Chapter 8 - Fragmented Musicals and 1970s Soul Aesthetic

Summary

Samuel O’Connell reads a single case study, Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 Broadway musical Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death. Beginning with an overview of the relevant critical writings related to whether Black music can reflect cultural and racial experiences, O’Connell contends that the genre of soul music, which Van Peebles incorporates within his stage play, succeeds in capturing the rhythm and politics of late 1960s and early 1970s Harlem. A theatrical innovator, Van Peebles challenged the accepted format of the integrated musical, a musical with a unified (and thematically related) book and music, and pioneered a new type of Black musical form, the fragmented musical, which was better equipped to reflect the racial and political frictions that were occurring in the midst of the Black Power and the Black Arts movements.