★ 06/08/2020
Lordi (Black Resonance ), an English professor at Vanderbilt University, examines the sound and artists of soul music in this brilliant history. Drawing on close listening to artists including Beyoncé, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight, among many others, Lordi argues that to have soul one had to possess “virtuosic black resilience,” exemplified through recordings and live performances that promoted the black community. Lordi looks at various elements and techniques that define soul, such as singing cover versions of popular songs, vocal ad-libs and falsettos, and false endings that trick listeners into thinking a performance has ended. As examples, she cites Nina Simone’s ad-libbing in “Be My Husband”; Aretha Franklin’s riffing in her live performance of “Dr. Feelgood” and “Amazing Grace”; and Donny Hathaway’s free-form lyrics in his version of “You’ve Got a Friend” (“Would y’all sing ‘you’ve got a friend’ for me?” Hathaway calls out during a live recording from the Troubadour in L.A.). Lordi vividly illustrates that soul artists offer models of black resistance, joy, and community through their songs. This is a must-read for musicologists, critics, and fans of soul. (Aug.)
06/01/2020
Ask any devotee of American popular music to define the genre soul, and chances are you'll get an evasive answer masquerading as profound wisdom. In this scholarly look at classic soul, Lordi (English, Vanderbilt Univ.; Black Resonance ) painstakingly tries to pin down the slippery genre, first by reminding readers what—contrary to popular belief—classic soul isn't defined by: It's not necessarily directly tied to the civil rights or Black Power movements, nor does it have to be overtly political. Plus, Lordi adds, it's not all about guys strutting their stuff in matching outfits. Instead, the author asserts that women actually took the lead in shaping what she calls "the logic of soul," the spirit of Black overcoming and resilience demonstrated through classic soul recordings and performances, many of which Lordi deconstructs in detail. Hallmarks of soul, she writes, include falsetto vocals, false endings, ad libs, and inventive cover versions that often "subsume" versions by other artists. She analyzes the work of classic soul artists such as Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and Marvin Gaye and ends by comparing and contrasting postsoul artist including Beyoncé, Prince, and Flying Lotus. VERDICT A strong choice for libraries supporting African American studies or popular American music programs.—Jeffrey Hastings, Howell Carnegie District Lib, Howell, MI
2020-04-21
As Vanderbilt English professor Lordi argues in this academic but spirited book, too much recent writing about soul music treats the genre as if it were trapped in amber. Though the music had a relatively brief moment of prominence on the charts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, it speaks to enduring elements of black experience that were often suppressed. To that end, the author’s guiding lights aren’t James Brown or Stax and Motown legends; rather, she spotlights the likes of Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, and Minnie Riperton, less-appreciated artists for whom “stylization of survival is conditioned by pain, often led by women, and driven by imagination, innovation, and craft.” Lordi shows how this attitude manifests through the artists’ song choices (often reinterpretations of pop hits by white artists), live ad-libs and false endings, and falsetto singing, which explores “how vulnerable it is permissible to be—how sexy, how extravagant, how cool and effervescent.” The author’s use of jargon is sometimes overly thick, especially when she tussles with the “post-soul” theorists who downplay the music’s themes of femininity and struggle. However, Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon. (Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul and Aretha Frankin’s live gospel album Amazing Grace draw special attention.) The author’s argument for soul’s continuing relevance would be stronger with more contemporary examples, but she concludes with some brief but thought-provoking commentaries on artists like Erykah Badu and Janelle Monáe. They are, she writes, representative of what she calls “Afropresentism,” a mindset that is beholden neither to the past nor Afrofuturist fantasias but instead speaks to black struggles in the moment.
A knotty but worthy attempt to stoke new conversations about a genre sometimes dismissed as moribund.
"Lordi’s love for soul music, vibrant writing, and analytical acumen coalesce in a book that is difficult to put down. Readers are unlikely to hear soul music the same way ever again. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers."
Meaning of Soul is a needed corrective, challenging how scholarship and much of popular culture remembers the soul music era. Lordi refuses descriptions of the era that only allow its brightest stars and biggest names full consideration.... Her work serves as an exemplar for inclusive genre analysis that makes room for musical possibility.
Journal of Musicological Research - Fredara Mareva Hadley
"With welcoming prose that belies its density, The Meaning of Soul focuses on ostensibly unconventional creative choices: soul singers’ covers of songs written by white artists; ad-libs, improvisations, and mistakes; the uses of falsetto and the 'false endings' that trickle throughout the oeuvres of many Black artists. She is attentive to the significant contributions of the female architects of the genre. . . . Lordi gives a deft, concise accounting of soul music’s political and social milieu."
Bookforum - Danielle A. Jackson
"Detailing not only the evolution of the genre but of the criticism surrounding it, The Meaning Of Soul is a heartfelt appreciation as well as a welcome addition to the scholarly soul canon."
The Wire - Michael A Gonzales
An exquisite work of sound scholarship, The Meaning of Soul offers a new narrative of soul music that compels us to rethink what we have missed about the genre and the political moment it inhabited. It at last articulates a usable, inclusive definition of soul, filling a critical gap in our understanding of black music and sociopolitical experiences in the United States and across the diaspora."
"The Meaning of Soul is a thoughtful, lively journey through rich musical archives that expands the definition of what it means to be a soul artist."
Foreword Reviews - Rachel Jagareski
Emily J. Lordi’s The Meaning of Soul will likely be the most important book I'll read this decade. Lordi reminds us that to hear soul, one must actively listen to the winding ways of black folk. Lordi is the greatest listener this nation has created, and this book will remind us that liberation starts with black sound.
"Few cultural theorists listen to music this well or joyfully; few critics place their judgments and pleasures within as persuasive a theoretical framework."
Emily J. Lordi incisively and insightfully takes up the daunting task of resurrecting, dissecting, and disentangling soul’s wide-ranging legacy, spillage, and overlap in black popular culture, black academia, and radical black politics. Her generation-leaping contrasts of the soul and ‘post-soul’ era’s most spiritualized and radicalized avatars from James Brown to Beyoncé serve up poignant and often piquant musicological reveals about classic, epochal recordings of Civil Rights-era and contemporary vintage. Lordi illuminates the evolutionary artistry that ensures the poetics, production, and ethos of soul kulcha sustain staying power as a haunted (and hainted) arbiter of black resilience, resistance, and embattled maroon futurism. With wit, detail, and ruminative verve Lordi narrates and interrogates how the journey of the soul meme’s movements within musical blackness navigates a crossroads full of split desire for both incendiary grassroots action and an infinity of intimate release.
"Lordi’s book is essential reading, for she brilliantly guides us to reconsider the meaning of soul and to redefine it."
No Depression - Henry Carrigan
