ABOUT THIS BOOK

In King’s Vibrato Maurice O. Wallace explores the sonic character of Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice and its power to move the world. Providing a cultural history and critical theory of the black modernist soundscapes that helped inform King’s vocal timbre, Wallace shows how the qualities of King’s voice depended on a mix of ecclesial architecture and acoustics, musical instrumentation and sound technology, audience and song. He examines the acoustical architectures of the African American churches where King spoke and the centrality of the pipe organ in these churches, offers a black feminist critique of the influence of gospel on King, and outlines how variations in natural environments and sound amplifications made each of King’s three deliveries of the “I Have a Dream” speech unique. By mapping the vocal timbre of one of the most important figures of black hope and protest in American history, Wallace presents King as the embodiment of the sound of modern black thought.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Maurice O. Wallace is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995, and coeditor of Pictures of Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, both also published by Duke University Press.

REVIEWS

"King's Vibrato provides the opportunity to listen to and hear black cultural history through the ears of Maurice O. Wallace."

-- Diane Grams Ethnic and Racial Studies

"King’s Vibrato is a commendable entry into the growing discourse around history, blackness, and aesthetics, and will be of particular interest to historians of American religion looking for ways to further develop the kinds of subjects available for this sort of inquiry—in this case, the sound of an individual’s voice. This book has relevance, too, for scholars of African American history interested in an innovative look at a familiar subject."

-- Adam Sweatman Reading Religion

"The achievement of Maurice O. Wallace’s superb King’s Vibrato is that it allows us to understand King’s epochal abilities beyond the singularity of King himself. . . . Wallace’s focus on sound lets us understand King’s celebrated orations as collaborations between King, his audiences, and the physical environments in which they met. King’s Vibrato goes into intricate detail about how various churches were designed and built with sonic effects in mind."
-- David T. Smith Journal of Religious History

"Wallace’s tome is a compelling distillation of the Black modern life that produced King’s sound. As he plumbs the depths of the spiritual, spatial, and sonic landscape of King’s vibrato, Wallace brings to bear a bevy of interdisciplinary modes of critique to make sense of Black modern life’s infrangible links to one of the world’s most recognizable voices."
-- Joshua Lawrence Lazard Yale Journal of Music & Religion

"Wallace’s work provides a transformative view of a twentieth-century Black modernism that sounds from even the photographs of the era. Wallace’s nuanced discussion of these aspects intervenes in conventional discourses of religion, rhetoric, and Black cultural history. . . ."
-- Noelle Morrissette Journal of American Ethnic History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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