Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination

Abstract

In the wake of the Summer 2020 protests and the sociopolitical upheaval that seemed to engulf many institutions, a group of Black academics representing the fields of music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology convened for a virtual gathering to discuss the state of their respective fields and the future of Black music research. What was born from that call was the first meeting of the Theorizing African American Music (TAAM) conference in June 2022. Recognizing that Black people have had little to no influence in determining the ways Black music is depicted in scholarly literature or how instruction of the music is facilitated in the classroom, the primary aims of the conference were to center “African American perspectives on music and music theory, perspectives that have historically been marginalized in the academic study of music in the United States.”1 But how do you codify Black art, much of which is bound up in a composite oral tradition that has not been academically documented in ways that most are familiar? What does it mean to theorize Black music? To analyze it? And to what end do such endeavors serve? The issues that arise when providing an answer to these questions are further compounded when one considers the cultural significance of music within the Black community.

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