Essay: Let's Talk About Diana Ross

[smark21]

Right now I’m reading a book called “Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste” by Carl Wilson. The book is an expansion of Wilson’s 2007 book on the Celine Dion 1998 album Let’s Talk About Love, a brilliant piece of cultural criticism exploring taste, distinction, class, schmaltz, and fan community and taste differentiation and snobbery in popular music critics and fans of the music. Last year an expanded edition of the book was released which not only includes Wilson’s original book, but essays responding to various aspects of Wilson’s work or using Wilson’s exploration of Celine Dion as a basis to explore other artists. One essayist, Daphne Brooks, contributed a chapter entitled “Let’s Talk About Diana Ross”. IN her essay she examines Diana’s song on Free to Be You and Me, the Central Park concert, “Home”, “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand”, Motown the Musical and the uneasy relationship the African American community has had with Diana Ross over her career. Brooks also argues that artists like Diana Ross show that schmaltz isn’t just a white form of musical expression and posits that Ross is a forerunner of the type of act Celine Dion became. Excerpts of the essay can be read on Google Books. See link below. But if you have any interest in cultural critique or want to read the entire piece, I recommend purchasing Carl Wilson’s book or borrowing it from your local library.

http://books.google.com/books?id=mwG...20Ross&f=false

[soulster]

Looks like this thread isn't going to get much traction on this forum.

[Jaap]

Thanks for pointing this out. I've read Carl Wilson's original book and it is quite insightful in its attempt to understand Celine Dion's global popularity without being condescending. I also know Daphne Brooks work [[on Whitney Houston, among others), but didn't know she had wrote about Ross.

[Lulu]

Interesting share and timely given this whole Russell Wilson/"not black enough"/Charles Barkley discourse.

[smark21]

Looks like this thread isn't going to get much traction on this forum.

Did you click on the link with the essay excerpts? If you did, you'll realize pretty quickly it's not a gossip piece or pictures or a who shoved who debate, but an essay by someone who takes Diana Ross seriously in terms of performance, her songs and music, and in terms of her iconography. Also if you scroll through the link you might find other essays of interest.

And the book on Dion's Let's Talk About Love album is one of the most intellectually stimulating books of music and cultural criticism and analysis I've ever read.

[soulster]

Did you click on the link with the essay excerpts? If you did, you'll realize pretty quickly it's not a gossip piece or pictures or a who shoved who debate, but an essay by someone who takes Diana Ross seriously in terms of performance, her songs and music, and in terms of her iconography. Also if you scroll through the link you might find other essays of interest.

I skimmed it and saw something that looked more like a hit piece. My bad.