Mark Anthony Neal. Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Heather Duerre Humann

Mark Anthony Neal. Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation. New York: Routledge, 2003. 214 pp. $85.00/ $19.95 paper.

With the publication of Songs in the Key of Black Life, Mark Anthony Neal has enriched the field of African American studies. In his appraisal of varied forms of cultural expression, Neal traces the ways that different styles of music, including the Blues, Soul, Hip Hop, and Rhythm and Blues (R&B), intersect with political agendas and social movements. One of the book's strengths is its power to hone in on societal contradictions, which Neal posits surface through musical expression and its ability to critique existing paradigms. Although he discusses a range of topics, two issues that Neal revisits frequently throughout Song in the Key of Black Life are those of economics and identity.

Neal's focus on identity issues surfaces, for instance, when he discusses the poet Etheridge Knight, noting how in "The Idea of Ancestry," Knight "builds a complex definition of black fluidity via the forty-seven pictures of his family that adorn his cell wall" (16). This definition serves, Neal claims, to "reinforce an idea that black community is strengthened by its diversity" (17). Also, identity is central in Neal's discussion of the "Alicia vs. India" debate; here, Neal shows how issues such as (what Alice Walker has labeled) colorism, the "color-caste" system, remain relevant even today (24). Later in the book, he examines the notion of how strong, "self-actualized women are seen as threats to the 'strong black man,'" underscoring that questions of gender are as important among African Americans as those of race and ethnicity (66).

Issues of economics, which sometimes overlap with his discussions of identity, factor significantly into Neal's treatise as well. He probes the influence of the entertainment and music industries on capitalism and quests for profit, and explores how economic issues pertain to the type of available work, cultural representations, music content, and what music gets played. At one point, he cites Hattie McDaniel's remark that "she would rather play a maid in film than be a maid in real life" (59) to emphasize the precarious situation that African American women, then and now, navigated and are still negotiating in the entertainment industry--an industry dominated principally by wealthy white males.

Neal also closely examines how money influences radio and video play. In regards to radio, for example, he asserts that the "industry is currently on lockdown courtesy of two companies--Clear Channel and Infinity--that control nearly one-third of all the ad revenue generated from the nation's twelve-thousand-plus radio outlets" (140). As well, he points to and, at times, implicates BET and MTV, for the way they control what videos get played and, by extension, how they control which artists make money and achieve success.

Although immensely valuable, Neal's study is lacking in two main ways. While Neal is quick to spot and label injustices and inequitable circumstances (and although he does these things well), he does not always offer solutions to these problems. Also, despite the fact that Neal possesses encyclopedic knowledge about music, poetry, current events, and popular culture and, although he does cite some influential contemporary scholars, including Cornel West, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Neal does not refer enough to others who are doing the same type of work that he is doing. For instance, Neal merely glosses over Tricia Rose's important cultural criticism, and he omits any reference to Chuck D.'s valuable work.

Despite these oversights, Songs in the Key of Black Life is a noteworthy title and should be of interest to anyone concerned with African American cultural studies. Neal's book works well as an assessment of how diverse forms of cultural expression intersect with and are affected by social and political issues.

Heather Duerre Humann

The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa