ABSTRACT
"Addressivity" notwithstanding, and despite many studies of production and consumption, popular-music scholars have rarely employed genre theory as a way of understanding black music. One reason the contradictions of genre are more apparent in black popular music is precisely because the label highlights its associations with social identity so much more than the label "Nocturne" does. Many subtle and important statements about black music over the years have explored conceptual continuities in African-American music rather than consistency of empirically based style traits. The centrality of music in specifically political struggles by African Americans undermines the idea that black music can only result from naive beliefs in cultural inferiority and purism. An emphasis on genre as a way of approaching the practice of black music stresses institutional structures and spatial arrangements, whereas an emphasis on cultural memory foregrounds the deferred temporality of enunciation.
