As superstar Lil Nas X might put it, 'can’t nobody tell me' that Francesca Royster’s dazzling book isn’t a necessary and groundbreaking work in popular music studies. Both riveting and moving, Black Country Music weaves together a number of urgent and critical threads of inquiry—interrogating overlooked and ofttimes underloved Black pioneers who made rich and innovative music in spite of marginalization, and exploring present-day rule-breaking artists who are inventing new ways of narrating their own sounds and their often complicated relationships to country. At its heart, this book insists that we reckon with both the Blackness that lies at the heart of country music and the fearlessness of generations of musicians who laid claim to a sonic culture that was slow to acknowledge their worth. It's a book for the national moment in which we find ourselves.
~Daphne A. Brooks
Black Country Music holds within it vital history and also serves as a vessel for Francesca Royster's gentle, reliable, and immersive storytelling, weaving an expansive narrative to hold up the untold and undertold stories of the music-makers at the heart of America's many sounds.
~Hanif Abdurraqib
Francesca Royster’s extraordinary book puts Black country artists and audience in conversation with Black thinkers Audre Lorde, Claudia Rankine, bell hooks, and Camille Dungy, among others, to center the radical work that is revealed as Royster listens for, and finds, strains of revolution within Black country. Her work at the intersection of Afrofuturism and Black country is necessary reading for all interested in the evolution of Black aesthetics.
~Alice Randall
Francesca Royster gets to the heart of the matter with this book. She plots the journey of self-acceptance and defiance that has marked every one of our journeys in country music.
~Rissi Palmer
An original, timely and much-needed entry in the long-overdue national conversation on representation and accountability in the country music industry.
~Los Angeles Times
Black Country Music delves deeply into the tensions, pleasures, and contradictions that Royster, as a Black queer woman, finds in country music as a genre and a cultural signifier. The book weaves history, criticism, and memoir into an elegant narrative that challenges assumptions about what country music can be.
~Chapter 16
Black Country Music is an astounding work of musical history and cultural reckoning...This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys country music, music writing, Black history, and Afrofuturism.
~Bearded Gentlemen Music
Royster examines not just the erasure Black artists have faced in country music, but the many ways they are reclaiming their presence in it. At the same time, she also interrogates her own relationship with country music as listener, fan, and banjo player...Royster explores the spaces Black country artists are carving for themselves.
~JSTOR Daily
[A] groundbreaking work…Black Country Music is a must-read for any music fan.
~Texas Monthly
An important examination on the erasure of Black voices and music expression in the world of American country music.
~New York Amsterdam News
Black Country Music arrives as mainstream country music continues to grapple with its longstanding marginalization of minorities. Along with artists that broke through to country radio, like Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, [Royster] spotlights a new generation of artists, including Our Native Daughters, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla, while explaining the industry's need to take an honest look at inclusion — and the genre's lackthereof.
~The Boot, "10 Best Country Music Books of 2022"
Provocative and illuminating...Every fan of country and Americana music should read this book.
~No Depression, "2022's Most Memorable Music Books"
