On Rhetoric and Black Music

On Rhetoric and Black Music is a brilliant, resonant story of Black music and meaning-making, of Black sonic and social worlds. Earl Brooks invites us to hear the expressive force and persuasive power in our musical tradition. That power might manifest in a poignant lyric, a piano trill, a blue note, or a wordless moan—and in all the conversation, contemplation, inspiration, creation, and community that emerge with these sounds. Alongside the rhetorical quality of Black music, I am moved by the musical quality of Brooks's own rhetoric. He writes with great beauty, clarity, agility, and melody—a singing book.

~La Marr Jurelle Bruce

Earl H. Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music offers a brilliant new way of thinking about the contributions of Black musical artists. He provides a rhetorical analysis of the musical artistry of Harriet Tubman, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, and Mahalia Jackson. His analysis demonstrates that Black music is not just or only entertainment but a lifeline, a 'sonic lexicon' which articulates the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped Black people's cultural and political development.

~Geneva Smitherman

Scholar and musician Earl Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music marshals the author's scholarly curiosities and musical prowess into a unique, multisited study, impressive in its historical reach and capacious in its genre coverage. Excellent for teaching courses on Black music, American music, and cultural studies, this book takes on the spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and gospel and analyzes them with an original take. With this study, Brooks establishes a compelling multidisciplinary voice in several fields—one that readers will find accessible and illuminating.

~Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.

Deeply imaginative, thoroughly researched, and theoretically sound, Earl Brooks's On Rhetoric and Black Music challenges conventional thinking about the discursive practices that underscored the ideology, movement, and activity that framed the larger historical span of the struggle for social change and racial reconciliation in America. Brooks offers new readings into how musical sound persuaded, informed, and motivated Black America during key historical periods by anchoring his theoretical framework in an examination of the cultural work of five key sound identities that were central to the progression of American music: Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson. This alone makes this work a must-read!

~Tammy L. Kernodle