ABSTRACT

“‘Work Me, Lord’: Janis Joplin’s Kozmic Blues” explores the life and music of Janis Joplin (1943–1970) in terms of “electric Romanticism,” a phrase that Strelitz coins to explain Joplin’s particular kind of performance and musical energy that she not only projects but also embodies. Citing Coleridge’s “The Aeolian Harp,” Ralph Waldo Emerson, and most importantly Thoreau’s writing about the telegraph, which he himself described as an “electric aeolian harp,” Strelitz argues that as an aeolian harp channels the sounds of the wind into music, Joplin channeled the electricity of the late 1960s into her own music and performances. Joplin’s work is Romantic because of its commitment to ecstasy, non-conformity, and radical praxis combined with an equal commitment to the personal, a commitment to express herself. Strelitz cites Hélène Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” to explain how Joplin’s Romanticism is simultaneously feminist and emancipatory. Strelitz then extends this emancipatory project to trace Joplin’s own affinity with Black culture.