Questions of Genre in Black Popular Music

Author(s): David Brackett

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1/2 (Spring - Fall, 2005), pp. 73-92
Published by: Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Press
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QUESTIONSOF GENRE IN BLACKPOPULARMUSIC

DAVIDBRACKETT

In the movie TheJerk(1979), Steve Martin plays Navin Johnson, a white

man raised by an African-American family in rural Mississippi. The
opening credits have barely concluded when it becomes clear that the
development of Navin's personality is causing some consternation
among his adoptive parents and siblings. He cannot dance, he experiences difficulty clapping in time to the rustic shout-type tune that his
family plays on the front porch, and he prefers tuna fish sandwiches on
white bread (with extra mayonnaise) and shrink-wrapped Twinkies to
soul food. Navin finds his deliverance, however, in a fortuitous exposure
to a broadcast of 1970s-era easy listening music-suddenly, he can clap
on the backbeat to the neo-Herb Alpert strains emanating from the radio,
recognizing through this involuntary response that, somewhere, others of
his own kind must exist.
My summary of the opening of TheJerkmay seem remote from the title
of this article. But the movie's first few scenes present topoi that condense
many beliefs and assumptions central to understanding the links
between identity and musical genres. The film revels in the absurdity of
rigid essentialist stereotypes even as it points to widely shared associations between musical categories and racial demographics. Nature triumphs over culture, and mimesis (how nature and culture become "second nature") lurks outside the frame. Who, after all, associates African
Americans with Herb Alpert?1
1. This is not intended as a condescending swipe at Herb Alpert. After all, according to
Pierre Bourdieu's "heteronomous principle of hierarchization" (i.e., economic success),

DAVID BRACKETT
is Associate Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of
Theory (Academic Affairs) at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. His previous publications include IntrepretingPopular Music (University of California Press, 2000;
originally published in 1995) and The Pop, Rock, and Soul Reader: Histories and Debates
(Oxford University Press, 2005).

73

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If a generalized connection can be established in TheJerkbetween racial

identity and musical "kind" writ large, then a second anecdote illustrates
the ambiguity involved with categorization in practice. On a recent trip
to the local HMV megastore, I attempted to find a recording by the
Drifters, a group that began in the 1950s with Clyde McPhatter's gospelderived lead tenor featured against the background of the group's
gospel-quartet influenced "doo-wop" vocals. By the late 1950s, the group
(with Ben E. King now singing lead) had become a star attraction of the
new "uptown," pop-rhythm and blues emerging from the Brill Building
in central Manhattan. After I searched in vain for the "oldies section,"
which I assumed would house the Drifters' recordings, a friendly store
clerk directed me to the "R&B" section, and I left with a copy of the
Drifters' GreatestHits. I felt a bit perplexed: the Drifters' first recordings
certainly were categorized as "rhythm and blues" in the mid-1950s, and
as both "rhythm and blues" and "popular" (i.e., as "crossover recordings") during their Brill Building heyday from 1959 to 1964. But they
have little in common with contemporary R&B, which is what I expect to
find in the R&B section of the contemporary record store.
Compared with the straightforward, commonsensical relationships
observed in The Jerk,my visit to the HMV megastore presented a more
tangled web of connections. The logic of this particular HMV's spatial
arrangement of categories is not difficult to detect, even if it is rife with
interesting and revealing contradictions. Genres associated with the
African diaspora-rap, reggae, R&B of all eras, disco-are grouped into
one corner of the store along with not necessarily black but still dancecentered genres such as house, techno, drum 'n' bass, and other forms of
electronic dance music. Consumers interested in the inconsistencies of
this system need only look under "J"in the R&B section, where they will
find the Jackson 5, the Jacksons, and Jermaine and Janet Jackson, but not
Michael-he's in the Pop/Rock section in the middle of the floor along
with his confreres Prince and Jimi Hendrix. (I might add that the floor
containing the various genres of popular music is in the basement of the
store-Classical and Jazz are "on top.")
Both the opening minutes of The Jerk and my trip to HMV present
notions of genre and identity that result either in laughter or confusion
depending on how well these notions match the generic codes that we

Alpert's work is unquestionably of great value (Bourdieu 1993, 38). As an illustration of this,
Joel Whitbum (2001) ranks Herb Alpert (with or without the Tijuana Brass) as the twentysixth most popular album artist during the period 1955-2001. For more on mimesis as "second nature," see Taussig (1993).

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

75

have internalized. The symbolic function of genre serves us well until we

encounter a situation that reveals the fragile line between common sense
and nonsense.
TheJerkproposes a natural connection between race and taste, between
a preference for pigs' feet and an ease in finding musical beats. In contrast
to the connections proposed by The Jerk,the organization of HMV highlights the arbitrary relationship between recordings and categories,
although race once again plays a role in designating the place of a particular type of music. Both of these cases exemplify how the notion of genre
speaks to transitory divisions in the musical field that correspond in discontinuous and complex ways to a temporally defined social space. The
relationship between divisions in the musical field and social identities is
most obvious in the large categories for popular music (initially labeled
"race," "hillbilly," and "popular") that have been used by the U.S. music
industry since the 1920s. Of these categories, "race music"-subsequently relabeled "rhythm and blues," "soul," "black," and most recently,
"R&B"-has persistently been linked with African Americans. It would
be a mistake, however, to assume that this linkage has been straightforward or consistent: non-African Americans have recorded music that has
been classified in this category; non-African Americans have certainly
purchased, consumed, and listened to music classified in this category;
African Americans have recorded, purchased, consumed, and listened to
music that does not belong in this category; and, as my Drifters' anecdote
suggests, the range of musical styles included within this category has
varied considerably both synchronically and diachronically.
Yet it would also be a mistake to think of these categories as solely arbitrary machinations of the music industry or as mere "social constructions." The large musical categories of the U.S. popular music industry
that have played variations over the basic terms of popular, race, and hillbilly since the 1920s are part of a larger field of musical production in
which musical genres participate in the circulation of social connotations
that pass between musicians, fans, critics, music-industry magnates and
employees. That these connotations, these "meanings," are accepted as
"real" speaks to the phantasmatic nature of identity, that ever-shifting
sense of self that finds confirmation and reinforcement in quotidian social
practices and in a range of discursive formations, both institutional and
shadowy.
Even as individuals use genres to articulate the here-and-now of individual and collective identities, the variety of genre labels gestures
toward an ephemerality that exceeds the spatial stolidity indicated whenever a particular structural arrangement is named. For example, the
music industry categories of "popular," "R&B," and "country" each

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encompass genre labels that emerge in other media and contexts, all of
which are in a perpetual state of transformation. Thus R&B, the musicindustry category, might consist of R&B, hip-hop, neo-soul, and quiet
storm as propagated in radio formats, nightclubs, certain record stores, or
in the everyday discourse of fans. By the same token, the larger umbrella
category of popular music functions as part of an even larger field of
Western music containing jazz, classical music, world music, and so on
(see Brackett 2002, 69; 2003).
Because of the fleeting quality of genre arrangements and levels at any
particular point in time, a given musical text may belong to more than
one genre simultaneously, either due to shifting perceptions of the context under consideration or because the text presents a synthesis that
exceeds contemporary comprehension of generic boundaries. To be sure,
close inspection of any text inevitably raises doubts as to genre identity;
but it is also impossible to imagine a genreless text.2 Similarly, the more
closely one describes a genre in terms of its stylistic components, the
fewer the examples that actually seem to fit (see also Negus 1999, 29;
Toynbee 2000, 105). And although the range of sonic possibilities for any
given genre is quite large at a particular moment, it is not infinite: simply
because the boundaries of genre are permeable and fluctuating does not
mean that they are not patrolled; simply because a musical text may not
"belong" to a genre with any stability does not mean that it does not
"participate" in one. To take a recent example, "Hey Ya" (2003) by
Outkast might be understood as "hip-hop," "rap," maybe even a type of
"alternative rock," or perhaps "alternative" or "progressive hip-hop,"
but it could not be considered "country music" by any stretch of the
imagination.3
Whatever sense of boundary exists before slippage ensues relies on the
affinity of musical genres for what Bakhtin (1986, 60-102) described as
"speech genres," verbal "enunciations," and the resulting quality of
"addressivity." As Bakhtin (95) explains, "The style of the utterance
depend[s] on those to whom the utterance is addressed, [and] how the
speaker (or writer) senses and imagines his addressees." Furthermore,
"Each speech genre in each area of speech communication has its own
2. I am here paraphrasing Derrida (1980, 61) when he hypothesizes that "a text cannot
belong to no genre, it cannot be without or less a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging." For studies of specific instances in which the same
song was reclassified due to performance style and context, see Hamm (1995, 370-380).
Grenier (1990) discusses how the meaning of a recording changes when it appears in different radio formats.

3. This is not to say that "HeyYa"could not be performedor recordedin such a way as
to turn it into a countrysong; again,see Hamm (1995,370-380).

Brackett * Questions of Genre in Black Popular Music

77

typical conception of the addressee, and this defines it as a genre." (95).

In addition to marking the intersubjectivity of speech genres, enunciations refer to particular moments and specific spaces, emphasize embeddedness in a discursive web, and imply a distinct cultural position (see
Bhabha 1994, 36; de Certeau 1984, 33).
To continue the parallel, musical utterances form and are subsequently
reformed within (or between or even among) genres, already anticipating
how these utterances will be heard. Successful interactions with mediators (e.g., record company employees, music critics, etc.) situated within
institutions that function at the interstices of power and public culture
often depend on generic intelligibility (at least until a certain level of success has been achieved), but these gatekeepers are also not independent
from the social circulation of generic meaning (see Frith 1996, 88-89).
One can anticipate a few common criticisms of genre studies. Some
could easily fault the notion of genre as a static concept that strips a work
of its individuality. The spectral protests of musicians hover before me,
complaining that an emphasis on genre, and hence (to some extent) on
structure, robs them of agency. On the other hand, when the temporality
of genre becomes the focus, the notion may come to seem meaningless
because it then paradoxically appears to be too unstable: no listing of
semantic or stylistic content can account for all texts that might be branded by a particular label, and the same labels refer to different cultural artifacts at different moments. Moreover, when one posits a momentary relationship between a musical field of genres and different positions in
social space, one is confronted with the instability of social identities,
which, like genres, are subject to constant redefinition and which also
become meaningful within a field of relationships at a particular
moment.4
A swerve into etymology will show that the term genre, imported from
French into English, refers in French both to categories for artworks and
to what approaches an originary experience of category: that of gender,
the classification of humans into females and males, a division that, it
might be argued, engenders all human impulses to categorize and classify.5 If the term genre evokes stasis and spatiality, as do terms such as
arrangement and field, then to describe a text as "participating" in, rather
than "belonging" to, a genre emphasizes temporality. Derrida comments
on the impossibility of defining genre on the basis of traits and on the
4. For more on the relationship between positions within a cultural field of production
and a social space, see Bourdieu (1993, 29-73). Bourdieu counterposes the "space of artistic
position-takings" (the cultural field of production) with the "space of artistic positions" (the
position of artists in social space).
5. For more extensive punning on "genre," see Derrida (1980, 57).

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simultaneous impossibility of ignoring genre: "[The mark of belonging]

belongs without belonging, and the 'without' (or the suffix '-less') which
relates belonging to nonbelonging appears only in the timeless time of
the blink of an eye" (Derrida 1980, 61). The instability of genre, then,
resembles nothing so much as the situation of meaning in language in
general.
If the instability of genre is not particularly remarkable, then the quality of "addressivity," derived from Bakhtin, claims a bit more attention.
One often reads that genres connect cultural producers and texts with
audiences (for one of the most eloquent presentations of this argument,
see Frith [1996, 75-95]). This quality provides one way of understanding
how people in the United States (and much of the rest of the world) can
speak of "black popular music" with some sense that they know what
they are talking about despite apparent inconsistencies in terms of musical style, musicians, and producers and how it is that qualities of race,
place, gender, sexuality, and so on may become associated with an assemblage of musical texts.
"Addressivity" notwithstanding, and despite many studies of production and consumption, popular-music scholars have rarely employed
genre theory as a way of understanding black music.6 One of the few
essays to address the use of the term blackmusic by popular-music scholars is written by Philip Taggs (1989), "Open Letter: 'Black Music,'AfroAmerican Music,' and 'European Music.'" As indicated by its title, Tagg
presents his essay in the form of an open letter. It is not, in the words of
the author, "a 'scholarly' article quoting, misquoting or otherwise
attempting to attack or out-argue anyone else" (Tagg 1989, 285). Rather,
"the letter is intended as a polemical problematisation of terms like 'black
music,' 'white music,' 'Afro-American music' or 'European music'" and
"to provide some ideas for a constructive debate on music, race, and ideology" (285). Somewhat surprising, in light of the importance of the subject, Tagg's essay, while frequently cited, has not, to my knowledge, in the
fifteen-odd years since its publication received a direct, sustained
response nor has there been a particularly constructive debate within
popular music studies around the issues that Tagg raises.
This lacuna is especially striking given that, since 1989, the study of
particular "scenes" and social groups (i.e., specific articulations of identity) has become one of the major growth areas of popular music studies,7
6. For exceptions, see Toynbee (2000, 115-22) and Negus (1999, 83-102); for a systematic
theory of genre developed by a popular music scholar, see Fabbri (1982).
7. Two influential examples of the move toward "scene studies" are Cohen (1991) and
Straw (1991).

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

79

and it may well be that since the publication of Tagg's letter, broad statements about black music of the sort to which he took exception have
tapered off. I would not be surprised if this tapering off resulted from the
force of Tagg's presentation, a thorough dissection of essentialism in discussions of black music and in the use of racial terminology itself. Tagg
notes the inconsistency of style traits in the music described as black
music, the heterogeneity of practitioners and audience, and the presence
of black-identified traits in "European" music-in fact, his critique of the
concept of "Afro-American music" might well resemble a critique of the
tendency to classify musical texts into music genres in general. The
relentless rationality of Tagg's arguments makes them difficult to ignore.
Several possible responses to Tagg suggest themselves, although none
provide the type of empirical data that would refute his points on their
own terms. One could mention a historical discourse emerging in the
United States and emanating to the rest of the world positing a critical
difference between African-American music and other music produced
in the United States. This discourse bears important similarities to the
discourse that insists on the idea of racial difference itself, an idea emerging in almost-perfect synchrony in the nineteenth century in a profusion
of colonial texts. While in no sense natural, inevitable, or logical, the
"peculiar institution" of slavery and the equally peculiar legal/social
practice of Jim Crow are but two particularly infamous and visible
instances of routinized racial difference that permeate U.S. social history
and that are performed anew as living traces in individual memories.8
The centrality of this particular axis of difference can be difficult to understand for people from elsewhere in the world. African-American legal
scholar Patricia Williams (2004, 10) recounts an exchange that she had
with a Parisian friend who was upset over what seemed to the friend to
be the American obsession with racial categories, an obsession seen most
overtly in personal ads. Williams adds that labels such as "single black
female," "lonely Asian male," and "self-described hunk or hunkette who
is tall, blond and emphatically Caucausian" characterized "the personals
columns of any given newspaper or magazine," which are "perhaps the
most openly and unashamedly segregated sites in the United States." Yet
while the particular enactment of difference in the United States may not
find precise duplication elsewhere, why should we expect performances
of difference (which may occur along axes of gender, sexuality, class, religion, language, etc., as well as race) to remain the same from place to
place and time to time?
8. For attempts to theorize this historical discourse, see Brackett (2000) and Radano
(1996). For source readings illustrating the formation of this discourse, see Southern (1971)
and Epstein (1977).

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Examining the idea of black music as a genre as it occurs in large popular music categories forms another avenue of response to Tagg's argument. Especially important are the ideas that genres are not static assemblages of empirically verifiable musical characteristics, that they bring
with them social connotations about race, gender, and so on, and that
they are understandable only in relation to other genres at particular
moments in time. While in some respects less accessible, the same contradictions (some might say shortcomings) of generic understanding
highlighted by Tagg hold true for classical music: one need only look at
Chopin's Nocturne in G minor, op. 15, no. 3, for an example of a piece
with almost no musical characteristics associated with the genre within
which its title places it.9 I am not suggesting that scholars should avoid
analyzing internal stylistic characteristics that create difference within the
musical field. Rather, the preceding discussion suggests that such internal differentiations will be most convincing when limited to particular
sociohistorical instances. Of course, one reason the contradictions of
genre are more apparent in black popular music is precisely because the
label highlights its associations with social identity so much more than
the label "Nocturne" does. But then this is true to some extent of other
popular music genres as well. For example, the assumed audience of
country music is clear, especially in its original guise as "hillbilly" music.
In addition to referring to black popular music as part of a long-range
historical discourse and as part of an ever-changing genre system in a
general sense, we may attain a greater degree of specificity by looking at
the uses of this label in one particular "frozen" moment. In the following
example, the relationship between recordings that "cross over" genre
boundaries articulates those very same transitory and translucent boundaries. "Crossover" recordings illuminate the instability of musical categories even as they reinforce and rely on them. Comparisons between
music industry genre assignations (keeping in mind that the "music
industry" is not separate from the rest of society) and the sound of specific recordings often highlight sociocultural factors in classification precisely because of the lack of an airtight relationship.10Examining two different recordings of the same song made around the same time provides
an occasion for proceeding with the assumption that these categorical
labels must mean something if so many people seem to think they do,

9. Jeffrey Kallberg (1996) has done just this in his excellent analysis.
10. For a more in-depth examination of a different moment that describes a similar disjunction, see Brackett 2002.

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

81

even if the categories appear inconsistent from the standpoint of empirical, musicological data.11
"By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (hereafter "Phoenix") was written by
Jimmy Webb (1967), part of a new breed of songwriters who emerged
during the 1960s (including, most notably, Burt Bacharach). Webb
retained the basic aesthetic of Tin Pan Alley (especially the use of sophisticated harmonic-melodic relationships and orchestral backing) while
updating this traditional notion of craft with formal fluctuations, occasional modal-tinged harmonies, and contemporary lyric themes suitable
for a new brand of swinging consumer.12As such, recordings of Webb's
songs by artists such as Glen Campbell (including "Phoenix," "Wichita
Lineman," "Galveston"), the 5th Dimension ("Up, Up, and Away"), and
Richard Harris ("MacArthur Park") demonstrated the continued viability of the "easy listening" or "middle-of-the-road" (MOR) genre within
the popular mainstream during the late 1960s. Yet, in a manner recalling
Tin Pan Alley songs of the "golden era," Webb's songs proved adaptable
in a variety of genres, as illustrated later in the discussion of Isaac Hayes'
soul version of "Phoenix."
Glen Campbell's recording of "Phoenix," released late in 1967, poses
interesting challenges in terms of genre analysis. As might be expected, it
participates in the pop-MOR genre without belonging to it. It features
orchestral backing and relatively complex functional harmony, but compared with the other songs of Webb's already mentioned, it is relatively
simple in formal terms, consisting of one sixteen-bar section that goes
around three times. Its sense of late 1960s contemporaneity is provided
by a dotted-quarter-eighth-note bass pattern, an integral part of producing a "rock ballad" feel, and by lyrics containing a degree of romantic
realism-pessimism-bittersweetness that would have been distinctly out
of place prior to the mid-1960s. A brief two-bar mixolydian modal vamp
appears at the end of the song but fades out before it sounds three times,
as the song clocks in at two minutes, and forty-three seconds, a conventional duration for a pop recording of the era. Campbell sings the melody
very close to how it appears in the sheet music, adding subtle expressive
ornamentation during verses two and three but largely allowing the
orchestration and the lyrics' narrative to carry the drama of the recording.
In terms of Billboardchart representation, Campbell's "Phoenix" was a
moderate pop hit, reaching number twenty-six on the "Hot 100" pop
chart, while the album of the same name reached number fifteen on the
11. A more general study of how cover versions highlight the connections between genre
and identity may be found in Griffiths (2002).
12. The selection of songs for studies such as this one can be virtually arbitrary.This song
was chosen because I initially presented this discussion at a conference held in Phoenix.

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album chart and won the "Best Album of the Year" Grammy award for
1968, reflecting the prestige granted MOR-pop by the music-industry
establishment at this time. The broad acceptability of Campbell's music
and persona is also evidenced by his primetime variety network television show, which aired from 1968 through 1972.
If the identity of Campbell's "Phoenix" as a MOR ballad is relatively
clear, the same cannot be said of its simultaneous designation as a country song. On the one hand, the recording fared much better on Billboard's
country chart than on the pop chart, reaching number two, yet the sonic
signifiers of country on "Phoenix" and Campbell's other hits (which also
tended to rank higher on the country charts) are subtle at best. Line
Grenier (1990) has made a persuasive case for the generic ambiguity of
ballads in the rock era, a property that enables the codes of these recordings to be seamlessly rearticulated in varying radio formats. In other
words, Campbell's recording of "Phoenix" created a "ballad" that could
retain the country audience without country markers strong enough so as
to disturb mainstream pop listeners. Members of the listening audience
searching for elements of late 1960s country style would have recognized
that Campbell's voice has a slight southern twang and that the song's
persona moves steadily towards Oklahoma, which comes to represent a
southern safe haven, perhaps even "home." Two other Campbell-Webb
collaborations, "Galveston" and "Wichita Lineman," perform a similar
fusion, adding another countryism in the form of a tremeloed, "Bonanzaesque" guitar. 13
The almost-tangential relationship of these songs to country music
stereotypes has been typical of country-pop ballads going back to the late
1950s, most notably in the ballad recordings of Jim Reeves. In one of the
many interesting paradoxes (and tautologies) of genre, perhaps the clearest evidence why Campbell's recording of "Phoenix" would be considered a country-pop ballad is because it bears some resemblance to previous country-pop ballads. Another factor in assignations of genre is the
role of the performer's image as understood by the music industry and
consuming public at that time: in other words, if Glen Campbell is perceived as a country musician, then he must make country recordings.
Released in the summer of 1969, Isaac Hayes' recording of "Phoenix"
crosses over from a completely different direction. Hayes' recording of
13. Richard Peterson (1997, 137-55) has noted the coexistence of "hard-core" and "softshell" country subgenres since the 1930s, an internal division that indicates how country's
hybridity depends on the maintenance of opposing forces within itself. While Campbell's
work falls clearly into Peterson's soft-shell category, Peterson's subgeneric dichotomy
demonstrates that one need not necessarily resort to the intrageneric ballad argument to
explain why Campbell-Webb's "Phoenix" can be understood as country.

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

83

Webb's song (as written) lasts roughly the same duration as Campbell's
(slightly under three minutes) but is framed on the album version
(although not the single) by an eight-and-a-half-minute introduction and
a seven-minute concluding vamp. The album that includes "Phoenix,"
Hot ButteredSoul, presaged a new blend of jazz and soul, in some respects
anticipating the R&B subgenre with "Quiet Storm." On "Phoenix" and on
"Walk on By" (the first song on the album, written in 1964 by Burt
Bacharach and Hal David), Hayes approaches these 1960s updates of Tin
Pan Alley song craft as a jazz singer (or some pre-rock and roll pop
singers) would, ornamenting and embellishing phrases, never singing an
entire phrase "straight." The soul-gospel influence is prominent in the
many melismas and interjected moans and hums. In contrast to
Campbell's version, Hayes' vocal performance infuses the song with a
dramatic arc, as his vocal grows gradually more intense and elaborate
over the course of the song's three verses. This is most dramatically illustrated by the different treatment of the third line of each verse, which
forms the melodic climax of the song. Hayes places the beginning of each
of the three lines where this shift occurs progressively higher in his voice
(the recording is in E-flat major):
Verse1: (eb)"she'lllaugh when she reachesthe part"
Verse2: (fi)"she'llhear the phone keep right on ringing"
Verse3: (g) "thenshe'llcryjustto thinkI would reallyleave her"
Whereas Hayes' rendition of these lines features an ascent in scale degree
from one to three during the course of the song, Campbell's recording
hovers around scale degree six in the parallel passages of all three verses.
Thus, even in the first verse, Hayes' treatment of this phrase represents a
significant variation on both Campbell's recording and the printed sheet
music (to which Campbell's recording adheres more closely than does
Hayes').
Examples 1 and 2 add detail to these observations. The third line,
because it forms the climax of the melodic line, provides a good vehicle
for comparing the singers' treatment of the line during the course of their
recordings, as well as for comparing the recordings to each other.
Campbell's recorded performance varies this line from verse to verse,
shifting the phrasing, sometimes by delaying a phrase for a beat or two
(compare Ex. lb with la and Ic) and, at other times, by micro-rhythmic
inflections. The conversational character of his voice and the limited
range of these lines (restricted to a major third, scale degrees 4-6) projects
well the proselike character of Webb's lyrics. This perhaps helps explain
why certain events that may look remarkable in notation (e.g., the
"reversed" accents on the words "I'm leavin'" in Ex. la, which also

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Example 1. "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." A comparisonof the third phrase
(mm. 9-12) in verses 1-3 of Glenn Campbell'srecording(transcriptionby David
Brackett)
a.
FMaj7

BlMaj7

She'll

laugh

C7

when she reach the

Am7

part

that says

I'm leav-in'

b.
C7

FMaj7 BlMaj7

But she'll just hear

Am7

that phone

keep on ring - in'

c.
FMaj7

C7

BIMaj7

And she'll

cry__

just to

think__

Am7

I'd real-ly

leave

her

appear to create an accented nonharmonic tone with the d over an A

minor chord), sound smooth and flowing on the recording. The transcriptions also represent the subtle but increasing intensity that Campbell
injects into his delivery of this line in successive verses of the song, particularly evident in the melismas present in the second measure of
Examples lb and Ic.
As already suggested by the discussion of the climactic points in his
recording, Hayes varies the line considerably more than Cambell does,
sharing only the emphasis on scale degrees 6 and 5 in the first two measures of the line (shown in Exx. 2a and 2b; these pitches are emphasized
in the first three measures of Ex. 2c). This variation is evident not only in
the high note that begins these lines in Hayes' recording but in the complex internal subdivisions of the beat, in the immense expansion of the
melodic

range of the line (all three versions

of the line taken together

span a perfect twelfth), and in the lengthening of the line to three-and-ahalf measures from two-and-a-half. Compared with Campbell's conversational vocal quality, Hayes' voice is more like an instrument, repeating
syllables and words ("Oh" and "ringin"' in Ex. 2b; "I" and "ea," from

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

85

Example2. "Bythe TimeI Get to Phoenix."A comparison

of the thirdphrase
(mm. 9-12) in verses1-3 of IsaacHayes'srecording(transcriptionby David
Brackett)
a.
ElMaj7 AbMaj7

B7

She'll laugh
Gm7

when she reach the

part

Cm7

that says I'm leav - in'

yes she will

b.
B7

EbLMaj7 AlMaj7

she'll hear_

Woah_
/

Gm7

I~-----3----

Oh_

Oh the phone_

keep

Cm7

right on ring-in' and ring-in' and ring-in' and ring-in'

woah and ring-in'

C.
E Maj7

Woah__

ALMaj7

then she'll cry

Bj7

(i)

just to

think

Cm7

Gm7

I would real-ly lea__

ea-ea

ve

her

"leave," in Ex. 2c) to enable him to embellish the vocal line. This instrumental vocal character reaches an apex in the almost-vertiginous
polyrhythm of "ringin' and ringin' and ringin"' in Example 2b and the
over-the-barline internal triplets of "le-ea-ea-ve her" in Example 2c.
These features strongly suggest the soul genre circa 1969 (much more

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strongly, I might add, than Campbell's versions suggest country, even in

its "soft-shell" guise, circa 1967), and the long introduction and concluding vamp that frames Webb's song in Hayes' version make the connection with soul music even more explicit. The entirety of the lengthy introduction takes place over a single, jazzy, dominant 11-13 harmony,
sustained on a Hammond organ, with a bass playing the same dotted figure found on Campbell's recording, and with the drummer steadily playing quarter notes on a ride cymbal. Over this, Hayes "preaches" a sermon
on the "power of love" that outlines a prequel to the narrative presented
in the song. Hayes states that the song is "written by one of the great
young songwriters of today" and that it is a "deep tune" and has a "deep
meaning." This section of the song reinforces the sense that Hayes is participating in the soul genre, as he declares that he is going to do the song
"my own way" and "bring it on down to soulsville." The addition of contemporary black slang ("she was bad," "she was outasite") demonstrates
how intersubjective awareness of the audience-"addressivity"-is
in
play on both musical and verbal levels. Hayes refers to a recent soul
recording in the introduction when he compares the narrative of his prequel to the story found in Tyrone Davis's hit from earlier in 1969, "Can I
Change My Mind." This process recalls the sort of "troping" discussed by
Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Signifying Monkey (1988), a practice that is
decisive (according to one of Gates's better-known formulations) in creating a sense of an African-American literary tradition. Hayes stretches
the concluding vamp, heard for a few seconds on Campbell's recording,
to a length almost equal to the introduction, and provides an opportunity for extensive vocal extemporizing, another musical practice that
evokes gospel and soul music.
As in the classification of Campbell's recording, the importance of preconceptions and social perceptions of identity plays a role in genre assignation in Hayes' version of "Phoenix": Hayes' personal and vocal identity as an African American cannot be discounted when one tries to
understand the placement of his recording in the soul music category.
Another factor is Hayes' previous association-as a songwriter, pianist,
and producer-with Stax Records, a recording company specializing in
soul music, a factor that parallels Campbell's previous associations with
country music (as well as with pop music as a studio musician).14 The
representation of the mainstream popularity of these two recordings was
remarkably alike, with neither of them being a big hit using Billboard's
methods of measurement. Campbell, however, had far more mainstream
success in other arenas, as witnessed by his television show and Grammy
14. Campbell even toured with the Beach Boys during the initial period when primary
songwriter Brian Wilson ceased to perform live with the band.

Brackett * Questions of Genre in Black Popular Music

87

awards. Yet, it was by virtue of similar processes of crossing over to the

mainstream, albeit from different directions, that the generic identity of
the two recordings was confirmed. 15
The way I am establishing the viability of the term black popular music
may well seem absurd to those for whom such elaborate and circuitous
argumentation about black popular music and African-American identity merely addresses an obvious fact of life. Many subtle and important
statements about black music over the years have explored conceptual
continuities in African-American music rather than consistency of empirically based style traits.16These studies reveal how a linkage between
social identity and a practice of music making (as in "black music") need
not depend on the reproduction of negative stereotypes but may function
as a positive marker, a chiastic turn, not unlike the "sly civility" ("the
native refusal to satisfy the colonizer's narrative demand") noted by certain postcolonial critics.17The centrality of music in specifically political
struggles by African Americans undermines the idea that black music can
only result from naive beliefs in cultural inferiority and purism.
In two recent scholarly landmarks on African-American music, Samuel
Floyd Jr. (1995) and Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. (2003), use the concept of "cultural memory" as a discursive tactic that forms an implicit riposte to dismissals of the idea of black music. One of the principal ways in which cultural memory becomes audible and visible is through the practice of
storytelling, an ineluctably temporal practice that disturbs the fixity of
spatial practices by blurring the line between scholarly discourse and fiction. Storytelling as a mode of discourse, relying as it invariably does on
memories, forms an opposing pole to scientific discourse. The truth of
storytelling depends on external verifications of truth that are clearly contingent. Scientific discourse, on the other hand, with its abundant systems of external verification, no longer has to clarify its relationship to the
conditions that authorize its claims to truth. Michel de Certeau (1984, 87)
describes a powerful property of memory and storytelling in what he
terms the "'art' of memory," an art that "'authorizes' (makes possible) a

15. Mainstreamoften remains an unexamined term in discussions of genre and value in

popular music. For a recent attempt to shed light on this "straw" genre, see Toynbee (2002).
16. A selection (by no means exhaustive) of representative work includes Baraka (1967),
Wilson (1974), Maultsby (1990), Floyd (1995), Neal (1999), and Ramsey (2003).
17. The term sly civility comes from Homi Bhabha's (1994, 93-101) essay of the same
name, a complex meditation on the "the native refusal to satisfy the colonizer's narrative
demand" that results ultimately in paranoia on the part of the colonizer (99). For a postcolonial study of the "BlackAtlantic" that explores how a similar dynamic connects AfricanAmerican tactical responses to power with that of the black diaspora, see Gilroy (1993).

88

BMR Journal

reversal, a change in order or place, a transition into something different,

a 'metaphor' of practice or of discourse."18
Floyd (1995, 8) explicitly uses the concept of cultural memory to confront objectivist biases that suppress forms of knowledge that would
allow subaltern discourses to surface, acknowledging what he calls the
"nonfactual and nonreferential motivations, actions and beliefs that
members of a culture seem, without direct knowledge or deliberate training, to 'know.'" Floyd's discussion of how cultural know-how becomes
second nature recalls the work of other social theorists who have tried to
account for the seemingly objective nature of subjective and intersubjective experience. I am thinking here primarily of Pierre Bourdieu's (1977,
1990) notion of the "habitus"-an ensemble of principles that generate
and organize practices and representations-or of Charles Taylor's (2002)
work on "social imaginaries."19
Guthrie Ramsey (2003) elaborates, riffs, and tropes on Floyd's compelling discussion of cultural memory. In this way, he situates himself in
a lineage of African-American writers discussing African-American
music in a manner analogous to the troping of African-American fiction
writers and musicians who generate an intertextual sense of tradition.
Ramsey emphasizes, even more than Floyd, the concept of cultural memory and the practice of storytelling, including narratives of the formation
of his own musical identity, as well as a substantial ethnography of his
extended family. With this shift in the grounds of what might constitute
scholarly discourse, Ramsey boldly presents an enunciating practice that
challenges orthodox epistemology in a fashion that matches the challenge
of African-American music as an object of study within the discipline of
musicology. The use of storytelling and cultural memory emphasizes the
time of black music at the expense of trying to locate it in its proper place;
it scores what de Certeau (1984, 79) calls a coup: "a detour by way of a
past... or by way of a quotation . . . made in order to take advantage of
an occasion and to modify an equilibrium by taking it by surprise. Its discourse is characterized more by a way of exercising itself than by the thing
it indicates" (emphasis in the original). Far from being presented as static, "pure" form, the existence of which can only be thrown into doubt by
inconsistent style traits, black music in this context, is revealed as hybrid
at the root, resisting closure as a concept in the vigorous enunciating
practices that perform its identity in ever-new guises.
Some will undoubtedly raise the question whether this use of cultural
18. The role of memory in African-American literary practices is explored in a series of
essays collected in Fabre and O'Meally (1994).
19. For an essay that develops a theoretical framework for understanding different ways
in which music might figure in the constitution of social imaginaries, see Born (2000).

Brackett* Questions of Genrein BlackPopularMusic

89

memory to write about African-American music excludes scholars who

are not African American and who therefore cannot lay claim to that particular form of cultural memory. Yet identification in the intersubjective
realm of the social is predicated on recognizing and identifying with an
"other." Thus, my identity as a white person growing up in the United
States during the late 1960s and 1970s depended (and depends) on my
sense of other people being "nonwhite," and on arguably inhabiting a
social imaginary conterminous or overlapping with others who identified themselves differently. When cultural memory is invoked as a way
of understanding the enunciating practice of black music, it reminds us
of the contingent nature of identity and how our identity, whatever we
perceive it to be, becomes meaningful in relation to other identities as
they are performed in the same social space.
To understand how the everyday knowledge embodied in genre labels
can have such communicative power despite their ultimate irrationality
is to begin to understand the sort of almost subliminal logic performed by
the various genres associated with African-American popular music.
Beyond the banal level of keeping the wheels of music commerce turning,
genres function as ephemeral utterances that provide a clue to the role
played by music in the intersubjective social imagination. As such, genres may act as mediators somewhat in the manner of myth and totemism
in the studies of Levi-Strauss (1966); that is, genres indicate a tacit and
contingent collective agreement about the "proper" place for different
types of music and the social groups most associated with them.
To insist on the role of popular music in facilitating the performance of
cultural difference may strike some as obeisance to political and/or theoretical correctness. Rather than debunk genre labels for their internal
inconsistencies, I have tried to inquire as to their social functions, as to
why these labels seem so important despite their rather transparent malleability. I am not sure that this quality of genre need be viewed as a
defect; indeed, it would be difficult to find any completely consistent use
of language or of symbolic communication in general. More to the point,
in the specific case of "black popular music," we are not talking simply
about another term or label but about a form of symbolic communication
imbricated in a lengthy history of power struggles.
It may seem as if I am trying to reconcile two incommensurable
approaches. An emphasis on genre as a way of approaching the practice
of black music stresses institutional structures and spatial arrangements,
whereas an emphasis on cultural memory foregrounds the deferred temporality of enunciation. Yet if we can accept the idea that cultural memories represent more than the consciousness of the individual who articu-

BMR Journal

90

lates them, therebyencompassing a culturalgroup or a community,then

I would argue that genres consist of individual musical utterances enun-

ciating the here-and-nowin musical terms. Embedded as we are in constantly reconfigured social imaginaries, then the point may be that if the

personal is political, then the individual can certainlybe institutional.

DISCOGRAPHY

5th Dimension. Up, up, and away. Soul City 756 (1967).
Campbell, Glen. By the time I get to Phoenix. Capitol 2015 (1967).
Galveston. Capitol 2428 (1969).
---.
---.
Wichita lineman. Capitol 2302 (1968).
Davis, Tyrone. Can I change my mind. Dakar 602 (1968).
Drifters. The very best of the Drifters. Rhino R2 71211 (1993).
Harris, Richard. MacArthur Park. Dunhill 4134 (1968).
Hayes, Isaac. By the time I get to Phoenix. Hot butteredsoul. Enterprise 1001 (1969).
-.
Walk on by. Hot butteredsoul. Enterprise 1001 (1969).
Outkast. Hey ya. Speakerboxxx/Thelove below.Arista 82876-50133-2 (2003).

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