Flashback

This photo of me with the Stax Records box set – assembled after years of research into the label’s history – was taken at York’s Keele Campus, where I set out, as a student and later as a professor, to prove that rock, soul and R & B deserve the same respect as any symphony. When I began teaching at the University in 1979, I argued that listening to popular music meant listening to the world: its struggles, triumphs and changing values.

Years later, my research into Stax Records – the Memphis label that launched Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, and brought Black and white musicians together in defiance of racism and segregation in the American South – earned me a 1996 Grammy for a 10-disc box set. York gave me the freedom to treat music as a lens on society, a habit that has shaped every project since.  

This year, two documentaries based on my work received Peabody Awards. My new book on Muscle Shoals, Ala., due this fall, draws on material I developed teaching graduate courses in popular music and African American music. In November, more than 100 essays I wrote on Muscle Shoals will anchor a six-month exhibition at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

None of these undertakings would sound the same without the perspective I first sharpened at York, where listening was never just about the notes – it was about everything the music dared to say.

— Rob Bowman (BA ’78, MFA ’82)