What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture

This is a wide-ranging and thoughtful analysis of Black popular music and the Black public sphere. Mark Anthony Neal is one of the country's leading scholars on music and cultural expressions and Black people.

I was not suspecting such a well-researched volume when I chose to purchase this text. I was looking for some information about a particular piece of music and this book was the only one that addressed it. I am still reading it because the particular copy I have has rather small print and the writing is very dense; this is not a text for the light-hearted as it is a scholarly work. Excellent job, Mr. Neal (no relation, to my knowledge...).

Mark Anthony Neal's work resonates and informs!!!!

Loved it

In this book Neal theorizes about African-American music, examining the link between early 20th century musics and turn-of-the-millenium music. The author shows connections between social developments and the forms of pop music that black Americans developed. The book is interesting both as a survey of some threads of black music and as an overview of historical changes for African-Amercians in our nation.The linkages between the two-- the music and the social climate-- are supported by a careful analysis of the music, and more often of the lyrics of some well-known composers. Performance styles are given some attention also. However, Neal is selective about examining only those artists whose work supports his theories. Other artists whose work does not fit the schema are generally ignored. In this sense, the book is not exhaustive. That is fine, actually, as the volume is elegantly structured into six digestible chapters. This maintains the momentum of the writing and allows the reader to remain engaged, to avoid being bogged down in minutia.Neal does a nice job of examining the African-American societies that have emerged during the 20th century. He looks at how different groups of blacks have related with each other, and how the music serves to both mollify and communicate the tensions and connections between the groups. The roles of work, finances, and community are given emphasis in his theories. As such, he focuses mostly on the middle-class, the working-class, and the under-class blacks. Other groups, such as gays or the wealthy (often the artists themselves), receive less attention.The author does at times surrender to a hair-splitting approach with the concepts. Sometimes his writing becomes entangled, with long, long sentences that are structured so that the reader becomes lost. This occurs primarily in the later chapters. The index given to the book is fairly incomplete, making cross-referencing difficult. To his great credit, Neal tends to hew closely to common language. This makes the book as a whole accessible to a variety of readers. Overall, I found this to be a educational and insightful volume, and recommend it to anyone interested in popular music, African-American cultural studies, or contemporary history.

I think that this book was very well written and focused very well on how the music of the Black community was a reflection of the status of blacks as well as their position. As a former student of Dr. Neal, I have learned that resistance to oppression does not always come from marches and sit-ins, but music itself can be a form of social protest. If you are a student of African-American history, you must have this book for your collection. Buy it now!