Dancing In The Streets: Motown

Motown Records marketed their releases as an all-inclusive “Sound of Young America” and succeeded in selling their records to both white and black audiences. Motown’s focus on the subject matter of the songs, the presentation of their artists to the public, and the perception that they remained at least neutral on political and social issues aided in their ability to crossover. This is the accepted narrative in the retelling and analysis of Motown Records in the 1960s. Suzanne Smith, in Dancing in the Streets: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit, argues that one must zoom out from the activities inside of 2648 West Grand Boulevard and the Top 40 chart to fully understand its history and impact. Furthermore, the conditions for
Basically, that Motown could not have happened in any other place besides Detroit. While that might be true, I would argue that Gordy’s access to and cultivating of the right songwriters, artists, and personnel were more important. Detroit was home to several small record labels at the same time that Gordy founded Motown and none achieved any comparable level of success. Also, Smith fails to explore or in some cases, even acknowledge other similar record companies, such as Vee Jay or Stax. Perhaps Stax doesn’t fit into her argument because the founders were white, but Stax’s history of integration in the South, and eventual leadership by Al Bell, does provide a fair analogy to Smith’s themes of community and racial support as a source and base for economic
Smith does an excellent job and service to the story of Motown Records in her presentation of the Black Forum subsidiary. In Berry Gordy’s autobiography, this label, which featured recordings by Martin Luther King, Ossie Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Langston Hughes, receives barely a mention in a single paragraph. However, given the title and its publisher, a large component of the audience consists of different facets of music historians, scholars, and students who already possess some knowledge of Motown. Smith’s sections on the history of Motown do not provide any new or compelling accounts that were not already available and rely heavily on secondary or already published autobiographies and interviews.

Bibliography
Smith, Suzanne. Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Sykes, Charles E. “The Black Forum Label: Motown Joins the Revolution.” ARSC Journal 46, No. 1 (Spring 2015):