MUS 254 - Africa in the Black Musical Imagination

“What is Africa to me?” asked the Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen in his 1925 poem “Heritage.” This course will introduce students to the ways and ends to which Black musicians, primarily in the United States, have explored this question. The responses have varied, ranging from early twentieth-century musical theater reconciling modern identities with “dark continent” stereotypes, to the cultural-political embrace of Afrocentricity in Sixties jazz and soul, to the Afro-diasporic parable of Beyoncé’s 2020 visual album Black Is King. This is not a course on music from the African continent. Rather, through suggestive musical examples and literature on such topics as Ethiopianism, African retentions, and the politics of origins, students will consider how and why Black musicians have persistently asserted and negotiated relationships with Africa-whether as a homeland or as a space of fantasy-and the fluidity of these relationship over time.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 254