Review: The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s, by Emily J. Lordi

Abstract

In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s, Emily J. Lordi reminds us that soul has many directives: to "signify the special resilience black people had earned by surviving the historical and daily trials of white supremacy" (5); to represent "the musical techniques or practices through which artists enacted soul ethos" (11); and, in its most familiar use, to refer to intellectual and artistic productions of Black Americans during the soul or post-soul music movements.Lordi's new book, however, calls for and provides a more expansive discourse of soul, which reveals meanings that have traditionally been overlooked, underrepresented, or disregarded. The Meaning of Soul addresses such slights of soul scholarship not only by analyzing Black American musicians from the late 1960s and early 1970s (and some more recent), but also by positioning soul not as a "discrete thing" but rather "a habit of thinking, a logic" (8). To achieve this, Lordi pushes back against "paradigms that treat soul music as a mere vehicle for civil rights messaging" (4), "mass-marketed representations of soul music (which sideline black women and mystify musical craft)," and "scholarship . . . [that] tends to assume that soul as a concept does not have an aesthetics, but only a politics" (6). Above all, in this book, the stories of soul come to life through soul music and music makers, but their meanings transcend music.The book establishes itself from the outset as representing a disparate discussion of soul, even before the first word. Its cover features Minnie Riperton, the gifted five-octave vocalist and composer known for her pop crossover hit "Lovin' You," which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1975. As such, Riperton is usually an outlier in discussions about soul music, whether due to her membership in the late 1960s multiracial, psychedelic rock outfit Rotary Connection, or her or others' perceptions of soul artists. As her Rotary bandmate Sidney Barnes wrote in his autobiography, Standing on Solid Ground, "She had attempted to use [her five-octave range] . . . at some of the local black clubs, and [they] often booed her off the stage. They weren't used to that weird sounding shit. They wanted her to belt out like Aretha Franklin or Fontella Bass." i Or as Aaron Cohen writes in Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power, "Besides Riperton's singular vocal range, prowess, and stylistic choices, her background 199