Popular Music Books: John Shaw on Louis Armstrong & "St Louis Blues," w/ Francesca Royster, 13/05/24

As part of the Popular Music Books in Process series, Monday, May 13, 2024, John Shaw discusses with Francesca Royster his work in progress, Trickster Virtuoso: Louis Armstrong, “St. Louis Blues,” and African American Modernism.
This conversation begins from Louis Armstrong's resistance to the Eurocentric condescension of Leonard Bernstein during their one collaboration, a symphonic arrangement of “St. Louis Blues,” a song that had been recorded in arrangements both glorious and degrading, a vehicle for Black virtuosity and blackface backlash. A vision of African American modernism emerges that works to subvert white dominance, a modernism born of solidarity and the continuity of resistance. This Black modernism shines in contrast to the Eurocentric account of modernism, which posits discontinuity, fragmentation, isolation, and despair as central.
The Popular Music Books in Process series (PMBiP) began in the spring of 2020 as a way to maintain continuity and conversation among all kinds of music writers and scholars during the COVID pandemic. Its positive reception led to its continuing on after the lockdowns as a place of ongoing musical and intellectual community, and to promote a general love of critical writing as an art form as well as the specific books.
John Shaw is an elementary classroom teacher for Seattle Public Schools and an active union member. He was a founding member of Chicago’s experimental and non-hierarchical Theater Oobleck, has self-released several albums of original songs and music, has scored several stage plays and an experimental film that has been exhibited internationally, and is the author of This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems (Public Affairs Books, 2013).
Francesca T. Royster is Professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago, and received her PhD in English from University of California, Berkeley. She’s written scholarly work on Shakespeare, Black Lesbian Country music fans, Prince, and Fela Kuti on Broadway, among other topics. Her books include Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions (2022), which won the 2023 Ralph Gleason Popular Music Book First Prize; Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance (2023); Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era (2013), and Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (2003).

[@tulelazule6914]

Bootsy, Outkast, Kermit Ruffins , even Bobby McFerin (when I saw him live) & how about Snoop?

[@JohnShawToo]

Great answers! My brain froze.