Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology

Alexander Ghedi Weheliye traces R&B music’s continued relevance for Black life since the late 1970s, showing how it remains a thriving venue for the continued expression of Black thought and life and a primary archive of the contemporary moment.In Feenin, Alexander Ghedi Weheliye traces R&B music’s continuing centrality in Black life since the late 1970s. Focusing on various musical production and reproduction technologies such as auto-tune and the materiality of the BlackFem singing voice, Weheliye counteracts the widespread popular and scholarly narratives of the genre’s decline and death. He shows how R&B remains a thriving venue for the expression of Black thought and life and a primary archive of the contemporary moment. Among other topics, Weheliye discusses the post-disco evolution of house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit, Prince and David Bowie in relation to the appropriations of Blackness and Euro-whiteness in the 1980s, how the BlackFem voice functions as