Episode Notes: 

How do we understand the work of Beyoncé? While she is one of the most well-known and appreciated Black women in music today, to understand her work, you need to see who came before her and what those women contributed to the story of Black women on stage. In this opening episode of the season, we take a look at the web of Black women in music and introduce the core themes of the season to our listeners, including innovation, labor, impact, and legacy. We also introduce the women profiled over the next four episodes and discuss why they were chosen (and why not others). 

Find more information at s.si.edu/collected. 

Guests: 

Daphne A. Brooks, PhD., is professor of African American Studies and Music at Yale University. Dr. Brooks most recent books is Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University, February 2021). https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/daphne-brooks  

Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and a 2022 recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. Her most recent book is Constructing a Nervous System: a memoir (2022). She is a professor of Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University. https://arts.columbia.edu/profiles/margo-jefferson  

Crystal M.  Moten, Ph.D., is a historian who specializes in twentieth century African American Women’s History. In 2023 she published Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee. She is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, Illinois and was previously curator at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History  https://www.crystalmoten.com/  

Dwandalyn R. Reece, Ph.D. is curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and curated the museum’s permanent exhibition, Musical Crossroads, for which she received the Secretary’s Research Prize in 2017.   https://music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece    

Fath Davis Ruffins was a Curator of African American History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). She began working at the museum in 1981, and between 1988 and 2005, she was the head of the Collection of Advertising History at the NMAH Archives Center. Ruffins was the original project director of Many Voices, One Nation, an exhibition that opened at NMAH in June 2017.  She was leading a museum project on the history and culture of the Low Country region of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. https://profiles.si.edu/display/nruffinsf1102006  

Craig Seymour is a writer, photographer, and critic who has written about music, particularly Black music for over two decades.  His most recent book is Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross (HarperCollins, 2004).   https://randbeing.com/