Overview

Reiland Rabaka provides an alternative history of funk since the mid-1960s, which uncovers the epoch that funk women influenced and were influenced by while wrestling with issues revolving around race, gender, sexuality, and class simultaneously in the American music industry and in American society. Rabaka explores the long line of artistically adventurous African American women whose music made groundbreaking contributions to funk, but whose subtle forms of alternative feminism and intoxicating eroticism led to their marginalization in both historical and contemporary discussions of the musical genre. Their gender identities and intense sexual expressions fly in the face of long-standing narratives about funk, which almost invariably focus on male figures. The book focuses primarily on the most acclaimed female funk group and artists of the classic era: Labelle, Chaka Khan, and Betty Davis, who created an uncompromising, anti-commercial, unclassifiable form of ultra-erotic funk rock that directly challenged patriarchy, the politics of respectability, and conservative conceptions of Black women’s sexuality. The book will be of significant interest for those interested in Race and Ethnicity in Popular Music, Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music, the Cultural Study of Popular Music, Black Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, and Music and Politics.

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9781041106814

Table of Contents

Reviews

Funk and feminism are rarely mentioned in the same breath. Maybe Reiland Rabaka’s Black Feminist Funk will change that! By foregrounding some of the period’s most artistically daring Black women musicians, Rabaka reveals that culture and politics, music and feminism came together in the funk of the 1970s. Rabaka’s tight focus on Chaka Khan, Betty Davis, and the women of Labelle, pays off, allowing readers to appreciate their contributions to the invention and evolution of funk and to the articulation of Black feminism. - Alice Echols, Author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture Professor Rabaka’s passion for uncovering the overlooked roles of Black women who shaped Funk shines through once again! It is his attention to subtle yet powerful details that makes this book stand out. You will “hear” these women’s voices as they speak and sing through its pages, and you will “see” them perform. Rabaka does more than center them—he allows them to speak and perform through his writing. This is another liberatory text that reveals how Black women voice their lived musical experiences through funk. - Ruth Opara, Department of Music, Columbia University, New York A daring and powerful work that rectifies the all too common erasure of Black women from feminist musicology, Reiland Rabaka’s testament of Black musical feminism provides an illuminating cultural context for Black women’s funk, highlighting the critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, and sexism behind the beats, and how feminine funksters addressed sexual liberation, Black power, and calls for economic justice three minutes at a time. - Roberta Freund Schwartz, Director of the Musicology Division, School of Music, University of Kansas

Funk and feminism are rarely mentioned in the same breath. Maybe Reiland Rabaka’s Black Feminist Funk will change that! By foregrounding some of the period’s most artistically daring Black women musicians, Rabaka reveals that culture and politics, music and feminism came together in the funk of the 1970s. Rabaka’s tight focus on Chaka Khan, Betty Davis, and the women of Labelle, pays off, allowing readers to appreciate their contributions to the invention and evolution of funk and to the articulation of Black feminism. - Alice Echols, Author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture It is Rabaka’s attention to subtle yet powerful details that makes this book stand out. You will “hear” these women’s voices as they speak and sing through its pages, and you will “see” them perform. Rabaka does more than center them—he allows them to speak and perform through his writing. This is another liberatory text that reveals how Black women voice their lived musical experiences through funk. - Ruth Opara, Department of Music, Columbia University, New York A daring and powerful work that rectifies the all too common erasure of Black women from feminist musicology, Reiland Rabaka’s testament of Black musical feminism provides an illuminating cultural context for Black women’s funk, highlighting the critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, and sexism behind the beats, and how feminine funksters addressed sexual liberation, Black power, and calls for economic justice three minutes at a time. - Roberta Freund Schwartz, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Kansas

Professor Rabaka’s passion for uncovering the overlooked roles of Black women who shaped Funk shines through once again! It is his attention to subtle yet powerful details that makes this book stand out. You will “hear” these women’s voices as they speak and sing through its pages, and you will “see” them perform. Professor Rabaka does more than center them—he allows them to speak and perform through his writing. This is another liberatory text that reveals how Black women voice their lived musical experiences through funk. - Ruth Opara, PhD, Department of Music, Columbia University, New York Funk and feminism are rarely mentioned in the same breath. Maybe Reiland Rabaka’s Black Feminist Funk will change that! By foregrounding some of the period’s most artistically daring Black women musicians, Rabaka reveals that culture and politics, music and feminism came together in the funk of the 1970s. Rabaka’s tight focus on Chaka Khan, Bette Davis, and the women of Labelle, pays off, allowing readers to appreciate their contributions to the invention and evolution of funk and to the articulation of Black feminism. - Alice Echols, Author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture A daring and powerful work that rectifies the all too common erasure of Black women from feminist musicology, Reiland Rebaka’s testament of Black musical feminism provides an illuminating cultural context for Black women’s funk, highlighting the critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, and sexism behind the beats, and how feminine funksters addressed sexual liberation, Black power, and calls for economic justice three minutes at a time. - Roberta Freund Schwartz, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Kansas

Author Information

Reiland Rabaka is Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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