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Informationen zum Autor Danyel Smith Klappentext American pop music is arguably this country’s greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country’s founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story—from “one of the generation’s greatest, most insightful, most nuanced writers in pop culture” (Shea Serrano) “Sparkling . . . the overdue singing of a Black girl’s song, with perfect pitch . . . delicious to read.”— Oprah Daily ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, The Root, Variety, Esquire, The Guardian, Newsweek, Pitchfork, She Reads, Publishers Weekly SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, Shine Bright is Danyel Smith’s intimate history of Black women’s music as the foundational story of American pop. Smith has been writing this history for more than five years. But as a music fan, and then as an essayist, editor ( Vibe, Billboard ), and podcast host ( Black Girl Songbook ), she has been living this history since she was a latchkey kid listening to “Midnight Train to Georgia” on the family stereo. Smith’s detailed narrative begins with Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman who sang her poems, and continues through the stories of Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Mariah Carey, as well as the under-considered careers of Marilyn McCoo, Deniece Williams, and Jody Watley. Shine Bright is an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight—and the book Danyel Smith was born to write. Leseprobe The Dixie Cups If you as a female—I don’t care how many hit records you’ve had—if you’re out there, still working, if you accept anything that [a] promoter throws at you, and you never say anything to lift yourself up, first as a female, second as an artist—then what’s going to happen? His next clients that are females, he expects them to take it because you took it. —Rosa Lee Hawkins of the Dixie Cups, 2015 Until we moved to Mid-City, Los Angeles, with my mother’s lawyer boyfriend, who was not practicing law, I was not sure that girls—outside of my sister and me—were teaming up in the world and making mischief. Quel and I got up to ours with our new friends at Carthay Center, then an experimental magnet school. I was in a “gifted” program run by my teacher, Roberta Blatt. My mother and her well-connected semi-lawyer boyfriend moved us to the Miracle Mile–adjacent neighborhood specifically so we could attend Carthay. I loved that school. It was about kids having freedom. My mother’s freedom came in the form of a used cream-yellow Monte Carlo. She looked cool in it, played her music in it, and on hazy Los Angeles mornings, seemed on her way to some kind of peace. My sister’s Carthay class had rabbits. In my classroom, beneath tendrils of Mrs. Blatt’s ivy, there was a carpet square designated for silent reading. I gulped essays printed on card stock, and answered the attached questions. With every correct answer, one moved up a color to the next comprehension level. Simple. I wanted to live on that carpet square. Because the duplex on Hi Point Street, with the bold tile in the long kitchen, was not a home. At Carthay, where there was softball, and chorus, my sister’s teachers noticed that she wasn’t speaking. Not even to say “Here” at roll call. They called my mother in. Who knows what was said. But my sister, who talked to me about the rabbits during recess and lunch, was soon sent to counseling. I was amazed by this turn of events and had a feeling that my li’l tide was about to turn. I don’t know when I first heard the Dixie Cups, but it w...
