Archive Find: Black music / Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis

Caption:

My archive find is from Pacifica Radio Archives. Joan Thornell interviews Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis for her “Another Perspective” series about the development of black music. Shange and Davis talk about Stevie Wonder, jazz, the differences between poetry and music and how each exists within a gendered space. The interview was produced at WPFW, Washington, DC in 1977.

Reaction:

I was really struck by Shange and Davis’s conversation about music as a gendered space. Shange said:

Music is such a male-dominated thing, sometimes I resent even having to speak about it. Even though I love it so much.

She talks about how, at the time, the arts world demanded more from musicians than it did of poets, and how as a consequence, she considered herself as being closer to most musicians. She continued, “I am willing to make those kinds of sacrifices and do that kind of work that we haven’t exactly laid out theoretically for poets to do.”

I am interested in knowing more about how she navigated the intersection between music and poetry, and whether she listened to poetry on the radio.

Access:

I received access to the interview file from Brian DeShazor, the Archives Director at Pacifica Radio.

Metadata:

There is a sufficient amount of metadata available on the interview’s page, including the station, date of broadcast, keywords, roles, genre and rights summary.