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Refiguring American Music
Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage
By
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-1-4780-5996-7
Publication date:
2024
This epilogue considers selected performances by black women singer-actors in the 2021-2022 season, when Broadway reopened after an eighteen-month Covid shutdown. Alice Childress’s 1955 backstage drama Trouble in Mind starred singer-actor LaChanze, offering an incisive critique of a weary-bluesy mammy role and racially charged rehearsal dynamics. Asare also writes about working as a lyricist on Paradise Square, whose star Joaquina Kalukango won the season’s Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, detailing key moments in the second act that stage the black feminist practice of singing along with.
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