Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Performing Arts
Episode: Maureen Mahon, "Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll" (Duke UP, 2020)
Description: Maureen Mahon’s book, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Duke University Press, 2020), focuses on the contributions to rock and roll by African American women from Big Mama Thornton to Tina Turner, and the erasure and marginalization of most of these women in other histories of popular music. Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll and puts them back into a narrative that generally emphasizes the role of white male guitar players in the development of the genre. She considers how...