EVENTS
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Tina Turner and the St. Louis Music Scene, 1955-1962
Maureen Mahon delivered the annual James Neal Primm Lecture in History on the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. This lecture, “Tina Turner and the St. Louis Music Scene, 1955-1962,” described how Turner brought what she learned as a high school student in the vibrant clubs of St. Louis and East St. Louis in the 1950s to the national stage in the 1960s.
Friday, July 8, 2022
Connections: The Pleasures and Politics of
Black Feminist Musicking
Maureen Mahon delivered the plenary keynote, "Connections: The Pleasures and Politics of Black Feminist Musicking" at the 30th anniversary Feminist Theory and Music Conference at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The lecture discussed the New York City-based Black countercultural women who were part of the community that coalesced around guitarist Jimi Hendrix.
Thursday, October 27, 2022 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Bamako to Brooklyn: DJ Spooky and Yacouba Sissoko
Maureen Mahon moderated an in-person conversation between Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky and master kora player Yacouba Sissoko about West African desert blues, griot and Hip-Hop. This exploration of the far-reaching sounds of the Sahel included a listening session, which introduced audiences to iconic and contemporary Malian albums featured in the library’s new vinyl collection.
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Muse-Sick: A Music Manifesto in Fifty-Nine Notes
In conversation with author Ian Brennan at Book Soup, Los Angeles, California.
WATCH>
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Conversations with Go on Girl!
Mahon joined Clover Hope, author of The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop, in a Go on Girl! Book Club conversation.
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy Lecture Series
Mahon presented the lecture “Sounds Like a Revolution: African American Women and Freedom Songs in the 1960s” as part of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy Lecture Series hosted by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
WATCH>
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Resounding Imagination: A Keyword Conversation about Black Feminist Sound, Memory, Place, and Power
Mahon was in conversation with Daphne A. Brooks and Jayna Brown on “Resounding Imagination: A Keyword Conversation about Black Feminist Sound, Memory, Place, and Power,” at the Return to the Center: Black Women, Jazz, and Jazz Education conference, Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA.
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Soundtrack to Creativity, UCLA’s Practice-based Epistemology Research
Maureen Mahon was in conversation with Josh Kun about her soundtrack for researching and writing Black Diamond Queens as part of the Soundtrack to Creativity series hosted by UCLA’s Practice-based Epistemology Research (PEER) Lab, UCLA.
WATCH>
Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 6:30- 8:30 PM Eastern on Zoom
Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll
The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) partners with the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania to convene a conversation centered on author Dr. Maureen Mahon’s book Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll. Along with Mahon, this conversation features Dr. Deborah Thomas and Dr. Guthrie Ramsey of the University of Pennsylvania as panelists, and Dejay Duckett, Director of Curatorial Services at AAMP as moderator.
$8 General Admission | Free for AAMP Members
Zoom Link Emailed Prior to the Event
Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 7:00–8:30 PM Eastern
WJF 2021: Black Diamond Queens with Maureen Mahon
and DJ Lynnée Denise
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosts a musical performance and a dynamic conversation about Black women in rock & roll with Maureen Mahon and DJ Lynnée Denise. Opening the evening is Tennessee-bred singer/songwriter, Amythyst Kiah whose prowess on guitar has been described as razor-sharp.
WATCH>
Monday, February 22, 2021 at 7:00-8:30 PM Eastern
Rewriting Rock: New Takes on Black Women in Rock and Pop History
Authors Daphne Brooks (Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound) and Maureen Mahon (Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll) discuss their newly-published books on Black women in pop music. These works are part of a wave of new writing on Black women in rock and pop that sheds light on how dominant views of gender, race, sexuality, and genre affected not only their careers but how their stories were minimized or written out of music history. Presented in partnership with Case Western Reserve University's Center for Popular Music Studies.
WATCH>
Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 7:00-8:30 PM Eastern
Toshi Reagon and Maureen Mahon discuss Mahon's important new book, Black Diamond Queens.
As part of Brooklyn Public Library’s public events programming, musician Toshi Reagon and Maureen Mahon discuss Black Diamond Queens and the pivotal part African American women have played a pivotal in rock and roll.
WATCH>
Installation view, Nikita Gale: PRIVATE DANCER. Photo by Elon Schoenholz.
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
at 8:00-9:30 PM Eastern / 5:00-6:30 PM Pacific
In conversation with Daphne Brooks and Gayle Wald
In conjunction with Nikita Gale’s PRIVATE DANCER exhibition at the California African American Museum, Mahon will be in conversation with Daphne Brooks, author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910, and Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, and Gayle Wald, author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe and "It's Been Beautiful": Soul! and Black Power Television.
WATCH>
Saturday, February 6, 2021 at 5:00 PM Eastern
Black Women Rock Panel – Santa Barbara Black History Month Virtual Culture House
A roundtable discussion about Black women rock and roll artists navigating the music business in 2021, featuring professor/author Maureen Mahon and artists Leah King, Shelley Nicole, Sophia Ramos, and LaFrae Sci.
REGISTER>
Thursday, January 14, 2021, at 7:00 PM Eastern
Jazz and Gender: An End to Norms
Winter Jazz Fest’s Jazz & Gender Talk Series presents a discussion with musicians and gender studies experts about gender fluidity, how it presents itself in the music, and how looking beyond the norms in a variety of ways can help to serve Black American Music as an artform.
Participants Terri Lyne Carrington, Maureen Mahon, and Samora Pinderhughes,
Moderated by Fay Victor
Hosted by Sarah Elizabeth Charles
Presented in partnership with the School of Jazz at The New School's College of Performing Arts and The Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice
Friday, December 4, 2020 at 9:00 PM Eastern
An Inside Look at Black Diamond Queens. Maureen Mahon in conversation with Honeychild Coleman
Part of Celebration BRC: 35 Years into Tomorrow. Marking 35 years of the Black Rock Coalition
November 19, 2020 at 6:00 PM Eastern on Zoom
A Discussion About African American Women
in Rock & Roll
Mahon and Honeychild Coleman, musician and DJ, joined Reggie Blanding, librarian at the James Brown African American Room of the Newark Public Library in Newark, NJ, for a conversation about Black women and rock and roll.
WATCH>
November 11, 2020 at 7:30 PM Eastern
Greenlight Bookstore’s “In Conversation”
As part of the author event series at Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore, Mahon was in conversation with Bridgett M. Davis, novelist and author of the memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers.
WATCH>
Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 7PM Eastern on YouTube
NMAAHC x NPR Music – Black Diamond Queens: A conversation between Maureen Mahon and Ann Powers
In partnership with NPR Music, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture hosted Mahon in an interview with Ann Powers, NPR Music’s critic and correspondent and the author of Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music.
LISTEN>
October 27, 2020 at 5:00 PM Eastern
African American Women and Rock
Popular Music Books in Process Series. In conversation with Francesca T. Royster, author of Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era.
Two Trains Runnin’,
October 9, 2020 at 5:00 PM Eastern
Screening of Two Trains Runnin’
Maureen Mahon will be in conversation with director Sam Pollard and producer Ben Hedin following a screening of their documentary Two Trains Runnin’. NYU Center for Media, Culture, and History.
October 4, 2020
Visions and Revisions in Popular Music
The story of popular music—the meaning and legacy of its key figures and unrecognized innovators, and how it has both shaped and reflected the societal forces, conversations and revolutions of our times—is forever being written and rewritten. Explore with three bold chroniclers of sound and politics: Sasha Geffen (Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary), Maureen Mahon (Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll), and Marcus J. Moore (The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America). Moderated by Bandcamp’s Jes Skolnik.
PLAY>
