from The Nation
Tainted Love: Amy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Appropriation by Daphne A. Brooks
London's Victoria and Albert Museum is currently paying tribute to the Supremes, the queen mother of all "girl groups," in a colorful exhibit that celebrates the more-than-passing connections between the Motown trio's rise to pop prominence and the 1960s struggle for civil rights. Featuring a luminous array of vintage glitter gowns and go-go petal dresses donated by original Supreme Mary Wilson, "The Story of the Supremes" highlights the link between the groundbreaking group's consistent execution of refined elegance and what you might call the civil right to black glamour that was dominant for much of twentieth-century black music history.
English pop phenom and London native Amy Winehouse is a singer who owes as much to the sound and look of the Supremes, the Ronettes and other pioneering girl groups as she does to the vocal stylings of bygone jazz and R&B greats like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Afro-Scottish pop legend Dame Shirley Bassey. On second thought, "owing" is putting it nicely. Winehouse's Tower of Pisa beehive, satin gowns and little black gloves invoke the styles of everyone from Lena Horne to the Shirelles, and her frothy brew of Motown girl-group melodies crossed with Etta James-era rock and blues riffs and silky-smooth 1970s soul arrangements are textbook BET lifetime achievement material. Just about the only thing Winehouse hasn't repackaged from the black music archives is the one thing she could use: a lesson from Motown's legendary etiquette coach Maxine Powell, who taught her charges to exude grace and a classic Hollywood glow. The mannered, elegant look that Winehouse pairs with a shot glass was, for Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, about more than Cleopatra eyeliner. It was about affirming black dignity and humanity amid the battle to end American apartheid.
Read the Full Essay @
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Daphne A. Brooks, an associate professor of English and African-American studies at Princeton University, is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke) and Jeff Buckley's Grace (Continuum)
Tainted Love: Amy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Appropriation by Daphne A. Brooks
London's Victoria and Albert Museum is currently paying tribute to the Supremes, the queen mother of all "girl groups," in a colorful exhibit that celebrates the more-than-passing connections between the Motown trio's rise to pop prominence and the 1960s struggle for civil rights. Featuring a luminous array of vintage glitter gowns and go-go petal dresses donated by original Supreme Mary Wilson, "The Story of the Supremes" highlights the link between the groundbreaking group's consistent execution of refined elegance and what you might call the civil right to black glamour that was dominant for much of twentieth-century black music history.
English pop phenom and London native Amy Winehouse is a singer who owes as much to the sound and look of the Supremes, the Ronettes and other pioneering girl groups as she does to the vocal stylings of bygone jazz and R&B greats like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Afro-Scottish pop legend Dame Shirley Bassey. On second thought, "owing" is putting it nicely. Winehouse's Tower of Pisa beehive, satin gowns and little black gloves invoke the styles of everyone from Lena Horne to the Shirelles, and her frothy brew of Motown girl-group melodies crossed with Etta James-era rock and blues riffs and silky-smooth 1970s soul arrangements are textbook BET lifetime achievement material. Just about the only thing Winehouse hasn't repackaged from the black music archives is the one thing she could use: a lesson from Motown's legendary etiquette coach Maxine Powell, who taught her charges to exude grace and a classic Hollywood glow. The mannered, elegant look that Winehouse pairs with a shot glass was, for Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, about more than Cleopatra eyeliner. It was about affirming black dignity and humanity amid the battle to end American apartheid.
Read the Full Essay @
***
Daphne A. Brooks, an associate professor of English and African-American studies at Princeton University, is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke) and Jeff Buckley's Grace (Continuum)
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