This collection is the first interdisciplinary volume to examine black women s negotiation of race and gender in African American music. Contributors address black women s activity in musical arenas that pre- and postdate the emergence of the vaudeville blues singers of the 1920s. Throughout, the authors illustrate black women s advocacy of themselves as blacks and as women in music. Feminist? Black feminist? The editors take care to stress that each term warrants interrogation: Black women can and have forged, often, but not always and not everywhere the same across time identities that are...