Rolling Stone: “Breaking Through Rock Journalism’s Boys’ Club”
Daphne A. Brooks featured among five music critics looking back at a problematic past, and forward to a future they’re helping create
“Corinne Bailey Rae leaves audiences spellbound with her sneak preview of 'Black Rainbows' at Yale Schwarzman Center”
Daphne A. Brooks in conversation with Grammy-winning musical artist Corinne Bailey Rae at Yale Schwarzman Center
In Conversation with Corinne Bailey Rae
Daphne A. Brooks in conversation with Grammy-winning musical artist Corinne Bailey Rae at Yale Schwarzman Center
BBC: “Tina Turner: Queen of rock'n'roll dies at 83”
Daphne A. Brooks joins this BBC Newsday segment on the death of rock icon Tina Turner to discuss Turner’s life, music, and legacy.
2022 Ralph J. Gleason Award Virtual Event
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Vice President of Education, Jason Hanley, sits down with 2022 Ralph J. Gleason award winner, Daphne Brooks to discuss her book "Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound."
“Sonic Zora in Florida”
In this media-enhanced excerpt from Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), Daphne A. Brooks delves into Zora Neale Hurston's 1939 experiences as the only Black woman on the staff of the Federal Writers Project's Florida Guide. A keen listener, interviewer, and ethnographer, Hurston, as heard in these recordings, was also a sonic interpreter of vernacular voices and performance styles.
“Still Processing” with Wesley Morris and Daphne A. Brooks
Wesley has been obsessed with lists since he was a child — think Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, the Academy Awards and Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All Time. Now, he wants to think more seriously about expanding what we call the canon, making sure more people have a say in which works of art are considered great, enduring and important. For guidance, Wesley sits down with Daphne A. Brooks, an academic, critic and music lover, to ask whether expanding the canon is even the right way to think about this. Her thoughts surprise him: We can do better than lists!
2021 MAAH Stone Book Award Virtual Event
The 2021 winners:
Daphne A. Brooks' Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound is the winner of the $50,000 2021 MAAH Stone Book Award!
Dan Royles' To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS and Walter Johnson's The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States are our two finalists. Each author receives $10,000.
Yale Daily News: 2021 MAAH Stone Book Award
Daphne Brooks discusses her book Liner Notes For The Revolution along with the recently announced MAAH Stone Book Award.
The authors discuss the interrelated themes of their new books Liner Notes for the Revolution and A Little Devil in America for Rolling Stone’s Spoken Dialogue series
Spoken Dialogue: Daphne A. Brooks and Hanif Abdurraqib
The New Commons Project at the University of Maine at Farmington
Keynote Address: “‘I Traveled Seventy States’: Solange & the Poetics of Black Feminist Sonic Alterity”
Labyrinth Books, Princeton NJ
Daphne Brooks in conversation with Tracy K. Smith. With an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music—and who should rightly tell it—Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black woman musicians as radical intellectuals.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Annual Women’s Jazz Festival
Daphne A. Brooks in conversation with moderator, Brent Hayes Edwards, Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Opening performance by Firey String Sistas!, an ensemble committed to pushing the limits of string, ensemble playing, and improvisation to the next level.
‘Sort of Like an Archaeologist’: Exploring the Archive of a Blues Music Feminist
The Pembroke Center at Brown University presented “‘Sort of Like an Archaeologist’: Exploring the Archive of a Blues Music Feminist,” a lecture by Daphne A. Brooks that explored how the papers of Rosetta Reitz document a rare and striking example of a white feminist intellectual ally invested in Black women’s triumphs in popular music culture.
Daphne Brooks in conversation with Ariana Proehl
In her new book Liner Notes for the Revolution cultural critic Daphne Brooks explores the Black women artists that were major influences on American music. Brooks uncovers the racial politics at play in the recording studio, on stage, and in the reviews of everything from blues to rock and roll. Yale University African American studies professor Daphne Brooks joins us to share her take on the legacy and enduring appeal of the Black female musician.
“Black Feminism and the Sonic Archive” | Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley
Daphne A. Brooks and Carter Mathes are scholars of African American and African Diasporic culture and aesthetics, especially attuned to the way the sonic--music, language and other sound-making practices--is an important if understudied component of Black history and Black life.
City Lights Bookstore: 5 Questions
Daphne A. Brooks is the author of Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Bodies in Dissent, and winner of the Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American performance studies. A professor at Yale University, she has written liner notes to accompany the recordings of Aretha Franklin, Tammi Terrell, and Prince, as well as stories for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and Pitchfork.
Daphne Brooks in conversation with Ann Powers discussing her new book Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound in the City Lights LIVE! discussion series on Wednesday, February 24
New Books in African American Studies
SOCIETY & CULTURE
Interviews with Scholars of African America about their New Books
Amanda Joyce Hall interviews Daphne A. Brooks for the New Books Network Podcast
Rewriting Rock: New Takes on Black Women in Rock and Pop History
Authors Daphne Brooks (Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound) and Maureen Mahon (Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll) discuss their newly published books on Black women in pop music. These works are part of a wave of new writing on Black women in rock and pop that sheds light on how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected not only their careers, but how their stories were minimized or written out of music history. Presented by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in partnership with Case Western Reserve University's Center for Popular Music Studies.
Grace Jones w/ Daphne Brooks
On this episode of Who Cares About the Rock Hall? Daphne Brooks joins Joe Kwaczala and Kristen Studard to discuss the potential Rock Hall future of androgynous style icon and pop innovator Grace Jones. Also discussed in this episode is Daphne's new book Liner Notes for the Revolution, as well as her own experiences attending induction ceremonies. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.
Popular Music Books in Process Series
Daphne A. Brooks, in conversation with Farah Jasmine Griffin and Gayle Wald on Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University Press).
This series is a collaboration between Journal of Popular Music Studies, IASPM-US, and the Pop Conference, began in June 2020. It’s meant to offer writers and scholars with books on all kinds of popular music, whether recently published or still in progress, a chance to connect with a deeply interested community of readers. And to give the rest of us a sense that our intellectual world, however dormant, is far from dead.
HBO: Between The World And Me (2020)
Dr. Daphne Brooks, Dr. Natalie Hopkinson and Jason Moran discuss how their relationship to the work has evolved, interpreting the special as a Black feminist meditation and the scenes that resonated with them.
In conversation with Kevin Beasley and Jace Clayton |
Live from the Whitney
In his exhibition A view of a landscape, Kevin Beasley examines and attempts to unravel power and history in the American South through the highly-mediated use of a 20th-century cotton gin motor from Alabama. For this program, Beasley invited Daphne A. Brooks and interdisciplinary artist Jace Clayton to discuss ways of understanding race, labor, and ancestry through an artistic lens.
McMaster University Whidden Lecture Series
“The Knowles Sisters’ Political Tour: Black Feminist Sonic Dissent at the End of the Third Reconstruction”
W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture Series Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Harvard University
'Lemonade from Lemons: Black Women Artists & the Gershwin Problem, 1935-2020'
Part One | 'Blackface Broken Records: White Women, "Black" Sound & the Origins of Porgy and Bess'
W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture Series Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Harvard University
'Lemonade from Lemons: Black Women Artists & the Gershwin Problem, 1935-2020'
Part Two | “One of These Mornings, You’re Gonna Rise Up Singing”: Black Women Performers and the Art of (Un)Doing Gershwin Time
Select Media Commentary
Commentator/Interview, PBS News Hour, August 2018
Commentator/Interview, Morning Edition, NPR, August 2018 + multiple media outlets—covering the passing of Aretha Franklin
Commentator/Interview, All Things Considered, NPR, Fall 2017
Commentator/Interview, Marketplace, NPR, April 21, 2016
Commentator/Interview, PBS News Hour, April 21, 2016
Commentator/Interview, CBC Radio, April 21, 2016
Commentator/Interview, CBS This Morning, January-March 2016
Commentator/Interview, Style Section, The New York Times, September 2015
Commentator/Interview, Education Section, The Los Angeles Times, November 2015
Program Guest, The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, October 2014
Program Guest, “Soundcheck,” WNYC, July 17, 2014
Commentator, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show, MSNBC, October 2013
Commentator, “Motown & the Supremes,” WURD, July 30, 2013
Commentator, “The Melisma: A Cultural Phenomenon,” BBC Television documentary, 2012
Commentator, “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Celebrates the Queen of Soul,” WABQ, Cleveland, OH, Fall 2011
(Germany/France), Signed Media Production, Summer 2011
Commentator, “The Queens of Soul,” Arte TV documentary, Spring 2011
Commentator, The Michael Dyson Show, “Aretha Franklin: A Tribute to the Queen,” December 2010
Commentator, PBS Make ‘Em Laugh documentary, Winter 2009 on PBS
Commentator, “Soundcheck,” WNYC, November 4, 2008
Commentator, “Radio Nation with Laura Flanders,” Air America Radio, September 15, 2008
Commentator, BBC’s Urban Soul program, Winter 2004 on BBC