Review of Race Music by Guthrie P. Ramsey

 Race Music 

Review by Corey Harris

In Race Music, scholar, musician and self-described culture bearer Guthrie P. Ramsey provides in-depth examination into the ways that Black music in the 20th century interacts with and brings meaning to Black people’s lives.  He focuses on “community theaters’, quotidian spaces such as clubs, churches, pool halls and private homes where varied Black identities are consciously constructed and linked via musical meaning.  In eight chapters Ramsey engages with differing Black musical styles through examinations of specific musicians and their compositions.  Invoking the concept of ‘race men and women’, he echoes the traditionally positive connotations of a term used to denote Black men and women who consciously promoted and valorized Black cultural age.  Moreover, his embrace of the word ‘race’ is also a reminder that it was originally used to denote both sacred and secular music that was marketed to Black people by white record companies in the early twentieth century.  One of his main premises is that Black music functions as a continual conversation within communities over time, uniting multi-faceted Black realities to forge Black ethnicity.  

Opening with Richard Muhal Abrams’ advice that “you can go anywhere, but don’t never leave home”, Ramsey proceeds to weave academic text, socio-cultural history and intimate family narratives into a comprehensive study of the relation between a people and their music. (1)  In the preface, he cautions the reader that his aim is not a “comprehensive, chronological study of African American popular music”, but “rather a meditation on the interpretation and criticism of various aspects of its history.” (ibid)  Chapters one and two recount Ramsey’s own musical experiences as a youth growing up in the South Side of Chicago, exploring the theoretical and methodological issues raised therein.  Chapter 3 sheds light on the blues through an examination of the music and lives of Cootie Williams, Louis Jordan and Dinah Washington before returning to a study of personal and family narratives in Chapter 4.  Having set the scene, Ramsey uses Chapter 5 to muse about the meaning of what he calls ‘afro-modernism’  in Black life in mid-20th century America, ably demonstrating its influence upon Black culture in subsequent decades.  Chapter 6 continues this analysis, taking up the Black Consciousness era with a focus on cultural memory through his own family’s historiography, cultural migration and the significance of the music of James Brown.  Chapter 7 turns to film criticism scrutinizing the impact of three important films of the hip-hop era, Do the Right Thing, Boyz in the Hood and Love Jones.  Chapter 8 concludes this exercise with a look at the blending of hip-hop influences into contemporary gospel music.  

Race Music is a comprehensive evaluation of the various manifestations of Black music in the twentieth century.  Echoing Amiri Baraka’s concept of the ‘changing same’, Ramsey exposes the thread of Black identity running throughout 20th century Black music.  Perhaps his greatest strength is how he elucidates the concept of Afro-modernism to show its still pervasive influence upon Black identity in the present era.  His recourse to family histories through interviews succeeds in personalizing his argument while retaining its effectiveness as an academic text.  This being said, the detour into film criticism of Chapter 7 somewhat interrupts the expert musicological flow of the discourse.  Additionally, Chapter 8 fails to bring the same level of analysis displayed in his engagement of the music of earlier decades, betraying the author’s lack of familiarity with the subject matter equivalent to his exhaustive analysis of blues, jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues.  Overall, Ramsey succeeds mightily in his objective to understand the significance of the meanings embedded in African American music throughout most of the 20th century.  Race Music is a groundbreaking study that will please academics, historians, and music fans alike.