ThoughtGallery.org > Ann Powers Presents GOOD BOOTY: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music

Ann Powers Presents GOOD BOOTY: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music

In GOOD BOOTY (the title is a nod to Little Richard’s breakthrough hit “Tutti Frutti”), Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. She takes us from 19 th century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-20 th century rock-and- roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and even Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom.

ANN POWERS is NPR Music’s critic and correspondent and one of the nation’s leading music writers. She began her career at San Francisco Weekly, and has held positions at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Blender, and the Experience Music Project. Her previous books include Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America; Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, which she co-wrote with Amos; and Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop,co-edited with Evelyn McDonnell. She was also the editor of Best Music Writing 2010.  She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.











When: Mon., Sep. 18, 2017 at 7:00 pm
Where: WORD
126 Franklin St.
718-383-0096
Price: Free
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In GOOD BOOTY (the title is a nod to Little Richard’s breakthrough hit “Tutti Frutti”), Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. She takes us from 19 th century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-20 th century rock-and- roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and even Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom.

ANN POWERS is NPR Music’s critic and correspondent and one of the nation’s leading music writers. She began her career at San Francisco Weekly, and has held positions at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Blender, and the Experience Music Project. Her previous books include Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America; Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, which she co-wrote with Amos; and Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop,co-edited with Evelyn McDonnell. She was also the editor of Best Music Writing 2010.  She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Buy tickets/get more info now