The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams: Meshell Ndegeocello and the ‘problem’ of Black female masculinity

Abstract

AbstractSinger, bass player and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello has inspired a growing body of scholarship addressing her funky, political, ‘othered’ musical personae. Existing work celebrates Ndegeocello in the context of identity politics (most commonly feminist, Black Feminist/Womanist, Black Nationalist or Africanist). This tactic not only defies Ndegeocello's rejection of identity politics, but also oversimplifies her complex, sometimes divergent musical negotiations of selfhood. This article highlights the discursive tensions of engaging ‘Black’ with ‘queer’ with ‘woman’ with ‘musician’ by exploring her most contradictory performances of self, particularly those which other scholars argue are ‘feminist’ or ‘queer’. Identifying a scholarly gap around Ndegeocello's strikingly conflicted performances of Black queer gender in songs about same- and opposite-sex relationships, this queer of colour critique explores manner and process over essence, articulating experiential, situational, non-linear and even incoherent perspectives. In doing so, it offers an affect-oriented, politically and musically attentive alternative conceptual frame to identity politics.