"Tracy Chapman and the Art of Refusal"

Abstract: In this talk, I'll be exploring a new book project on Tracy Chapman, her music and especially the ways that her elusiveness and refusal of celebrity is significant for Black women musicians. In an industry that has used – and sometimes used up its Black women innovators, from Willie Mae Thornton to Whitney Houston, Tracy Chapman's quiet presents a new model of public performance and musical legacy for Black women. Elegantly, Tracy Chapman has managed to avoid our gaze, even while those who love her: critic and fans, seek her out to praise her. She does so while being very much relevant to this moment. Her music (especially “Fast Car”) continues to speak to us, to the yearning, and queer hope for a place and world that isn’t quite with us. Her critiques of capitalism and excess, domestic violence, and also her optimism, continue to be important as we continue to be assaulted by global violence. She is relevant because of her music’s urging for us to name things, to witness and to feel others’ suffering. And she does so while protecting her privacy. Chapman reminds us of ways that the self is always subject to disciplining and projection—especially for Black queer women, famous and not so famous. Chapman refuses to be a proper subject, even as she creates a legacy for other Black and Queer artists who innovate while eluding the scrutiny of celebrity.

Francesca T. Royster is a Professor of the English at DePaul University in Chicago, and received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley in English Literature in 1995. At DePaul she teaches courses on African American Literature, Queer Writers of Color and Writing About Music.

She’s written scholarly work on Shakespeare, Black Lesbian Country music fans, Prince, and Fela Kuti on Broadway among other topics. Her creative work has appeared in Feminist Studies, Slag Glass City, LA Review of Books, The Huffington Post, The Windy City Times, Chicago Literati and The Oxford American. Her books include Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon (Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era (University of Michigan Press, 2013), Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions (University of Texas Press, 2022), and Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance (Abrams/ Overlook Press, 2023).

Her book, Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions was recently awarded the 2023 Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the 2023 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, the 2023 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from The

American Musicological Society, and the 2024 Woody Guthrie Award for most Outstanding Book on Popular Music by the International Association of Popular Music Studies-US.

She is at work on two new book projects: Listening for My Mother: Travels in Music from Chicago to Bahia, a combination of memoir, travel writing and cultural history about mourning and healing in Women's Music in the Black Diaspora; and Tracy Chapman and the Art of Refusal, on Chapman's wily negotiation of celebrity.

Royster lives in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood with her partner Annie, her daughter Cecelia, two pups and a frog.

Co-hosted by the Department of Music and the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.