In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
The anthology Black Summers explores Black joy experienced in Detroit’s urban spaces through a magnificent variety of forms including essays, creative nonfiction, poetry, and comics.
Ibram X. Kendi wrote of the book:
“Magnificently curated by Desiree Cooper, this collection is full. Like summers growing up in the urban outdoors. Like the feelings of Black people navigating Detroit’s public space. In all its insightful recollections and creative variety, Black Summers is full of pleasure, of pain, of splendor, of struggle, of home.”
In her own words, here is Desiree Cooper’s Book Notes music playlist for her anthology Black Summers:
Sunshine and Shadow: The Songs of Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors by Editor/Contributor Desiree Cooper and 28 Writers
In Detroit, summers are short but mighty. For a few months—after brutal winters and malingering springs—the sun rises before 6 a.m. and doesn’t set until nearly ten at night. Like the Whos from Whoville, Detroiters emerge from their winter burrows, and they mean business. Music is everywhere; festivals run back-to-back. Spirits are high and humidity is low. There are rooftop happy hours, block parties, alfresco dining, community bike rides, line dancing, front-porch hanging and waterfront chilling. There is no summer like a Detroit summer.
When I asked 28 Black writers from Detroit to reflect upon their hot fun in the urban outdoors, they pulled from the deep reservoir of summer joy. Their essays in Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors are replete with memories of the city’s beloved island park, Belle Isle (which is larger than New York’s Central Park); fishing in the Detroit River; close-knit neighborhoods; and pick-up games on basketball courts. But on the margins lurks a shadow that sunshine cannot dim: the legacy of racism in a city that’s been America’s poster child for racial strife, white flight, and urban abandonment. Their stories recall the 1967 Rebellion—the worst in U.S. history. The lack of recreational facilities, including swimming pools and parks. Their parents’ struggle to provide safe, outdoor sanctuaries for their children. The interruption of childhood innocence.
The following selections by contributors to Black Summers reflect that tension between sentimental longing and racial strife. Mostly, they land upon Black joy.
“Summer Breeze,” by the Isley Brothers
Selected by Desiree Cooper, editor of Black Summers and author of “We Water”
If I had to pick a theme song for Black Summers, it would be the 1970s ballad “Summer Breeze.” Not the gauzy original version by pop artists Seals & Crofts (a version I adored), but the musical rollercoaster ride by the Isley Brothers. The song opens with Ronald Isley’s haunting, falsetto heart-wish for summers at home—simple and happy. Before you know it, Ernie Isley is setting a controlled burn with his electric guitar, rocketing you from mellow dreaming to head-banging air guitar. It’s that soulful minor key (you have to listen to parts one AND two) that keeps you grounded in summer’s longing, even after the music turns into a straight-up jam.
“Your Precious Love,” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell
Selected by Bridgett M. Davis, author of “Backyard Balm”
One month after the frightening and violent ‘67 Detroit Uprising, this song hit the airwaves. It was a banner year for Motown, with hits by everyone from Gladys Knight & The Pips to the Four Tops to The Supremes to the Miracles. I had four older siblings, and each one had a favorite Motown song. For me it was this one, hands down. I was just seven years old that August, but I needed “Your Precious Love.” I played that 45 over and over, its yellow and brown TAMLA label making revolutions around my little record player. Everything about the ballad captivated me—from the opening guitar licks, to those finger snaps keeping time, to Marvin Gaye’s earnest voice, to the lilting chorus: “Heaven must’ve sent you from above, heaven must’ve sent your precious love.” But it was Tammi Terrell’s sweet, pretty voice that calmed my anxious heart. I adored her! I thought she looked both like my older sister Rita, and an angel. I’d later learn that the famed R&B duo Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson wrote this soulful duet, and that both the Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performed on the song. But I didn’t know all that back then. I only knew “Your Precious Love” made me feel warm and fuzzy inside—and that summer, that was everything.
“Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I Am Singing,” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by ZZ Claybourne, author of “The Daddy, The Isle, and The Tunnel Drive”
This song speaks to hearing the languages of love around us. It took me a while to recognize the music my father put out during summertime. Movement was how he spoke love—car rides with us where he knew we were safe. Driving was the A-side of his love language. The destination was the B-side. We’d drive to places like Belle Isle or Kent Lake, where he–and we–could enjoy the outdoors unbothered, something he didn’t get anywhere near as often as he wanted. “Ngiculela” might be a joyful song but there’s that pain that hits at about the midpoint when Stevie raises his voice to a defiant declaration/wit’s-end demand. “I AM SINGING!” he shouts, commanding folks to acknowledge the truth of Black days. Singing despite the wider world trying to steal our voices or hem us in.
“You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” By Funkadelic
Selected by Keith Owens, author of “Searching for Blackness in Detroit—and Finding It”
This song was a single off the album Maggot Brain by the American funk rock band Funkadelic. Released in the spring of 1971, it was my summer anthem. Being born a Black kid in Denver, my early life was a long search for my Black identity. Who were my folks, and how do I find a way to fit? I was amazed at how a famous Black group was asking those same questions. I loved artists like Funkadelic and Jimi Hendrix—Black artists who broke the molds. They forced folks to acknowledge that Blackness was however we defined it.
Maggot Brain was Funkadelic’s third studio album, released by Westbound Records in July 1971. It was produced by bandleader George Clinton and recorded at United Sound Systems in Detroit, the very city that made room for my own flavor of Blackness.
“Crazy in Love,” by Beyoncé (featuring Jay-Z)
Selected by Brittany Rogers, author of “Black Out, August 2003, Detroit”
“Crazy in Love” came out in 2003 on my birthday, May 14. Just like me, this song is a Taurus to the core—fixated on facts, loyal beyond reason, and unembarrassed by blatant longing. When this upbeat, catchy song dropped, I was a sophomore in high school, which is shorthand for being a know-it-all teen who was often loud and wrong. So, it should come as no surprise that the boy I was so crazy in love with that spring became a boy I barely knew by the time Detroit’s sky went pitch black that August when 50 million people lost power in an outage that covered the Northeast United States, and part of Canada. I just kept blasting “Crazy in Love” at every opportunity that summer, yearning for a love of that magnitude.
“I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It,” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by Esperanza Cintron, author of “Feral Fields”
When I think of summer music I think of Stevie Wonder’s album Hotter than July, which debuted in 1980. I remember listening to the single, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It,” while riding with my ex down the back roads of Kinshasa, Zaire. Back then, Mobutu Sese Seko was in power, a corrupt, ruthless strongman propped up by Western governments including France, Belgium, and the United States. As Stevie sang it, “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It” was an obvious reference to a man who wasn’t about to stand by and let someone else take his woman. There’s the rising anger at “somebody picking my cherries . . .and digging in my cake.” But I will forever connect the lyrics with the endless cycle of repression by Western powers in Africa and American cities, especially those with large Black populations and/or Black/Brown political representation: rebellion, freedom, devastation, reoccupation. We know the reason for Detroit’s neglect and decay is racism. It fueled divestment that destroyed our cherries and buried our cake, but I ain’t gonna stand for it!
“Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn
Selected by Lillien Waller, author of “Listen, Children, All Is Not Lost”
In the 1970s, I LOVED Tony Orlando and Dawn. They were at their height during the summers our family spent camping at Mitchell’s Bay in Canada. “Knock Three Times” was the ideal road trip song. It played on both AM and FM radio and we as kids were allowed to sing along because my parents were certain that the two youngest of us (me and Juanita), had no idea what it was about. We just liked making the three knocking sounds.
“Wurk” by Linqua Franqa
Selected by shannon garth-rhodes, author of “The Summer Protest”
When this song came out in 2022, it felt like the song I had been waiting for. Bridging the gap between the old and new labor movements, it opens with a shout out to organized labor like big-upping a set in 90’s hip hop. Then it hums into the hook “Which side are you on my people / Which side are you on?” “Wurk” then merges a Spanish language chant, “El Pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” (“the people/united/will never be defeated”) often used at rallies and protests, with a popular labor ballad from 1931. The pulsating beat and the visualization of the historically underpaid and underrepresented workers call for organization. “Here’s my ask for all my hominids: collective bargainin’ / Amazon and Target and FedEx and Walmart and Instacart and Whole Foods til we all get what we oughta get / Workers run the company, there isn’t any argument / So are you with them are you in?” The moral question about working class solidarity that shows up as a refrain in the song is also repeated throughout my essay, “The Summer Protest.” Are you with us or them?
“Blue in Green,” by Miles Davis
Selected by Isaiah Chambers, author of “The Poet in Their Natural Habitat”
My poem in Black Summers is about poets finding an outdoor place to be who they are. When they find that space, the poets become part of the environment, and the environment lives inside the poets, like blue in green. When I find that place among nature where I belong, I often lose my words. I become a revel of emotion. Miles Davis replicates that feeling; his wordless music overflows with meaning. The tenor and trumpet, the flirting, the anger, the joy, all exist within the song, without a word. In the same way, the flora and fauna inspire wordlessly, creating living, continuous poetry.
“Din Daa Daa” by George Kranz
Selected by Angela Atabex Lugo-Thomas, author of “Detroit Boricua”
After I left Puerto Rico and moved to Detroit as a child, I longed for my island life and my culture. I found remnants of both in the Motor City. Long before we were married, my future husband and I were students at Detroit’s Bates Academy in the 1980s. It was there that our dance teacher, Miss White (co-founder of Detroit Windsor Dance Academy), challenged us to choreograph sections of the dance club hit, “Din Daa Daa.” We loved that song so much; it gave me a chance to incorporate some of my favorite dance moves, and my hubby was one of the breakdancers. To this day, I continue dancing with the RicanStruction bomba drum and dance group through my cultural organization, La Casita Cimarrón y Yuketi de Detroit. I not only found a connection to my culture in Detroit, but I also found my “island”: Belle Isle, Detroit’s island park that we sometimes called “the Rock.” We used to spend summer evenings cruising on the Rock, listening to the beats of “Din Daa Daa.”
“My Eyes Don’t Cry” by Stevie Wonder
Selected by Rochelle Wilson-Ellis, author of “A Boatswain’s Boblo Memories”
When I was a kid in Detroit, the highlight of every summer was sailing down the Detroit River on the Boblo Boat to an amusement park in Canada. It was at least one day a year I got to spend with my mom, who was otherwise always working. That boat was magical—we had snacks, sat near the railing to gaze at the water, and bought touristy trinkets. Once, a bride came down the huge staircase to dance with everyone on the giant dance floor. I thought it was stunning—like the Titanic. That dance floor was like the heartbeat of the boat. On summer rides in the ‘70s, all the DJ had to do was play the hustle song “My Eyes Don’t Cry,” and everyone got up—young, old, Black, white—and we line danced together as a single spirit, just enjoying life, enjoying summer, enjoying being a Detroiter.
Miscellaneous TV Theme Songs, Hard Rock and Laid-Back Soul
Selected by Chace Morris, author of “Factory of Light”
Music has always been in my life, shaping my view of the world. When I walk through the portal back to that time as a kid the first music that comes to mind is theme songs. The unmistakable harmonica of the theme to Sanford and Son (“The Streetbeater” by Quincy Jones), the rock banger that opened Baywatch (“I’m Always Here” by Jimi Jamison), or the screaming guitars of “Electrifiying” by Jim Johnston playing as WWE’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made his entrance (“If you smell…what The Rock is cooking!”).
Then there was the “me and Ma in the hot ass kitchen with Mix92.3 on high” essentials: everything Anita Baker and Sade.
…And the miscellaneous jams that shaped my journey into hip-hop, writing, and overall Black nerdom: the hip-pop “On Our Own “(Ghostbusters soundtrack),” by Bobby Brown, the hip-hop “Children’s Story,” by Slick Rick, and the jingle for Nintendo’s Street Fighter II.
Can’t pick one. All of them were the sounds and songs of an eastside Detroit child on summer break at home early mornings with little to do but hang—before he even knew how much he loved the music.
DESIREE COOPER is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, former attorney, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, Best African American Fiction 2010, and noted in The Best American Essays 2019. Cooper’s children’s picture book, Nothing Special, is a 2023 Paterson Prizewinner and included on the NY Public Library’s “10 Best Children’s Books of 2022.” She is a founding board member of Cave Canem, a residency for Black poets; a former board member of the Furious Flower Poetry Center; a current member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective; and a fellow of Kimbilio, a residency for Black fiction writers. www.desireecooper.com