The Country Music Association Awards announced the nominees for the 58th CMA Awards and most notably, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is not on the list for her album, ‘Cowboy Carter.’ The awards are considered one of the most prestigious in country music. Beyoncé’s album came out in March and broke numerous records, not to mention its groundbreaking impact on culture and country music as a genre.
Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to offer insight, commentary and analysis. If you would like to speak with an expert, please contact GW Media Relations Specialists Tayah Frye at [email protected] and Cate Douglass at [email protected].
Loren Kajikawa is chair of the music program at The George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design. His main area of research and teaching is American music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special attention to the dynamics of race and politics. Kajikawa’s writings have appeared in American Music, Black Music Research Journal, ECHO: a music-centered journal, Journal of the Society for American Music, and Popular Music and Society, among others. His book Sounding Race in Rap Songs (University of California Press, 2015) explores the relationship between rap music’s backing tracks and racial representation. In addition to his publications, Kajikawa is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for American Music (Vol. 12-13) and he currently serves as co-editor of “Tracking Pop,” the University of Michigan Press’s series of books about popular music.
Kajikawa would tell you, “Beyoncé is using her star power, talent, and influence to try to shake up racially problematic genre categories that often relegate Black musicians to a single “lane”. Country music in particular has a complicated history in which Black musicians and Black music have been influential but not often acknowledged. One example of this is that “Texas Hold ‘Em” features Rhiannon Giddens on banjo, a Black woman who has been working for decades to create space and spread awareness about the Black roots of Country music.”
Gayle Wald is a professor of English at the George Washington University. Wald is an interdisciplinary scholar of African American literature and popular music, a cultural historian as well as a cultural theorist. She has published three books, "It's Been Beautiful": Soul! and Black Power Television (Duke UP, 2015), Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Beacon, 2007), and Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in U.S. Literature and Culture (Duke UP, 2000). Wald has also authored a variety of articles, essays, and journalistic pieces about literature, popular music (from boy bands to punk rock to Motown to gospel), and visual media. Wald is a former recipient of two NEH Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has served as co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and currently serves as an editor of Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series of books about popular recordings.
Imani M. Cheers, an associate professor of digital storytelling, is an award-winning digital storyteller, director, producer, and filmmaker. As a professor of practice, she uses a variety of mediums including video, photography, television, and film to document and discuss issues impacting and involving people of the African Diaspora. Her scholarly focus is on the intersection of women/girls, technology, health, conflict, agriculture, and the effects of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa. Cheers is also an expert on diversity in Hollywood, specifically the representation of Black women in television and film.
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