Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones

Abstract

Book Review| April 01 2022 Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha LolaJones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. viii, 346 pp. Birgitta J. Johnson Birgitta J. Johnson BIRGITTA J. JOHNSON is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the School of Music and the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include music in African American churches, change and identity in Black popular music, and gospel archiving. She has published articles in the Black Music Research Journal, Ethnomusicology Forum, Liturgy, Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies, and The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2022) 75 (1): 163–167. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.163 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Birgitta J. Johnson; Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance, by Alisha Lola Jones. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2022; 75 (1): 163–167. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2022.75.1.163 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance is an innovative contribution to contemporary Black sacred music and religious life scholarship. Jones uses multi-sited ethnographic research to anchor her analysis of the layered nuances of race, sexuality, gender, and gender presentation in Black Pentecostal religious communities of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The diverse settings for musical and rhetorical performances of Black masculinity, gender, and sexuality that Jones traverses in Flaming? are timely additions to an emerging area of Black music research in America. Throughout the book’s eight chapters, she uses insightful case studies to center the spoken and unspoken sentiments of Black male Christian musicians living and working in a society in which their humanity has been historically and violently contested. At the same time, these men are members of a religious community in which Black masculinity is often lionized in overtly... You do not currently have access to this content.