DRAKE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC
MUS 160: BUILDING A BLACK MUSIC ANTHOLOGY, SPRING 2023
Instructor: Dr. Eric Saylor Office: FAC 323 E-mail: Eric.Saylor@drake.edu
Office hours: M 1:00–3:00 pm, T 12:30–3:30 pm, or by appointment

COURSE OBJECTIVES
Assuming you complete all requirements and assignments, you should be able to:
• Understand how musical anthologies reflect and shape both critical and public
taste, reception, and ideologies
• Establish a working definition for “Black music,” and become familiar with a wide
range of Black musical traditions and artists affiliated with them
• Perceive how political variables—particularly institutional racism—shape and
affect the reception of musicians and musical works
• Write short, clear, and broadly accessible descriptions of individual musical
works

REFLECTION PAPERS
This class will divide into two broad sections. The first will cover the first four weeks of
class, and will focus on class discussions that will 1) explain what anthologies are and the
ideological principles underlying their construction, 2) establish a working definition for
“Black music” applicable to this class, and 3) define the scope and parameters of the
proposed class anthology. Students will be asked to write short reflective papers
addressing these topics, which will count for 20% of the overall class grade (each paper
is worth 5% of your grade).

NOTE: there will be five papers assigned in the opening weeks of the semester, but you
only need to complete four of them. This will provide you with an opportunity to pass
on any single paper if you are pressed for time without incurring a penalty. You will not
be allowed to submit a paper after its due date. Regardless of whether or not you
complete a reflection paper for a given reading, you are expected to complete all
assigned readings in order to effectively participate in class discussion.

In lieu of a final exam, the semester will conclude with a short evaluation of the
experience that students had on compiling and editing the anthology as a whole,
including reflections on what you learned about the process of editing and writing for an
anthology, if and how your perception of Black music has changed, and what you might
have done differently over the course of the project. This final paper will count for 5% of
the total grade.

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ANTHOLOGY ENTRIES
The remaining weeks of the course will put the broad precepts for the anthology (as
determined above) into practice. Students will divide into small groups, the makeup of
which will change over the course of the semester, to determine what pieces will be
included as representative examples of specific styles, periods, composers, and/or
genres. In consultation with me (as needed), students will identify appropriate resources
(print and electronic) to consult for information on the music and musicians in question,
and begin to draft entries for each work in the anthology. Individual entries will likely
total around 500–750 words, and may include biographical, historical, cultural, and/or
analytical information about the work under consideration. (I have provided a brief
prospective example on p. 5 of this syllabus.)

Groups will complete their entries every two weeks. The first week for a given set of
entries will involve discussions of what pieces to include, consultation of resources, and
the completion of an initial draft. The second week will involve the peer review of drafts
by other members of the group, and also by me. These peer reviews will be worked on
during the second Monday class for a given round of entries, with opportunities to
discuss with other members of the group; I will return my comments on your initial
drafts by Wednesday at the latest. The final versions of these entries will be due to me
the following Monday, when work on the next set of entries begins.

As the semester progresses, entries will be compiled on a shared document such as

Google Sheets so that the class can see how the anthology develops.

Each submission will count for 15% of the grade (2.5% for completing the first draft,
2.5% for revising group members’ drafts, 10% for the final version). Under the
prospective syllabus plan, this comes to five submissions total, which will count for 75%
of the final grade (15% x 5).

ATTENDANCE AND GRADING

While attendance will not formally count as part of your grade, the small size and group
work this class entails means that your attendance is essential to its success. Please
respect your classmates’ time and effort by arriving to class on time prepared to discuss
and/or work on whatever subject is assigned for the day.

Grades will be based on a variety of criteria; the following list should provide a sense of
how my expectations correlate to grades (please note that this is a general guide, not an
absolute set of benchmarks):

A: Presents interesting and well-supported opinions, insights,

observations, and/or queries of all material; grammatically coherent,
clear, and consistently accurate prose; demonstrates exceptional creative
engagement with or expression of the material

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 B: Demonstrates clear and detailed understanding of the assignment’s
major issues with some acknowledgement of secondary points; generally
clear writing with some errors in grammar or syntax; a few examples of
significant, individual creative expression
C: Basic (if limited) engagement with major issues with little or no
engagement of secondary material; consistently displays grammatical or
syntactical errors; demonstrates basic creative competence in terms of
understanding or expressing the subject
D: Cursory or erroneous engagement with material; significant problems
with textual coherence; unclear whether or not the writer understands
the subject
F: Does not fulfill requirements laid out in the assignment; textually
incoherent; consistently erroneous assertions; writer does not appear to
understand the subject at all

Final grades are determined from the percentage of points out of 500 possible over the
course of the class, with divisions as follows:

A+ 483–500 B+ 433–449 C+ 383–399 D+ 333–349

A 467–482 B 417–432 C 367–382 D 317–332 F<300
A- 450–466 B- 400–416 C- 350–366 D- 300–316

Lecture-Exam-Paper Schedule; Reading and Listening Assignments

Week Date Readings (HWM) and Listening (OAWM)
1 M 1/23 First day; What is an anthology?
W 1/25 Anthologies and ideologies (Luongo, “Constructing a Canon,” and
Burkholder, “Stewarding a Shared Resource”), RP 1 assigned

2 M 1/30 Guest discussant: Dr. Melissa Hoag, Oakland University,

RP 1 due; RP 2 assigned
W 2/1 How do we define “Black Music”? (Floyd, “Toward a Philosophy,”
and Floyd, “On Black Music Research”), RP 2 due, RP 3 assigned

3 M 2/6 Establishing musical parameters and categories, RP 3 due

W 2/8 Establishing musical categories and prospective repertoire

4 M 2/13 Guest discussant: Billy Weathers, CEO, B.Well Foundation, RP 4

assigned
W 2/15 Finding scholarly and musical resources, RP 4 due, RP 5 assigned

5 M 2/20 First round of entries begins; RP 5 due

W 2/22 Research and writing day

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6 M 2/27 First round draft revision/discussion
W 3/1

7 M 3/6 First round entries due; second round of entries begins

W 3/8 Research and writing day

8 M 3/13 SPRING BREAK

W 3/15 MORE SPRING BREAK

9 M 3/20 Second round draft revision/discussion

W 3/22

10 M 3/27 Second round entries due; third round of entries begins

W 3/29 Research and writing day

11 M 4/3 Third round draft revision/discussion

W 4/5

12 M 4/10 Third round entries due; fourth round of entries begins

W 4/12 Research and writing day

13 M 4/17 Fourth round draft revision/discussion

W 4/19

14 M 4/24 Fourth round entries due; fifth round of entries begins

W 4/26 Research and writing day

15 M 5/1 Fifth round draft revision/discussion

W 5/3 Final RP assigned

16 W 5/10 Fifth round entries due, Final RP due, 9:20 am

THIS SYLLABUS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE!!!

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 SAMPLE ANTHOLOGY ENTRY

Aretha Franklin (1942–2018), “Respect” (1967)

Written by Otis Redding (1965), released on Franklin’s studio album I Never Loved a Man the
Way I Love You (Atlantic, 1967)

Known as the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin ranks among the century’s most accomplished and
versatile popular musicians. As singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and producer, her catalog
spans every major vernacular tradition in Black vernacular music, from gospel and jazz to blues,
rock, funk, disco, and R&B. A powerful voice for female empowerment and within the Civil
Rights Movement, she was also “the first woman inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”
(1987), and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. 1

Franklin’s cover of “Respect” outshines the original—no small feat, since it was first recorded by
Otis Redding in 1965 for his album Otis Blue. What had been a song about a man complaining
about a lack of consideration from his woman was transformed by Franklin into a no-holds-
barred demand for the respect due to women—particularly Black women—from a world that
failed to recognize their worth. It was the opening track on the first album that Franklin
recorded for Atlantic Records under the supervision of legendary producer Jerry Wexler (at the
equally legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama), and made it to number one for two
weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, establishing itself as a soul music standard in the process.

Soul music represented an intersection of musical practices drawn primarily from gospel, jazz,
and R&B. It is especially audible in Franklin’s powerful belting style, characterized by shouts,
bends, rhythmic freedom, quasi-improvisatory interjections, and call-and-response exchanges
with a group of backup singers. These qualities are mirrored in the opening guitar hook and
extended saxophone solo (with its unusual harmonic modulation), while the stark solo break
where Franklin spells out the song’s title—a passage absent from Redding’s original—has
become one of the most iconic musical riffs of the 1960s.

Sources consulted

Brackett, David. “Soul Music.” Grove Music Online. 31 January 2014; accessed 7 August 2020.
https://doi-org.cowles-proxy.drake.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2257344.

McCollum, Brian. “Aretha Franklin took ‘Respect to the top, 50 years ago this week,” Detroit
Free Press (1 June 2017), https://tinyurl.com/y4eo2l3c.

Neal, Mark Anthony. “Franklin, Aretha (Louise).” The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2d
ed., edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Accessed
via Oxford Reference (https://tinyurl.com/y36tklmb).

“Respect (song).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 17 July 2020, accessed 7 August 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Respect_(song)&oldid=968169265.

1 Mark Anthony Neal, “Franklin, Aretha (Louise),” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2d
ed., edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); accessed via Oxford
Reference (https://tinyurl.com/y36tklmb).