Interplay of sex, music examined
Think about sex and pop music, and you probably come up with Prince, Madonna or Jay-Z and Beyonce. Maybe Miley Cyrus, twerking. And of course, that tall Memphis kid whose gyrating hips scandalized a nation.
You’ll find all those usual suspects in Ann Powers’ new book, “Good Booty,” a lively study stationed at the intersection of the musical and the erotic. But you’ll also find scenes from 19th-century New Orleans; the shimmy craze of the jazz age, when booze was illegal but sex was everywhere; and the sharp-dressed gospel quartets of the prerock 'n' roll era, which “ran on the shared, sensual, blessed charisma of men who might have otherwise never let loose.”
The real treasures here are the ones you probably don’t know. There’s a real sense of scholarly discovery in “Good Booty,” a willingness to go beyond the obvious
and mess with conventional wisdom.
“I started really thinking about how music had expressed attitudes about sexuality and love and eroticism historically, going beyond the cliche of ‘the blues and country had a baby and made rock ’n’ roll,’" Powers said from her home in Nashville, Tennessee. “I wanted to go a little deeper and get a little more specific and think about how, at different points in our history, our attitudes about sexuality were expressed through music and also formed that music and then, in turn, were formed by music.”
The book, which takes its title from original lyrics ■ in Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” touches on race, technology, gender, cultural mores and, of course, sex. To Powers, a longtime music critic who now works for NPR, the subject of sensuality runs deep.
Among her touchstones is Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” a sort of treatise on sexual self-definition. “She talks about how eroticism is really about that power within yourself that cannot be destroyed,” Powers said. “Even when your own body is threatened, you can still have that energy and power, of joy and pleasure and dignity.”
“Good Booty” spotlights figures obscure — the black stage sensation Florence Mills, who became a 1920s megastar before basically touring herself to death at age 31 — and more familiar. She drills deep on a pair of troikas: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, who wore sex on their sleeves and ended up trapped in their public images; and Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson, each of whom responded differently to AIDS angst.
Powers, who has a master's degree in English from the University of California-Berkeley, brings a degree of learnedness to her book. But there’s no need to hack through thickets of theory. Her writing is smart but lively and accessible.
“Well, it is about sex, so maybe that helps,” she joked.