. As a black woman, Thornton did not have that privileged access that Presley had as a white man displayed glaring disparities within the hierarchical social structure of the music industry. This phenomenon also posited the white man as the center of rock’n’roll and disregard the black women’s influence on the music genre. In Mahon’s book

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race, The BRC [Black

Rock Coalition, a group of New York-based black rock musicians formed in 1985 to create 33 outlets to dispel the idea that no one was interested in black ] had to deal with the notion that a white man was the proper embodiment of a rock musician and the fact that those who are not white and male have a difficult time winning acceptance as rockers. (Mahon 2004,

205). Thornton also recognized this disparity between her and Presley in a Maker interview with T-Bone Walker conducted by Tam Fiofori. When asked how she felt about groups making more money from her tunes, she answered:

But it is just one of those things. I’ve been singing way before Elvis Presley was born and he jumps up and becomes a millionaire before me…off something that I made popular. They gave him the right…now, why did that do that? He makes a million and all this jive because his face is different than mine. (Fiofori 1972, 44)

The dynamic in her relationship with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two white men who wrote the lyrics and composed the music to “Hound Dog,” illustrated how white men viewed the commodification of work from black women singers at the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll. Both men consumed black culture prior to meeting Thornton in the mid-1950s. In fact, they immersed themselves in different aspects of black culture: music, lifestyle, sports, etc. They created

“Hound Dog” minutes after meeting Thornton. Stoller recalled that he marveled her “larger than life” appearance as well as “her blues style” (Fricke 2011, www.rollingstone.com).

While her follow-up songs didn’t quite resonate with the listening public, she was a popular attraction on the touring circuit. After the success of “Hound Dog,” Thornton had to tour with male artists as opposed to touring as solo artist in the headlining role a year ago. There was not much competition between men and women R&B recording artists during that time. Michael

Spörke explains why this is the case: the women were the ones who bought records and they wanted to hear the male acts singing (2014, 30). After a fellow musician who traveled with

Thornton, Johnny Ace, died while on the road, she continued to record music and tour, but toured with other male acts like and Bobby “Blue” Bland. Elvis Presley’s version 34 of “Hound Dog” met with international praise and prompted Peacock to re-release Thornton’s version. But it did not garner much additional traction. After a lawsuit between Leiber and

Stoller and Otis and Johnny Ace’s death, Thornton decided to not renew her recording contract and leave Peacock Records because she felt that Don Robey gave her a bad deal by not properly compensating her. Thornton was an artist who made sure to get out of a bad situation where she thought she was not treated fairly in her career. It was not an easy task based on how black women was not as regard as much as other social identities who were part of the music industry.

The Show Must Go On

After her departure from under the leadership of Don Robey at Peacock Records,

Thornton decided to migrate to the West Coast and tour with blues artist Gatemouth Brown during the mid-1950s. The rise of rock‘n’roll and was the catalyst in the lack of interest in homegrown blues music in the United States. This type of blues was primarily distributed by black labels and consumed by black Americans from the mid-1950s through the late . She finally settled in the Bay Area in California where she continued to perform in local clubs with the help of a friend she toured with early in her music career. During this time, she did not make much money with her performances at these clubs. Her reality as a performer at this point was far different from the performer she was while at Peacock. Her friend, fellow musician Jimmy McCracklin further explained:

In those days nobody was making big money, like they make now. She was just playing the kind of clubs that I was playing. What we call the Chitlin clubs, the small clubs. The white people were running the clubs and you just had to play along with it. That’s all we could do. (Spörke 2014, 40)

Thornton met and collaborated with several fellow musicians while establishing herself again in the business of performing. Meanwhile, the scope of the blues music scene was changing as well.

While legendary artists were being praised for their artistry, the shift had moved to the focus on 35 younger artists performing . Thornton made her recording comeback after leaving

Peacock with Bay-Tone Label in 1961 with the singles, “You Did Me Wrong” and “Big Mama’s

Blues.” But neither song garnered any success. She recorded another song with the Bay-Tone label named, “Ball and Chain”, but it was not released because she signed an agreement that prevented her from releasing the song at a later time. She also recorded for another label, Irma

Label, in 1961, but she did not produce any hit songs either.

Thornton was able to secure more club and festival appearances, but she landed her first major music appearance at the in 1964. With artists such as the Duke

Ellington , Lou Rawls, , and the Miles Davis Quintet, she was usually the only woman performer on the roster and became a fan favorite with repeat performances at the festival in 1966 and 1968. William Minor called her “the real thing, an authentic blues singer” and Paul Gleason wrote that Thornton was “the best woman blues singer alive today”

(Spörke 2014, 47). She continued her streak in additional local clubs and festivals, tour dates across the country, and a major tour across Europe. She toured with artists like ,

Chuck Berry, and Louie Jordan. In the American Folk Blues Festival, the organizers were looking for a woman blues singer to break some of the monotony in having an all-male lineup at the festival. She traveled through countries like Germany, Switzerland, France, and Spain to rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. She was always slated to be the last act on the show because the organizers knew that she was a biggest attraction. She was also treated well while on tour staying in luxurious hotels and performing at grand concert halls. One of her fellow musicians on the American Folk Blues Festival tour, Jimmy Moore remarked about Thornton’s performances throughout the tour:

We were all so amazed at the size and the type of audience that we played. Big Mama wore cowboy boots, jeans, and a big hat. She was big and tough. There was 36

complete silence during the performance and then afterwards standing ovations. (Spörke 2014, 55)

While she was getting this praise from her fellow musicians and the audience, she was still self-aware of who she was and stood up for what she believed that she had the right to claim what belonged to her. Thornton had the opportunity to record a live album, an album called Big

Mama in Europe while on tour for Arhoolie Records, owned by Chris Strachwitz in 1965. Her experience touring in Europe gave Thornton a sense of purpose because the Europeans did not treat her like a second-class citizen and admired her for having a gift for singing unlike the

Americans. Like the other musicians who were on tour with her, she had a difficult time adjusting to the lukewarm reception coming back to the United States during the mid-1960s.

Society had changed culturally in the Bay Area (Thornton’s home base) to a counterculture that included the fight of equal rights for women, minorities, gays, and the disenfranchised. This shift not only provided a window for white America to discover the connection between rock music and blues music, but it allowed for blues artists to reach a new audience. Thornton was glad for this shift because she wanted to be included in this new-found recognition like her male peers.

Between the years of 1966 and 1969, she recorded for a number of record labels: Sotoplay

Records, Kent Records, and Galaxy. While recording music, she would continue performing at local clubs, festivals and music showcases. According to Spörke, Thornton had a long history of not getting along with her managers because “she was in some way not made for the business” and “the dynamic between the masculine way she dressed and her sweet demeanor as a person.”

(2014, 74) In all, her managers took advantage of her possibly because she was this black woman who was born and raised dirt poor in the South with little education. Despite the growing problems professionally and personally, Thornton continued to perform at venues of different sizes from small clubs to big concert halls in 1967 and 1968. 37

Black Women’s Contributions to Rock’n’Roll

Not only were race and gender factors in why black women were ignored in the story about the roots of rock and roll, but the gendering of what would become the primary instrument, the electric guitar, also contributed to this marginalization. Black women singers’ “instrument” has typically been the voice with a backup band composed of men. Daphne Duval Harrison stated the black community glorified in its own cultural power and paid happily for the sound of black music sung by black voices. The voice has traditionally been gendered to a woman, particularly in the African American community. Mahon explained that Thornton used her voice and body to indulge in a liberated black femininity through which she freed herself from many of the expectations of musical, lyrical, physical, and sartorial practice for black women” (2011, 7,

11). This idea can be traced back to the times of slavery when black women were the ones who were known to sing the for different aspects of slavery life. In general, slaves continued to utilize song in much the way their African ancestors had and [its] music remained a central, living element in their daily expression and activities (Levine 1977, 6). In his book Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Levine also explained that:

Black song had additional functions in both Africa and America. Songs served the dual purpose of not only preserving communal values and solidarity but also providing occasions for the individual to transcend, at least symbolically, the inevitable restrictions of his environment and his society by permitting him express deeply held feelings which ordinarily could not be verbalized. (1977, 8)

In other words, spirituals were used by slaves to communicate in various ways such as the way they worked on the plantation and how they communicated among themselves (and around their white slave owners). 38

But the rise of the electric guitar became the symbol of rock’n’roll when the music genre became popular in American culture and the instrument also overtook the value of the voice.

Symbolizing masculinity and treating it as an obsession by the white listening audience, white male artists used the guitar to compensate for their lack of good-sounding voices. The black women’s voices and white men’s usage of the guitar that “shaped and continue to shape rock music writing and canon formation, and they marginalize the influence of black women vocalists in spite of the important roles they played in the formation of rock and roll” (Mahon 2011, 14).

Dalton Anthony Jones explained it as Thornton conjur[ing] a type of subjugation imprinted uniquely on social body of the gendered black subject (2015, 63). Thornton encountered racialized and gendered obstacles throughout her music career, but it was not more prevalent in her experience with the song, “Hound Dog.” What the careers of Thornton and her predecessors defined what Jones concluded was so central to and yet excluded from the corporate industry of song, mirrors the precarious relationship between the black subject and civil society (2015, 63).

In other words, the musical “relationships” between the music producers (both white and black),

Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin (which will be discussed shortly) were ones where she was exploited by forces that she helped construct. Jones declared that:

Thornton was famous for playing a largely uncompensated role in crafting the rhythm and posture of a nation: for providing an expressive blueprint for American popular while reaping few of the economic rewards her work generated for white artists [specifically Presley and Joplin]. (2015, 66)

On the other hand, Thornton was resentful that “Hound Dog” was a big hit for Presley. In an interview videotaped in 1971 while Thornton was on tour with Muddy Waters, , and George “Harmonica” Smith, she remarked about a time that Presley did not want to perform on the same bill as Thornton because she was black. Granted, she was upset about it, but she said 39 that she was going to continue living her life (Spörke 2014, 106). This also coincides with the end in the interest of the traditional blues music genre.

Black Women and White Men: The Relationship

This specific example of Thornton and Presley came from a long and complex history in the dynamic of the relationship between the black woman and the white man. The racialized and gendered hierarchy can be traced back to the economic institution of slavery. In the early seventeenth century, white English settlers brought slaves to the United States where these white men created a caste system in order to devalue the existence of people of African descent, particularly black women. Black women were treated as a source of economic property to perform physical labor at the white slave master’s home. In addition to using slaves to perform manual labor, white slave owners performed sexual acts on black women to breed more bodies to perform more work. Whether it was the intention to increase the workforce of the white slave master, the main motivation for these acts was to create a sense of domination of white social order. hooks explained that white male slave owners wanted enslaved black women to passively accept sexual exploitation as the right and privilege of those in power (1981, 27). Collins agreed in Black Feminist Thought that sexual exploitation of enslaved black women by these white men slave-owners were a mechanism of social control (2000, 32) and they used black women as breeders to objectify them less than human because only animals can be bred against their will

(2000, 135). Janell Hobson also agreed in her book, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in

Popular Culture that slave laws in the American colonies created gender and racial entrapments for enslaved black women (2005, 26). In “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A

Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist

Politics”, Crenshaw quoted Gerda Lerner to introduce a contemporary concept about the acts of 40 power in the structured social order. This structured social order positioned the white man at the top of the societal hierarchy (1989, 329).

While the intent of slavery was to devalue the existence of black women through exploitation of their bodies economically through manual labor and sexual acts, there was another way in which black women were considered less than humans. With the previous example of in the display of Sara Baartman in Europe and the example in the social construction of slavery, black women were viewed in a dichotomy of being tempting sexually and being considered a “freak of nature.” In the case of Baartman, scholars would describe some parts of her body as “ugly” (like her face) and “lovely” (like her hand or foot). But the majority of them would focus on her buttocks and other sexual organs to illustrate the “existing trope of hypersexed black womanhood” (Hobson 2005, 24). This idea was translated in the same way with the English traders’ relationship with the African women who were brought through the transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century. Even though these traders were looking for black bodies to satisfy their economic needs, they were looking for desirable-looking ones to fulfill their sexual needs. Hobson explained further in her book:

These visual exaggerations of African women’s bodies, as recorded by European naturalist voyagers, create a monstrous hyper-woman in a sense. That is, the African woman seems to function as overly female compared with the European woman, and overly in abundance with regard to her femaleness: in this case, the stupendous size of her breasts. Moreover, because of the specificity of the female breast as a sign of sexual difference, the black female breast, highlighting race and gender differences, serves as an extreme deviation from the white male body. (2005, 29)

The racial and gendered dynamic between the white man and the black woman started centuries ago with slavery and it continued with in the example of Elvis Presley and Big Mama Thornton in the mid-twentieth century. 41

The Exploitation of Black Women’s Bodies

Daphne Brooks explained how black women’s bodies are viewed in her book, Bodies In

Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910. She argued that black women’s bodies continue to bear the gross insult and burden of spectacular (representational) exploitation in transatlantic culture (2006, 7). Brooks used a black woman vaudeville performer named Overton Walker (or her professional name, Ada Overton Walker) as an example in her book to illustrate the oppositional outside forces that black women faced as artistic performers during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the same time, historical events that greatly impacted black Americans were the Supreme Court decision making segregation constitutional in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) which led to the continuation of the .

Walker performed musical theater through song and dance in works such as In Dahomey (1902-

1904). Her performance in the musical play broke away from the popular stereotypes about black women and articulated black women’s often disregarded desires for social and cultural mobility in American culture (Brooks 2006, 327). But Walker also wanted to use her performances for promoting social justice and the way other social identities viewed black women. She wrote an article called “Colored Men and Women on the Stage” that was published in 1905 for an African

American newspaper, The Colored American, where she discussed what she wanted to accomplish through her performances. Walker wrote:

I venture to and dare to state that our profession does more toward the alleviation of color than any other profession among colored people. (Walker 1905, 571)

Not only did she address race, but she also addressed in the piece towards the end by saying:

My final word is to the men. You have your duties to perform on and off the stage to women and to yourselves. Remember this fact: good men help good women to 42

be good, and remember also, that in helping women, you are helping yourselves. We must work together for the uplift of all and for the progress of is good and noble in life. (Walker 1905, 575)

Walker’s acknowledgment of the social disparities of the music stage during the Jim Crow era highlighted her service of complicating and confounding early twentieth-century construction of race and gender (Brooks 2006, 327). There were reports that she was a difficult person, she shot a man, and danced naked for a living. Again, these accusations were just that. Michael Spörke, author of a Thornton , Big Mama Thornton: The Life and Music states from an article by Maureen Mahon that these assumptions fit perfectly with a picture of a cranky, heavy drinking, unpredictable, somehow dangerous and difficult person that other people have described her in the past (2014, 1) and these statements are rooted in men’s discomfort with an assertive black woman, present an image that has been incorporated into the historical record

(2014, 15).

In Thornton’s case, she lived through turbulent times where external forces such as the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the Tuskegee experiment, and the Scottsboro Boys rape scandal took place in her home state of Alabama. These historical events more than likely shaped her view about feeling dominated and wanting to be in control of the trajectory of her life. It showed in the way she sang with such power, how she handled the men in her life (band members, record label staff and even her fellow male tour mates who were also musicians) while she struggled between autonomy and dependence (Jones 2015, 70). In her book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and

Feminism, bell hooks added another layer to the relationship between the white man and the black women in the institution of slavery. Even though it is true that the purpose of this relationship was economics (to provide manual labor for the slave owner), she explained that white men exploited black women through sexual means to establish an absolute allegiance and 43 obedience to the white imperialistic order (hooks 1981, 27). In other words, white men used sex to dehumanize black women and to create the notion that they (white men) created a power structure that would benefit them. Both racism and sexism were the root of why white men did not value the existence of black women. hooks further expounded on the subject:

Racism was by no means the sole cause of many cruel and sadistic acts of violence perpetrated by white men against enslaved black women. The deep hatred of woman that had been embedded in the white colonizer’s psyche by patriarchal ideology and anti-woman religious teachings both motivated and sanctioned white male brutality against black women. (1981, 32)

Granted, racism against black people during slavery was harsh, but it was worst for black women. Not only did they have to deal with racism, but the sexism from the white slave owners, but also from black men. While both black men and women had somewhat of a level playing field in the work, but black women did not have the opportunity to move into leadership roles in the plantation. In fact, the black women were regulated to being in subordinate roles. The scenarios about the relationships between white/black men and black women that have just been described can be translated to the early history of the music business.

Big Mama Thornton and Janis Joplin: “Ball and Chain”

In addition to “Hound Dog,” another white artist, this time a white woman named Janis

Joplin, covered another Thornton song, “Ball and Chain” and her version became more successful than Thornton’s original version. Unlike Presley and his recording of “Hound Dog,”

Joplin sought out permission from Thornton to record “Ball and Chain” after seeing Thornton perform the selection in the early 1960s. The song, written by Thornton herself, garnered critical success for her performance of the song, but it was not quite successful on either the R&B or pop

Billboard singles charts. Years later, Joplin and the Big Brother and the Holding Company debuted the song at the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California in 1967. The audience 44 and critics responded well to the performance. A live version of the song was included on their second album, Cheap Thrills which went to number one on the Billboard Top LPs in 1968.

While Thornton had a more harmonious musical relationship with Joplin as opposed to a non- relationship with Presley. Joplin (and the band Big Brother and Holding Company) received much more success with “Ball and Chain” than Thornton’s original recording. In the same

Melody Maker interview with Tam Fiofori, Thornton described her relationship with Joplin:

I gave her the right and the permission to make ‘Ball and Chain.’ And she always was my idol before she passed away…and I thank her for helping me. I’ll always go along the line with that. (1972, 44)

Unfortunately, the song’s copyright had been assigned to Thornton’s record company a decade before, and with that assignation went all hope of royalties for Thornton (Swartley 1997, 16).

Rocker Janis Joplin and members of Big Brother & the Holding Company deeply respected

Thornton and wanted to cover one of her songs: “Ball and Chain.” They went to a club in San

Francisco to see Thornton perform and to ask her if they could record the song. Thornton gave them permission to do so. Joplin sang so much praise of Thornton that Joplin said this about her musical inspiration: “She sings the blues with such heart and soul. I have learned so much from her and only wish I could sing as well as Willie Mae” (Spörke 2014, 70). Both Joplin and

Thornton had built such a rapport that both women toured together with Thornton serving as the opening act. Unlike Elvis Presley who covered Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” there was not any public acknowledgement from Presley about Thornton’s contribution to singing the song. There were no ill feelings towards Joplin for making “Ball and Chain” a more successful record than

Thornton did. In fact, she was happy for Joplin because it made her some money in the long run.

It was styled as blues rock, not traditional blues that attracted audiences during this time. But 45

Thornton continued to perform in spite of that shift in the listening curve; she still had an audience.

The situation between Thornton and Joplin is one example of many on how white women benefited from black women’s creative work. To further drive this point, Patricia Hill Collins expound in her book, Fighting Words: Black Women & the Search for Justice that:

“Because individual African American women so often explore Black women’s collective voice via narrative forms, their work can be appropriated and commodified by all sorts of people who build careers and profit from Black women’s pain. (1998, 55)

What is particularly relevant is Collins’ statement about black women’s work being

“appropriated and commodified by all sorts of people” is what both Presley and Joplin accomplished in their own works. This “appropriation” of black women singing style by white women singers has had quite a history before Thornton and Joplin. In the 1910s, white women singers such as Sophie Tucker and capitalized on the popular appeal of the blues by copying the songs and performance styles of black women according to Ronald Freeman in his 1969 dissertation, Jazz and Race Records, 1920-32: Their Origins and Their Significance for the Record Industry and Society (24).

Despite the fact that Thornton’s and Joplin’s amicable relationship included performing on the same shows until Joplin’s death in 1970, black women’s relationship with white women have been complex since the white settlers brought enslaved Africans to America through the transatlantic slavery era in the seventeenth century. There is an array of situations in which white women have felt threatened by the existence of black women. bell hooks argued that negative attitudes toward black women were the result of prevailing racist-sexist stereotypes portrayed black women as morally impure and they also felt that their status as ladies would be undermined were they to associate with black women (1981, 130). Part of the reason for the white 46 woman’s resentment towards the black woman dated back to the oftentimes “relationship” between the white mistress’s husband and the enslaved black woman. Knowing that the enslaved black woman was used to satisfy the husband’s sexual desire, the white mistress usually punishes the black woman slave because she is “reminded the white female of her subordinate position in the relationship with” (hooks 1981, 154) her husband.

Black Women and White Women: The Relationship

The dynamic of this situation continued through the nineteenth century with white women continuing to devalue black women. The relationship between white and black women did not improve as time went on into the twentieth century. There was little progress in the liberation of Black Americans going into the twentieth century, the same systems of oppression continued to hold black women at the bottom of the social structure. Early in the 20th century, women’s suffrage became another big issue in black women’s fight for civil rights. Passed by

Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women the right to vote. While this was a monumental event in American history and the political landscape in the country, black women were shut out of the movement for equal rights and economic and political reforms. Another example is white feminist Frances Dana Gage’s description of Sojourner Truth delivering her “A’r’n’t I a Woman?” speech at a women’s rights convention in Ohio in 1851 in front of white women who were there. Her speech explicitly explained the dichotomy of her being a woman: strong yet nurturing. In 1851, Gage described

Truth in New York’s Independent as an “ form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eyes piercing the upper air like one in a dream…She spoke in deep tones” (Painter

167; cited in Hobson 2005, 12). Additionally, Truth grabbed the audience’s attention by declaring her strong physical appearance can accomplish manual labor while at the same time 47 give life or bear capital punishment. White women at this convention were so enthralled with

Truth’s speech that they wanted to use her to help them fight for equality.

Black women had to find ways to create avenues to spread the word about their own fight in the suffrage movement. Their agenda was a little bit different from white women in championing their right to vote. Since the late nineteenth century, white women had challenged the sexism that they faced as the perception that their only role as women were to be wives and ; they also wanted to be politically active. On the other hand, black women used the suffrage movement as a way to determine that the ability to vote would give them (and black men) a voice to uplift their communities terrorized by the racial strife that had been imposed on them since Emancipation. The suffrage movement also complicated intertwining racialized and gendered social issues. In their fight for the right to vote, white women pushed for change only for themselves and not for black women. In their efforts to secure the ballot, white women’s rights advocates willing betrayed the feminist belief that voting was the natural right for every woman (hooks 1981, 171).

With different agendas from white women for the suffrage movement, black women had to face oppression on the basis of not only being a woman, but also being black. This distinction in political activism between white and black women led them to form separate organized movements due to different racial and class ideologies and what their ideas each group wanted for the suffrage movement. This difference in ideas of what white and black women want for political freedom still happens today. But hooks explained it was a struggle for black women in the movement because they had to continue to face the notion that being black was thought to be male and being a woman was thought to be white (1981, 7). She also said that black women were placed in a double bind; to support women’s suffrage would imply that they were allying 48 themselves with white women activists who had publicly revealed their racism, but to support only black male suffrage was to endorse a patriarchal social order that would grant them no political voice (hooks 1981, 3). Organizations like the National Woman Suffrage Association were formed by mostly white women (with an effort to exclude black women suffragists) to push federal legislation in acknowledging a woman’s right to vote. But racism within the women’s rights movement did not emerge simply as a response to the issue of suffrage; it was a dominant force in all reform groups with white female members (hooks 1981, 128).

Disagreements within these organizations about the mission prompted black women to form their own organizations. One such organization, the National Association of Colored

Women, was established to help black women fight for different issues (e.g., education, child and elderly care) on social and civil justices like women's suffrage. Despite the many strides that black women have made in the work of women’s suffrage, they also faced many obstacles in this crusade. First, women's suffrage organizations that were run by the majority of white women focused their objective of being the “educated voter” which meant that being educated earns them the right to vote. To counteract, black women started more suffrage organizations to educate other black women about their communities and local governments. But the movement did not consider black women, many of whom were uneducated, which led them to believe that they could not vote. Also, black women were still being excluded from the voting process even after the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. Some of the suppression tactics were long waiting times at the polls, poll taxes, violence, and jail time. It was not until forty-five years after the

Nineteen Amendment was ratified when the right to vote was secured for racial minorities in the

United States with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These historical events did not directly affect Thornton, but the social and political culture surrounding these phenomena does 49 put into context about how a white women singer would benefit from the labors of a black woman.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton: The Later Years

In the early 1970s, Thornton also continued to perform at various clubs around the country in cities like New York City and Ann Arbor, . While she was praised for her performances, her relationships with management have always been strained or violative. She would change up managers constantly for various reasons because she did not trust them with the handling of the money or the manager could not handle Thornton’s temperament. Starting in

1971, the offers for her to perform at different venues became fewer and smaller. She signed with another record label, Pentagram Records, but this time she was fulfilling her dream to sing with her first album called Saved. She had a couple of promotional appearances in

New York City to support the record, but it was not as smooth as everyone thought who had encountered her during that time of the tour. As the American blues performed by older artists continued to decline and was picked up by younger artists, Thornton seized another opportunity to perform at the American Folk Blues Festival tour in Europe. The American Folk Blues

Festival was the brainchild between jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt and promoters Horst

Lippmann and Fitz Rau. Lippmann knew that blues has been a huge part of African American blues for decades. Based on their experiences being on the road with jazz musicians in the late

1950s, Berendt, Lippmann, and Rau thought it was a good idea to bring blues artists to Europe.

After the first blues tour in 1962, one of the artists who performed at that concert thought that his blues friends in the United States should come to Europe to perform too. Lippman went to

“America’s ghettos” to recruit more blues artists to perform. This festival illustrated that it won a completely new audience who consisted of young people who saw rock’n’roll come from the 50 blues, gave access to the blues culture of the and served as an introduction to American audiences in the late sixties (Spörke 2014, 48). This tour proved to be another success for Thornton as she was in control of how she wanted her shows to turn out. She also continued to perform at various clubs around the country in cities like New York City and

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Back in the United States, Thornton’s life became a little different from her touring experience in Europe. She performed for smaller venues and her health started to decline. Even with her health in question, she still decided what she wanted (or not wanted) professionally and personally. She still commanded an audience and directed her backup band on how to play. After the fact that she could not tour anymore because of her fragile state, she moved in with family and friends. Ed Bland, an A&R representative at Vanguard Records decided that he wanted to release a live album from Thornton’s performances at prisons in Monroe, Washington and

Eugene, Oregon called Jail in 1975. After that album was released, Thornton recorded another album called Sassy Mama in the same year. With the support of her sister, the recording went smoothly as she was sober and was compensated for her work. But she commanded to be respected in these recording sessions despite the state of her health at that time. She also continued to tour with the same stage performances she did in her earlier years commanding the attention from both the audience and her backup band. She still had the power to perform when and how she liked. In 1976, she unfortunately had a couple of more health-related issues such as developing cancer, having alcohol-related issues and being involved in a car accident. These issues did not stop Thornton from performing on tour throughout the United States and Canada from the mid to late 1970s. She did not slow down as the new decade approached still performing at local clubs and festivals. During her performances, she would move the best way 51 she could dancing across the stage and would recall that Presley took the song, “Hound Dog” after she originally recorded it three years earlier. There have been reports from different people who have worked with Thornton that under that rigid, tough persona that she projected was a really sweet woman. A member of a backup band to Thornton, Nelson Giles, recalled:

The thing that I took away from the gig about her was that even though she lived a very hard life, she had the most beautiful smile that seemed to indicate she wasn’t bitter about the path her life took. (Spörke, 2014, 141)

While she did continue to perform dates in various cities in the United States, she performed the majority of them in her home base of Los Angeles from 1980 until her death in 1984. In the many obstacles she had in her life, one thing about Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was that she was going to be in control of her destiny. Michael Spörke explained that this was a dubious accomplishment as “she had lived her life to the fullest” and “to be successful in the music business was […] for a black woman, not the easiest task” (2014, 148). As scholar Nate Dove further reflected on Thornton’s life:

Big Mama lived well. She lived as she wanted to live. She wasn’t a millionaire and I don’t think she was trying to be one. But I do think that she was very successful in doing what she wanted to do, the way she wanted to do it. (Spörke 2014, 147)

Mahon agreed with both Spörke and Dove regarding the complexity of Thornton’s life intertwined with her music career. In “Listening for Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s Voice: the Sound of Race and Gender Transgression in Rock and Roll,” she explained that Thornton’s

“identity as a black woman” has made it difficult to hear and see Thornton in all of her resonant dimensions, especially in standard histories of rock and roll (2011, 1). While “Hound Dog” and

“Ball and Chain” were included into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the “500 Songs

That Shaped Rock ‘N’ Roll,” she did not receive many residuals from the royalties from recording her songs. Remember, Thornton recorded on many different labels and switched 52 management quite often. These record label heads and managers were white men and Thornton did not have solid education and did whatever she wanted. Having that ability to do whatever she wanted was great initially, but she was taken advantage of due to her lack of knowledge of the music business.

Conclusion

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was an early influence on the early incarnation of rock’n’roll music. Even though she was an influence, she experienced racial and gender discrimination by record label heads, fellow musicians, and audiences. She wasn’t the first black woman who faced power structures of the entertainment industry. Blues singers like Ma Rainey,

Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith had to encounter unequal social systems based on both their race and sex. The phonograph companies were not the first entities in the entertainment industry that exhibited oppression to these women. Theater conglomerates like the Theatre Owners

Business Association or Toby Time that suppressed black performers especially black women performers. Like her predecessors, Thornton was born in a social and economic system where the poor was situated in a disadvantaged position. As she was becoming a prominent American blues singer in the 1940s and 1950s, Thornton had to overcome many obstacles like bad music deals from men who were record label heads, producers, and club owners. As a black woman, she had to come to terms about how white artists like Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin appropriated her labor for their respective successes with “Hound Dog” and “Ball and Chain.” Some of the racial and gender disparities have alluded to historical events in the treatment of black women’s bodies such as slavery and the woman’s suffrage movement. Despite the many challenges she confronted throughout her career (e.g., music content, her image), Willie Mae “Big Mama”

Thornton demonstrated that she wanted to perform on her terms. 53

CHAPTER TWO. NINA SIMONE

I started to think about myself as a black person in a country run by white people and a woman in world run by men. - Simone’s revelation after her conversation with her friend playwright about political education in the early 1960s (Simone with Cleary 1991, 87).

Introduction

The narrative about black women singers like Big Mama Thornton serves as an example of how they had to navigate through racialized and gendered power structures whether it was through their personal lives or performing in the music industry. As a black woman, Big Mama

Thornton experienced racism and sexism not only by record producers, but also by fellow musicians and artists as well. This trope continued after Thornton became popular in the 1930s and 1940s, before rock ‘n’ roll became a cultural phenomenon. White men and women rockers like Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin have benefited from the labor produced musically by

Thornton, but she was not treated the same as they were when it came to compensation and access to resources. Not only did black women singers have to face being black in the business during the time when Thornton was making music, but they also had to encounter being a woman in the same spaces as black men as record producers and fellow musicians. Just as they faced stark inequalities in prior social phenomena such as slavery and the suffrage movement, black women were regulated to subordinate roles in the Civil Rights movement from its beginnings in the mid-1950s. Black women activists like Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella

Baker, and Diane Nash participated in the fight against racial and gender equality, but did not receive the same recognition as their black men peers in the fight. One black woman singer, Nina Simone, was also among these “unsung” black women heroes in the movement.

While she acted to help elevate the civil liberties for African Americans off stage, her 54 contributions were more amplified through countless songs she wrote and composed. Not only was she aware of the social injustices against African Americans, but she was also keenly cognizant of the biases against African American women. This recognition stemmed from almost the day she was born.

Nina Simone: Her Life in the South

Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon to John Divine and Mary Kate Waymon on

February 21, 1933 in a small resort town of Tryon, , the sixth of eight children.

Like other southern towns in the early 1930s, Tryon was segregated. Her father was a barber, dry-clean business owner, and a trucker while her mother was a homemaker. Born and raised during The Great Depression, Simone and her family faced many economic and social roadblocks. Even though the Waymon family had to move from house to house and were forced to make do with the little food they had, Simone thought that her time as a young child was a new experience and she enjoyed every moment without stopping to think about what it meant

(Simone and Cleary 1991, 9); that experience involved music played in the house by her parents.

The Great Depression, the worldwide economic downturn that started with the stock market crash in 1929 and lasted until 1939, affected all levels of the social hierarchy, but black women were hit the hardest. They lost the little that they already had. Also, they had to work more with little to show in compensation. Although the financial needs of black families intensified during this time, black women’s labor-force participation dropped from 42 percent in 1930 to 37.8 percent ten years later, reflecting their diminished work opportunities (Jones 2009, 165). This financial upheaval sparked an abrupt shift in not only the American economy but also American ideology regarding gender dynamics (Ward 2018, 2) as well as race. Because it took place in tandem with the Great Migration, the Great Depression has widely been discussed in terms of 55 how it has affected African American women in the North, but it also changed the social and economic experience of African American women in the South. Slavery, racism, and African and

Afro-American cultural practices and values (Helmbold 1987, 633-634) severely disrupted the

African American family structure during the Great Depression. In this same structure, African

American women were forced to do whatever possible to maintain a stable familial economy while facing external pressure with little or no support from the government or legislative processes (Ward 2018, 18) such as the New Deal, introduced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, which included the National Industrial Recovery Act, (1933), the Social Security Act (1935), and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). During the decade, nine of ten African American women toiled as agricultural laborers or domestic servants and various federal legislations, such as the ones that were previously mentioned, were designed to protect and raise the purchasing power of workers exempting these two groups from their provisions (Jones 2009, 167). Like many African

American families in the South, the effects of the Great Depression fell upon the Waymon household too. The town of Tryon was a resort town and, as Nina Simone wrote herself, the first things to go were “luxuries” like vacations and entertainment due to the Great Depression and this resulted in the loss of income for many African Americans. Her father was a trained barber, was in the dry-cleaning business, and was in the truck haulage business. Her mother was a housewife. In : The Autobiography of Nina Simone, Simone vividly described how the Great Depression affected her family:

But then the Depression came. Tryon was a resort town and the first things to go when money gets short are luxuries like a trip to the mountains. The summer trade started to dry up, and by the winter of 1931 the place was a ghost town. More than half of the dry-cleaning Daddy handled in his shop came from visitors to the town and that business just vanished. Even though my father and his partner laid off the drivers they had, haulage work became more and more scarce and they weren’t making the money to meet the payments on the truck [...] By Christmas 1931 the 56

barber shop, dry cleaners and truck were gone. Daddy was busted. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 6)

The pressures on black women to earn a living increased in proportion to the rise in their menfolk’s unemployment rates. Long accustomed to being the breadwinners, black women of all ages now assumed even greater responsibility for the welfare of their families (Gray 1993, 6;

156; 161-162; 166-167, 174). But black women who were breadwinners were perceived differently than their white counterparts. As a result of her father losing the businesses, making a living fell to her mother, who entered the workforce. She earned a living in domestic service such as cleaning windows of the town’s buildings. But both parents were able to take advantage of earning a wage with the assistance of the government: her mother sewed military uniforms and her father delivered food to the poor. Her father was able to work due to the National

Recovery Act (NRA). Through this program, the government found local drivers who had delivery trucks to carry out the job of taking food to needy, local residents. Even though

Simone’s father was able to get a job with the help of the NRA, Simone’s mother did not have that opportunity. Under the NRA, the minimum wage-codes set on an industry-wide basis institutionalized a variety of forms of discrimination, but it was deemed unconstitutional in 1935.

Workers received more or less pay depending on their race, gender, and geographical location---

North-South and rural-urban (Jones 2009, 176). The policies of the NRA historically discriminated against blacks, women, southerners, and rural workers (Jones, 2009, 176) which meant that black women like Simone’s mother were on the lowest level of the pay scale. In 1935, things began to turn around for the Waymon family at the time Simone was a baby. When jobs became scarce for her father again, her mother started to work as a housekeeper for a white family. She continued to be the breadwinner as Simone’s father became sick. 57

Even though her family went through hard times, they were constantly surrounded by music. Both her father and mother were heavily involved in the church where they helped administer the service. Her parents and siblings sang and played the piano at different occasions such as church services, small group gospel choirs, and glee club events. Naturally, Simone inherited the musical gene. When she was a baby, she clapped to church music and started to play the piano at the young age of two years old. When the townspeople started calling Simone a child prodigy, her parents insisted that she (and her siblings) conduct themselves with grace because that is what “good church people” do. She became the regular pianist at the church where her mother ministered, and her mother did not allow her to listen to . With the assistance of a piano tutor, an Englishwoman named Mrs. Muriel Massinovitch (Simone called her “Miz Mazzy”), Simone honed her piano-playing skills and performed town hall recitals for people who helped fund her piano lessons. As she grew older and continued her piano lessons, she also noticed some of the social injustices that occurred in her hometown when she became more independent and removed from the protection of [her] family (Simone and Cleary

26) such as her inability to eat at a local pharmacy or to interact with a white playmate. At a recital in which her parents were removed from the front row to accommodate a white family,

Simone refused to play unless her parents were seated back in the front row. Here’s what she thought after that incident with regarding to how she looked at the world at that point and realized the scope of her blackness at age eleven:

I had no reason to think otherwise [that all white people were nice based on her relationship with her benefactor and piano teacher (who were both white)]: they [her music patron, Mrs. Miller, and her piano teacher, Miz Mazzy] were the only white people I had ever talked to for any length of time. But now prejudice had been made real for me and it was like switching on a light. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 26) 58

When Simone was embarking on her teenage years in the 1940s, the United States’ participation in World War II did not improve social inequality for black women. In fact, the bias against them remained unchanged while at the same time economic conditions for the country improved due to the war. Despite the government desegregating industries that were part of the war effort as a result from the pressure of both black women and men activists, some African

American women raised concerns that the order did not expressly include women (Barry and

Gross 2020, 147). When they did get industrial jobs, white women refused to share floors with black women and white women led hate marches to prevent African American from obtaining jobs (Barry and Gross 2020, 147-148). But that did not stop some black women from finding new opportunities. The U.S. Army instituted the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in 1943 as an auxiliary unit with active-duty status to the military branch. Women served in different capacities in the war effort throughout the WAC in various roles like switchboard operators, mechanics, stenographers, and armorers. Despite the fact that the WAC operated in a segregated fashion, black women signed up in thousands thinking that it was a great opportunity for them.

But their hopes were dashed because the cleaning tasks were assigned to them while their white counterpart learned nursing skills (Barry and Gross 2020, 148). These racial and gendered disparities also happened in the Women’s Reserves of the US Navy (WAVES) and in the fight for black nurses to serve in the war effort. Some black women used this fight as a catalyst in expanding into other areas that negatively affected the black community. African American women met challenges head-on at a variety of points, though sometimes their gains could be frustratingly fleeing (Barry and Gross 2020, 151). Also, during this time, African Americans

(especially African American women) faced unjust practices in the judicial, educational, and entertainment systems. Black women were often wrongly sentenced by an all-white jury or felt 59 they were denied admission to a university based on their skin color and gender. In the entertainment business during the 1940s, there were two distinct issues for black women who pursued a career in the movies: portraying stereotypical characters and colorism. (Simone has reflected about her own dark skin as a performer in the music industry. A deeper discussion about her reflection will be highlighted later in this chapter.) Despite many obstacles that were stacked against them during World War II, black women who fought against these injustices both “mirror and foreshadow Black women’s activism, not only during World War II but also the civil rights era and well beyond'' (Giddings 1984, 264).

Simone’s journey into high school was filled with ambition, but mostly the reason for that drive came from her mother and her piano teacher. They agreed to allow Simone to take piano lessons. Classifying her as a child prodigy, her mother and the piano teacher thought that

Simone should become a classical pianist. Both women’s reasons stemmed from the fact that

Simone had to be ambitious because she was a black woman. They both were preparing her for the racism and sexism that she would encounter as she became an adult. In her book Black

Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Patricia Hill

Collins stated that the mother daughter relationship is one fundamental relationship among Black women (2000, 102). Black mothers have empowered their daughters by passing on the everyday knowledge essential to survival as African American women (Joseph 1981 and Collins 1987) It was no different in the relationship between Simone and her mother at this point of her life. At the same time, there was a wide range of black women singers who were already making names for themselves in the recording industry: , , , and

Billie Holiday. While these black women singers were dazzling audiences with their vocal stylings, blues singer Bessie Smith consistently reminded that the cycle of black women’s work 60 came full circle when luck and talent rescued her in the song, “Washwoman’s Blues” (1928) as explained in the following lyrics with Smith as the weary laundress (Jones 2009, 185):

All day long I’m slavin’, all day long I’m bustin’ suds All day long I’m slavin’, all day long I’m bustin’ suds Gee, my hands are tired, washin’ out these dirty suds. (0:12-0:43)

Simone went to an all-girls school named Allen High School for Girls located outside of Tryon in Asheville, NC during the mid-1940s where she was able to continue to hone her skills to become “the first black American concert pianist” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 32) what her mother told Simone. Both Simone’s mother and Miz Mazzy decided that she should go to an institution where she could “receive the social training a black pioneer would need in order not to let down her race” and have “a normal life that offered a chance of personal happiness” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 32). She studied hard (in her academics and piano studies) throughout her high school career and she graduated as the valedictorian of her class. While Simone documented her time at Allen High was as fruitful, the overall impression of education for African American girls in the United States during the 1940s was not ideal. In fact, the major focus in African American education was access during that time (Thomas and Jackson 2007, 365). In spite of the passage of the Brown vs. Board of Education legal case in 1954 to desegregate schools, some of these institutions continued to treat the experiences of African American children separately.

Simone’s Journey to the Northeast and Her Self Discovery

After high school graduation, Simone was awarded a scholarship for a year to the

Juilliard School of Music in New York City to serve as a way to prepare for another scholarship examination to the Curtis Institute of Music in in 1950. Even though she was the only black student being tutored under Dr. Carl Friedburg, Simone continued to practice with intensity to make sure that she was prepared for her with Curtis. Unfortunately, she did 61 not get into Curtis and this incident gave her some perspective about how society thought of her.

Her original thought was that she was rejected because she thought she was not good enough, but she heard that she did not get into the school because she was a “very poor unknown black ”

(Simone and Cleary 1991, 42). The struggle she had between those two thoughts began to shape about her position on discrimination. She realized that the color of her skin has an effect on the things she had done (and would continue to do going forward). She questioned her sentiment:

The questions I might have asked, like why it was always black women like Momma who cleaned the houses for white people like Mrs. Miller [her mother’s boss and the one who was the benefactor for Simone’s piano lessons when she was a child], I never did. I knew prejudice existed, but I never thought it could have such a direct effect on my . Nobody told me that no matter what I did in life the colour of my skin would always make a difference. I learned that bitter lesson from Curtis. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 44).

When Simone did not get accepted into Curtis, she had a brief moment of uncertainty about her future in music. She stayed in Philadelphia when her family moved there from Tryon, North

Carolina. She took a break from music to work as a photographer’s assistant, but an older brother convinced Simone that she should continue her musical studies. When she went back and practiced with a tutor, she realized that she missed playing the piano. As she continued to practice, she let go of the resentment she had about what happened to her at Curtis. In order to keep practicing while making some money for her studies, she took a job as an accompanist for a local singing teacher. Although she did not make much, she was glad to be working. Seeing an opportunity after teaching some of the students classical voice lessons at the teacher’s studio, she decided to open her own studio. At what served as a studio and living space, she taught some of the students from the previous studio much to the teacher’s dismay. To keep the peace, the teacher and Simone came to an agreement with the new teaching and she still had time after her students were gone to practice herself. 62

Through one of her students, she found out a job opportunity playing the piano at a bar in

Atlantic City. She was hired at a local bar called the Midtown Bar and Grill, but had to change her name so her family would not find out. So, she changed her name from Eunice Waymon to

Nina Simone. For a while, she only played classical music wearing a fancy dress, but the patrons started to notice her excellent playing skills unlike the previous pianists who occupied that same space. With the encouragement of the boss (actually, it was an ultimatum), she started to accompany her piano playing with her singing. Feeling unsure about what to sing, she decided to perform popular songs much to her dismay because she considered herself a trained classical pianist. An increase of bar patrons came to see her perform, but thought she was a strange because she closed her eyes while she sang and drank milk. Her hesitation about performance anxiety was realized when she overheard a patron said that she closed her eyes while she sang and drank milk because she was a drug addict. Simone said that she closed her eyes while performing to “drift away on the music”(Simone and Cleary 1991, 50) and she drank milk because she got sick when she drank liquor (Simone and Cleary 1991, 53). She was hurt when she discovered what they assumed about her.

In the chapter, “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images” of Black Feminist

Thought, Collins explained that black women respond in different ways to oppression and she used examples of literature that has been written by black women. One example she mentioned in the chapter is the suspended woman, described as a one dimension of black women’s internalized oppression where pain violence, and death form the essential content of these women’s lives. They are suspended in time and place; their life choices are severely limited that the women themselves are often destroyed (Collins 2000, 93) like the character Pecola

Breedlove, an 11-year-old black girl in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) who longed to be 63 white and wanting to escape being black and poor. Another way black women respond to oppression is what Collins described in the chapter as women who experienced personal growth toward positive self-definitions (Collins 2000, 94) when faced external forces. This creates controlling images of black women like the character Claudia, a 10-year-old black girl, from The

Bluest Eye. She rejected the idea of that controlling image of thinking that black women as ugly.

She demonstrated this in the book by destroying her white dolls and not sharing her classmates’ admiration for another classmate who had light-skinned complexion and long hair. Based on her reception at the bar, Simone exhibited what Collins described as the woman who attempts to escape from a world predicated upon derogated images of black womanhood. Fictional African

American women characters use drugs, alcohol, excessive religion, and even retreat into madness (although, Simone used music) in an attempt to create other worlds apart from the ones that produced such painful Black female realities (2000, 94). Simone thought that the patrons at the bar were engrossed in her performance, but realized that they primarily viewed her as a .

During the following summer in 1955, Simone returned to Atlantic City for another performance residency at the Midtown Bar and Grill. Through a suggestion from a regular patron, Simone incorporated the Billie Holiday song “I Loves You, Porgy” from Gershwin’s

Porgy and Bess and it became a regular number in her performances at the bar. Deciding that she could not go back to teaching, she found work playing at other in Philadelphia in addition to Midtown Bar, but she used the money that she made to continue studying with a piano instructor Vladimir Sokhaloff so she could audition to go back to Juilliard. Her mother was not pleased with her decision. At this point, she felt that she needed a manager to help her get playing gigs in the Philadelphia and Atlantic City areas and found that in an agent from New 64

York City named Jerry Fields. Simone met Don Ross, a white patron who frequented the bar, took an interest in her and encouraged her to record in New York City. (She married him in

1958.) Bu she was committed to continue her run of music gigs in Philadelphia. When she was at the point of feeling comfortable with performing at her club dates, someone recorded one of her performances and the recording showed up years later as a pirate album named Starring Nina

Simone. Taking legal action against the record label that released it without her consent (in which she did not receive compensation for her work) shaped her attitude towards record labels. She said:

So, the first album I ever made was a pirate that I never got paid for and knew nothing about. It was an omen for how record companies were going to treat me. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 57)

Simone was not exactly incorrect about the music business, particularly the relationship between record labels and its black artists. In Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural

Politics of Race, cultural anthropologist Maureen Mahon argued that this is the convergence of economic, racial, and artistic ideologies and practices that have produced a business and creative environment in which African Americans occupy a subordinate position even as African

American cultural productions serve as a central creative source (2004, 146). She further explained that black artists and executives work within a restricted range of creative possibilities, control fewer economic resources, and have limited decision-making power (Mahon 2004, 147).

At the urging of her manager, Simone went to New York City to play a club date and clicked with a fellow musician named . They continued their musical relationship in New

York City and Philadelphia. While Schackman was at a different gig on the West Coast, a demo tape from Simone landed at a music label called and the executives wanted her to record an album. The head of the label, Sid Nathan wanted Simone to record the music 65 and work with the studio musicians he had selected. But Simone had other ideas. She told the

Nathan that she didn’t want to play the material he selected for her nor play with the musicians he picked. She said that she will have control of the music content and pick the musicians who will be part of her band. She felt that she had been handling the direction of her musical journey on her own and did not need any outside forces to steer her differently. Once the label head figured out that Simone was not going to be swayed, Nathan met her demands and recorded her first album that contained songs that she performed during her sets at Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City. At the end of the session and before heading back to Philadelphia,

Simone signed a recording contract without reading it and without the legal and financial advice not thinking about the damaging effect that might have on her future as a performer. Her overall relationships with record labels reflected the ideology that continued bias against blacks encouraged and protected the use of unfair business practices that have always been a part of the

American recording industry (Mahon 2004, 148).

The album Little Girl Blue was released in 1958 with little fanfare from Bethlehem

Records. Simone thought that the album was going to shift her career into high gear, but that was not the case. Simone tried to reach out to Nathan to find out about the promotion of the project, but he would not speak to her. In the meantime, a local DJ at a Philadelphia R&B radio station started to play “I Loves You, Porgy” from the album. It caught listeners’ attention and they began to request the song. When Simone tried to call the Nathan again to let him know about the success of the single in Philadelphia and to ask him to release it as a single, he (again) hung up on her. But she found out soon after that the single was going to be released after all and it will be available for purchase at record stores. The song, “Porgy” was a success across the country.

With the success of the single, her manager advised her to move to New York because she 66

“needed to be where the action was, in the Big City” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 62). Simone reluctantly moved to New York City to pursue a musical career to play at big clubs in order to get noticed. She would send money to her family in Philadelphia and still travel back the city to continue classical training with Sokhaloff. After finding out that she could not make the bills while taking a break, she decided to get a job as a maid working in the home of a white family like Big Mama Thornton did when the music gigs slowed down.

She received a break into the industry when she decided that she would sign with

Columbia Pictures Records - Colpix - in the late 1950s. The Amazing Nina Simone, her debut album on Colpix, was released in 1959. Around the same time, Bethlehem released another album, Nina Simone and Her Friends, a collection of her songs that were left over from the first

Bethlehem recordings in 1957. Simone could not do anything to stop the release because she had signed that contract without legal and financial advice. She was baffled because she was the one trying to get the record label to promote the album in the first place. Knowing it was such a blow to her career (even when it was in the beginning stage), she made a vow to make sure that she was better equipped with the information to set up contracts in the future because she realized that the record label was making money off her name. She lamented:

The further I got into the business side of the music industry, the less I liked it. Record companies were bad enough, but it was only a matter of luck that clubs were not a problem for me; I did my shows, got my money and left. I was fortunate not to have trouble from club owners but I always drew a crowd so it made no sense to rip me off - if that happened I’d never play a particular club again. Unlike most artists I didn’t care that much about a career as a popular singer. I was different - I was going to be a classical musician. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 65)

In her early days at Colpix during the early 1960s, Simone did not have total operational and marketing support from the label, or a well-suited producer to help her with creating music.

She only had an engineer to set up the recording and an orchestrator to help with the musical 67 . Her experience made her very disillusioned about the record industry, which she described as filled with “the cheap crooks, the disrespectful audiences, and the way most people were so easily satisfied by dumb, stupid tunes” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 65). These relationships between Simone and record labels reflect the racial hierarchy in the music industry where black performers struggled to get a fair chance and were confined to inferior contracts, resources, and opportunities (Mahon 2004, 148). After a couple of short stints with managers, she moved from playing small clubs to performing at larger venues like concerts halls. In 1959, her first big break was performing at New York City Town Hall in which her record label recorded the concert live. The recording was released as an album called Nina Simone at Town

Hall and it became the catalyst that started her ascent into recognition into the music industry.

She was in the midst of performing in the same artistic circles as , Art Pepper,

James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry. Not only was she gaining popularity in the performing circuit, but she was also gaining traction among her musical peers. While she was gaining praise from inside and outside of the musical community, music critics started to pigeonhole Simone’s choice of music to play which was a mixture of all types of music (like she performed during her days in Atlantic City). These same critics resigned to describing her as a “jazz-and-something- else singer” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 68). An early act of resistance as an established musician was to reconcile her presence as a black woman in the industry. She further explained in her autobiography:

Because of ‘Porgy’ people often compared me to Billie Holiday which I hated. That was just one song out of my repertoire, and anybody who saw me perform could see we were entirely different. What made me mad was that it meant people couldn’t get past the fact we were both black: if I had happened to be white nobody would have made the connection. And I didn’t like to be put in a box with other jazz singers because my musicianship was totally different, and in its own way superior. Calling me a jazz singer was a way of ignoring my musical background because I didn’t fit into white ideas of what a black performer should 68

be. It was a racist thing; ‘If she’s black she music be a jazz singer.’ It diminished me, exactly like was diminished when people called him a ‘great black poet’. Langston was a great poet period, and it was up to him and him alone to say what part the colour of his skin had to do with that. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 69)

Simone continued to tour across the country and performed at larger venues as her popularity and new fans grew. While she thought that her battle with her former record label,

Bethlehem Records, was behind her, she did get an unexpected surprise in the form of a check from the record label in the amount of ten thousand dollars. Determined to work on the path of performing at more upscale venues to increase her musical profile, she held a concert at the

Village Gate where Colpix recorded her next album, Live at in 1961. She understood the dynamics of working with club owners based on her previous experiences with less-than-stellar ones and decided to take ownership in her working relationships with them going forward. Her career continued to ascend with her being recognized by some of her musical contemporaries like and . Her performances expanded from club dates to music festivals and shows. As her career continued to soar, she hit a bump in the road when she diagnosed with either non-paralytic polio or spinal meningitis. Her doctors did not know which one she experienced. She also experienced an abusive episode with Andrew Stroud, her boyfriend at the time when he physically hit her several times because he saw Simone put a note in her pocket that a fan gave to her. (She married him in 1961 a couple of years after her divorce from first husband, Don Ross).

Not only had she faced racial discrimination, but she also experienced gender discrimination indirectly. For example, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, who was considered a contemporary of Simone by some individuals, was treated differently than she was even though both artists had similar experiences with the industry. Both were engaged in the civil rights 69 movement, but the levels of their involvement were strikingly different. Davis’ reason was more personal by performing onstage with his back turned against both his black and white audiences, but he did it with more intensity for the latter. For him, this act was a way for him to let white audiences know that he is in control of the performance as a black man. Simone incorporated that struggle in her music as well as in the movement with recordings such as “Mississippi

Goddam” (1964) and “Young, Gifted, and Black” (1970). While Davis was disillusioned with the lack of respect from the white industry with regards to payment and ownership, Simone was disillusioned by the way African Americans were treated in society (West 2016, www.washingtonpost.com). Both were well respected by both black and white audiences alike, but Davis was revered for his attitude towards not “shucking and jiving” for white audiences while Simone would not have gotten the reverence for the same attitude. Ruth Feldstein further supported this idea when she explained:

But, if rudeness in male jazz musicians confirmed their , similar behavior confirmed something else about Simone. The point is not to debate Simone’s behavior - which by all accounts was unpredictable and difficult - but to consider the gender-specific meanings it assumed. Over time, she was far more likely to be depicted as a “witch” than an artist with high standards. ‘Temperamental’ is one word that is applied to her frequently; ‘insulting’ and ‘arrogant’ are also favorites (Shapiro 1963, 82) [...] On one hand, these references place Simone more in a long line of unstable women celebrities than as a member of an exclusive club of innovative black male artists. As a black woman, however, her status as a demanding diva evoked racially specific kinds of fear. (2005, 1359)

There has been a double standard brought up by scholars on the subject that Simone, as a black woman, was criticized for her reportedly difficult off-stage behavior, but Miles Davis (a black man), rarely got the same treatment. This also happened in the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) where Mahon detailed in Right to Rock the internal gendered conflict within the members saying that men expected women to agree with their decisions in the operation of the organization

(2004, 219) because black men place racism over sexism and fail to realize the intersection of 70 these systems of oppression. Simone was treated harshly by critics and audiences simply because she was black and a woman. It was not mutually exclusive. La Marr Jurelle Bruce argued in

“Interludes in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation” that Simone experienced severe mental illness or medicalized madness and it impacted her music-making in the 1960s. He continued to explain that Simone disclosed that she experienced episodes of psychosis which later was diagnosed with as manic-depressive disorder and schizophrenia

(Bruce 2017, 3). He also described the connection between her mental illness and her depth of creativity:

While I refuse to reduce Simone’s performance to psychiatric symptom, I recognize that, say, manic impulsivity and racing thoughts might have intensified her audacity, hastened her impatience, diminished her inhibition, and otherwise stoked her brilliant delivery. The potential presence of psychiatric disorder does not demean Simone’s artistry, nor does it deny the immanent genius, revolutionary politics, and radical love that might interanimate her performance, along with madness. (Bruce 2017, 3)

So the criticism from a male-dominated industry that she received about her demeanor as an artist during the height of her career could have been misconstrued. Unlike it is in current times, the subject of mental health was not widely discussed especially in the black community with reference to black women.

Her pushback against these racial and gendered , particularly in her early career, was the genesis of her participation in black activism. As her visibility as a performer expanded from national to international, she realized that her consistency in navigating the criticism against her because of her race and gender was solely dependent on her and planned out how she was going to accomplish that. She compared that plan to preparing for a war:

You plan your campaign, recruit your troops, equip them properly and then fight until you’ve stormed the cities you want. Then you dig in and defend your position. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 82) 71

With her husband as now her manager, Simone gave Stroud complete control of her business affairs like creating companies for recording music, performing at venues, and songwriting. She felt that she has been doing this all by herself before meeting her husband and thought that her husband should be assigned to do such tasks as part as being in a traditional marriage. She also allowed her husband to handle all aspects of her business because she needed someone to take care of her; to provide some stability with so much happening in her life. Even though she had the support she needed, Simone still felt of the responsibility to provide for the people who worked for her: the musicians and staff members (and their families). Not soon after Lisa

(her only child) was born, she went back to performing knowing that people depended on her.

But her return to performing took a different turn from dreaming to work with an orchestra to perform in order to make a living.

Simone’s experiences as a teenager when her mother explained to her that she will have to work hard because of her race and gender laid the foundation in which she stood up against bar owners, music agents, and record label executives (who were all white men) in order to find a way for her creativity to be consumed by mass audiences. This fight for racialized and gendered equality led to her having the ability to become one of the unsung heroes of the Civil

Rights Movement.

She’s Black and She’s Proud

At the same time she realized that she was the breadwinner for her family and friends,

Simone’s musical journey during the 1960s pivoted slightly from the music she traditionally recorded to music that would provide a to the plight of African Americans. After a trip to Nigeria in 1961 as part of a black artistic group which included both musicians and intellectuals, she had an awakening when she saw an abundance of people who looked like her 72 and embraced what the country had to offer. She knew that she was changed after that visit. As her career began to take off, she took notice of what blacks were doing in order to demand equality in American society during the Civil Rights Movement. In particular, she was profoundly disturbed by the violent slaughter of Black girls and Black freedom fighters (Berry and Gross 2020, 181). She felt that she has not done her part because she was taught by her parents that acknowledging racism was a sign of defeat. She continued to have this thought even after not getting accepted into Curtis. Like other Americans in the country, Simone watched the developments unravel in the movement starting with the Montgomery bus boycott. Initially, she was reluctant to get involved with social movements; in fact, she thought it was not a serious matter even though she was friends with during her time performing at small nightclubs in New York City. But it took American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of the Broadway play, A Raisin in the Sun, to show Simone the reasons why she should be involved in politics. Hansberry and Simone met in the early 1960s when they both lived in New York state and they soon became close friends in no time. Also, Hansberry informed Simone that the Civil

Rights Movement involved only one component of racial and class struggle. She also informed

Simone that she was involved in this struggle just for being black after Simone admitted to feeling separated from the events that happened in the movement. Hansberry expressed to

Simone that she did not spend much on her appearance because she felt that thinking about beauty would somehow distract from her involvement in the movement. After this conversation with Hansberry, Simone thought:

Lorraine started off my political education and through her I started thinking about myself as a black person in a country run by white people and a woman in the world run by men. I realized I was ignorant and had much to learn, but my teachers from Lorraine onwards were the cream of the movement: , Godfrey Cambridge and many, many others, most of whom I could 73

never meet face to face, but in their writings, speeches, or just in their actions. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 87)

With a better sense of what was happening in America (e.g., civil rights leaders in jail, various injustices against black people), Hansberry asked Simone what action she was going to take to help the movement. As events continued to unfold, Simone continued to ignore the grave injustices against black people, like ’ assassination, the 16th Street church bombing, and the violence from police inflicted on black people. But she had an epiphany. She further explained:

All the truths that I had denied to myself for so long rose up and slapped my face. The bombing of the little Alabama and the murder of Medgar Evers were like the final pieces of a jigsaw that made no sense until you have fitted the whole thing together. I suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963, but it was not an intellectual connection of the type of fury, hatred, and determination. In church language, the Truth entered into me and I ‘came through.’ (Simone and Cleary 1991, 89)

Even though she did not receive the same high regard as her male counterparts in music

(both black and white), there was no denying that her political activism through her music and physical appearance inspired black men culturally in various ways. First, her activism made gender central to her radical racial politics by unlinking what some radical men linked together: racial progress, racial power, and masculine sexual power and was able to accomplish this by having fans cut across lines of race, class, gender, and nation (Feldstein 2005, 1377). Second, her transformation from a glamorous performer to a singer with a militant physical presentation associated with and Africa (e.g., the Afro) which influenced black male militants in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Feldstein 2005, 1374). Mainstream hip-hop artists, who are mainly composed of black men, have applied the work of Nina Simone, in voice and sound, as both heuristic and musical material that recalls a particularly radical moment in American culture 74 and simultaneously undergoes transformation as they cite her in response to the aesthetic and political forces of their times (Tillet 120). Hip-hop artists like and have sampled Simone’s works to express their shared resistance against the injustices of black people, but also to embrace black freedom. Most importantly, they are drawn to Simone’s ability to experiment sonically in infusing political statements in her music (Tillet 120). Since there is scholarship documenting that Simone has shaped black men’s political ideologies on civil rights, why has Simone not been lauded for her efforts like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Stokely

Carmichael, who had different approaches to the fight against racial injustice? There could be many answers to this question, but I argue that it is based on the black community’s support for black women in general whether it is in music or social justice.

“Mississippi Goddamn” and Nina Simone in Concert

Trying to figure out how to fight for the civil rights of black people, she decided to use what she knew: music. Her first thought was to fight with guns, but she felt that using violence was not the answer after a conversation with Stroud, her husband (Simone and Cleary 1991, 89-

90). Lamenting Bloody Sunday in Birmingham, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Church that killed four black girls, and the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, she sat at her piano and produced “” within an hour. It was her first civil rights song and she knew right then that her purpose in life was to address black justice, freedom, and equality until there is no need anymore. The song’s lyrics “filled with anger and despair” (Feldstein 2005,

1349) and it reimagines “the political work a song could do” (Feldstein 2005, 1350), which is

“meant to galvanize black life and resistance” (Bruce 2017, 1). Recorded live at in

1963 to a mostly white audience, Simone sang the lyrics about racial injustice to music in the style of a show tune. The audience thought she was being playful by their reaction of laughs to 75 her statement, “The name of this tune is ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ and I mean every word of it,” at the beginning of her performance. But realized that she was serious based on their reaction when she checked in when she during the middle of the song by asking them, “Bet you thought I was kidding didn’t you?” Her foray into this cause was an easy one because many of her fans saw her as an artist who had already made political statements. Her fans thought this because she already talked about civil rights at her performances praising Freedom Riders and acknowledging members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Fig. 2 Nina Simone. Image Courtesy of Philippe Gras/Alamy Stock Photo.

At first, Simone faced a dilemma because she thought that honoring the people in the social justice movement should not resort to a song. She performed it live in front of an audience in New York with much trepidation. This and her subsequent performances were widely received and the single sold well - except in the South. The record label was told the reason why it was not selling well is because of the profanity, but they knew the real reason why. Some sellers censored part of the song title and one distributor sent the records back with each record broken 76 in half. Simone’s reaction to hearing about what some people did to this particular record was confusion because she thought these people “missed the point” (Fields 2021, pbs.org). Her musical and life trajectory changed after these series of events. She decided to use her music to talk about civil rights and to promote the “hope of black revolution” (Simone and Cleary 1991,

91). As she became more immersed in the movement, she realized what is her purpose in life and saw that same purpose in her audiences. Starting with “Mississippi Goddam,” Simone reinvented black activism in the 1960s by speaking out more directly about the black struggle compared to other African American entertainers (Feldstein 2015, 1350). She further explained:

They [her audiences] knew I was making sacrifices and running risks just like they were, and we were all in it together…My music was dedicated to a purpose more important than classical music’s pursuit of excellence; it was dedicated to the fight for freedom and the historical destiny of my people. I felt a fierce pride when I thought about what we were all doing together. So if the movement gave me nothing else, it gave me self- respect. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 91)

Simone did not play it safe with expressing how she felt about the lack of regard to black human life in her music. With this particular song, she did not use the typical style of music to get her point across like other African American artists before her who use a gospel/spiritual angle to demonstrate peaceful protest to appeal to either a white audience or an audience that includes an older generation. In the article “Interludes in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical

Syncopation,” La Marr Jurelle Bruce interpreted Simone’s performance of this song as “to be black and a woman and shout ‘Goddam!’ into the snarling face of Jim Crow was surely to subvert white-supremacist and patriarchal psychonorms.” (2017, 3). I think she wanted to ruffle some feathers, in my honest opinion. She wanted to get people’s attention in order for her to express the social injustices against the black community. I also think that she wanted the individuals who held these racist and sexist ideologies to take notice and go, “Who does she 77 think she is?” as a black woman telling them about what was wrong with these hierarchical structures of society.

Performing “Mississippi Goddam” across the country and the world and substituting the word “Tennessee” in this specific lyric, “Tennessee made me lose my rest,” with other places in the United States was her special way to show resistance against the racial injustice that was happening in places like Selma, Watts [California], and Memphis. “Mississippi Goddamn” was also the last song on her 1964 album, Nina Simone in Concert. It contained several songs which shifted Simone from a music artist who performed classic jazz standards to one of the black women who became a staunch fighter in the Civil Rights Movement. While Simone created other songs about the movement like “” (a song originated in Bertolt Brecht and

Kurt Weill’s 1928 musical The Threepenny in which Simone wanted to use the story as a metaphor for the Civil Rights Movement to address race, gender, and class in the American

South) and “Old Jim Crow,” (a song protesting the Jim Crow laws) she has received a little more recognition within past years in scholarship on her involvement in the intersection of music, civil rights, and activism. This build in the scholarship about Simone means that her name is often overlooked in conversations about contributors to jazz music; these conversations overwhelmingly just include men. This action parallels the eradication of black women’s contributions in the fight against racial injustice in the Civil Rights Movement.

Nina Simone and Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Inspired by her fight for civil rights in her music and acknowledged the fact that fellow jazz vocalist (and black woman) Abby Lincoln received backlash for attempting to address the racial and sexist prejudices against black women, Simone continued to perform, believing that there were ideas that would help the movement. During the early to mid-1960s, she had a close- 78 knit relationship with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) because she felt that non-violence was the answer and would use that to stand up for what is right. She found out that the members of SNCC had her songs playing during their meetings at different locations across the country. Upon finding out this revelation that her music inspired these freedom fighters long before Simone’s own moment of reckoning in her fight in the civil rights movement, she knew that this was what she was meant to do. While Simone was certain that she wanted to be involved in the Civil Rights Movement, she did not know how or which organization (SNCC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality) would be the best fit for her. In addition to her activism, she still had a career that was flourishing and a child to raise. But she would be quick to help to speak out against social injustices when she needed to. For example, she marched up to the stage in the middle of an off-

Broadway performance admonishing two black actors – Bill Dukes and Brock Peters - for insulting black people in the roles they were portraying in the early 1960s. She met with various leaders in different types of levels in the fight for equality, but has developed her own sense of what she thought it should be:

When I started out in the movement all I wanted were my rights under the Constitution, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that no matter what the President or the Supreme Court might say, the only way we could get true equality was if America changed completely, top to bottom. And this change had to start with my own people, with black revolution (Simone and Cleary 1991, 100).

She felt that activism through her music was satisfying, but faced much opposition to the content in her lyrics in her travels, particularly in the South. While she felt empowered to speak out against the social injustices that African Americans have faced, she was keenly aware every day that she was a black woman and could be killed just for that reason. Her protest music 79 contained politically charged lyrics in which gender and sexuality informed her denunciation of racial discrimination (Feldstein 2005, 1376).

While Simone was fighting the social injustices against African Americans through her music, other African American women were involved in different positions in the Civil Rights

Movement, many in rank and file. This movement marked another pivotal moment in United

States history in which African Americans worked to dismantle inequalities in their civil rights during the Jim Crow era. During this period (1954-1968), several legal cases and federal regulations provided protection against discrimination in different spaces like schools, employment, and housing. One aspect of this social and political movement was the increase in the mobilization of African Americans using various strategies to eliminate racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and discrimination in the United States. By participating nonviolent actions like sit-ins, boycotts, and voter registration campaigns, for example. While the movement advocated for equality for all black Americans, it was dominated by black patriarchy as the majority of the credit was given. However, black women were heavily involved in the movement, however. Black women played a significant part in the movement and expression of black cultural nationalism and black power and they were also leaders, grass-roots activists, and cultural producers. But many organizations remained, for the most part, male-dominated

(Feldstein 2005, 1367). African American women have petitioned the courts, formed abolition and self-help societies, published newspapers, poems, and stories, fought against , and overall forged the modern Civil Rights Movement (Davis 1982, Lerner 1972). They were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to fight for civil rights, were part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize sit-ins and Freedom Rides and advocated for basic needs like childcare and better 80 working conditions. In 1935, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) was created to encourage black women to participate in civic, political, economic, and educational institutions, but this organization was heavily involved in the civil rights marches during the 1960s. Despite these contributions by black women, they still faced gender and sexual discrimination during this crusade. Only one woman was included on the organizing committee for The March on

Washington in 1963 and no black women was initially slated to speak during the program. (The organizers quickly change it by adding a small tribute to the women who were part of the movement after complaints were made and the omission was recognized. While this did happen, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and performed songs at The March.)

All classes of African American women participated in the movement - middle class, rural, domestic, professional women, educated and uneducated to fight in promoting civil rights and equal opportunities (Gyant 1996, 633). Many of these women were motivated to join the fight because they witnessed firsthand the constant racism, sexism, and oppression that their mothers and grandmothers endured and wanted better opportunities for themselves. Racial injustices, poor living conditions, lack of participation in the system, and the high rate of illiteracy among adults and children (preventing adults to register to vote) were other factors in why African American women were motivated to participate in the movement (Gyant 1996,

638). While the majority of the leaders in the movement were men, it is interesting to understand why there were not many women leaders. The reason was that they viewed the leadership roles differently as men. Black women viewed leadership as a collective effort while men viewed it as delegating responsibilities. In addition to that viewpoint, African American women leadership has had sparse scholarship in American history for a reason:

Obstructed by the dynamics of racism and sexism in the groups in which they live and work, the full leadership potential of Black females throughout their history 81

in this country has remained a relatively untapped or at best, underutilized resource.” (Dumas 1980, 203)

An interviewee in Passing The Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement by LeVerne Gyant said that because of the society and the culture in which we live, men have been expected to be leaders. In her assessment about the leadership dynamic between men and women, Gant suggested that black women do not feel resented about how black men are recognized more in this fight against social justice. She also said that they are glad that the men are fighting along with women (1996, 644-645). In other readings about men’s and women’s leadership during the Civil Rights Movement, the consensus has been that both African

American men and women should be lauded for their participation in the history of the movement (Nance 1996 and Urban 2002).

But there has been some scholarship where it has been noted that some black women were discriminated against by black men civil rights activists, or that they have been left out in the scholarship about the Civil Right Movement. Fannie Lou Hamer, Septima Poinsette Clark,

Unita Blackwell, and Diane Nash are just a small group of women who helped move the needle in the fight in the movement. Ella Baker, an American civil rights and human rights activist, was inspired early on to fight for racial justice upon hearing the stories about how her own grandmother stood her ground despite being treated harshly by her owner. After graduating from college, Baker was involved in many social programs that helped empower black Americans in economic and labor sectors before joining the National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People (NAACP) where she first served as New York City branch’s field secretary and then advanced to its President. When she left the NAACP and moved to Atlanta to help expand civil rights efforts after the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Baker’s efforts were an integral part in the initial organization of the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership 82

Conference (SCLC) during the Civil Rights movement, but she was not taken seriously for her knowledge because the men in the organization thought that her age and experience worked against her because of her gender. Also, she grew weary of King’s [Martin Luther] organization and became critical of SCLC for its male-dominated, hierarchical structure (Urban 2002, 185) which led her to create SNCC in 1960. This organization had more black women in leadership roles, like Diane Nash. She was the first field staff to be paid and guided the members in the

Freedom Riders initiative. Black women used grassroots mobilization in the civil rights movement by utilizing local neighborhood’s social institutions like churches and women’s clubs to help eliminate inequality of black Americans. With all of this work that black women accomplished, they still were subjected to clerical and non-essential tasks. If black women had a leadership role at SNCC, they had to confer with a man to make any decisions. Some black women in these organizations accepted this sexism because they felt that black men should take advantage of this opportunity of being in a leadership role, since they could. hooks analyzed this concept when she said that some black women activists did not give in to black men’s request to play a secondary role, but some did submit to their demands. She also explained that the movement began as an act to free all black people, but it became a platform to establish the black male patriarchy. She concluded, as a matter of fact, that black men ignore the dual impact of sexist and racist oppression on the social status of black women (hooks 1981, 5 and 6). Collins explained that contemporary U.S. black feminist thought reflects black women resisting this gender inequality within black civil society (2000, 7). Kimberlé Crenshaw described this as a failure of feminism to interrogate that race means the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism to interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of 83 women (1991, 1252) and that intersectionality does not take into account that cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which black women are subordinated (1998, 315).

Another unique example was Gloria Richardson, the leader of the Cambridge, Maryland

Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), who was part of the movement when it shifted away from purely civil disobedience. She was an advocate of peaceful protest, but did not back down from meeting force with force, with protests ultimately resulting in clashes with authorities

(Alexander 2020, washingtonpost.com) Even though Richardson was from the middle class, she was aware of the disparate living conditions of its black Americans and that racism affected more social institutions than schools and restaurants. One of those areas was health care. Having a couple of family members experience the denial of access to it, Richardson knew she had to do something to fix this problem. Knowing that the role of poverty in maintaining racism and power structures that kept black people down (Berry and Gross 2020, 183), she became the first official spokesperson for CNAC after representatives from SNCC came to the city to help organize civil rights actions where CNAC members began to promote economic equality in the city, dubbed

“The Cambridge Movement.” Her tactics were not widely embraced by civil rights leaders like

Martin Luther King, Jr. nor the Kennedy Administration. But King adopted Richardson’s idea that poverty is linked to systemic racism and it needed to be erased in order for black Americans to achieve accessibility to a better way of living. While Richardson was one of the five women who were honored as freedom fighters at The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in

1963, none of them was invited to speak to the audience; they were only allowed to sit on the stage. (On the other hand, Simone was able to use the stage to express her activism for civil rights through music.) Richardson’s ideology of self-defense inspired further civil rights luminaries such as and Stokely Carmichael. 84

During trips Simone took internationally, she noticed a difference in the audiences between there and the United States. She realized that her international audiences requested songs that she performed earlier in her career and figured out that her (and other artists’) music has been bootlegged in many international countries. She was aware that artists get taken advantage of all the time, but her major concern was that black artists were more disadvantaged than their white counterparts. After being with Colpix for years, she was courted to sign with another label named Phillips in 1964 and had a very amicable relationship with the label head,

Wilhelm Langenberg. When Langenberg died and Simone left the label, she decided to refocus her efforts to write/perform protest songs in the fight for social justice for black Americans.

Simone also realized that actions must be taken in order for black Americans to be treated with respect in the American society. But, she felt that her efforts were not helping the cause at all because she felt removed from the individuals who were participating in the rallies and the marches. She attributed this to her being a famous music star. In addition to not feeling connected to the movement, she also did not feel free to do things she wanted to do. Her reason for this self-assessment included the following:

Most of the decisions I made were taken in consultation with my manager/husband, accountant, lawyer, and record company. Like it or not, I couldn’t do what I wanted and think about the consequences later; I had to play months, sometimes years ahead. So I felt part of the struggle, yet separated from it. I was lonely in the movement like I had been lonely everywhere else. Sometimes I think the whole of my life has been a search to find the one place I truly belong. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 113)

Simone continued to perform around the world in the midst of social unrest after the murders of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X, but activities surrounding these events were not too far from her mind. As she continued the desire to help the cause in the plight of African Americans, she started to have issues with her husband (who was 85 also her manager) about which direction she wanted to take her career at this point. While there has been some scholarship that some black women did not have an issue with some male civil rights activists disregarding them as leaders (Nance 1996, 551), it should be noted that black women, including Simone, made significant contributions to the fight against racial injustice for all. Her fight in the Civil Rights Movement precluded her pioneering role in offering a vision of black cultural nationalism within and outside the United States that insisted on female power well before the apparent ascendance of black power or second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s (Feldstein 2005, 1352).

“Four Women” and Beauty Standards in Black Women

From the 1966 album Wild Is the Wind, Simone wrote the song, “Four Women” as a response to the lack of compassion from her husband. The song detailed how black women felt about themselves based on the hue of their skin which mirrors what black women in America think in real life. Addressing colorism head on, each of the four characters in the song describes the various stereotypes among black women. The first woman described as “Aunt Sarah” represented black enslavement, the second woman named “Saffronia” as a woman of mixed race who had to live in both worlds (black and white), the third woman known as “Sweet Thing” who was loved by both black and white people because she gave sexual satisfaction, and the last woman named “” who developed a thick skin due to the acknowledgement of the oppression that generations before her went through. Each verse in the song described each woman, but here is an example of some lyrics of Simone’s description of Peaches in which

Simone says she most identify with:

My skin is brown My manner is tough I'll kill the first mother I see My life has been rough 86

I'm awfully bitter these days 'Cause my parents were slaves What do they call me? My name is Peaches! (Simone 3:32-4:18)

Simone believed that “black women didn’t know what the hell they wanted because they were defined by the things they didn’t control, and until they had the confidence to define themselves they’d be stuck in the same mess forever” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 117). In an interview with the Globe, director of the play Nina Simone: Four Women Kenneth Robertson said that

Simone “made sure she gave these women a color as a songwriter. At a time when such things were not discussed, Nina was bold enough that she was going to challenge us with this”

(Sullivan 2020, www.bostonglobe.com). In the same article, actress Dionne Addai, who portrayed Simone in the play, agreed that Simone “gets specific, not just about the racism experienced by Black people but the things experienced by Black women, the sexism within the community,” (Sullivan 2020, www.bostonglobe.com).

Unfortunately, some radio stations misinterpreted Simone’s intention for the song as racist because they thought it perpetuated stereotypes. This led them to the decision not to play the song. Radio was not supportive of the song because they thought it was an insult to black women, but Simone did not agree. She thought that this song was a way to connect black women and men. In the long run, Simone did think she was part of the women’s liberation because she was thinking of a broader approach in the black struggle. Not only was she thinking about the struggle of black women, but she was also fighting against the social injustices experience by black men. Her purpose mirrored one of novelist and feminist Alice Walker’s concepts of womanism to include a connection between black community and black men. Simone finally understood why she was unhappy while she was experiencing success in her music. She further explained: 87

I didn’t suddenly wake up one morning feeling dissatisfied…I’d look in the mirror and see two faces, knowing that on the one hand I loved being black and being a woman, and that on the other it was my colour and sex which had fucked me up in the first place. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 118).

Simone was forward thinking in introducing the subject of colorism to the forefront before the topic became a bigger conversation within the black community.

Years later after the release of Simone’s “Four Women,” Patricia Hill Collins expanded the idea about colorism among African American women in the “Mammies, Matriarchs and

Other Controlling Images” chapter of her book, Black Feminist Thought when she explained that

“maintaining images of U.S. Black women as the Other provides ideological justification for race, gender, and class oppression” (2000, 70). She described some common stereotypes that have been historically applied to black women for a long time in popular culture which included minstrel shows, early radio programs, and early television shows. The first one, the mammy, a racial caricature who exemplified the relationship between the dominated group and the black woman who was the obedient servant in the white household. The matriarch, the second stereotype, symbolized the mother figure in the black home and the “bad” black mother.

Introduced in a government report titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, the black matriarchy thesis argued that black women who failed to fulfill their traditional “womanly” duties at home contributed to social problems in black civil society (Moynihan, 1965). Often, they tend to be single mothers or allegedly emasculate their husbands or lovers (Collins 2000,

75). The matriarch also fought against both racial and gender structures at the same time. She was sometimes considered the head of the household (this position is traditionally male) and the structure was established early when slavery defined black men and women’s roles by disrupting a traditional family dynamic. The third stereotype, the welfare queen, faced both racial and gender ideologies that typically defines as a black woman who lacks work ethic and does not 88 have a male partner to assist her: a big no-no in the dominant group in the social hierarchy. This stereotype started as term in Chicago media in 1974 to describe a woman who committed welfare fraud where , a presidential candidate at the time, used the term to criticize the social programs in America. When he won in 1980, media images increasingly and blamed black women for the deterioration of U.S. interests. Then, poor black women simultaneously become symbols of what was deemed wrong with America and targets of social policies designed to shrink the government sector (Collins 2000, 80) Lastly, the jezebel/hoochie is central in this nexus of controlling images of Black womanhood and represents a deviant Black female sexuality (Collins 2000, 81). Like the other stereotypes, the jezebel has origin ties to slavery where black women were stereotyped as sexually aggressive to justify white men’s sexual assaults against enslaved black women. Using that controlling image also allowed white slave owners to tie economic manipulation in this institution.

Not only does Collins explain their stereotypes, but she also discussed beauty standards of African American women in the chapter. Her main argument is that white women are privileged due to their blond, blue-eyed, thin appearance to Black women with African features of dark skin, broad noses, full lips, and kinky hair (Collins 2000, 89). Both topics on stereotypes and beauty appearances of black women have been a serious problem within the music industry for a very long time. In her book Right to Rock, Mahon further describes this phenomenon:

[...] black women [rockers] have to pursue their vision in a white male-dominated area where their race and gender upset the balance. Selling rock, especially the rock of female performers, is often about selling sexuality, low-key sensuality can be problematic. Mainstream American media representations construct black women as inadequately feminine [...]. Generally, black women’s complexions, facial features, hair, and body type diverge too much from European-centered beauty standards, and only a handful manage to win acceptance and would not identify with white male rock fans. (2004, 216) 89

Another offshoot from the issue of beauty standards is colorism. This term is defined as discrimination against individuals who have darken skin typical within their own racial group.

Black women creatives have historically addressed this issue in their own works like Maya

Angelou, , and Toni Morrison. As it was described earlier in this chapter,

Simone even acknowledged that the dark color of her skin has created limitations throughout her musical career. With “Four Women,” Simone was able to express how the intersection of being black and a woman, no matter what size or skin complexion, is not exempt from being discriminated from other social groups whether she was performing music or fighting for equality.

Taking a Stance and Creating Her Own

When she was fighting against racial injustice in American, she started to notice that her husband, who was also her manager, was not handling her business affairs in a proper (and legal) manner. After this realization, she started to make moves to separate from her husband. Once it finally happened, she had problems getting her business affairs together because she left that up to her husband/manager and he was not forthcoming with disclosing the financials. Her record label was not fully supportive because they were nervous about her political beliefs. She started to distrust people around her: black men, white men, the record companies, and the promoters.

Jacqueline Warwick in her book Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the

1960s, agreed that the hierarchy that places producers and songwriters at the head of the musical enterprise—followed at some distance by lyricists, sound engineers, and ultimately by musicians in their various ranks, beginning with lead guitarists and keyboard players and continuing downward, until drummers and rhythm guitarists emerge only slightly ahead of singers at the bottom of the ladder—became well established during the 1960s (2007, 90). 90

While she continued to tour across the country, she also had family issues mainly dealing with her father’s and sisters’ death. Unable to handle the turmoil in her family, she decided to retreat to in the early 1970s with her daughter Lisa to clear her head. She divorced

Stroud, but did not think about the financial implications that would soon follow the breakup of her marriage. Not only was she have a disillusioned about her personal relationships, but she also continued to have her reservations about the how the music business operates. At this point, she realized the shift was changing once the movement began to wane, when the leaders in social justice and music were no longer in the spotlight. She believed that these record companies acted in a more controlled way in working with artists. Simone was not far off the mark with this statement. Simone lamented on being the black artist that record labels claimed they could not fit in the new era of music. She believed that “the only black artists that record companies liked were those who crossed over by playing music for the white mass market, music which ran scared of its own colour” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 136). While the music content was different from Simone’s, “ music, especially music by black groups, played an important role in discourse about sexuality and respectability in adolescent culture, identifying the double standards for girls and boys and undermining racial segregation by presenting a source for girls of different class and race backgrounds to find ideas and information” (Warwick 2007, 142), this concept can also be applied to how Simone was pressured by the record companies to participate in respectability politics as an African American woman to appeal to mainstream audiences. She also believed that the music industry turned on her once they made money off of her talents.

But she could not get away from the legal ramifications that were bestowed on her by the music label executives. They were waiting for her to resign to their demands of rectifying some of the bad deals that happened when her husband was her manager. To avoid dealing with them, 91 she traveled back out of the country in order to figure things out. When that trip proved that it did not help Simone, she decided to get back on the stage to perform. At first, she did the management work herself instead of having other people do it, but it did not last long. An attempt to hire professional agents was confirmed to be less fruitful because she did not trust nor get along with them. At this point, some audiences and music industry professionals came to her concerts simply to find out if Simone would fail because of her reputation of being “difficult” or her calling out the music industry for being unsavory. The idea of Simone being called

“difficult” is rooted in sexism and media’s depiction of women as being assertive and ambitious, but men who are called these terms are praised for being so. Adding race to the picture creates another layer of pushback or criticism from external forces. She described what happened:

The press and the music industry found it difficult to accept that I didn’t give a damn about those people and what they represented. They expected me to be grateful just to be on stage in front of them, they thought I should feel honoured. I didn’t. The only thing I felt when I walked off stage was that I needed to take a bath as soon as possible, to wash their dirt off my skin. (Simone and Cleary 1991, 160).

She reunited with her husband, but only in a managerial role, for a small tour in the

United States. She thought she was headed for a comeback, but she got in trouble with the

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for failing to pay her taxes when her ex-husband was her manager the first time. After straightening out the situation with the IRS, Simone continued to tour, but decided to perform strictly internationally. After moving around to different countries such as , Barbados, and Switzerland, she settled in Paris, France during the 1980s. She settled there because she knew that the French people appreciated serious artists, as she considered herself as one, and they did not care much for the commercial side of the music unlike the United States. She also liked that Paris had a strong African community and felt like that she could be her true self there. With this mindset, she also decided to find individuals who 92 would support another shift in her music career. Even though she was getting offers from promoters, she was set on “mak[ing] it work on her own” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 166) and turned down their offers. Like her fans in America, the French expected her to be a star as well as a musician. Since she realized that her performing career was moving very slowly, she recorded an album to provide more exposure to her music. When her plan to be more in control of her career did not turn out the way she wanted, she relented to hiring a manager to handle her finances and a producer to handle her music project. She moved back to the United States and recorded another album. Her new manager made a conscious effort in getting Simone’s career back on track. Once she realized this, she also thought about the previous bad record deals that did not benefit her in the long run. With that mindset, she worked harder by making numerous concert and television appearances. This proved to be successful due to the positive feedback, though she did not change her views on the music industry and the social injustices against Black

Americans. She wanted to be more involved in the trajectory of her career, but her new manager assured that he was handling it. Simone was not on board with this arrangement and decided to part ways with him. She thought her manager was not looking out for her best interest at heart. In

Right to Rock, Maureen Mahon confirmed Simone’s apprehension with the idea that there were ways the music industry’s very businesslike emphasis on profit is exacerbated by its very

American problem with race (2004, 146), but gender should be included in this statement as well. In regard to the overarching theme to Simone’s relationship to record labels and management, Mahon also concluded that black artists “work within a restricted range of creative possibilities, control fewer economic resources, and have limited decision-making power” (2004,

147). With that, she found another manager and reconnected with her friends from the movement in the 1960s. “Fighting for the rights of my and sisters everywhere; America, Africa, all 93 over the world, years” (Simone and Cleary 1991, 176) was Simone’s reason for performing; that was her activism against the racialized and gendered structures not only in the music industry, but in a social framework.

Conclusion

During the 1970s and 1980s, Simone spent her time overseas after leaving RCA Records and was convinced to record another album after not having a release in six years. The result, an album titled Baltimore, was praised by her fans, but Simone was not entirely satisfied with the results. She reluctantly recorded four more over a five-year period, but took an extended break. A record label rep from Elektra persuaded Simone to conceive her final full-length album,

A Single Woman, which consists of well-known musicians who created music to accompany a reading that was personal to her. Her desire to live overseas continued when she established a home in Southern France. She also resumed touring during the 1990s while becoming a more polarizing figure in the music business. Simone was a woman who surrounded herself with people, but also had the ability to create a solitary existence. After a lifetime of “mak[ing] people feel on a deep level,” Simone died in her sleep on April 21, 2003 in her final home in southern

France.

Despite the fact that Simone became a very successful artist, she was always cognizant of how she fit in the music industry. As a child prodigy, Simone began to notice the stark difference growing up in North Carolina, where she experienced the dichotomy between her family living with very humble means and being in a space of privilege when she went to Miz Mazzy for piano lessons. Not getting accepted into the Curtis Institute was Simone’s turning point, when she personally felt a victim of systemic racism. Her move to New York City and the subsequent entry into the music business taught her a lesson about not trusting music labels and management 94

(who comprised exclusively men, both white and black) in the guidance of her music career.

After having that pivotal conversation with American playwright and friend Lorraine Hansberry in the 1960s, she became keenly aware of who she was as a black woman in America and expressed that sentiment in her songs, “Mississippi Goddam” and “Four Women” as part of the

Civil Rights Movement. She also had to fight against gendered pushback from both music critics and audiences who did not give her male counterparts the same treatment. Unfortunately, it was after Simone died when she was finally being recognized for the musical and social work that she contributed to the culture. While she did follow some of its standard practices, Nina Simone was not afraid to take a stand against individuals who tried to conform her beliefs both within and outside of the music industry as a black woman. 95

CHAPTER THREE. JANET JACKSON

This is a story about control, my control Control of what I say, control of what I do And this time I'm gonna do it I hope you enjoy this as much as I do Are we ready? I am 'Cause it's all about control And I've got lots of it. – “Control” (Jackson 0:06-0:34)

Introduction

The Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s was a pivotal moment for black women to become more politically, socially, and culturally involved in American culture. The movement also created an avenue for black women to enter spaces previously off-limits to them to make a difference for their communities and for themselves. On the other hand, these women had to navigate in these gendered spaces, which were led primarily by African American men.

Historically, these women have said that they were not looking to be leaders, but some of them, such as like Ella Baker at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were concerned for its male-dominated, hierarchical structure (Urban 2002, 185). Although Nina Simone was a singer, she was another black woman during the Civil Rights Movement who did not conform to what other social identities dictated. Through her music, she fought against the racial injustices affecting the black community. As a black woman, she also fought throughout her whole career against a system where record label heads, music producers, music critics and even fellow musicians who the majority were white or black men. Through songs like “,” she addressed gender discrimination in a Civil Rights movement space. She was also one of the black women who was a pioneer in the black activist movement that inspired male leaders like

Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. 96

While Simone was laying spaces for others to stand up for racial and gender equality during the 1970s, black women singers such as soul singer Aretha Franklin continued to directly

(and indirectly) establish and preserve the legacies of Big Mama Thornton’s and Simone’s contributions to popular culture in spite of the racialized and gendered power systems in the music industry. Soul/R&B singer Aretha Franklin, who has been regarded as having one of

America’s greatest singers in any style and dubbed as the “Queen of Soul” (Pareles 2018, www.nytimes.com), used fame to contribute to many civil rights causes in many ways. She released “Respect” in 1967 which became an anthem for the racial and gendered political movements at the time (Lang 2018, www.time.com), donated money for operational costs to keep Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the road to continue the Civil Rights Movement and even offered to post bail for activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis. As it was mentioned in the previous chapter about Nina Simone having the reputation of being “difficult,” Franklin was known to exhibit the characteristics of being a “diva.” But, she was located in a space where the majority of the decision makers in the music industry were still white men. Calling her a “diva” was a way to negatively making a black woman who is ambitious and stands up for herself.

At the same time during the second-wave feminist movement, black women like Flo

Kennedy, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Audre Lorde, and Margaret Sloan engaged in initiatives in different capacities to fight against racism and sexism by creating grassroots organizations or writing think pieces on a national level through platforms like the National Organization for

Women (NOW) and Ms. Magazine. This movement also shifted the way black women created their own spaces in American culture openly and unapologetically lead the way for other black women who came after them such as R&B/pop Janet Jackson. Although she was only a young 97 child during the time of the movement, Jackson became a superstar in her own right against the challenges of having that famous last name.

Goin' Back to Indiana (and California)

Born on May 16, 1966 in Gary, Indiana, Janet Damita Jo Jackson is the youngest member of the family of ten where spent her early years during the end of the Civil Rights Movement.

Her parents, Joseph and Katherine Jackson, had humble beginnings in the traditional sense, he as a full-time crane operator at Inland Steel Company and she as a housewife. Both parents were part of the Great Migration, in which their families moved to Indiana from the South for different reasons, but both were looking for better opportunities for themselves and their children. During the 1960s (after the couple moved there ten years earlier), the number of nonwhites in the city increased to 38.9% in 1960 from 29.4% in 1950 according to the United States Census

Bureau (General Population Characteristics - Indiana) due to the rise of the steel industry as it became the major employer in the city. While they were a close-knit family, the patriarch, Joe

Jackson, ran a strict household on 2300 Jackson Street when he attempted to pursue his musical career with his own blues band. Unfortunately, it did not work out for him. Instead, he focused on his sons - Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael - to form the musical group The

Jackson 5. They performed around town in Gary and recorded music locally, but their big break came when they were signed to Records in 1969.

Janet Jackson was three years old when the family moved to California in order for her brothers to record for the iconic label. She does not recall any memories of growing up in Gary, except one: her eldest sister getting married there. But, her early childhood memories were the ones in Encino, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Hardly ever in dresses, she would play with 98 her brothers in activities like baseball and . While her childhood was seemingly idyllic, her experiences in school were not. She recalls one particular moment at school:

I remember those comparisons when I was the only black child in an all-white school. Some of the kids did things that weren’t intended to be mean, but they were funky and made me feel less-than. I remember them wanting to touch my hair because it wasn’t straight - it was different. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 11)

Not only did she have insecurities dealing with her classmates at school, but she also had them within her own family. As a child, she often compared herself to her older sisters remarking how beautiful they were and thinking to herself that she would never be as beautiful as them. She also explained that her brothers’ constant teasing (especially from Michael) about her appearance really affected her self-confidence. Compounded with the idea from her father that pleasing others would lead to one’s own happiness, Jackson was already battling the pressures of being an entertainer (like her famous brothers) at the young age of seven (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 32).

Wanting to create a similar performing family act like The Osmonds (a white American family music group who were very popular during the 1970s), her father brought in Jackson’s two sisters Rebbie and LaToya, her youngest brother Randy and Jackson. Knowing that she was eventually going into the “family business,” she started to perform with Randy at the MGM in

Las Vegas in various skits that included dressing as the popular entertainment couple from the

1970s, Sonny and . Her childhood was complicated, to say the least. She was trying to do normal things (e.g., attending Brownie troop meetings, going to school, playing with her classmates) while continuing to perform with her brother and going on acting for advertisement commercials and theater. Her life seemed pretty busy juggling between being in the entertainment business and having a childhood, but her relationship with her father, who also acted as her manager, was a defining moment that shaped the evolution of her career. 99

Janet Jackson and Joe Jackson - Their Relationship in the Entertainment Business

Jackson’s relationship with her father, Joe, was a very complicated one. Her father had a reputation for having a proprietary interest in his children's welfare which made him overbearing and difficult (Taraborrelli 1987, www.sun-sentinel.com). First, her father wanted her and her siblings to call him by his first name rather than any form of what a child’s moniker for their male parent. One reason why Jackson did not call her father “Dad” is because she and her siblings feared him. Another reason was that her father was a man of action, not words according to Jackson. Her father was not a nurturer unlike her mother. There was a disconnect between her father and his kids and the business relationship further that disconnect. The dynamic between having a “normal” childhood and working in entertainment with her family was very difficult for

Jackson. The levels of her performance anxiety between answering a math problem in class and being onstage at the MGM Casino in showed a stark difference. She said that she felt more comfortable performing in front of people in her own familiar surroundings. Jackson elaborated:

I hated such situations [regarding public speaking] because they always reminded me of that schoolroom trama, which had deepened my shyness and fear of facing a group of strangers. If I’m on stage, I’m fine. Being onstage is like being at home. I’ve grown up onstage. But if the stage is a classroom or a press conference, I’m unhappy and reluctant to say much of anything. (A specific school incident) from my seat to a position in front of the class changed my life. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 38-39)

Even though her family had success in the entertainment industry, Jackson and her siblings led normal lives as much as they could by doing chores at the estate and playing childhood games with one another. Also, they did not always get what they wanted despite the fact that their parents had the means to provide. Jackson and her siblings feared their father because of his physical and emotional violence. When she became an adult, Jackson understood the reasons for his actions. In her dissertation, Exploring Sexual Socialization Among Black Father-Daughter 100

Relationships, Susan Marie Holmes-Walker explained that black fathers have to prepare their children to deal with the negative personal feeling associated with racism, and help them develop the skills necessary to succeed economically in a society that seems to retard such advancement in black children (2010, 26). Joe Jackson’s relationship with his kids reflected Holmes-Walker’s assessment. Hence, Janet Jackson’s father was known for his dictator-like personality, the result of having had to struggle for years in order to gain recognition and respect (Taraborrelli 1987, www.sun-sentinel.com). While she does not condone his actions, she understands why he did it so she could be someone who could stop the cycle.

Jackson’s mother wanted her to be a typical teenager by enrolling her in ballet classes and developing relationships with girls her own age. But, her father had other plans for Jackson: advancing her career beyond her time at the MGM Grand where she had honed her acting skills.

This caught the attention from Norman Lear, creator of such as and

Maude. Lear called Jackson’s father, who became her manager officially at this point, to find out if Jackson was available to audition for a role in the , which was a spinoff from Maude. She successfully secured the role of Penny Gordon Woods, a physically and emotionally abused child who was adopted by one of the main characters, Willona Woods. She believed that her time on the show gave her some confidence that she “had accomplished something on my own, apart from my family” (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 49). After her run on

Good Times where she was tutored privately while on set, she returned to a regular, public school. She had to adjust to being at a predominately white school, but things changed for her when some black and Latino kids were bused to her school. At school, they danced to black music during lunchtime and Jackson marveled at being in the same space because she felt like she could be who she was around them: a young black woman. She befriended another young 101 black woman from another part of town, but their similar interests, including music, were what brought them together. She learned two valuable lessons from that interaction with her classmate: sincerity and humility. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 68) Wise at a young age, Jackson understood that she came from a place of privilege as a result from her and her family’s success in the entertainment business. Things were going well at her school until racial tension affected her personally; years later, she turned that feeling into a pivotal moment in her recording career years later.

After returning to television to star in shows like A New Kind of Family (1979-1980) and

Diff’rent Strokes (1980-1984), she starred in the musical television drama, Fame, for one season in 1984 at the insistence of her father. She did not want to take the role, but she did anyway because she was raised to obey her parents. During the time she spent on the set of Fame, she at the age of eighteen she eloped with singer James DeBarge (who was also a part of a musical dynasty) in 1984. But their marriage was quickly annulled the next year. Years later, she realized that she entered the relationship with DeBarge for the wrong reason and felt that she was not emotionally mature enough to be married. After the dissolution of her marriage, she found another outlet to express herself: recording music. Her original attempt in the studio recording music caught the attention of her father and he informed her that she was going to have a singing career even though she wanted to continue her acting. Jackson recalled that moment:

But before I could explain to Joseph why I wasn’t interested in a singing career, my father closed down the discussion. It was his way. And that was that. A few weeks later Joseph returned with the news: he had secured me a contract at A&M Records. I was set to do an album. I was all of fourteen years old. I didn’t want to do an album. I wasn’t ready to do an album. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 88)

As with the Fame role, she was doing what she was being told. She did not have the courage to stand up for herself to her father. With the relationship dynamic she had with her father, Jackson 102 always questioned whether she did the right thing in letting her father make all her professional decisions.

Nevertheless, she continued to follow her father’s advice about recording music. Her debut album, Janet Jackson, was released in 1982 on A&M Records. Despite having top-notch producers working on it and her father overseeing the project, the album did not fare as well as everyone anticipated, and Jackson thought that it “did not bring her any closer to the fame that had been achieved by my brothers” (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 92). Things were not any better for the success of her second album, Dream Street, released in 1984. Jackson and her father had different concepts about the direction of her music career. Her father instilled in her (and her brothers) the belief that success means having number one hits, but Jackson continued to follow under his direction. It was after the release of her second album was when Jackson realized that she needed to take reins of her own career in order for her to succeed. Here’s what Jackson thought after that revelation:

I also began to think about what it meant for me to care for myself. That was a different concept. Slowly - very slowly - I was beginning to understand that if major success were to come, it would have to come on my terms, not my father’s. If my early albums did just okay, as opposed to great, I would have to figure out why. If I wanted my music to reflect more of me, I’d have to put more of myself into it. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 93)

What Jackson felt was what Holmes-Walker described as the influence of power struggles between parents and children, the daughters’ attempts to reach independence from the family during late adolescence, and loss of time valuable in the development of their relationships

(2010, 82). The dynamic between Jackson and her father was that he was trying to protect her because she was a young woman. Adding to the fact that this was a black man raising a black daughter did not make the relationship any easier. Her main struggle was trying to fulfill other individuals’ vision of her career and failing to meet those expectations. She wanted her career to 103 be more reflective of who she truly was as an artist; not what others thought it should be. In order to do this, the first step was breaking away from the “family business” that she grew up in since she was a child (Thus, this included ending the business relationship with her father.)

Janet’s in Control

At only nineteen years old, she moved to to record her third album, Control

(1986), under the direction of mega music producers James “Jimmy Jam” Harris and Terry

Lewis (S.O.S Band, New Edition, Mary J. Blige). This major shift in her life happened after painstakingly firing her father as her manager and hiring A&M Records executive John McClain, who incidentally was a close friend of the . It was McClain who brought Jackson to Jam and Lewis. Both men were once part of the R&B/ band, The Time, but were unceremoniously fired by their boss, . In her semi-autobiography, : A Journey to

Finding and Loving Yourself, Janet Jackson recalled seeing the band in concert years earlier and remarked how she wanted to sing with a band like that because she thought that they were

“superfunky” (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 103). Although she was nervous moving to a new city without her father’s guidance, she was looking forward to the new experiences that were waiting for her in Minneapolis. She described this move as “a watershed moment; my life was never the same again. Yet it was exciting as well” (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 95). She further explained that she was a little prudish; a little uptight. She knew she wanted control. She still believed in creative control, but soon saw that she’d have to give in order to get: give herself over to a creative environment that was different from, and even a little dangerous than anything she’d ever known (Ritz 1993, www.rollingstone.com). Once she was in Minneapolis, Jackson realized that she was in charge of her own destiny, of figuring out how to switch from being obligated to wanting to record music. Being out on her own was a frightening experience because she was 104 used to being part of the family business. After a conversation with Jam, she realized that she had to act like she was in control of situations that might have scared her. She did not notice until later that facing these fears served as the blueprint for songs like “Nasty” and “What Have You

Done For Me Lately?” for the album. Jackson stated that Control was the first time she got to include her personal emotions and feelings in words so that people could feel them when they listened to it (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 99). Yet, she was still grappling with the fact that she was trying to mark her own independence while having a hard time separating from the business relationship with her father.

After being in Minneapolis for a while, she thought about her family dynamic regarding responsibility while growing up in California and a conversation she had with her brother

Michael about living out dreams and life goals. This self-reflection led her to believe that she was equipped with the ability to take more interest in the direction of her own life. Under the guidance of Jam and Lewis, Jackson felt comfortable in the recording process with them because they had the same vision for her as she had for herself. Reflecting later on the Control days, she said:

Today when I watch the videos I made for Control, I remember being so energized by this new direction. I loved the new music and the new, independent life I was leading. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 103)

In an Instagram Live chat with DJ D-Nice in November 2020, he asked Jam and Lewis if they were involved with the video concepts or was it just based on music. Jam replied:

“Not, not with Janet though. She had very clear ideas of musically what she wanted to do and how to bring things to life. It was such a thrill after what we done “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” and um, to see the video and to see her dancing and doing her thing. The thing we wanted to do with Janet was real simple: When you watch really old videos of Janet. I meant really old, the variety show days when it was her and Randy (Jackson’s older brother) dancing together and that kinda stuff. And she is acting so feisty and she has all of this attitude. That’s the way I always had in our minds. We always thought of Janet like that: 105

just a woman with a bunch of attitude, right? Cuz this young lady with a bunch of attitude.” (@dnice)

The start of Jam’s and Lewis’ musical relationship with Jackson was rare in regard to how men producers worked with black women singers whether it was the first or fifteen time on different music projects. Both producers worked along with Jackson instead of dictating with she should record for the album. In fact, they encouraged Jackson to not only write lyrics from personal experiences, but this collaboration was the start of owing autonomy creatively on her subsequent albums.

Control, Jackson’s third album, was released on February 4, 1986 to international success. The album was also the prototype for different genres of music including “” where the majority of the artists who performed the music were men. Control also allowed Jackson to be noticed as an artist in her own right; stepping out from under the success of her famous family. She wanted to appear as “worldly, tightly in control, capable of resisting all manipulation” (Stevenson 1987, www.spin.com). The desire for that independence from her family reflected in the very first verse of the title track:

When I was 17 I did what people told me Did what my father said, And let my mother mold me But that was a long ago I'm in control, never gonna stop Control, to get what I want Control, I like to have a lot Control, now I'm all grown up. (Jackson 1:12-1:28)

The Control project was also a culmination of surviving through an annulment, the dissolvement of her business relationship with her father, hiring new management, and working with producers who lived outside of California. Speaking of her father, he insisted that Jackson should stay in Los Angeles so he could watch after her, but the production team declined his request. (In 106 fact, Jackson’s father insisted that the album was not going to sell after listening to the album’s outcome!) They wanted Jackson to be in a space where she would have no distractions from the

“Hollywood vibe” that she grew up on and where there would be no individuals from her father’s entourage influencing Jackson’s creativity. Jam further explained in the same Instagram interview with DJ D-Nice:

All what we wanted to do is to try to bring that feisty attitude that she had on those records out and it happened because she was at a point of her career where she had something she wanted to say. It wasn’t like we were handing her songs and going that these were the songs. We talked to her for a week before we even went into the studio. And then when we showed her…and she said, ‘When are going to get started [to record music]?’ ‘Well, we already started (inaudible) and (inaudible) we started Control off, she said, ‘Oh wow, this is what we have been talking about!” And then she said, ‘So whatever we talk about, that’s what we are going to write about? I said, ‘Yeah.’ Then she said, ‘Oh, I want to write about this and I want to write about this.’ That’s the thing got her going and that was the thing we were able to do. And that was the difference. It was really, you know, empowering her to be herself. And that’s the thing we try to do with the artists, all the artists that we work with. (@dnice)

What Jam and Lewis accomplished with Jackson on the Control project was a stark difference from some relationships men producers have with women music artists. Although the man producer/woman artist musical relationship is nothing new in the industry, there have been many instances where the man producer received more of the recognition and praise from critics and audiences alike. In the early twentieth century, music by black women artists were produced mostly by white men on record labels that were overseen by white men. In the 1960s, music producers like and Phil Spector were known for creating the “Motown Sound” and the “Wall of Sound” by music critics while girl groups like and and

The Ronettes, who actually performed the songs were less recognized. As Jacqueline Warwick states in Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s, the male producer will often make even more of an effort to eclipse a female performer than a male one (2007, 49). 107

For example, Gordy’s goal for Motown Records was to achieve crossover success with white audiences which is why it was important to have control in how their music and image should be for the black women artists at Motown. For example, Gordy fired Ballard, one of the original members of The Supremes, because she did not fit the image of the “upwardly mobile blackness” (Warwick 2007, 158) that Gordy wanted to achieve and Ballard’s singing voice was not what Gordy was looking for in order to attract the teen demographic.

In more contemporary times, this relationship between the man producer and the woman music artist has not evolved. For example, prolific producer (real name: Timothy

Mosley) was instrumental in the professional resurrection of two women music artists of color,

R&B artist Aaliyah and Canadian-Portuguese pop artist Furtado. In Naturalizing Male

Authority and the Power of the Producer, Marita B. Djupvik argued that the general acknowledgment by journalists of Timbaland’s constructive commercial impact upon Furtado’s career and music resonates with their personal narratives. The Canadian-Portuguese Furtado had begun to struggle a bit after her second album failed to generate any hits. Virginia producer

Timbaland had already saved many a stalled career. The late R&B singer Aaliyah struggled with her second album due to a personal scandal that forced her to break with her record company and producer. Timbaland (and ) came to her rescue and produced the album One in a

Million, which went double platinum in 1996 (2017, 186). Djupvik also concluded that both

Gordy and Timbaland used different tactics due to different times and audiences, but each fills the mold of a dominating producer (2017, 193). In addition to white men who were the driving force in the music production of black women artists, Gordy and Timbaland are examples of black men producers who had “controlling” positions in the production of music by women 108 artists of color. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Jam and Lewis’ musical relationship with

Jackson was more collaborative instead of a one-sided, dominated partnership.

While McClain supported Jackson’s musical breakthrough, he fully invested into her career by implementing practices such as adjusting her physical appearance to conform to body standards in the music industry (e.g., diet and exercise), working with a vocal coach, and partnering with choreographer (who became a pop artist in her own right.) This is a bit ironic since the Control project stressed Jackson making her own decisions but there were still men in the industry who control the way her body should look. There was talk in the industry about McClain’s perceived authority over Jackson’s career, but McClain argued that his decisions were viewed incorrectly, saying that he did pry into her business a bit, but he was aiming to make her the “queen of the music industry” (Stevenson 1987, www.spin.com). The combination of self-expression and artistic experimentation was embraced by critics and audiences and set the tone for women artists in crafting their own careers, particularly for black women. Unlike many women artists before her, Jackson shared co-writing and co-producing credits with Jam and Lewis on Control. On song after song on Control, Jackson, Jam, and Lewis would seek to create such a feminist affect, one that could power a nuanced black womanhood

(Capetola 2020, 104). Capetola further explained that this feminist affect “embodies a tension between neoliberalism and black feminist solidarity” (Capetola 2020, 104). Jackson embraced content on women’s empowerment in songs from the album: “What Have You Done for Me

Lately?” (her feelings about her annulment to James DeBarge that reflected her outlook on life),

“Nasty” (how she stood up against street harassment on a Minneapolis street) and of course

“Control” (how she was finally taking control of her life). Other notable tracks from the album were “Let’s Wait Awhile” (encouraging sexual abstinence and sexual intimacy at the right time 109 of a relationship) and “” (finding relief and fun in a lover), her first number one hit on the US . In an interview on the Swedish talk show Jacob Stege in

1986, Jackson addressed to the statement that the Control album was a “feminist album” with the following:

A lot of people ask me “Am I a feminist?” And I ... a lot of people have a lot of different definitions of feminists. So, I ... just say if it’s someone, a woman who’s taking control of her life as well as your career and just getting into, into the things like that then I say that I am a feminist. (DarkSupernova, 3:37-3:52)

Janet, Black Women, and Second-Wave Feminism

Jackson demonstrated a familiar feminist narrative of overcoming or a black woman’s account of getting her voice out into a racist and sexist music industry (Capetola 2020, 105) in her music, investigating how institutional racism and sexism affect black women’s psychic lives

(Capetola 2020, 96), and turned her personal stories on Control into a politics of loud, assertive, and emotionally aware Black womanhood (Capetola 2020, 97). But, it was black women singers like Jackson who truly took ownership (agency) through their performances to express their displeasure at the spectacular marginalization of African American women (Brooks 2011, 183).

Black women had to navigate through a racialized and gendered hierarchical structure in public spaces, but specifically that space was the video to the title track, “Control.” In the beginning of the video, it featured her as a young woman who was a music artist wanting to move out of her parents’ home to live independently. But her father was against the idea. Feeling down, she runs into her musicians friends which included Jam and Lewis and she told them that she and her father had a disagreement about her moving out. Her friends encouraged not worry about that at the moment and to get ready for the performance that night. The video also showcased Jackson’s ability to command a stage with flashy lights, choreography, and both Jam and Lewis playing 110 instruments behind her. That “spectacle” in form of that video informed Jackson’s Control project as a consideration in an extension of the women’s liberation movement.

Branching out from the Civil Right Movement, the women’s liberation movement (also called the Second Wave of Feminism), which started in the early 1960s and continued into the

1980s, challenged the social, political, and economic hierarchies that limited and narrowly defined the woman’s position in society. Women participants who led the charge felt that sexism/sexual discrimination was the root of this control and patriarchy shaped the power dynamics in gender control in this society. The women’s liberationists were looking for gender equality and social freedom within private and public spaces such as the workplace and educational institutions. In addition to disputing the patriarchy and social hierarchies, the movement also wanted women to express their individuality and encouraged empowerment. Like the suffrage movement in the early twentieth century, the women’s liberation movement was mostly led by white women and black women were shut out in this fight as they had to handle compound racial and gendered injustices. Not only were they the female group most victimized by sexist discrimination and sexist oppression, but their powerlessness was also such that resistance on their part could rarely take the form of organized collective action (hooks 1981,

161). Becky Thompson expanded that thought in “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the

Chronology of Second Wave Feminism” saying:

This [hegemonic] feminism is white led, marginalizes the activism and world views of women of color [...] and treats sexism as the ultimate oppression. Hegemonic feminism deemphasizes or ignores a class and race analysis, generally sees equality with men as the goal of feminism, and has an individual rights based, rather than justice-based vision for social change. (2002, 337). hooks agreed with Thompson that white women’s organizations could confine their attention to issues such as education, charity, or to the formation of literary societies, while black women 111 were concerned with issues such as poverty, care for the elderly and disabled, or prostitution

(1981, 165). Jackson focused on social causes like agency, sexuality, and mental health during the height of her career in the 1980s and 1990s. Collins also agreed with Thompson that white women find it difficult to get out of the way and encourage a fully articulated, black feminist agenda where black women are in charge (2000, 234). She further explained that neglect from white women scholars is also prevalent in the omission of black feminist ideas in their works

(Collins 2000, 6) and hooks agreed explaining that white female scholars who support feminist ideology have also ignore the contributions of black women (1981, 160). Black feminism had been around in some form for a very long time, but it manifested into a more distinct fashion during the black power era (Berry and Gross 2020, 193), The need for color-led organizations prompted the formation of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) which fought against racism and sexism, and whose major initiative was to address issues black women faced.

Black women were champions of the women’s movement, but it was the racism they faced that forced them to concentrate on them and other black women.

Even after Control was completed and finally declaring her independence, Jackson still was entangled in complicated power dynamic between her father and her new manager.

Jackson’s father was afraid that others would come in to steal Jackson away from him and take advantage of the hard work he had accomplished in building her career. He was against

Jackson’s image transformation from the sweet, innocent, and virginal type to the tough, “street- talking”, leather-wearing, sexy star from the Control and the videos. He thought that many would not accept her new image. But Jackson strongly disagreed. She called the new look “sassy” and McClain said he “wasn't trying to get to a 50-year-old audience. [...] trying to get these kids out here” (Stevenson 1987, www.spin.com). 112

Here’s what Jackson thought about making the album:

Gaining artistic and management control was vital to me then and still is now. Working with Jimmy [Jam] and Terry [Lewis], I was passionate in writing songs, lyrics, telling my own story, and finding my own voice. I had to do that apart from my past. (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 103)

The Control album was an important part of Jackson’s musical journey. She was able to use her creativity on her own terms to discuss what she has experienced growing up as a young black woman wanting to break from the shadows of her famous family. Despite the constant praise of

Jam and Lewis’ music production on the album, Jackson ignored the critics and felt gratified about her contributions to the project. When she accepted her two for the Control album in 1987, she said:

The reason I'm so proud of this album is that I did it on my own, without my family's help. That makes my success even more important. Finally, I'm starting to feel like I'm my own person. To me, that's a relief. (Taraborrelli 1987, www.sun-sentinel.com)

After the successful run of Control, Jackson went back into the studio with Jam and

Lewis in the late 1980s to record her next album, 1814 (1989), that contained socially conscious topics such as illiteracy, racism, crime, and social injustice. This album was a response to her observation of the hardships of everyday people that was reported in the media.

Despite many objections from music executives and the criticism she received by moving away from the musical sensibility of the Control project, Jackson held firm in her belief to record music about her social concerns in the world. To help drive her message to audiences, she adopted an all-black outfit motif to symbolize the severity of the issues. She did not want to appear glamorous or hip to draw attention away from the important matters at hand (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 111). In hindsight, the album resonated with many different people and it helped some people to turn their lives around for the better. For example, a woman wrote to Jackson that 113 the album inspired her to wear all black at work protest the comments she received from co- workers and her boss that her clothes were deemed provocative (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 112-

113). Not all of the music on the album addressed serious topics. Songs like “”,

Fig. 3 Janet Jackson. Image courtesy of Geraint Lewis/Alamy Stock Photo.

“Alright”, and “Escapade” highlighted a more buoyant Jackson from the Control era. But the video for “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” was a transformative moment for Jackson when she showcased a more sexual, sensual side by wearing a halter top, jeans, a blonde wig and sashaying in front of the camera. Directed by late fashion photographer Herb Ritz who is known for his intimate images both still pictures and videos, he shot close-ups of Jackson moving her hands over her face and body sometimes in slow motion. This transition marked a new shift in

Jackson’s career and redefining women’s empowerment. 114 janet.: “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby!”

After Rhythm Nation, her fifth album, janet. was released in 1993 as Jackson’s opus to a woman’s sexual liberation. While Control was the beginning of her breaking away from her and family claiming independence, janet. represented was the definitive separation of her public connection to her family by dropping her last name. She enjoyed recording this album because she revealed who she was at that moment, presenting sensuality as an important and beautiful part of her being....she was feeling free (Jackson with Ritz 2011, 124). Inspired by poet Maya

Angelou’s work when Jackson starred in the movie, Poetic Justice (1993), Jackson wanted to record something lighter yet bold after addressing difficult topics on Rhythm Nation. The content of the album addressed the beauty of sex and how she was not afraid to express that sentiment from her own personal experience. Jackson explained:

[...] sex has been an important part of me for several years. But it just hasn’t blossomed publicly until now. I’ve had to go through some changes and shed some old attitudes before feeling completely comfortable with my body. Listening to my new record, people intuitively understand the change in me. (Ritz 1993, www.rollingstone.com)

Her journey of sexual freedom through her music and visual performances inspired other women to take one of their own. This was a ground-breaking event because black women have reacted to the repressive force of the hegemonic discourses on race and sex that constructed their image with silence, secrecy, and a partially self-chosen invisibility (Hine 1989, 915). Jackson addressed the politics of being an African American woman to the interiority of Black women’s sexual and emotional experiences (Capetola 2020, 114). One of the biggest platforms of the second-wave women’s movement was protecting the agency of women’s bodies and their right to adequate reproductive healthcare. Toni Cade Bambara, in an essay “The Pill: Genocide or

Liberation?” from the anthology entitled The Black Woman which explored important black 115 women’s issues, changed the narrative about birth control explaining that Black women’s ability to free themselves from poverty, welfare, and social and political exclusion was directly tied to seizing control of their own bodies through contraception and legalized abortion (Barry and

Gross 2020, 194; Bambara 1970, 166). There has been the narrative where white women were the “face of the movement”, but black women’s participation has been vastly ignored. This articulation was rooted in a Black feminist agenda as African American women who experienced sexist and racist discrimination in forms that could not be pulled apart and fought separately

(Randolph 2005, 137).

On janet., Jackson continued her music collaboration with Jam and Lewis from her previous two albums, but took a larger role in the writing and producing process. Unlike her two previous albums, she and her producers experimented with different types of music genres like jazz (“Funky New Band”), house (“Throb”), rock (“If”), and (“New Agenda”). This album was much more personal to her than the previous two which is why she thought it was important to take a more hands-on approach in songwriting and music production. Not only was she heavily involved in the recording sessions, but she was involved in the creative processes of her performances such as musical concepts, dancing, promoting, and touring. She drew from her own life to identify ideas for content in her albums. Watching musicals as a kid inspired Jackson to create concepts for her videos and stage sets for her tours. A big influence from her brothers’ experiences being on the road affected Jackson to create striking stage sets for her tours. Like her previous two albums, janet. received positive reviews overall, but there was some criticism regarding the new deal with in 1991. Jackson’s recording contract with A&M

Records, home to her first four albums, was up for renewal. But other record companies were vying for Jackson to record for them. After a bidding war, Virgin Records came out as the 116 company that signed Jackson to a contract worth an estimated $40 million, making her the world's highest paid musical act at the time. While this was considered a milestone for , this deal met with criticism because it was thought that Jackson got the deal because of her relationship to her family, and she was relying on her producers in creating her material. One critic, Stephen Holden, considered Jackson a “liability” because she is “a producer-dependent artist i.e., someone who relies who relies on others to make her sound interesting and trendy” and

“lacks a sharply defined personality an artist and celebrity who has an indistinguishable studio voice” (1991, www.nytimes.com). Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group of Companies counters Holden’s argument by saying:

Ms. Jackson has met with great success working with the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, just as her brother has experienced his greatest successes with the producer . It is interesting that Mr. Holden doesn't mention this similar "liability" when discussing Michael Jackson. To say that Ms. Jackson is "dependent" on her producer is a shortsighted observation. She is a formidable talent who stands on her own. (1991, www.nytimes.com)

Branson mentioned in his rebuttal about the comparison between her and her brother, Michael.

He disputed that Michael Jackson would not receive much flak about his ongoing musical relationship with music producer Quincy Jones.

Naming the album, janet. was her decision to emphasize Jackson as an established singer, songwriter, and producer who expressed her ideas of love, womanhood, sexuality, and self- identity. There were many songs from the album that featured lyrics that Jackson expressed her feelings about a woman’s right to explore sexuality with being judged, having the ability to celebrate love, and honoring black sisterhood. With Public Enemy front man Chuck D and opera singer guest starring, one standout track on the album named “New Agenda,”

Jackson paid tribute to the strong bond of sisterhood among black women based on her personal 117 experience. In the song, she explained how she had to suppress who she was, but found the strength to break through external forces in order to find herself with the help of other black women. She also addressed intersectionality as a reason why she was denied the opportunities as a black woman in the lyrics:

“(no no) Because of my gender (no) I've heard no too many times Because of my race I've heard no too many times But with every no I grow in strength That is why African American woman I stand tall with pride.” (Jackson 1:13-1:51)

Another element of the janet. album that signified her openness to her sexuality was the Rolling

Stone cover where she appeared topless with her then-husband’s (René Elizondo Jr.) hands covering her breasts. (But, a cropped version of that photo that just shows her face on the album cover and the photo of her midriff on the inside booklet.) This photo became one of the most recognizable images in popular culture in which it has been lampooned many times over because it represented in the establishment of Jackson as a sex symbol and a role model for talking about sexuality freely in music. While this is not the first time a black woman has expressed about sexuality in music, but there was more interest because of her famous last name.

In an array of the album’s criticism that ranged from “Janet’s janet. is a more complete sexual being than most of pop’s black women are allowed or allow themselves to be” (Touré

1993, www.rollingstone.com) to “Janet is not about to let thoughts of love get in the way of the mechanics of lust, and like many of her superstar contemporaries she tends to confuse sex with soul” (Sinclair 1993, www.thetimes.co.uk), the one constant idea that critics agreed in their 118 reviews is that Jackson promoted feminist thought throughout the project. Women in general are judged at a much higher rate than their men counterparts when it comes to talking about sexuality in their music. Black women have that extra layer of judgment when race in added in the equation. For instance, black men artists who create and perform the same type of music as

Jackson does not garner as much judgment/criticism. Let’s look at Jackson’s brother Michael.

Even though the content in Michael’s music did not have much sexual innuendo, one can say that music critics and audiences did not make a big deal about the content that did. No one really made a big deal about a specific dance move in which he sometimes included several thrust moves in the choreography. Like Janet, Michael was a child star that transformed into adult in the music industry. Her videos from the album also reflected Jackson’s transformation from bubblegum teen to a social-conscious musician to an adult sexy star. She embodied the dynamic of exhibiting sexual freedom while commanding respect. The criticism of Jackson’s sexual lyrical content and her image during this period reflected the sexism that has been imbedded in the music industry from the beginning of its existence that continues today. Jackson inspired later music artists like , and P!nk who also incorporated sex appeal and appearance with talent with similar career trajectories transitioning from the bubblegum image into adults expressing very mature content in their music .

Intersectionality at Super Bowl XXXVIII

Jackson released , a , in 1997 which focused on subjects like depression, self-worth, and after experiencing a dark period in her life.

The album’s title alluded to a rope representing “a kind of posh prison in which [Jackson] found herself and needed to break free from a place of darkness to a place of light” (Jackson with Ritz

2011, 127). The album’s title also referred to the emotional barrier that individuals face along 119 with the need to belong. Jackson explored sexuality in forms such as and same-sex relationships on The Velvet Rope, but the overarching theme of the album was to allow individuals to free themselves from constricting external forces. Her music on this album about sexuality was a bit more explicit than it was on janet. Four years later, Jackson released her seventh studio album, All for You, in 2001. After her divorce from her Elizondo, this album was a little more fun and upbeat than The Velvet Rope and geared towards exploration of different aspects of dating such as love, romance, and adoration. She had another successful run with this album, but a situation that was viewed by hundreds of millions live would change the trajectory of her career. The outcome was a prime example about how intersectionality puts Jackson at a disadvantage because she is a black woman.

On February 1, 2004, Jackson performed a medley of her hits throughout her career during the halftime show of the Super Bowl. artist Justin Timberlake was Jackson’s special musical guest when he performed the song, “Rock Your Body” with her and tore her open a piece of her costume after he sang the lyric, “I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song.” While it was reported that the intention was to expose just the bra underneath, he tore the piece of the costume revealing her right breast to 140 million people live on television.

Complaints flooded the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The FCC fined Music

Television (MTV who produced the show), the National Football League (NFL), and the broadcast television network CBS even though they stated that companies had no prior knowledge of what happened. Both Jackson and Timberlake apologized, but Jackson received the bigger career fallout by various entities of the industry as a result from the incident. The

National Academy for the Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the organization that presents the Grammy Awards, dropped Jackson as a scheduled presenter and uninvited her to the show. 120

But, NARAS allowed Timberlake to come to the award ceremony. In fact, Timberlake had several successful projects after the Super Bowl incident including a return Super Bowl performance in 2018. On the other hand, Jackson was also dropped as a star of a biopic about legendary jazz singer Lena Horne. The following month in 2004, Jackson released her eighth album, Damita Jo (2004), but was shunned by the major radio and music channel conglomerates across the country. Radio stations and music channel networks were feeling the pressure from former CBS CEO Les Moonves (a white man who ironically was ousted years later from that position due to sexual allegations) to not play Jackson’s music on the radio nor on music channels like MTV and VH1.

The treatment that Jackson and Timberlake received after that Super Bowl ill-fated performance was marked in the way the media and social institutions reprieved Timberlake (a white man) and vilified Jackson (a black woman). Shannon Holland in “The ‘Offending’ Breast of Janet Jackson: Public Discourse Surrounding the Jackson/Timberlake Performance at Super

Bowl XXXVIII” argued that in many of these accounts, Jackson was represented as a contemporary Jezebel and that her racial and gendered Otherness was often juxtaposed with the

"normalcy" of Timberlake's white masculinity. That is, she emerged in public discourse as the primary (if not sole) instigator of the lewd act, a scheming seductress who manipulated

Timberlake for her own economic gain (2009, 130). The Jezebel stereotype is often described as a wanton, sexualized, manipulating woman which plays to the white male privilege trope. What the media and the audience imagined that Jackson was the “temptress” who used her sexuality to exploit white men. The combination in the composition of individuals who were watching the football game (e.g., white, conservative) and the very public display of black womanhood in

Jackson which many perceived her as sexual throughout her career eliminated the responsibility 121 of Timberlake as a white man. Different media outlets were just as guilty of portraying Jackson as being in the wrong with the incident by going further to describe the contrast in what she and

Timberlake wore at the performance. Janell Hobson agreed that Jackson’s body, not Justin’s undressing of her body would take the brunt of this scandal also reminds us of the difficulty in women’s self-representation and the racial undercurrents that shape the public condemnation and fascination for her duplicated image (2005, 114).

Her Career Post-Super Bowl

While she was still blacklisted in the music industry due to the Super Bowl incident,

Jackson continued to record music and added an acting role or two her repertoire. Her first album since the Super Bowl incident, 20 Y.O. (2006), debuted at number two on the album chart with songs, “Call on Me” and “.” Her boyfriend during this time, music producer Jermaine Dupri, was involved in the project along with her long-time collaborators,

Jam and Lewis. Critics argued that Dupri was at fault for Jackson’s disappointing album sales because he strayed away from her successful “pop” sound and wanted to cater to the black audiences. Black music artists who crossover to the pop/mainstream audience very successfully have always had that complicated situation of catering to both audiences musically. Both Janet and Michael among other artists like have a history of this practice, but records labels hold responsibility because they are the gateways to these audiences. While these critics blame Dupri, they should look who run these record labels. They also criticized his business and personal relationship with Jackson and concluded that these two reasons were why Virgin

Records decided to part ways with Jackson and Dupri. Two years later, she released her tenth album (her first and only with Island Records), Discipline (2008) and it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 album charts. Still being blacklisted at the time, she had a good run with the 122 lead single, “Feedback.” Unfortunately, her brother Michael died in August 2009 while she was filming the movie Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010). At the time she grieved for Michael, she continued to work (by releasing a hits compilation titled Number Ones in 2009) and ended her personal relationship with Dupri. During the period between 2010-2014, Jackson did not record new music, but stayed busy with acting, touring, writing a self-help book, charity work, and endorsing various products.

Jackson returned to recording music and launched a world in that same year.

The album, Unbreakable (2015) and the Unbreakable World Tour marked a “comeback” for

Jackson. She released the album on her own label, Rhythm Nation, which made her one of the few black women who owned their own record label when it was established in 2015. She took a break from the tour to concentrate on creating a family with Wissam Al Mana, her husband at the time, but returned in 2017 with a new focus (and name) called the State of the World Tour after giving birth to a son, Eissa, that same year. After receiving a couple more career achievement awards, Jackson was named one of the 7 inductees of the 2019 class of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. Like many other artists who have done so, Jackson also performed a highly successful

4-month Las Vegas residency entitled Metamorphosis. In 2020, she announced that she was going back on tour with a new album with both called Black Diamond, but it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusion

Growing up with a famous last name did present some challenges for Jackson, but that did not deter her from creating her own identity throughout her music career. In fact, she thrived in that journey since she was nineteen when she recorded the album Control. She asserted independence after having the courage to dissolve her business relationship with her father as her 123 manager and the dissolvement of her first marriage to James DeBarge. In collaboration with music producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson was able to branch out into songwriting and music production. She emerged from being labeled as a bubblegum princess-artist type to being a strong, sassy, assertive woman. Jackson focused on social causes like agency, sexuality, and mental health during the height of her career in the 1980s and 1990s. With the success of

Control, Jackson decided to expand her creativity to address social ills of the world in her lyrics with music that consisted danceable beats, contagious hooks, and great production with Rhythm

Nation. The start of her second major transformation began towards the end of the Rhythm

Nation era, but manifested with janet. in which she promoted sexual freedom for her and other women. Not many black women music artists did this during the early 1990s. She continued this plight in her subsequent album, All for You where she explored other facets of sex, passion, and romance, in her lyrics after separating from her second husband, René Elizondo Jr. In The Velvet

Rope, Jackson explored black sexual politics, which was a rarity for black women music artists.

The perfect example about how intersectionality carried out in the music industry is how vastly different Justin Timberlake, a white man (who has often been criticized for appropriating black music), and Jackson, a black woman, were treated from the aftermath of the live halftime show at the Super Bowl in 2004. Despite being blacklisted for a period of eight years some reports say, Jackson survived and thrived since then by recording several albums and going on a couple of concerts tours. Capetola argued that Jackson deserves credit for bringing a feminist affect to pop music (Capetola 2020, 114). Contemporary pop artists have been influenced by

Jackson. Although today’s black women singers like , Teyana Taylor, and share similar music sensibilities with Jackson, non-black mainstream pop singers like Britney Spears and have credited Jackson as an instrumental force in their musical careers. Not 124 only has Jackson been influential musically, but she has also been a strong, prominent feminist and serves as a precursor of today’s artists like Beyoncé, P!nk, and who have put themselves as feminists too. Jackson has been one of the few women (both black and white) who have been socially conscious about the affairs of the world and have translated that in their music. Although Jackson has addressed topics like claiming independence and social ills of the world in her career-defining albums, Control and Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, she pushes the boundaries on owning her sexuality on janet. Janet Jackson was defined as the epitome of a resilient, black woman who has pushed against these racist and gendered circumstances and was not afraid to call it out in and outside her music. 125

CHAPTER FOUR. JANELLE MONÁE AND LIZZO

Black girl magic, y'all can't stand it Y'all can't ban it, made out like a bandit They been tryin' hard just to make us all vanish I suggest they put a flag on a whole another planet. – “Django Jane” (Monáe 1:26-1:35)

Introduction

Janet Jackson set an example for women in music to take more autonomy in the trajectory of their careers. As a three-year-old when her brothers became famous as The Jackson

5 and moved to California, Jackson was able to step out from the shadows of the Jackson name to carve out her own body of work facing the patriarchal structures in the music industry whether from her own father or music executives. In her music, Jackson looked through the lens from her own personal experience at first and used that to expand her repertoire in discussing the plight of other black women. As it was mentioned in the last chapter, Jackson paved the way for women music artists like Britney Spears, P!nk, and Jennifer Lopez who achieved success during the late

1990s and early 2000s. She was also instrumental in opening for these artists to create agency in their own music careers. Jackson’s albums, Control and Rhythm Nation 1814, explored independence and social injustice respectively while her album janet. represented a shift in the way black women openly explore their sexuality in different fashion. But Jackson was also an influence on current black women artists such as Ciara, Beyoncé, and Rihanna. R&B artist Ciara, who is known for songs like “Goodies” and “Get Up”, is often compared to Jackson in the manner in which they both have incorporated the art of a complete performance that included song and dance. Pop music icon Beyoncé has used her music in recent years to address social injustice and black pride. R&B pop artist Rihanna utilized her music as a steppingstone to create visuals through music videos that normalized sexual liberation. 126

Second-wave feminism during the 1970s privileged white women in the fight for equal rights, but black women activists like Florynce Kennedy, Angela Davis, and Shirley Chisholm fought to include racial undertones in the battle against sexist inequalities in society. This activism continued into the 1980s with writer and social activist Alice Walker who introduced the concept of womanism and Audre Lorde who further the fight in black feminism. Lorde did not stop at race and gender as forms of oppression that are interconnected, she also incorporates in that intersection. From the 1990s to the present, third and fourth wave feminist movements included the introduction of intersectionality, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, a redefinition of sexual liberation, and the fight for equality via technology. This technology is an exhaustive list, but it includes blogs and social media campaigns that uses platforms such as , , and Instagram. Although highly debated in scholarship over its arrival, the fourth wave feminist movement comes in different forms from Laura Bates’

Everyday Sexism Project to using humor to women music artists in popular culture.

Intersectional feminism is another layer of the fourth-year movement in which it “centers the voices of those experiencing overlapping, concurrent forms of oppression in order to understand the depths of the inequalities and the relationships among them in any given context” (UN

Women 2020, www.un-women.medium.com). Like the previous feminist movements, black women have not been included in these conversations, but things are changing because they have a bigger platform by the way of social media. These events from the third-and fourth-wave feminist movements manifested into the launch in the music careers of Janelle Monáe and Lizzo in which each artist established a new path for the black woman singer. Both artists found innovative ways to express themselves in the forms of sexuality and body positivity through 127 music, but encountered the same power structures in the music industry in the twenty-first century.

Janelle Monáe: Her Musical Beginnings

With her talent that spreads across different outlets, Janelle Monáe Robinson pushed the boundaries to redefine the embodiment of the black woman music artist. She is commonly known for her musical contributions as singer-songwriter, producer, and record label head, but has also made her mark in film, modeling, and social activism. Her involvement in social activism has focused on the intersection of race and gender in her music and music videos. In the midst of the work she has done both inside and outside the music industry, Monáe has introduced a fresh perspective on how black women should exist by developing a transformative concept about wearing a certain “uniform” and not to be afraid to address the social ills of the black community. She said:

I feel like I have a responsibility to my community and other young girls to help redefine what it looks like to be a woman. I don't believe in men's wear or women's wear, I just like what I like. And I think we should just be respected for being an individual…. I've been in Vogue, now, and different publications, which is cool, because I think that it just shows a different perspective of how women can dress. (Andrews 2010, www.io9.gizmodo.com)

Black women artists like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Ciara presented very provocative yet liberating content in their lyrics and images (both in videos and live performances) in the years before Monáe started in the music industry. But she expanded the thought of sexuality and displayed a different narrative in her music and image in which she makes a lot of references to her hometown of Kansas City, Kansas that includes black working-class women in American culture and the existence of poverty-stricken communities. She even uses that uniform as an ode to her working-class parents (her mother, a hotel maid; her father, a truck driver; her stepfather, a postal worker). This working-class culture remained constant in the African American 128 community for a very long time and it had a tremendous effect on their children. Black families continue to be disproportionately represented among this country's poor (Allen 1995, 587), for whom spiraling inflation, economic restructuring, and changing societal priorities greatly diminish the opportunities and quality of life (Allen 1995, 586).

From Kansas City to New York City to Atlanta

Aspiring to become a singer and entertainer since she was a child who was born in 1985,

Monáe started in the space where most black women singers start: the church. She performed with her family at church, but also at local talent shows where won several times. Growing up, she was engrossed in performing and writing musicals inspired by the Dorothy character in The

Wizard of Oz and a album when she attended a local theater group. Watching how black people were being portrayed in American culture during the 1990s, she often wondered if this is all what mainstream audiences think black people are. After high school, she moved to New York City to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy to study musical theater. Her experience there was pleasant, but she was the only black woman in her classes. In reflection, she thought that she was going to lose herself if continued to stay:

I didn’t want to sound, or look or feel like anybody else. I felt like that was a home, but I wanted to write my own musicals. I didn't want to have to live vicariously through a character that had been played thousands of times – in a line with everybody wanting to play the same person. (Wortham 2018, www.nytimes.com; Lynskey 2010, www.theguardian.com)

A year and a half later into the musical theater program, Monáe left and moved to

Atlanta, Georgia in the early 2000s where she lived in a boarding house near the campuses of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU). While working at an office supply store and attending Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, she made music with her own money and demoed her album, The Audition (2003) by performing at Atlanta University Center which 129 comprises Morehouse College, Spelman College, , and Morehouse

School of Medicine. This is also where she met her longtime manager and future Wondaland

Arts Society collaborators. She caught the eye of Antwan Patton, better known as , one half of the legendary Southern hip-hop group at an open-mic night. He liked what he heard and invited her to record music for two of his projects - one for a compilation album and one for a soundtrack for a movie that had Patton in a starring role.

Those opportunities did not open the door to continuing working with Patton, but she caught the eye of super producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, also head of . Prior to her meeting with Combs, Monáe had a series of meetings with different label record executives, but those meetings were very unsuccessful. She felt disappointed because they did not share her vision about her career. They criticized her style, which then involved, sartorially, androgynous suits, and musically, operatic odes to her character Cindi Mayweather, Monáe’s alter ego on her albums (Wortham 2018, www.nytimes.com) and suggested many changes to her album

(Lynskey 2010, www.guardian.com) and her image (e.g., styles in hair and fashion). After those meetings fell apart, she vowed to work with an executive on her terms. This is where Combs fit into the picture: the moment he saw her perform he knew that he wanted to work with Monáe.

But she told him that he had to share her vision and he could not change her creatively. Having that same music instinct for R&B singer Mary J. Blige and the Notorious B.I.G, Combs created a space for Monáe to create music freely and gave her access to connections in the industry.

Monáe was signed to Bad Boy Records in 2006. The label wanted her music to grow organically as opposed to trying to release a promotional single. 130

Metropolis: The Chase Suite, The ArchAndroid, and The Electric Lady and the Fourth-Wave Feminist Movement Originally released through her website and download platforms in 2007, Bad Boy

Records re- released her EP, Metropolis: The Chase Suite a year later in 2008. The album garnered positive critical reviews and a Grammy nomination for Best Urban/Alternative

Performance “Many Moons,” a single from the album. The album’s concept, inspired by Fritz

Lang's 1927 classic Metropolis, detailing the life of a rebellious soul-equipped android who risks disassembly by falling in love with a human that has theatrical soul, 21st century new wave, ice-coated opera, and brassy hip-hop funk (Kellman 2018, www.allmusic.com). This album introduced the android, named Cyndi Mayweather. Monáe said:

I love speaking about the android because they are the new “other”. People are afraid of the other and I believe we’re going to live in a world with androids because of technology and the way it advances. The first album she was running because she had fallen in love with a human and she was being disassembled for that. (MTV urban blog 2010, www..uk.co)

Her first full-length album, The ArchAndroid (2010), is described as a continued story where the main character, Cindi Mayweather, becomes the savior to the android community using the android as a metaphor of the minority. Continuing the concept from Metropolis and using different genres of music, the album details the journey in which Cindi takes in order to save the community from the destruction of freedom and love. Containing elements of

Afrofuturism and science fiction, a self-empowerment manifesto couched inside a futuristic

"emotion-picture" about an android's battle to overcome oppression. The notion of space travel and "new worlds" becomes a metaphor for breaking out of the oppression that enslaves minorities of all types in the present one; a theme that has a long tradition in African American music (Kot 2010, www.chicagotribune.com). Also, Monáe’s music and videos digitize revolution by insisting on a historicized African American female presence in both highly 131 technological and revolutionary roles (Jones 2018, 43). As a result, she used her music creativity to oppose racist, sexist, and patriarchal forces that suppress black women’s bodies, to take down positions of power and disrupt the privilege of white feminism.

Like her two previous major-label musical efforts, Monáe continued to explore the adventures of Cindi Mayweather who set out to free the citizens of a dystopian place from oppressive forces through different genres of music throughout The Electric Lady (2013), her third album. Monáe addresses her mother directly on The Electric Lady track “Ghetto Woman”, a confessional electro-funk tune that speaks to the image of working-class black women in

American culture: “Carry on, ghetto woman, even when the news portrays you less than you could be” (1:27-1:35). Jacqueline Jones disclosed in the Labor of Love book that:

Black women of course had a long history of combining paid labor with domestic obligations. In 1950 one-third of all black wives were in the labor force compared to one quarter of all married women in the general population. A major study of the period 1940 to 1960 concluded that black mothers of school-aged children were more likely to work than their white counterparts, though part-time positions in the declining field of domestic service inhibited growth in their rates of labor- force participation. To most black women regardless of class, work seemed to form an integral part of the female role. (2010, 222)

Another standout track from that album, “Q.U.E.E.N.” (an acronym for ,

Untouchables, Emigrants, Excommunicated, and Negroid) addressed the existence in the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality. She explained that the song was inspired by private conversations she had with R&B/soul singer Erykah about topics such as community, how women are treated, and sexism (Valnes 2017, 7). Gayle Murchison attributed to bell hooks

(2018, 80) in “Let’s Flip It! Quare Emancipations: Black Queer Traditions, Afrofuturisms,

Janelle Monáe to ,” that the video to “Q.U.E.E.N.” can be read as quare [an aspect of queer theory that explores the intersectionality of race and sexuality] feminist critiques, for each troubles the way which the music industry offers black female bodies on a continuum from 132 eroticized to hypersexualized (hooks 1992, 65-71). She considers herself as a part of Afrofuturist movement, which is applied to African American science-fiction and speculative-fiction writers who addresses concerns in the context of twentieth century technoculture which includes African

American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future (Murchison 2018, 81).

Fig. 4 Janelle Monáe. Image Courtesy of Media Punch Inc/Alamy Stock Photo

While some of her musical influences have included artists like Badu, Grace Jones,

Labelle, and Janet Jackson (who Monáe presented as an inductee of the 2019 class at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony), she has been often compared to male artists such as

Prince, , Outkast, and funk/ luminaries George Clinton and .

Matthew Valnes in “Janelle Monáe and the Afro-Sonic Feminist Funk”, Monáe’s song,

“Tightrope” and the dancing featured in its accompanying video quickly drew comparisons to funk artists like James Brown (2017, 1). Like these artists, she has a skill for pulling off 133 extravagant fashion statements and genre-defying musical tastes (Gross 2009, www.npr.org). It is interesting that Monáe, as a black woman, has been mostly compared to these men artists in articles written by music critics, but it reflects that these music spaces are primarily occupied by men.

Monáe’s use of a digital character in her music to address these forms of oppression makes her part of the fourth-wave feminist movement. A basic definition of fourth-wave feminism is the resurgence of feminism that is driven by younger who harness the power of the

Internet and social media to challenge gender equality (Maclaran 2015, 1732). What many considered the start of the movement was the Everyday Sexist Project conceived by Laura Bates in 2012. It is a local grassroots group that welcomes women to share their personal experiences with online. The goal of this group is to “show the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women every day and it is a valid program to discuss” (Bates 2021, www.everydaysexism.com). What started in England, it has expanded to 25 countries as of 2021 and has tens of thousands of entries from women who have encountered street harassment, workplace discrimination, and body-shaming. (The #metoo movement became a huge cultural moment in the late 2010s.) Another facet of the movement is using humor to get people’s attention to further research the breadth of information on different types of feminist ideas.

Comediennes and like Nadia Kamil, Mary Bourke, and Caitlin Moran used humor to address hierarchical systems in society, woman objectification, and abortion. Like the previous three feminist movements, black women have been erased in the conversations. While some white women said that they have to either be conscious or check their privilege with the existence of intersecting identities, there will always be a situation where black women will not get as much attention about their issues that are specific to them. It is also fractured and complex, frequently 134 reinforcing the advancement of the individual and centering the seductive notions of ‘choice,’

‘empowerment,’ and ‘agency’ (Rivers 2017, 24). Location is an additional aspect of the movement. This means that the movement takes place in different spaces within and outside academia. Feminist academics increasingly turn their attention to both media portrayals of women, and the impact of popular culture on women’s lives, this binary between discussions taking place inside and outside academia is steadily eroded. These locations are popular culture, advertisements, , music videos, and media discussions (Rivers 2017, 16). Speaking of popular culture, the fourth wave also encompasses:

Women music megastars such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, , also navigates a complicated path between postfeminism(s), relying on promoting the achievements (and frequently the lifestyle) of successful women, whilst also demanding that all women be elevated to-or more worryingly, emulate-this individualized, neoliberal, and capitalist vision of ‘success.’ Of course, access to this success in the male-dominated environment of the music industry is still dependent on presenting a youthful and highly sexualized image of femininity. (Rivers 2017, 25)

(This is also relevant to the Janet Jackson chapter where music critics [and her father, the A&M

Records executive, and her music producers, to an extent] mentioned her transformation from bubblegum pop early in her recording career to sassy during the Control era to sexpot image during the janet. era.)

From The Electric Lady album, Monáe released a protest song, “,” that confronts the injustice that black people who have died as a result of violence at the hands of law enforcement and pleads listeners to say the names of the people who have died. She even released an instrumental to allow people to create their own version. This recording invokes

Monáe’s activism in the Black Lives Movement (#blacklivesmatter) and the Say Her Name campaigns (#), both recognizing the unfair treatment of black men and women by the that happens daily in the sample of the lyrics from “Hell You Talmbout”: 135

“Freddie Gray, say his name Freddie Gray, say his name Freddie Gray, say his name Freddie Gray, won't you say his name? Aiyana Jones, say her name Aiyana Jones, say her name Aiyana Jones, say her name Aiyana Jones, won't you say her name? Sandra Bland, say her name Sandra Bland, say her name Sandra Bland, say her name Sandra Bland, won't you say her name?” (Monáe 2:17-2:40)

She also used her activism outside of music. Reaching into her roots in musical theater, Monáe started an acting career in Hollywood starring in the Academy Award-winning movie, Moonlight

(2016) and the critically acclaimed and commercially successful movie (2016) in which she wanted to be “a raconteur expressing narratives often ignored or unknown to others”

(Anderson 2013, www.latimes.com) particularly about black women. From portraying a surrogate mother to a queer black boy to unsung hero in the space program to a woman who subjected as an enslaved woman in present time, she brokered deals with studios to ensure that she established partnerships to provide music to from either her or from her artists.

Dirty Computer: Redefining Identity and Sexuality in the Music Industry

On her next album, Dirty Computer (2018), Monáe pivoted from the Cindi Mayweather story and concentrated more on different elements of pop, funk, and neo-soul. But she released it after the filming of both Moonlight and Hidden Figures was completed. In collaboration with the

Prince, the album is a homage to women and the spectrum of sexual identities where she discovers how society sees her, what things that she had to handle, and what it is like for her to be an American citizen (Wortham 2018, www.nytimes.com). She also used this album to express who she is as a black woman in American society. Like on The Electric Lady, Monáe utilized her music and videos in digital spaces from to discuss intersectionality in the current times on Dirty 136

Computer with a primary focus on the vagina as a locus of female pleasure and power echo that pays attention to the black female flesh (Yates-Richard 2021, 127). In a standout track from the album, “,” she discussed the theme of women empowerment with an equally powerful accompanying . Monáe describes the song as a “celebration of creation, self-love, sexuality and pussy power” (Spanos 2018, www.rollingstone.com) which the music video features Monáe and actress with a group of women friends going to the fictional Pynk Rest Inn to celebrate femininity and power. But the song and music video go a bit deeper to praise the black woman in commanding attention for its visual aesthetic featuring trousers that resemble vulvas and a pop song saturated with synth strings and piano interspersed with snapping fingers that exudes a certain auditory wetness that echoes the lyrical references to the vagina and sexual pleasure (Yates-Richard 2021, 127) with lyrics beginning such as:

“Pink like the inside of your, baby Pink behind all of the doors, crazy Pink like the tongue that goes down, maybe Pink like the paradise found Pink when you're blushing inside, baby Pink is the truth you can't hide, maybe Pink like the folds of your brain, crazy Pink as we all go insane.” (Monáe 0:43-1:19)

Janet Jackson addressed sexuality on her album janet. and a few subsequent albums, but Monáe amplified the conversations about black women’s bodies explicitly on Dirty Computer.

After the release of the song “Make Me Feel,” from Dirty Computer in 2018, she explores her sexuality by identifying herself as pansexual after disclosing publicly her relationships with both men and women. Knowing she is a sexually liberated individual, she read up on pansexuality and thought that her beliefs about who she decides to love aligns with this specific concept. Writer Danette Chavez describes Dirty Computer “cementing her status alongside Prince in the hall of hyper-talented, gender-fluid icons who love and promote 137 blackness” (2018, www.music.avclub.com). She insisted that her coming-out was intentional to support black women and queer women, to erase that invisibility they faced all the time:

“I want it to be very clear that I’m an advocate for women,” she said. “I’m a girl’s girl, meaning I support women no matter what they choose to do. I’m proud when everybody is taking agency over their image and their bodies.” (Wortham 2018, www.nytimes.com)

In the same “Let’s Flip It!” article, Gayle Murchison expands the subject of quareness to quare black music as “music created, performed, interpreted, and so on by LGBTQIA African,

American, and African diasporic musicians” (2018, 83). A basic explanation of quare black music can start with the definition as “the relationship between music and-specifically, lesbian- sexuality” (Cusick 2006, 69) and add the idea of “performers who push the norms of blackness as they get entangled with sexuality and gender through the powerful platform of popular music”

(Murchison 2018, 83). Coming out as pansexual despite from objections from her family,

Monáe’s intention to do this was for people from marginalized communities to see themselves represented in culture, politics, and business (Ringen 2018, www.fastcompany.com). The relationship between sexuality and the black community is a complicated one. Some individuals in the black community particularly who are religious feel that queerness is a threat to the construction of the family unit or think that being queer is wrong based on their religious beliefs.

Or, that black people are already being marginalized and think that adding queerness would cause more problems. Invoking this sentiment in several songs from Dirty Computer, her belief that queer people deserved respect counters the prejudices from both the past and present times in the black community.

Wondaland Arts Society: Janelle Monáe Creates An Arts Collective

Not only music critics compare her to men in the creative space, but also in the business/producing space too in which music writer stated that “the house [Wondaland Arts 138

Society, her arts collective] is decked out for creative purposes in a highly studied way, as if someone has been reading up on Prince’s Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, , or

Jack White’s Third Man Headquarters in Nashville” (Battan 2013, www..com). This highlights the fact in the lack of women leadership in music creative spaces, but Monáe insisted that she wanted to create her own path for her career and for others.

As one of the few black women who heads a record label, Monáe created a creative arts space called the Wondaland Arts Society, which includes a TV and film production company, a brand consultancy, a management firm, a hub for activism in addition to the label. Wondaland is housed in a complex outside of Atlanta, Georgia where Monáe, her artists, and producers frequently create various avenues of output while maintaining full control of that product .

Wondaland’s vision encompasses a philosophy that “[we] have created our own state, our own republic... In this state, there are no laws, there is only music...We believe music is the weapon of the future” (Wondaland Arts Society, Now Put Some Voodoo On It, www.wondaland.wordpress.com). Black women artists like Monáe and Janet Jackson are taking matters into their own hands in creating their own labels due to “plummeting record sales, the increased importance of streaming, and the relative ease with which anyone can self-promote and distribute online (Cliff 2015, www.fader.com). With both major and independent record labels owned and headed by majority of white men, there has not been a lot of room for black women making executive decisions in the operations of these labels. There was , who owned and ran Sugarhill Records which was famous for releasing the Sugarhill Gang’s

“Rapper’s Delight,” a song that transformed hip-hop music. Since the dissolvement of that record label years ago, black women’s ownership in record labels have been nonexistent. White men continue to be the only social group who tends to have ownership of these record labels as 139 well as running these companies. In the past couple of years, women in general have made strides in C-level management (CEO, COO, Vice President, Senior Directors, etc.), but there has only been a couple of black women in these positions currently: Sylvia Rhone, chair and CEO of

Epic Records, a label owned by Entertainment and Ethiopia

Habtemariam, chairman/CEO of Motown Records. The racial reckoning from summer 2020 forced the record industry to face its problem with hiring more minorities in general, but there is a bigger problem with appointing black women in these key positions at the label. Hence, this need forced black women artists like Monáe and Jackson to reimagine their autonomy in the heavily white male-dominated space.

As a black woman, Janelle Monáe also used her humble beginnings living in the inner city of a Midwestern town to navigate against racialized and gendered spaces to pursue a dream of entering into the entertainment business. Despite having a not-so-idyllic childhood that included her parents breaking up and having a drug-addicted father, she found solace in music and acting when she joined the local community theater group. When she felt that she was limiting herself to the great potential she thought she had, she figured out a way for that breakthrough in starting her career creatively. In order to achieve this, she tried different avenues until something worked and someone else noticed her potential too. Even though she received help from other men in the music industry, Monáe made sure that she was the sole driving force in her career. She continued to hold steadfast when music industry executives wanted to change the direction in her music and image. Knowing the possibility that she could be the only black woman in these spaces (both in music and film opportunities), she figured out how to negotiate deals that would benefit her and her close collaborators. Often compared to black male artists in creative capacities, she addresses social issues like racism, sexism, and classism in her music, but 140 expands into the discussion about freely expressing her thoughts about different aspects of sexuality. Janelle Monáe epitomizes the standard as the Renaissance woman in the twenty-first century without compromising her identity which could act as a precursor to the manifestation of the pop/R&B star, Lizzo.

Lizzo’s That 100% Bad Bitch

[...] I want to shout out all the BIG, BLACK girls that I bring out on stage with me. I do that because I want them to know that they are the trophies. Since this is the final award of the night, I don’t want it to be about me. Every last one of you, you are the award. We are so special. We are such a beautiful people. This is just a reminder of all of the incredible things that we can do. God bless you and keep on being an award. Let’s go! Let’s go! Whooooo...yes!” Lizzo, accepting the award for Entertainer of the Year at the 2020 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards. (BET Networks 2020, www..com)

The space I’m occupying isn’t just for me. It’s for all the big black girls in the future who just want to be seen. (Bruner 2019, 48)

Both quotes above sum up what Melissa Viviane Jefferson, professionally known as

Lizzo, wants to convey in her music, stage performances and image. Lizzo is a singer, songwriter, rapper, and a flautist who has been one of the staunchest supporters in the subject of body positivity for women. She also spread the message of joy and empowerment, self-worth, and unabashed female sexuality (Bruner 2019, 48). Although she has been lauded for encouraging women (especially black women) to accept their bodies as they are, she has received much criticism for promoting obesity. The complexity of Lizzo further makes her a fascinating figure in the music industry in these current times, but she was not an “overnight success” as many believed. Lizzo further explained:

“Everybody says that and I’m like, ‘It took 10 years to get to this point [of her career]! “Mainstream success happens very fast, and that’s why people think it’s overnight.” (Greenblatt 2020, 51-52) 141

#blackgirlmagic

Born in , Michigan in 1988, Lizzo moved to Houston, Texas with her family at a young age. While her parents were working and older siblings had outside interests of their own,

Lizzo found music to be the way to express herself. In middle school, she was classically trained as a flautist all the way through high school. But, she also started a local music group in the area in which she started a stint as a rap artist and adopted the name, Lizzo. She was originally Lissa, but Jay-Z’s “Izzo” was a popular song at the time (Davis 2019, www.thecut.com). In middle school, she faced an identity dilemma between being accepted from her classmates and figuring out how to express herself. People gravitated to her rhyming skills, but also criticized the way she dressed and the music she listened to. After graduating from high school, Lizzo attended the

University of Houston in 2005 on a music scholarship continuing to hone her skills on the flute.

In her junior year, she dropped out because she was having a hard time fitting in the culture of college life and realized that her ambitions were bigger than being a college student. Since her parents moved West, she ended up sleeping in her car while pursuing a music career. She joined her first band playing the flute in 2008, which was a prog-rock-influenced group called Ellypseas

(Davis 2019, www.thecut.com). While performing with the band, she slept on friends’ floors and received assistance from them on other items such as food. They performed at various shows throughout the city, but also at South by Southwest, a collection of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences. After the band stopped performing together, tragedy struck when her father passed away in 2010 and she moved to Denver at the insistence of her mother.

These series of events led to a bout of depression. Knowing that she needed to continue her music ambitions, she moved to Minneapolis a year later based on a friend’s suggestion that she might enjoy the music scene there. 142

There was plenty of diversity in the Minneapolis music scene. While there were artists performing different types of music, the majority of these performers were white men who made it a little difficult for women of color like Lizzo to get noticed. With this, she was able to stand out and got noticed from the energy in her stage presence. During her stint as a performer in

Minneapolis, she formed two distinct bands: the Chalice, which made melodic pop with a little bit of rap like the . Later, she and the Chalice’s Sophia Eris started GRRRL PRTY and went full riot onstage - women drinking, cussing, and and singing (Davis 2019, www.thecut.com). Lizzo’s participation as member of GRRRL PRTY resembles the qualities of the movement that combines feminism, , and politics where the songs address issues such as rape, sexuality, patriarchy, and women empowerment.

Started during the third-wave movement in the early 1990s in the and continued during the fourth in 2010s with the popularity of the Internet, the evolved to address intersectional oppressions against all . Omitting the “i” and adding “rr” in the word “girl” was the way to take back the derogatory use of the term. The riot grrrl movement also encouraged women to create their own spaces in the male-dominated punk rock scene with bands like , L7, and the Go Team. Contemporary bands like Sleater-Kinney and Pussy

Riot have continued the legacy of the movement, but was often criticized for not be truly inclusive. GRRRL PRTY became a local favorite which included music legend and Minneapolis native Prince. He was impressed enough to invite the band to record a song “Boy Trouble” from

Prince’s and ’s album entitled Plectrumelectrum in 2014. Also, he invited GRRRL

PRTY to perform at his music complex, Paisley Park. During this time, Lizzo had solo ambitions and recorded two albums, Lizzobangers and Big GRRRL Small World on different independent record labels (one of them was her own). It was Big GRRRL Small World that convinced Atlantic 143

Records to sign her in 2016. She then moved to Los Angeles and began touring as an opening act for established artists like fellow riot grrrl groups Sleater-Kinney, Florence + the Machine, and

Haim (Davis 2019, www.thecut.com). Now, Lizzo’s stage performances both on and off stage exhibits similar traits from her days in Minneapolis performing at small clubs in 2014.

Lizzo: Blame It on Her “Juice” and She’s Feeling “Good as Hell”

After signing with Atlantic, the label released her first major-record label

(EP) called Coconut Oil in which she co-wrote every song exploring body positivity, self-love and the trials of getting to the point where you believe you deserve it (Okoth-Obbo 2016, www.pitchfork.com) which was contrary to the type of music she recorded in her two previous albums. The name of the album title refers to the substance that can be used to solve different situations, but it is also used as part of skin and hair care ritual for black women. Music writer

Vanessa Okoth-Obbo explained its significance in her music review of Coconut Oil:

“It has come to represent something very important for black women in particular, who rally around its power to heal from the outside in. From acknowledging this in the EP’s title down to making songs that speak directly to the lived experience of this demographic, Lizzo is both channeling and fueling the zeitgeist under which black women’s oft-ignored specificities are being celebrated in popular culture.” (2016, www.pitchfork.com)

The album received positive reviews and she went on the Good As Hell tour in 2017 to promote it. She made numerous appearances at festivals and on television as a guest judge on RuPaul’s

Drag Race, a reality competition show that features drag performers. After suffering body image issues as a teen, Lizzo made it her mission to promote self-confidence and body and race inclusivity inside and outside her work in the forms of ad campaigns, fashion shows, magazine features and even the composition of her backup dancers: all plus size. She affectionately called them the “Big Girl Dancers.” In a Variety article, writer Erin Nyren detailed the circumstance on why Lizzo was intentional in choosing her dancers: 144

“She auditioned personally after explaining that when she had first begun her search for dancers, she’d only been presented with smaller girls. When she asked her choreographer why that was, she was told that those were the dancers who had representation. ‘F— that!’ Lizzo exclaimed. She cited herself as an example of a big woman who can give her all for 45-minutes-plus and scoffed at the idea that big dancers and performers in general aren’t as capable, resulting in her intentional recruitment of larger dancers.” (2019, www.variety.com)

The exposure she received gave her a platform to promote body positivity that translated through her music, music videos, stage performances, and social media. By viewing her social media, she’s very open about her life and is not afraid to show off the latest in her hair, makeup, clothes, and body. Much of Lizzo’s self-advocacy and self-confidence is attributed to a behavior developed from being overlooked in a world that favors the thin, the white, and the male (Picardi

2018, www.teenvogue.com). She drew from her insecurities growing up in Detroit and Houston to build that self-assurance. Lizzo reflected about how she was viewed as a black girl in the past and how things have not changed over the years even after the fact that she became successful:

“When I was in high school, I was a big girl with a cute face. So, dudes liked me secretly, but they didn’t like me publicly. I never had a boyfriend because they didn’t want to claim me. So now in this industry, I’m a big girl with a cute face and some cute music and I’m still being liked secretly and not claimed publicly.” (Picardi 2018, www.teenvogue.com)

While she gained great feedback from audiences, critics, and media about being the ambassador for body positivity, Lizzo does not feel the same way. She has said in two separate interviews that loving oneself is supposed to be “so innate and first-nature and to look at our bodies as vehicles for success, and not a signifier of who you are” (Picardi 2018, www.teenvogue.com) and to “normalize the image of a sexy, confident plus-size woman” (Rosa

2019, www.glamour.com). She also counteracts the positive feedback because she thinks that the media cannot think that a big, black woman can exude confidence. The culture dictates the standard of beauty as a thin white woman and “the media portrays them as perfect” (Bautista 145

2020, www.apnews.com). There is another dynamic in these black women versus white women regarding image: Black women who are exposed to mainstream American culture do not seem to share the ultrathin ideals preferred by White women (Flynn and Fitzgibbon 1998, 13).

2019 was a banner year for Lizzo. In January of that year, her third studio album, her first from a major label, was well received by music critics and audiences alike. debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 with the help of the lead single, “Juice.” Around the same time of the album’s release, Lizzo performed at Coachella, a very popular music and arts festival in California in which it was considered her breakthrough performance despite the sound issues she endured throughout her whole set. After it appeared in a TikTok meme and a film called Someone Great, the song “Truth Hurts” (a song she recorded in two years ago in

2017) became popular on the radio and gained more interest in the album where it prompted

Atlantic to add the song to the deluxe edition of Cuz I Love You. Beginning with Coachella, audiences began to notice Lizzo incorporating playing the flute into her performances like the

BET Awards. That act renewed an interest for some people to revisit their marching band roots.

Lizzo adds that “the flute community is loud and proud” (Greenblatt 2019, 53). Even Lizzo’s long silver sidekick, Sasha Flute, has its own Instagram account with an extremely decent

130,000 followers where Sasha can be found at @sashabefluting (Cooper 2019, www.theguardian.com). She changed society’s perception of what a flutist should look like or expanded genres of music in which a flute should be played. Lisa Nelsen, acting chair of the

British Flute Society and steadfast Lizzo fan explained the phenomenon:

“Lizzo transcends all kinds of stereotypes. The flute gang are pretty ready to show off what we can do. Pop, classical, beatbox – we’ve got our fingers in lots of pots.” (Cooper 2019, www.theguardian.com) 146

“Truth Hurts” also earned Lizzo her first number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 and that honor has not been achieved since Rihanna’s “Diamonds” accomplished it in 2012. As she continued to tour across the world at award shows, music festivals, and concerts, a third single,

“Good as Hell” reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 2019 and had success in various countries throughout the world. Another song that Lizzo recorded years prior,

“Good as Hell” first appeared on the soundtrack for : The Next Cut and her EP,

Coconut Oil. She continued her lucrative career in 2019 where she toured internationally at popular venues like the Sydney Opera House. She also received various nominations for the

MTV Video Music Awards, the BET Music Awards, the and the

Grammys where she won three and was the opening act at the live telecast ceremony in early

2020. She expanded her professional career to acting and voiceover work in the movies Hustlers and UglyDolls, respectively. Looking to expand her empire, she partnered with Amazon Studios to develop various projects.

Fig. 5 Lizzo. Image Courtesy of Paul Froggatt/Alamy Stock Photo 147

With every artist who achieves artistic success, there is bound to be criticism commenting on their lifestyle and Lizzo is no different. As stated earlier, she has been praised by music critics and audiences, but she also has had her fair share of negative feedback whether it is about her opinions and particularly about her image. As history documented that black women are traditionally located on the bottom of the societal pole, they have been subjected to a lot of hate from other dominant racial and gendered groups. In the twenty-first century, it is not any different, but the platform has been expanded with the popularity of social media. Like Big

Mama Thornton in the early decades of the twentieth century, society was intimidated by the stature of a black woman and it could be referred to the “mammy” stereotype that was detailed in the Thornton chapter. In a more contemporary reference, the term misogynoir made its way into the intersectionality lexicon. The term was coined in 2010 by gay black feminist American academic Moya Bailey, who defined it “to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual and popular culture” (Anyangwe 2015, www.guardian.com).

There are specific examples of misogynoir such as black girls being seen as more mature and more sexualized than their white counterparts, black women not being taken seriously regarding their health, and the characterization of the strong black woman. Since the term’s introduction, it has expanded outside of American visual and popular culture. The difference between intersectionality and misogynoir is that misogynoir is connected to black women specifically whereas intersectionality can be expanded beyond the black women identity. In article “Misogynoir: Where Racism and Sexism Meet”, Eliza Anyangwe provided an example of this practice:

[In 2015] A nightclub, Dstrkt, was accused of turning away two young black women for being “too fat” and “too dark”, prompting a swift, strident response on social media. The club was quick to deny the allegations and the council equally quick to express its concern. News outlets went into overdrive, to 148

find “voices” to give the incident context. In the Guardian, one writer explained that young black people often resort to unlikely methods to get into certain clubs – the kind, like Dstrkt in Soho, that aren’t really about the music anyway – while in , DJ Edward Adoo discussed the pervasive racism of London’s nightclubs as a matter of fact. But what is alleged to have happened at Dstrkt isn’t just about race; the accused is black. It’s about gender too. Discrimination, prejudice, and unchecked fear aimed specifically at black women now has a name: misogynoir. (2015, www.theguardian.com)

Lizzo has been a victim of misogynoir on different occasions whether in print or online, but one specific incident that happened to her that stands out. As a woman who is 5 feet 9 inches and wears a size 18, has faced fashion discrimination when a well-known designer tells her that they did not have enough fabric to finish her outfit or her struggle to something sexy that fits (Essence

2019, 48). She counters this discrimination by “not adhering to the narrow standards of beauty or femininity” and “normalizing black women when she post naked pictures of herself”(Greenblatt

2019, 49).

Conclusion

Janelle Monáe and Lizzo are two individuals who reimagined the essence of the black woman singer in the twenty-first century. Using their acts of empowerment helped them navigate through racialized and gendered power structures in the music industry. Despite her childhood circumstances living in the inner city of Kansas City, Kansas, Monáe used her experiences there to find her musical path on her own terms by producing and heading her own creative space while helping others. As a black woman, she learned how to negotiate business deals when she started acting in movies. Once she became a force in both music and film, she unapologetically redefined a woman’s sexuality. Lizzo became a role model on body positivity, but still had to defy racial and gendered stereotypes from both critics, music audiences and social media. As a large-sized black woman, she introduced a new confidence in the subject of women's sexuality while making flute playing cool. When mainstream audiences thought that she was an “overnight 149 success”, Lizzo made it clear that she had to work hard for years before she got her big break in

2019. Instead of trying to fit in with what is considered the standard of beauty (e.g., white, blonde, thin women), she has flipped the narrative where those standards of beauty are forced to conform with her. As stated earlier in this chapter, black women have not been inserted in these recorded histories of the feminist movements as much as white women have even though black women had started and participated in various grassroot campaigns. But there are black activists today who want to continue that legacy and Valdecir Nascimento, a women’s rights activist, is one of them. She argues that “the dialogue to advance black women’s rights should put them in the centre” because “black women were part of the feminist movement, the black movement, and other progressive movements” (UN Women 2020, www.un-women.medium.com). With these two black women singers, both Janelle Monáe and Lizzo have established a new model for the black woman singers for future generations. 150

CONCLUSION

Intersectionality has evolved since it was introduced in 1989. This theoretical framework was a turning point in informing how society should consider black women in different social institutions such as education, medicine, and housing. It is also important about how some black women are subjected to all inequalities of race, gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status and the experience is not just the sum of its parts (Time 2020, 82). That is how combined inequalities should be handle in the future.

Under different circumstances, the black women singers in this project did create and maintain agency in the music industry despite their race and gender. Big Mama Thornton was described as someone who made a music career for herself in the early 1930s and 1940s where the dynamic in social structure between the black woman and white man, who was the majority of gatekeepers in the industry, continued to be widen from the effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws. She had to reckon with the fact that a white man, Elvis Presley, recorded a song that she recorded first, “Hound Dog” became hugely successful. When Janis Joplin covered a different

Thornton recording years later, “Ball and Chain,” the personal relationship between Joplin and

Thornton was amicable contrary to Thornton’s nonexistent relationship with Presley. Despite that relationship with Joplin, Thornton still did not get the proper credit for her musical contributions of being the originator of two songs made popular by white artists. Like Thornton,

Nina Simone was a black woman who also had to deal with a majority of white men gatekeepers of music. As a child music prodigy growing up in North Carolina, she had first-hand accounts of systems in inequality watching her parents work - her mom cleaning white individuals’ homes and her father taking odd jobs - during the Great Depression. Her watching that unfold in her childhood was the reason why she was headstrong about taking agency in her work throughout 151 her career. There were times where she was criticized for it, but her men counterparts, for example Miles Davis, were not. At the suggestion from her friend, Lorraine Hansberry, Simone became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, but her efforts (like other black women) were marginally left out of the story.

As a result from the second-wave feminist movement, Janet Jackson has been the epitome of “taking control” of her musical career since the time she wanted to claim her independence and fire her father as her manager. She also was a trendsetter in explicitly talking about her experiences as a black woman and sexuality freely in her music disregarding the negative feedback that she may receive. Jackson was unfortunately part of a situation where society devalued a black woman as a sexual deviant from the Super Bowl halftime show performance with Justin Timberlake in 2004. She received the brunt of the backlash as opposed to Timberlake receiving lesser punishment. But, she was able to rebound from that incident years after that when she received awards for her career achievements, continued to record music and went on several world tours.

Citing Jackson as an influence, Janelle Monáe pushed the musical boundaries with her creativity inside and outside of music. She did this on her own terms even when music executives wanted her to go into a different direction; she made them conform to her vision.

Following the ideals of third-wave feminism, Monáe reimagined how black women embrace sexuality. While she is not the only one, she has been one of the earlier champions of gender fluidity which has not always been welcomed in the black community. Lastly, Lizzo has been the face of body positivity ever since she hit it big in 2019. She redefined the image of the big black woman who has been characterized as the “mammy” stereotype in the past. This stereotype has been portrayed as being quietly subservient to white families has historically been silent with a 152 motherly-type temperament. But Lizzo changed that perception by including messages about self-confidence and self-love in her music.

The expansion of the music industry in the channels getting the music out to audiences has emerged tremendously between the early twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries. This illustrates how black women singers had to adjust to these ongoing developments to compete with other music artists from other social identities in the industry. Radio was a popular form of entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s. Big Mama Thornton and Nina Simone had to primarily rely on it and live performances to promote their music. When their music was not handled correctly by these gatekeepers in the industry, they had to present live performances across the country (and sometimes the world) in order to earn a decent living. But that was not always guaranteed either.

During the height of the MTV era in the mid-1980s, music videos were added as another component of promotion in the industry. This meant that image was important for the record label in order to connect their artists to music audiences. Starting with her album Control, Janet

Jackson used the music video to incorporate dancing in creating visuals to connect with fans and establish new audiences. In her quest to explore sexuality in her music, the videos helped get her message across, but also showed that black women can be sensual without being perceived as deviant. Janelle Monáe’s and Lizzo’s music careers began a few years after the advent of social media during the early to mid-2000s and mid to late 2010s, respectively. In addition to traditional methods of promotion (radio, videos, and touring/live performances), both music artists used different types of digital footprints to connect with fans, but also to deliver messages in their music. Monáe used an alter ego, Cyndi Mayweather, who Monáe described as a “digital griot” [a term coined by Adam Banks in his 2011 book Digital Griots: African American 153

Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age] to discuss racism and sexism on a few of her projects. As a digital griot, Monáe infuses the tradition of storytelling of the black experience through advance technology which includes older forms such as radio and video, but also newer ones such as websites like YouTube, social media, and streaming. She also showcased different perspectives of black women in her videos and promoted those videos through social media. Lizzo expanded the use of social media on her personal accounts on Twitter and Instagram to promote her music and her messages about different facets of body positivity. Black women singers knew how to pivot with the constant changes in the music industry like black women had to face the discrimination they endured in social institutions that are part of American culture.

Where does intersectionality go from here in 2021? In the same interview with Ira Madison III on the Keep It! podcast, Kimberlé Crenshaw replied to this question:

And, I guess I would say that in the first decade of intersectionality it pretty much traveled within the legal sphere primarily and eventually in more the human rights arena and then across the academy and then far more globally. And people use to ask me, “Well, you know, could intersectionality use to do ‘fill in the blank.” And I was like, “It is not like those Fred Flintstone cartoons in which you use a tool that tells you “I don’t do windows.” It’s not that. It’s like, “you take the tool and use it to do the things that you want to do with it. So, if you want to talk about being a black woman who is looking for shelter because you have been abused and your local shelter doesn’t provide bilingual services…Yes, intersectionality explains where that gap came from and what needs to be done about it. If you are a person who is facing a disability and you are also working class…Yes, intersectionality helps you understand that. But, the point is that there’s no small print that actually says, ‘it can only be used for this or it can only be used for that.” Intersectionality is just trying to explain how power comes together in many different ways. And gives people a way of naming what that is and being able to fight back. So, if the question now is what’s different? I think what’s different is first of all is it’s grown much more common, its powerful ability to explain and give people a voice a name for something they’re experiencing has not only caught on among those who are using it, but caught on among those who want to critique it and want to destroy it. So, now it’s part of those so-called cultural wars to the point that this last President really has tried to put a gag order on intersectionality, critical race theory, structural racism. Right now, there are people going through government documents and grant applications and if they see the word ‘intersectionality’, they’re crossing it out. So, some people say that 154

you should be happy that a word has so powerful concept has done work that the other side wants to take it out. I guess so, but I rather be able to take them out rather than taking the concept out. (2020, www.spotify.com)

Based on Crenshaw’s assessment on the future of intersectionality, black women singers will have to continue resisting forces from these racialized and gendered hierarchies in the music industry in order to have a voice in their music careers based on the methods of their predecessors like speaking up for themselves, calling out the social ills, embracing individuality, and creating more ownership in their product and image in form of a record label or a branding company. 155

WORKS CITED

Alexander, Keith L. “Gloria Richardson Pushed Aside a Bayonet as a ’60s Civil Rights Activist. Now 98, She Wants the New Generation to Fight on.” , https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/gloria-richardson-civil-rights- blm/2020/12/10/b9cacdbe-29dd-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.

Allen, Walter. “African American Family Life in Societal Context: Crisis and Hope.” Sociological Forum, vol. 10, no. 4, Special Issue: African Americans and Sociology: A Critical Analysis, Dec. 1995, pp. 569-592. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/684772.

“The American President-Elect (with Kimberlé Crenshaw) .” Keep It! from Spotify, November 2020, https://open.spotify.com/episode/32xetBSjHwru02cNdYv2mx.

Anderson, Tre’vell. “Q&A: Songstress Janelle Monáe stretches her dramatic muscles in ‘Moonlight.’” , https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-moonlight-janelle-monae- 20161018-snap-story.html. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Andrews, Gillian “Gus”. “Janelle Monáe Turns Rhythm and Blues Into Science Fiction.” Gizmodo, https://io9.gizmodo.com/janelle-monae-turns-rhythm-and-blues-into-science- ficti-5592174. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Anyangwe, Eliza. “Misogynoir: Where Racism and Sexism Meet.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/05/what-is-misogynoir. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Barnett, David C. “Women Make Up Less Than 8% Of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Inductees.” NPR. 2020. 14 Jan. 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796012607/women-make-up-less-than-8-of- rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-inductees. Accessed 1 Mar. 2020.

Bates, Lauren. “The Everyday Sexism Project.” The Everyday Sexism Project, https://everydaysexism.com/. Accessed 6 June 2021.

Battan, Carrie. “Mind Control.” Pitchfork, https://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/janelle-monae/. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Bautista, Berenice. “Lizzo Talks Diversity, Self-Confidence and Femininity.” AP News, https://apnews.com/article/music-lizzo-us-news-music-industry-concerts- ee0f0de76b204576808c44a571bf3219. Accessed 23 May 2021. 156

Berry, Daina Ramey and Kali Nicole Gross. A Black Women’s History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2020.

Brooks, Daphne. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe.” Meridians, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 180-204.

Brooks, Daphne A. Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850 – 1910. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006.

Brooks, Daphne A. “Nina Simone’s Triple Play.” Callaloo, vol. 34, no.1 (2011): 176-197.

Bruce, La Marr Jurelle. “Interludes in Madtime: Black Music, Madness, and Metaphysical Syncopation.” Social Text, vol. 35, no.4, 2017, pp. 1–31.

Bruner Raisa. “Lizzo Fulfills Her Own Self-Love Prophecy.” Time, 22 Apr. 2019, pp. 47-49.

Cade Bambara, Toni. “The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?” The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade, New American Library, 1970, pp. 162-169.

Capetola, Christine. “Gimme a Beat!”: Janet Jackson, Hyperaurality, and Affective Feminism.” Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 32 no. 4, 2020 pp. 95–117.

Chavez, Danette. “Janelle Monáe Comes Out as an Icon on the Superb ‘Dirty Computer.’” AV Club, https://music.avclub.com/janelle-monae-comes-out-as-an-icon-on-the-superb-dirty- 1825577814. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Clark Hine, Darlene. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 14, no. 4, 1989, pp. 912-920.

Cliff, Aimee. “How to Run a Record Label.” Fader, https://www.thefader.com/2015/07/16/how-to-run-a-record-label. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York and London: Routledge, 2000.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minnesota and London: Press, 1998.

Cooper, Leonie. “Flutes You: Lizzo and the Woodwind Renaissance.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/09/flute-lizzo-and-the-woodwind- renaissance. Accessed 23 May 2021. 157

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Feminism and Politics: Oxford Readings in Feminism. Ed. Anne Phillips. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–1299.

Cusick, Suzanne G. “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music: A Serious Eff ort Not to Think Straight.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian , Ed. Phillip Brett, et. al., New York: Routledge, 2006, pp.67–83.

Davis, Allison P. “It’s Just a Matter of Time Till Everybody Loves Lizzo as Much as She Loves Herself.” The Cut, https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/lizzo-flute-pop-star.html. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

Davis, Angela. “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.” Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought. Ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The New Press: New York, 1995. 200-218.

Djupvik, Marita B. “Naturalizing Male Authority and the Power of the Producer.” Popular Music and Society, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 181-200.

@dnice. “#HDKNBI with @officialjamandlewis. @flytetymejam x @flytetymelewis.” Instagram, November 13, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHhNuIMDd6o/.

Dumas, R.G. “Dilemmas of Black Female Leadership.” The Black Woman. Ed. La Frances Rodgers-Rose, pp. 203-215. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981.

Feldstein, Ruth. “I Don't Trust You Anymore”: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s.” The Journal of American History, vol. 91, no. 4 (Mar. 2005), pp. 1349-1379, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3660176. Accessed 28 Jan. 2021.

Fields, Liz. “The Story Behind Nina Simone’s protest song, ‘Mississippi Goddam.’” PBS: , https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/the-story-behind- nina-simones-protest-song-mississippi-goddam/16651/. Accessed 15 Jan 2021.

Fiofori, Tam. “The Blues.” Melody Maker, 29 April 1972, p.44.

Flynn, Kristin J. and Marian Fitzgibbon. “Body Images and Obesity Risk among Black Females: A Review of the Literature.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine, vol. 20, no. 1, pp.13–24.

Foreman, Ronald. Jazz and Race Records, 1920-32: Their Origins and Their Significance for the Record Industry and Society. Champaign: University of Press, 1969. 158

Fricke, David. “Leiber and Stoller: ’s 1990 Interview with Legendary Songwriting Legends.” Rolling Stone, 1990, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/leiber- and-stoller-rolling-stones-1990-interview-with-the-songwriting-legends-246405/.

“From ‘Race Records’ to ‘Rhythm & Blues.’” The Urban Daily, 2010, https://theurbandaily.com/816655/from-race-music-to-rhythm-blues/.

General Population Characteristics - Indiana. United States Census Bureau, Accessed 4 May 2021.

Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: HarperCollins, 1984.

Gray, Brenda Clegg. Black Female Domestics During the Depression in New York City, 1930 - 1940. New York: Garland Press, 1993.

Greenblatt, Leah. “Entertainers of the Year: Lizzo.” , Jan. 2020, pp. 50-53.

Gross, Terry. “Janelle Monáe's Funky Otherworldly Sounds.” NPR, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105491960. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Gyant, LaVerne. “Passing the Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26 no. 5, May 1996, Special Issue: The Voice of African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, pp. 629-647. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/2784888. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

Haden, Patricia, et. al. “A Historical and Critical Essay for Black Women.” Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought. Ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The New Press: New York, 1995. 200-218.

Harrison, Daphne Duval. Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick: Press, 1988.

Harrison, Daphne Duval. “Women In Blues: Transgressing Boundaries.” Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation. Eds. Portia K. Maultsby and Mellonee V. Burnim. New York and London: Routledge, 2017.

Hayes, Eileen M. Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women’s Music. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Helmbold, Lois Rita. “Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression.” Feminist Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3, Autumn, 1987, pp. 629- 655, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3177885. Accessed 28 Apr. 2020. 159

Hill, Bertha “Chippie.” “Trouble in Mind.” 1926, Paramount, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiuodxN070c.

Hobson, Janell. Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 2005.

Holden, Stephen. “Pop View; Big Stars, Big Bucks and the Big Gamble.” , https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/24/arts/pop-view-big-stars-big-bucks-and-the-big- gamble.html. Accessed Apr 13 2021.

Holland, Shannon L. “The ‘Offending’ Breast of Janet Jackson: Public Discourse Surrounding the Jackson/Timberlake Performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII.” Women's Studies in Communication, vol. 32, no. 2, Spring 2009, pp. 129-150.

Holmes-Walker, Susan Marie. Exploring Sexual Socialization Among Black Father-Daughter Relationships. 2010. The University of Michigan, PhD dissertation. hooks, bell. Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981. hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992.

“Intersectional Feminism: What It Means and Why It Matters Right Now.” UN Women, https://un-women.medium.com/intersectional-feminism-what-it-means-and-why-it- matters-right-now-7743bfa16757. Accessed 12 Jun 2021.

Jackson, Janet.” “Control.” Control, 1986, A&M Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMuoowyCkUU.

Jackson, Janet.” “New Agenda.” janet., 1993, Virgin Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9asdotTIEtk.

Jackson, Janet with David Ritz. True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself. New York: Gallery Books/ Hunter Publishing, 2011.

“Janet Jackson on Jacob Stege 1986.” YouTube, uploaded by DarkSupernova, 3 Sep 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4d05LFVq_8.

“Janelle Monáe Talks to Our Urban Blog.” MTV, http://www.mtv.co.uk/janelle-monae/news/janelle-monae-talks-to-our-urban-blog. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Jones, Cassandra L. ““Tryna Free Kansas City: The Revolutions of Janelle Monáe as Digital Griot.” Frontiers, vol. 39, no. 1, 2018, pp. 42-72.

Jones, Dalton Anthony. “Death Sentences: From Genesis to Genre (Big Mama's Parole).” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, vol. 25, no.1, 20 May 2015, pp. 59-81. 160

Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow : Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

Joseph, Gloria. “Black Mothers and Daughters: Their Roles and Functions in American Society.” In Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives. ed. Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, pp. 75–126. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1981.

Kellman, Andy. “Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase: Album Review.” AllMusic, https://www.allmusic.com/album/metropolis-suite-i-the-chase-mw0000792387. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Kot, Greg. “Janelle Monáe’s Android Power.” , https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-xpm-2010-05-28-ct-ott-0528-janelle- monae-20100528-story.html. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Lang, Cady. “Aretha Franklin Wasn’t Just a Music Legend. She Also Raised Her Voice for Civil Rights.” Time, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190623-why-janet-jackson-is- pops-most-underrated-legend. Accessed 5 Jun 2021.

Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought and from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Levine, Nick. “Why Janet Jackson is Pop’s Most Underrated Legend.” BBC, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190623-why-janet-jackson-is-pops-most- underrated-legend. Accessed Apr 6 2021.

Lewis, David L. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf, 1981.

Lieb, Sandra R. Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983.

“Lizzo Is The 2020 NAACP Image Awards’ Entertainer Of The Year!” YouTube, uploaded by BET Networks, 2 Feb 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewlCf3CDBWo.

Lynskey, Dorian. “Janelle Monáe: Sister From Another Planet.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/26/janelle-monae-sister-another-planet. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Maclaran, Pauline. “Feminism’s Fourth Wave: A Research Agenda for Marketing and Consumer Research.” Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 31, no. 15-16, 2015, pp.1732–1738.

Mahon, Maureen. “Listening for Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s Voice: the Sound of Race and Gender Transgression in Rock and Roll.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, vol. 15, 2011, pp. 1-17.

Mahon, Maureen. Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race. 161

Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

“Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance.” NYU Press, https://nyupress.org/9781479865109/misogynoir-transformed/. Accessed 25 May 2021.

Monáe, Janelle. “Django Jane.” Dirty Computer, 2018, Bad Boy/Atlantic Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTjQq5rMlEY.

Monáe, Janelle. “Ghetto Woman.” The Electric Lady, 2013, Bad Boy/Atlantic Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q04UGjPP0eE.

Monáe, Janelle. “Hell You Talmbout.” Dirty Computer, 2018, Bad Boy/Atlantic Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fumaCsQ9wKw.

Monáe, Janelle. “Pynk.” 2015, Wondaland Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaYvlVR_BEc.

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. “Chapter IV. The Tangle of Pathology.” The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. 1965, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office

Murchison, Gayle. “Let’s Flip It! Quare Emancipations: Black Queer Traditions, Afrofuturisms, Janelle Monáe to Labelle.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, vol. 22, no. 1, 2018, pp.79–90.

Nance, Teresa. “Hearing the Missing Voice.” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26 no. 5, Special Issue: The Voice of African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, May 1996, pp. 629-647. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/2784888. Accessed 28 Jan 2021.

Nyren, Erin. “Lizzo Kills Coachella Weekend Two Despite Second Round of Sound Issues.” Variety, https://variety.com/2019/music/news/lizzo-coachella-weekend-two-sound- issues-1203194220/. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Okoth-Obbo, Vanessa. “Lizzo: ‘Coconut Oil.’” Pitchfork, https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22511-coconut-oil/. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Oliver, Paul. Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Pareles, Jon. “Aretha Franklin, Indomitable ‘Queen of Soul’ Dies at 76.” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/obituaries/aretha-franklin-dead.html. Accessed Jun 12 2021. Picardi, Phillip. “Lizzo Is the Sex-Positive, Twerking, Gospel-Singing Artist the World Needs.” Teen Vogue, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lizzo-music-issue. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Pittman, Coretta. “Bessie Smith’s Blues as Rhetorical Advocacy.” Woman and Rhetoric Between 162

the Wars, Eds. Ann George, et. al. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2013.

“Pop Contracts; On Taking a Larger View.” https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/arts/l-pop-contracts-on-taking-a-larger-view- 344291.html. Accessed Apr 13 2021.

Randolph, Sherie M. “Not to Rely Completely on the Courts: Florynce “Flo” Kennedy and Black Feminist Leadership in the Battle, 1969–1971.” Journal of Women's History, vol. 27, no. 1, Spring 2015, pp. 136-160.

Reich, Howard. “The Real Ma Rainey.” Chicago Tribune, 1997 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-06-30-9706300008-story.html.

Reznik, Alexandra B., Staging Intersectionality: Power and Performance in American Cultural Texts, 1855- 2019, 2019. Duquesne University, PhD dissertation.

“Q +A: Kimberlé Crenshaw.” Time, 2-9 Mar 2020.

Ringen, Jonathan. “How Singer-Songwriter, Actress-Activist Janelle Monáe Gets So Much Done.” Fast Company, https://www.fastcompany.com/90263428/how-singer-songwriter- actress-activist-janelle-monae-gets-so-much-done. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Rivers, Nicola. Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Rosa, Christopher. “Don’t Call Lizzo ‘Brave’ for Being Confident.” Glamour, https://www.glamour.com/story/dont-call-lizzo-brave-for-being-confident. Accessed 23 May 2021.

Simone, Nina.” “Four Women.” Wild is the Wind, 1966, Phillips Records, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWWqx_Keo1U.

Simone, Nina and Stephen Cleary. I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone. New York: De Capo Press, 1991.

Sinclair, David. “Remote Control; Janet Jackson; Rock.” Times. London, England: 1788, 1993.

Smith, Bessie.” “Washwoman’s Blues.” 1928, Columbia Photograph Company, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTSdWOI4TJc.

Spanos, Brittany. “Watch Janelle Monáe Celebrate ‘Pussy Power’ in ‘Pynk’ Video: “Make Me Feel Singer Re-Teams with for Latest ‘Dirty Computer’ Single .” Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/watch-janelle-monae-celebrate-pussy- power-in-pynk-video-628927/. Accessed 6 Jun 2021. 163

Spörke, Michael. Big Mama Thornton: The Life and Music. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2014.

Stevenson, J.C. “Janet Jackson: Our 1987 Cover Story.” Spin, https://www.spin.com/featured/janet-jackson-control-january-1987-cover-story-damn-it- janet/. Accessed Apr 6 2021.

Suisman, David. “Rising: The Brief Success of Harlem’s Own Record Company.” National Endowment for the Humanities, 2010, https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2010/novemberdecember/feature/black-swan-rising/. Accessed 12 February 2021.

Sullivan, James. “In ‘Nina Simone: Four Women,’ the singer, the song, the outrage.” The Boston Globe, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/06/arts/nina-simone-four-women- singer-song-outrage/. Accessed 5 Mar 2021.

Swartley, Ariel. “Little Mamas, Wild Women, and Balls of Fire: The Blues.” Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of . ed. Barbara O’Dair. New York: Random House, 1997.

Taraborrelli, Randy. “Janet Jackson’s in 'Control' With Latest Album.” South Florida Sun Sentinel, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1987-05-27-8702180401- story.html. Accessed Apr 6 2021.

Thompson, Becky. “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism.” Feminist Studies 28.2 (Summer 2002): 337 - 360.

Thornton, Willie Mae “Big Mama.” “Ball and Chain.” Stronger Than Dirt, 1968, Arhoolie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jXM1OEP5os.

Tillet, Salamishah. “Strange Sampling: Nina Simone and Her Hip-Hop Children.” American Quarterly, Vol. 66 no. 1, 2014, p. 119-137. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aq.2014.0006. Accessed 5 March. 2019.

Touré. “‘Janet’ Album Review.” Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/janet-245726/. Accessed Apr 22 2021.

Urban, Dennis J. “The Women of SNCC: Struggle, Sexism, and the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness. 1960-66.” International Social Science Review, Vol. 77 no. 3/4, 2002, pp. 185-190. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/41887103. Accessed 14 Apr 2019.

Valnes, Matthew. “Janelle Monáe and Afro-Sonic Feminist Funk.” Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, September 2017, pp. 1-12.

Walker, Aida Overton. “Colored Men and Women on the Stage.” The Colored American. 164

HathiTrust, October 1905.

Ward, Sarah. “Women and Work: African American Women in Depression Era America.” CUNY Academic Works, May 2018, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2625.

Warwick, Jacqueline. Girl Groups, Girl Culture : Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s. New York and London: Routledge, 2007.

West, Michael J. “Here’s How Miles Davis and Nina Simone Were Alike and Different.” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/heres-how-miles- davis-and-nina-simone-were-alike-and-different/2016/04/14/6ed08550-fb80-11e5-80e4- c381214de1a3_story.html. Accessed 15 Jan 2021.

“Wondaland Arts Society: Now Put Some Voodoo On It.” https://wondaland.wordpress.com/about/. Accessed 18 May 2021.

Wortham, Jenna. “How Janelle Monáe Found Her Voice.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/magazine/how-janelle-monae-found-her- voice.html. Accessed 16 May 2021.

Yates-Richard, Meina. “’Hell You Talmbout’: Janelle Monáe’s Black Cyberfeminist Sonic Aesthetics.” Feminist Review, vol. 127, 2021, pp. 35-51.