Disintegrating the Musical

“This complex book has been diligently researched through primary sources including contemporary Black journalism and criticism as well as the films themselves, and through a comprehensive reading of relevant secondary sources.” - Andrew Killick , Popular Music

"Disintegrating the Musical combines meticulous documentation with a balanced temporally and conceptually building argument. . . . Knight's book should be used as more than just an examination of a generic form, or of, indeed, particularly racial representations. Its importance lies in the way it takes up the challenge of Du Bois and demonstrates the influence of popular culture in civil society through careful documentation of historical and textual processes." - E. Sean Rintel , M/C Reviews

"[R]ich in content and frequently eloquent. . . . Knight's study should inspire other scholars to explore the significance of the films that guided and entertained African Americans through some very difficult and historic moments of the twentieth century." - William J. Mahar, Journal of American History

"At the end, [Knight] expresses the hope that he has made a convincing case that there never was such a thing as ‘just’ singing and dancing. Indeed he has, in a study that is richly informed and thoughtfully analytical. . . . Essential. All collections." - K.S. Nolley , Choice

"Knight’s book makes a valuable contribution to studies of the film musical, offering the first book-length study of black performance in both the Hollywood musical and the race film musicals of the 1930s. . . . Disintegrating the Musical charts new territory in studies of the film musical, and the project that Knight has undertaken here will hopefully lead to more work in this area." - Jodi Brooks , Screening the Past

“African American influence on American music is legendary, but not until Arthur Knight’s Disintegrating the Musical have African American contributions to the Hollywood musical been put in the spotlight. Finally, we have a first-rate book offering a new slant on everything from blackface and Paul Robeson to the film version of Porgy and Bess.” - Rick Altman, University of Iowa

“Knight’s fine book is compelling reading that takes black cinema scholarship into new unmapped issues and territories. Notable is Knight's thoroughly innovative and nuanced discussion of ‘blackface’ (and its ‘whiteface’ counterpoint) and how blacks deployed forms of ‘black blackface,’ to discover pain, pleasure and irony in its complexities. Importantly, Knight charts the power of black musical performance, illuminating the schizophrenic disjuncture between the pervasive influence of the black Jazz sound and the simultaneous erasure, segregation, or devaluation of the African American musician's visual presence in mainstream cinema. Disintegrating The Musical casts its arguments in bold, lucid strokes, standing out as a solid contribution to the fields of cinema and performance studies and Jazz scholarship.” - Ed Guerrero, New York University