Soul as a Gateway to Erotic Possibilities: An Afrocentric Study of Black Women’s Musical Narratives as Extensions of Agency and Freedom

Abstract

This dissertation examines Black women’s sexual narratives in contemporary Soul music. Through a close analysis of various songs, videos, and images from Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Syd Bennett, and Ari Lennox this research explores the relationship between sexual narratives in contemporary-Soul music and African social and spiritual thought and practice. I examine Black women’s eroticism as a production and reflection of African pleasure, sexuality, and intimacy. This work employs Afrocentricity as a methodological tool to engage with sexual expressions that center on African historical, social, political, and social phenomena. Location theory, Womanism, and ADQT (Afrocentric Decolonizing Queer Theory) provide a framework for interrogating Afrocentric erotic politics historically and contemporarily through patterns of traditional practices of intimacy and cultural productions of sexuality. Ethnographic Content Analysis and Iconography are utilized to examine the artists' work in their discography, interviews, photographs, and social media content. The heart of this work examines how Soul as a cultural symbol and aesthetic can be used as a tool for Black women in this context to acquire agency through freely exploring eroticism. Through analysis of Erykah, Jill, Syd, and Ari, this research develops an ongoing conversation about Black Americans’ relationship with the erotic and its role in African culture and spirituality. Ultimately this research demonstrates the importance of Black women’s erotic expression and how this importance reflects a more extensive conversation of what sexual expression means to African people. Through analyzing these artists' iconography and lyricism, this work demonstrates how erotic expressions in Soul are a self-affirming, self-determining, agentic force of African life.