Black Sinatras, White Panthers: Race, Genre and Performance in Detroit Black Pop and Rock, 1960-1970

Abstract

This paper explores several narratives of race and racialized music production in postwar American popular musics, to study the ways in which race has played an intrinsic role in structuring not only contemporary expectations of popular music-making, but also the frameworks by which we continue to study American popular musics today. The essay discusses two case studies from Detroit's music cultures of the 1960s – black pop star Marvin Gaye and the white hard rock group the MC5 – to illustrate how entrenched expectations of racialized performance served to inform contemporary and still-current critiques of these groups; these case studies also reveal the inadequacy of some standard musico-racial narratives in interpreting the racialized dimensions of these artists' performances.