“I Got the Blues of a Fallen Teardrop”: An Original #BlackEphemera Mix by Lynnée Denise

“I Got the Blues of a Fallen Teardrop”: An Original #BlackEphemera Mix by Lynnée Denise

Soul Expressions 2.0 · “I Got the Blues of a Fallen Teardrop”: An Original #BlackEphemera Mix by Lynnée Denise

“What is there to be heard in the music, lyrics, and voices of early Black blues women singers like Clara Smith, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and Edith Wilson, and how does the archive of their work animate and inform the life of a late twentieth-century-character who is navigating much of the same terrain?”

–- Mark Anthony Neal, Black Ephemera: The Crisis and the Challenge of the Musical Archive | Chapter Two: “I Got the Blues of a Fallen Teardrop”: Erasure, Trauma, and a Sonic Archive of Black Women (NYU Press)

Lynnée Denise is an artist, scholar, writer, and DJ whose work reflects on underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies, theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora. Denise coined the phrase “DJ Scholarship” to re-position the role of the DJ from a party purveyor to an archivist, cultural custodian, and information specialist of music with critical value. Through interactive workshops, lectures, and presentations at universities, conferences, and performance venues, Denise harnesses music as a medium for vital public dialogue on how to transform the way that music of the Black Atlantic is understood in its social context and beyond entertainment. Lynnée Denise is the Sterling Brown '22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College and lives and works in London.