http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/497019136

I hear a symphony making music at Motown, 1959-1979

"This dissertation explores the intersections between social status and musical production in the music of Motown between 1959 and 1979, the period of this record company's most successful and best-known work. More significantly, this study reveals Motown's strong relationship with the cultural formation of the American black middle class, by discussing the ways in which the processes of making music at Motown and the creative products of the company were inextricably connected to many of the most pressing issues facing this cultural and ethnic group. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical and historical framework for the formation of Motown in the context of Detroit's black middle class of the late-1950s. By carefully analyzing the company's output during these formative years, this chapter shows that Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. created music in a wide range of styles, and marketed these styles to a localized, mostly black Detroit audience. Chapter 2 provides an analysis of Motown's broad national success between the years 1963 and 1967 by considering the ways the songwriting and production team of Holland, Dozier, and Holland used musical and textual troping techniques to create black middle class identities for The Four Tops and The Supremes. Chapter 3 tracks Motown's move into more racialized musical territory in the late 1960s. A lengthy discussion of the emergence and stylistic characteristics of Norman Whitfield's psychedelic soul music, which he produced and wrote mainly for The Temptations, shows how Motown's stance toward racial unity, taken from the company's roots in the black middle class, was still pervasive in the music of this era. Marvin Gaye's compositional technique in the 1970s, which I call vocal composition, is the subject of chapter 4. I show how this technique allowed Gaye to explore and confront his own personal conflict between his popular hyper-sexualized soul music and the more conservative cabaret music he longed to sing throughout his career."--Leaves iii-iv.

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