J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

DOI 10.1007/s12111-017-9365-5
A RT I C L E S

Teaching Prince as Critical

Pedagogy: an Autoethnography

Zada Johnson 1

Published online: 26 September 2017

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017

Abstract In the 20 years that I have practiced critical pedagogy in college instruction,
some of my most exciting student engagement has centered around the musical legacy
of Prince. From the social commentary in his lyrics to his struggle for ownership of his
master recordings, teaching Prince has provided a space in my courses for lively class
discussion and deep critical analysis. In BTeaching Prince as Critical Pedagogy: an
Autoethnography,^ I examine the critical pedagogy models that I have used to connect
students’ knowledge of Prince’s music to larger social, cultural, and historical contexts.
While a great deal of the literature on critical pedagogy aptly addresses the influence of
hip hop music, there has been little attention given to the genres of music represented
by Prince (soul, R&B, funk, blues, jazz) particularly in classrooms of adult learners. In
this case, I argue that using the types of popular culture contexts that are represented in
Prince’s musical legacy offer a prime opportunity to create a learning environment that
critically engages adult learners.

Keywords Prince . Critical pedagogy . Culturally relevant teaching . Autoethnography .

Adult returning learners . African-American Studies . Popular culture

The year is 1999 and I am looking for something from pop culture that will help engage
my students at Olive-Harvey College in a discussion about African-American attitudes
toward the turn of the century. As a young African-American Studies professor, I found
that music was one of the best ways to spark the interest of my largely adult returning
students so I decided to incorporate Prince’s iconic B1999^ song into the curriculum.
Our class discussion was lively over the course of those sessions, we talked about
Prince’s perception of the twenty-first century as it compared to the debates of W.E.B.
DuBois and Booker T. Washington. We talked about the negotiation of racial identity,

* Zada Johnson
z-johnson@neiu.edu

1
Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, Northeastern Illinois University, 700 E. Oakwood Blvd.,
Chicago, IL 60653, USA
338 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

sexual freedom, and anti-war commentary—all themes in Prince’s B1999^ lyrics and
performance aesthetic. We also discussed the similarities between Prince’s Bsky was all
purple^ apocalyptic vision of the twenty-first century and looming Y2K narratives of a
country debilitated by a technology glitch and reduced to marshal law. At the close of
our discussion, one of my adult returning students said she was struck by the way our
discussion of Prince related to the topics of our course. BI always thought of Prince as a
lot of wild partying and sexual stuff in his lyrics,^ she shared with the class, Bbut after
analyzing his lyrics, I can see that there is much to learn from his music.^
I would spend the next 17 years teaching Prince’s musical legacy, performance
aesthetics and activism to adult returning learners in African-American Studies, an-
thropology, and Inner City Studies courses. As I reflect on his untimely passing, I think
about the many moments I have shared with students discussing his music, analyzing
his lyrics, and contemplating his legacy in the broader context of African-American
culture. From the social commentary in his lyrics to his struggle for ownership of his
master recordings, teaching Prince has provided a space in my courses for engaging
class discussion and deep critical analysis.
In this essay, I examine the critical pedagogy models that I have used to connect
students’ knowledge of Prince’s music to larger social, cultural, and historical contexts.
Building from the body of literature on the significance of critical pedagogy and socio-
culturally relevant curriculum in the development of students (Giroux 1997; Friere
1970; Gay 2010; Ladson-Billings 1995; Morrell 2002; Daspit and Weaver 2000;
McLaren 2009), this article investigates the ways that Prince’s lyrics, performance
and political activism have provided a platform for critical analysis in my own
intellectual development as a student as well as my classes as a college instructor.
While a great deal of the literature on critical pedagogy aptly addresses the influence of
hip hop music (Tinson and McBride 2013, Portfilio and Viola 2012, Ibrahim 1999,
Hentges 2013, Morrell 2002, Daspit and Weaver 2000), there has been little attention
given to the genres of music represented by Prince (soul, R&B, funk, blues, jazz)
particularly in classrooms of adult learners. In this case, I argue that using the types of
popular culture contexts that are represented in Prince’s musical legacy offer a prime
opportunity to create a learning environment that critically engages adult learners.
In addition to theories of critical pedagogy, this work also employs an
autoethnographic approach of narrative reflection. Drawing upon the scholarship on
autoethnography that emphasizes the important relationship between the personal and
the cultural (Wall 2006, Sparkes 2000, Vryan 2006, Holman Jones 2005, Ellis 2004,
Duncan 2004, Anderson 2006, Muncey 2005, Atkinson et al. 1999), I utilize narrative
reflection to explore my own experiences with Prince’s music as I analyze the impact of
his work in my classes. Following Muncey’s (2005) argument that autoethnography
pulls from a Bpatchwork of feelings, experiences, emotions and behaviors^ to broaden
our understanding and critical analysis of social phenomenon, I reflect on my own
experiences as a young Prince fan and college student writing about Prince as well as
my experiences as a college instructor teaching Prince in the classroom.
Subsequently, the essay is framed around the narrative of three classroom vignettes:
the first is my own classroom experience with writing about Prince in a first year
humanities course at the University of Chicago. Secondly, I discuss classroom units on
analyzing social commentary in B1999^ and contextualizing Prince’s struggle for
ownership of his master recordings with African-American Studies students at Olive-
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 339

Harvey College. Lastly, I discuss classroom units on Prince’s use of the blues aesthetic
as well as his family history connection to the Pullman Porters with Inner City Studies
students at Northeastern Illinois University.
In terms of data, I use my own personal archives (personal journals, yearbooks,
classroom lecture notes, undergraduate essays) for the narrative of my experience
writing about Prince as a college student. To inform my narrative accounts of teaching
Prince in a college classroom, I utilized materials I have collected over the years that I
taught adult learners in African-American Studies and Inner City Studies (lecture
outlines, lecture notes, lecture recordings, and course documents). For my discussion
of my most recent classroom units on Prince, I draw from course materials archived in
the Desire 2 Learn online learning platform that I use in my Inner City Studies courses.

Sign O’ the Times, Prince, and Aristotelian Ethics

My experience with Prince in the classroom did not begin as a college instructor, but
instead as a first year undergrad at the University of Chicago. My humanities professor
took notice that the predominantly white classroom environment and readings of her
course often left me struggling to feel engaged. In one of our many office hour
conversations, she encouraged me to incorporate my own interests into my next paper
for the course. By the time I got to college, one of my greatest interests was the music
of Prince. I grew up in the early eighties generation of 24-hour music videos and
school-aged girls who copied the lyrics of their favorite songs from memory into
notebooks. Along with Michael Jackson’s BBillie Jean,^ BLittle Red Corvette^ was
one of the first music videos I remember watching over and over again. Also from the
1999 album, BDelirious^ was the first song I had the courage to dance to at a school
party. During my elementary school years, Prince lived in my older sister’s record
collection. With her permission (and sometimes not), I would spend hours marveling
over the album art and lyrics of his late 1970s/early 1980s work. In 1984 when Purple
Rain established him as a pop icon, Prince became a part of my own growing musical
collection and individual musical taste.
In my high school years, Prince’s music remained a soundtrack of school parties,
homework sessions, and modern dance class routines (one of which to the Parade
album’s BNew Position^ which never saw the light of day because my mother said no
16-year-old daughter of hers was going to dance to a song called BNew Position^). My
senior prom was on June 7, 1991 and much to my prom date’s frustration, I insisted that
we wear purple in honor of Prince’s birthday. One of my favorite inscriptions in my
high school yearbook includes excerpts of BAdore^ my all time favorite song with a
promise of friendship that would last Buntil the end of time.^
As a freshman in college, the discography of Prince was still a prominent part of my
everyday life-in headphones on the way to class and playing in the background while I
labored through calculus problem sets and term papers. When my humanities professor
gave me permission to craft my next paper around my own interest, I knew immedi-
ately what I wanted to do. Although it had been released several years earlier, I was still
regularly listening to the Sign O’ the Times album in my freshman year, particularly the
titular song from the album which featured Prince’s commentary on drugs, gang
violence and poverty. On the next visit to my professor’s office hours, I was excited
340 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

to pitch the idea of writing a paper that examined the lyrics of BSign O’ the Times^ in
the context of Aristotelian ethics. BPrince?^ she asked me surprisingly, Bthe Purple
Rain, Prince?^ As I continued with my pitch, I began to notice that suddenly Aristo-
telian ethics did not seem like such foreign subject matter. Instead of stumbling over
concepts from the course, I felt more comfortable thinking through them with the
anchor of my interest in Prince’s music, I also noticed that my professor and I seemed
to be exchanging dialogue around the concepts of her course that felt less like a tutoring
session and more like an active conversation. BWell,^ she noted as she approved my
topic, Banything that gets you this excited about Aristotle is certainly worth writing
about.^
The paper that resulted from our conversation explored moral virtue in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics through the lens of Prince’s BSign O’ the Times^ (Prince 1987). I
was particularly interested in the way Prince’s lyrics Bsome say a man ain’t happy until
a man truly dies^ seemed to mirror Aristotle’s contemplations of happiness and death in
the broader scope of human existence. I was also interested in the way the song
discussed the AIDS epidemic (BIn France a skinny man dies of a big disease with a
little name^ (Prince 1987)), gang violence, and poverty in ways that made me think
about society and moral virtue in a contemporary context. Analyzing Prince’s lyrics on
gang violence (BAt home there are seventeen year old boys and their idea of fun is
being in a gang called the Disciples high on crack toting a machine gun^ (Prince 1987))
gave me an opportunity to discuss the realities of my own experience as a young person
growing up on the South Side of Chicago, an experience that I did not often get to
discuss in my humanities class. His lyrics on poverty and drug addiction (Bsister killed
her baby cause she couldn’t afford to feed it and we’re sending people to the moon,
September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time, now he’s doing Horse, its
June^ (Prince 1987)) provided a springboard for me to question the moral virtue of
larger society in its marginalization and overall neglect of non-privileged groups.
During our next class discussion, my professor mentioned my paper and gave me an
opportunity to discuss it with my peers. The majority of the class was familiar with
BSign O’ the Times^ and was able to discuss the lyrics of the song alongside the
concepts of Aristotelian ethics as I had done in my essay. A highlight of the class
discussion was our dialogue on poverty and gang violence. These were not topics that
came up in our previous discussions and our professor seemed eager to talk about what
moral virtue might mean in the context of these contemporary issues. For the first time
in my undergraduate experience, I felt like an active participant in my classroom
environment with valuable contributions to make to our discussion based on my lived
experience and interpretation of our course readings.
My experience with writing about Prince as a college freshman reflects Morrell’s
(2002) argument that popular culture can operate as a component of critical pedagogy
through which students can successfully connect to curricula that is otherwise difficult
to access. In his essay on critical pedagogy and literacy development, Morrell contends
that the inclusion of popular culture in critical pedagogical models can create bridges
between lived experience of students and understanding course concepts. This is
illustrated in the way that my lived experience of being familiar with the lyrics and
meanings embedded in BSign O’ the Times^ helped me to explore the meanings
embedded within Aristotelian ethics. Furthermore, my professor’s openness to the
inclusion of my popular culture interests as a paper topic not only provided a
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 341

connection to course concepts but also a connection to class discussion. Where I was
not as familiar and comfortable with Aristotelian ethics as my peers, I was less likely to
participate in classroom dialogue. However, using BSign O’ the Times^ as a lens to
analyze Aristotle increased my confidence in class discussion, offering an opportunity
where I finally felt like I was part of the conversation.
The inclusion of BSign O’ the Times^ in class discussion also reflects arguments that
critical pedagogy offers an opportunity for students to understand the political and
economic contexts that frame dominant curriculum models (Giroux 1997, Daspit and
Weaver 2000, Morrell 2002, McLaren 2009). In this case, the social commentary
within BSign O’ the Times^ became a lens for me to explore the Aristotelian ethics
against contemporary inequalities associated with the AIDS epidemic, poverty, drug
abuse, and gang violence. Similar to McLaren (2009) discussion of critical pedagogy
and cultural capital, the music of Prince worked as a form of cultural knowledge in my
academic experience. Using this cultural knowledge as a lens allowed me an opportu-
nity to engage and articulate the power dynamics and social inequalities that were not
frequently discussed in my course’s traditional curriculum.

BIf You Don’t Own Your Masters, Then Your Master Owns You^: Prince
in the African-American Studies Classroom

As a beginning college instructor, I continued to reflect on the ways that socially

relevant curriculum could enhance the classroom experience. In this case however, I
was concerned with the classroom experience of my students, who were primarily adult
returning students at Olive-Harvey College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago. After
graduating with a MA in Social Sciences in the mid 1990s, I decided to take a position
in African-American Studies with the City Colleges of Chicago so that I may have the
opportunity to teach in the communities that I came from. Although I had the great
curricular advantage of teaching concepts that were directly related to the history and
culture of my students, I was still faced with the challenge of engaging students with
relevant pedagogical models.
On average my students were adult returning learners that had not been in a
classroom setting in several years. While they were eager to be back in school, they
also needed assistance with maneuvering through difficult course readings and complex
course concepts. To keep my students engaged, I drew upon a wide array of socio-
cultural phenomena that were relevant to our course. In some instances, I was able to
engage students with socially relevant models from hip hop music and culture. But for
a large majority of my adult returning students, hip hop was more the music of their
teenage and young adult children than it was a genre that they were familiar and
comfortable with. In this case, I needed to find other relevant material that was familiar
enough for students to feel comfortable with as they worked through the traditional
readings and activities for the course.
At the time I was developing curriculum for my African-American Studies courses,
Prince’s career was undergoing a series of transformations that I thought would be
interesting for class investigation. Among these was his split with major recording
label Warner Brothers and his struggle for ownership of his master recordings. As a
result of this struggle, Prince took to performing with the word Bslave^
342 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

written across his face in protest of Warner Brothers’ refusal to relinquish his master
recordings. Along with his dispute with Warner Brothers, a renewed interest in
Prince’s early 1980s work was emerging, particularly with the song B1999^ in light
of the approaching millennium. With these two things in mind, I decided to craft units
within my African-American Studies curriculum that incorporated Prince’s music and
struggle for ownership of his master recordings in a larger discussion of African-
American perspectives on the turn of the century and the exploitation of African-
American labor during the post-Reconstruction era in the American South.
In terms of my own experience with Prince’s music, the mid 1990s marked the time
when I began regularly seeing Prince perform live in concert. During my first Prince
concert in 1996 at the United Center in Chicago, I began to think about the impact of
his music career on my development as a music listener and African-American culture
in general. At my first concert, and subsequent performances, I observed Prince use the
space of his performance to address the new investigations into the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. and the lack of African-American history in public curricula.
During that same time Prince had visited Marva Collins WestSide Preparatory school in
Chicago and donated 500,000 dollars to her educational mission. In an interview on his
love4oneanother.com website, he said that he had contemplated opening up his own
independent school in Minneapolis that would feature a curriculum that emphasized
African-American history. Even though my students may have been largely familiar
with Prince as a music icon, I still felt like there was a vast amount of information to
learn about him that would be engaging in an African-American Studies curriculum.
In our unit on the turn of the twentieth century, I decided to use Prince’s B1999^ as a
contemporary example of African-American commentary about the millennial future. I
began with a warm up discussion about key issues that were important for African-
Americans going into the twenty-first century and the Y2K urban myths that were
circulating about an apocalyptic time where African-American communities would be
relegated to marshal law. As we discussed Y2K, I asked students to think about the turn
of the century as a type of ideological space where African-Americans have historically
used the moment to express social commentaries on their position in society and their
collective future. To put this into context, I asked students to step back in time to the
turn of the twentieth century as we explored excerpts from W.E.B Dubois’ Souls of
Black Folk and excerpts from Booker T Washington’s speeches and Up From Slavery.
After a brief lecture on the socio-historical conditions that led up to the Dubois-
Washington debates, students broke up into groups for a close analysis of course
readings and identified the key issues that DuBois and Washington believed were
critical to the social advancement of African-Americans in the near future. When we
reconvened for larger discussion, students shared their key terms. Among them,
students highlighted education, economics, identity, racism (color-line), freedom, and
oppression as the key issues that African-Americans faced at the turn of the twentieth
century.
During our next class session, I asked students what they knew about Prince’s 1999
album. B‘1999’ is going to be the song that plays during the Y2K disaster^ one student
joked. Other students talked about their admiration for this music and how they grew
up listening to his hits. When I asked what they thought about the social commentary in
Prince’s music, there seemed to be a pause in the class. BI know he can have some deep
lyrics, but I never really thought of Prince’s music as social commentary^ a student
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 343

added. I asked students to think back to our previous conversation on the millennium as
ideological space for commentary on social issues and the future. I then asked students
to read through the lyrics of B1999^ as a class as we listened to the song together. While
they read along, I asked students to make note of key issues they thought Prince was
emphasizing about the coming millennium as they did for the Dubois-Washington
readings.
In our discussion, students were immediately struck by the robotic voice of the
song’s intro (BDon’t worry, I won’t hurt, I only want you to have some fun^
(Prince 1982)). BThat’s the voice of technology^ a student commented BPrince is
talking about how technology is taking over the society and a lot of people are
scared about that, kinda like Y2K.^ Another student applied her biblical knowl-
edge to the first verse of the song (B…I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive
me if it goes astray, when I woke up this morning could have sworn it was
judg ement day… the s ky was all p urple there wa s pe ople runn in g
everywhere^(Prince 1982). BIt’s like Prince is using imagery from Revelations
to paint a picture of a world that is coming to an end because of all of the war and
the fact that ‘everybody’ has a bomb^, she commented. As we continued to discuss,
another student pointed out, BThis is also a song about being young and rebellious, he
sees all the war, all the killing and destruction and he plans to rebel by listening to his
body and partying like it’s the eve of destruction.^ After we listened to the song and read
the lyrics, we watched the B1999^ video for a sense of how the song was performed. My
student who observed the rebellion in the lyrics humorously commented Bhe’s a real
rebel, he wants you to know that he’s aware of all of this destruction, but he’s still going
to control his destiny in the midst of it all, with two fine women singing behind him, now
that’s what I’m talking about!^
When we talked about the key issues in B1999^ students were surprised that they
could see the same issues that they designated for the Dubois-Washington debates. BI’m
not so sure about race and color line^ one student commented Bbut definitely identity, it
seems like Prince’s focus on his youth and sexuality is a way to step outside of black
and white and define his identity beyond race.^ This student’s comment took us on a
sidebar discussion about the racial identity of Prince and the shifting politics of racial
identity in the 1980s and 1990s. Another student chimes in, BIt also seems like Prince is
identifying himself as a kind of activist against war, war is a huge issue for him as a
young person in the 1980s.^ I asked students in what ways do the issues highlighted in
B1999^ reflect the issues we discussed with DuBois-Washington and Y2K. BPrince is
like a musical version of all the commentaries on the millennium^ a student summa-
rized, Bjust like everyone else, he has something to say about the social conditions that
he lives in and ideas for how things could look in the future if we don’t make changes.^
Later that semester in my same Introduction to African-American Studies courses, I
also included Prince in my unit on the post-Reconstruction experience of African-
Americans in the South. Having previously completed a unit on slavery in the
American South, I wanted students to understand the conditions that African-
Americans were faced with after emancipation, particularly the labor exploitation of
tenant farming and the disenfranchisement of the African-American vote. As with my
previous units, I used the first day to review key passages in the text and key terms that
framed our readings. Our overarching term for the unit was social repression, I wanted
students to have a clear understanding of the dynamic of social repression in the post-
344 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

Reconstruction era so they could better understand the factors that prompted African-
Americans to leave the South during our next unit on the Great Migration. Although
many of my students were connected to the history of the post-Reconstruction South in
their family history, this was new information for them in the classroom. On several
occasions, students would comment that they never learned this information in their
previous school experiences and felt like they were engaging these concepts for the first
time. In this case, I wanted to show students that even though they may not be familiar
with the terminology of disfranchisement and tenant farming/sharecropping, they could
see the effects of these terms in their everyday experience, even in popular culture.
On the following days of the unit we looked at several contemporary examples of
disfranchisement and labor exploitation in the African-American experience. As part of
these examples, we also examined Prince’s struggle for the ownership of his master
recordings during his split with Warner Brothers records. For the discussion we read
several interviews Prince had done as well as a few op-ed pieces about Prince
performing with the word Bslave^ written on his face to protest his status with Warner
Brothers regarding his master tapes. I asked students if they could see any similarities in
Prince’s experience with our overall theme of labor exploitation in the post-
Reconstruction South. Before we could get to the terms, one student interjected with
a theme from our turn of the twentieth century unit. BI just wanted to say that I see some
important identity stuff here, Professor Johnson^ she commented, Bit seems like Prince
has shifted from not talking about race at all in B1999^ to embracing his African-
American identity as a Black man experiencing racism.^ From my student’s valid
observations, I asked the class if they thought this shift was influenced by the
circumstances of his struggle for his master recordings. BIt’s only so long you can live
in this world without thinking that you’re not affected by race and racism^, a student
added Bmaybe when he was younger, he thought he could get past race, but as DuBois
would have told him, you can never get past race in America.^
When our conversation returns to labor exploitation, students see a connection
between the dynamics of tenant farming and the details of Prince’s contract with his
record label. During discussion a student comments, BIt’s a lot like the labor exploita-
tion of sharecropping because Prince put his full labor into the deal, but the record
company, like the landowners, made it so they would always be in full control of the
fruits of his labor.^ Students were especially struck by Prince’s explanation in a 1996
Rolling Stone interview as to why he performed with slave written on his face:

When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave. That’s where I was. I
don’t own Prince’s music. If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.
(DeCurtis 1996)

After reviewing this quote, I asked students what they thought about Prince’s use of
the term slave and slavery in his dispute with Warner Brothers. BWell, he certainly
didn’t endure the atrocities of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade^ one student replies BI
think we should be sensitive to the way we use historical terms like slavery.^ To this
another student responds, BI see it as a metaphor, he knows that he was never a slave
like in slavery times, he even said that in the Tavis Smiley interview. He’s more so
talking about someone else treating him like a slave by exploiting his labor, and that
much I can agree with.^ Finally, I asked the class if they would classify Prince’s
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 345

struggle for ownership of his master recordings as a form of labor exploitation and
social repression. BThere are certainly some similarities^ a student responded Bthis just
lets us know that exploitation can be everywhere, from sharecroppers to the music
business, our labor is always subject to some form of exploitation.^
My course units on Prince in my African-American Studies courses at Olive-Harvey
College are also reflective of critical pedagogy arguments about using popular culture
to connect students to course concepts. For my adult returning students, Prince’s music
provided a bridge between a body of cultural knowledge that they were familiar with
and complex course concepts that they were attempting to engage. This is illustrated in
students’ ability to relate their own perceptions of Y2K, as well as their knowledge of
the bible to the analysis of his lyrics and the broader course theme of African-American
attitudes toward the new millennium. Our unit with Prince on disfranchisement and the
labor exploitation of sharecropping provided an opportunity for students to engage and
articulate the power dynamics of social repression in the South as well as the power
dynamics and inequalities of the music business. In this case, students were able to use
Prince’s struggle for his master recordings to think about the exploitation of slavery
along with the labor exploitation of the sharecropping system.
It should also be noted here that students’ analysis of Prince’s struggle for his master
recordings also opened up a rich dialogue about racial identity and racial discrimination
where students were able to engage the politics of race in both the past and present, I
was particularly struck with my student’s response that placed W.E.B DuBois in
conversation with Prince (B…but as DuBois would have told him, you can never get
past race in America^). In this case, analyzing the racial identity politics within Prince’s
struggle for ownership of his music offered students an opportunity to broaden their
understanding of DuBois’ concept of Bcolor-line.^

The Blues, Purple Rain, and the Pullman Porters: Prince in the Inner City
Studies Classroom

In the last several years of my career as a college professor, I have used Prince in the
development of curriculum units for my courses at Northeastern Illinois University’s
Center for Inner City Studies located on the South Side of Chicago. Similar to the
City Colleges of Chicago, The Center for Inner City Studies has a primarily adult
returning population of students who benefit largely from culturally relevant peda-
gogical models that connect their lived experience to course concepts. With these
students, I have incorporated the work of Prince into their curriculum on many
occasions. In my undergraduate courses, we have analyzed the music and perfor-
mance of Prince as we have thought through a range of issues from urban art forms to
urban blight.
Among my most successful uses of Prince in my recent curriculum has been in my
undergraduate Inner City Community course within a unit on the blues aesthetic in
August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. For this unit, we read Seven Guitars and several
articles on the influence blues had on August Wilson’s work. It was important to me
in this unit that students understand the blues as a foundational genre of music, so we
spent a great deal of time looking at the origins of blues music and its influences on
both American music and American culture. Along with the works of classic blues
346 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

icons such as Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, and Willie Dixon, I also
taught the work of artists who were deeply influenced by the blues but not always
associated with blues like Jimi Hendrix and of course, Prince. Subsequently, we
analyzed the music and lyrics of BLet’s Go Crazy^ as well as Prince’s Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame performance of BWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps.^
In my own experience, I was still regularly listening to Prince’s music and
seeing him play live. By the late 2000s I had seen Prince ten times, often traveling
to Minneapolis and other nearby cities to catch his latest tour. In terms of
curriculum development, I had grown more interested in teaching the overall
cultural impact of Prince’s body of work to students who may have been familiar
with his music but had not really thought about his influence in a larger cultural
context. After completing a doctoral degree that focused on African-American
performance culture in New Orleans, I had become interested in writing about
Prince and the influence of the Minneapolis Sound in pop culture. In addition to
this, I was also interested in placing Prince back into the context of African-
American performance traditions, particularly highlighting his social commentary
on racial inequality and social activism-topics that my students did not often
associate with him as an artist.
The guiding theme of our unit on the blues was August Wilson’s quote about the
importance of blues music to his work and to African-American culture:

I think blues is the best literature that we as Blacks have ever created since we
been here…it has a lot of philosophical ideas, I call it our sacred book…so what
I’ve attempted to do is mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes
and give them to my characters. (Kantor and Pollard 2015)

From this quote, we discussed the philosophical ideas and meaning present in the
work of the traditional blues musicians on our reading list as well as those that are not
immediately associated with the blues. As we listened to traditional blues artists, I had
students make note of the defining characteristics of the blues including AAB format,
call and response lyrics, and blues guitar solo improvisation. Once we got to Prince, I
asked students if they ever thought of him as a musician that was heavily influenced by
the blues. BPrince doesn’t really come to mind when I think about the blues, but then
again, I really don’t know enough about the blues to know about its influences^ a
student responded. Another student replied BI listen to the blues and I could definitely
see Prince being influenced by it, but I never really thought about it until now, I guess
the media never made a connection in its presentation of him as a pop star, so neither
did I.^
As we listened to BLet’s Go Crazy^ and look at the lyrics, I asked students to listen
out for a modified AAB format in the first two verses, the call and response between
lead and back vocals and the 2/4 blues rhythm that plays beneath the synthesizer and
drum machine arrangement. To illustrate, I played a segment of BLet’s Go Crazy^ and
then alternately play a segment of B.B. King’s BEvery Day I Have the Blues^ with each
example from our list of defining characteristics of the blues. While they listened
students nodded and commented that they did in fact hear similar components between
the two songs. When we get to the last guitar solo of BLet’s Go Crazy^ right before the
song ends, my student who said that she listened to the blues yells out BYasss, now that
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ain’t nothing but the blues right there!^ We all laugh and I share with students the time I
was visiting my then 65-year-old Aunt Louise in Detroit in 1984 and she yelled out the
exact same thing, at the exact same moment while she was listening to BLet’s Go
Crazy.^
After listening to BLet’s Go Crazy,^ our discussion shifts to the appropriation of
blues music and the politics of race that seem to undergird the exposure of different
genres of music to different audiences. Our discussion stems from readings on the
appropriation of blues by white artists and early Rock and Roll history when African-
American artists were not allowed to be on the cover of their own albums. In response
to the readings, a student points out, BWe’re so removed from the blues, it’s hard for us
to even know who is influenced because we’re no longer familiar with the blues as our
music.^ From this, I asked students how we should think about Prince and his use of
the blues, could we in fact see Prince as a continuation of the blues tradition in African-
American performance? To build on this point, I show students the video of Prince
performing George Harrison’s BWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps^ at the 2004 Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame.
In the video, Prince plays alongside an ensemble including Tom Petty, Steve
Winwood, and Dhani Harrison (George Harrison’s son) in tribute to the late George
Harrison of the Beatles. As we watched, students pointed out the various blues
aesthetics that they see in Prince’s performance including his blues man style of dress
in a pinstriped suit with a fire engine red shirt and matching red hat. Students
immediately noticed the blues-influenced solos Prince plays throughout the song and
comment on his virtuoso performance style as he falls back into a stage hand’s arms
while still playing and then throws his guitar off stage and walks away at the end of the
performance. Reaching back to the August Wilson quote, I asked students what cultural
attitudes are being represented in Prince’s performance. BYou know it’s like he came to
that performance to prove something^ a student responds BI don’t know what those
other musicians did to him before they started playing, but it’s clear that he came there
that night to shut it down.^ I added to my student’s observation that there does seem to
be a sense of reclamation in Prince’s performance. I shared with students that given the
often contentious history of Rock and Roll as a genre that sought to obscure its black
roots and influence, I could certainly see where Prince’s performance at the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame could be read as a reclamation of the blues as an African-American
performance tradition.
Along with my course units on the blues, I also found great success in incorporating
Prince into my units on the Great Migration at the Center for Inner City Studies. With
our campus located in Bronzeville, the historic neighborhood where African-
Americans settled during the migration era, I have always included curriculum units
on the Great Migration in the majority of my courses. After seeing Prince perform in
2012 at what would be one of his last shows in Chicago, I decided to include him in a
unit that I was doing on family history and the Great Migration for students in my
undergraduate Inner City Community course. My exploration of his family history
proved quite interesting and deeply connected to the unit I was teaching on the Great
Migration. From census records and other documents I found that Prince’s family was
part of the Great Migration, both his mother and father migrated to Minneapolis from
Louisiana and were a part of the budding African-American music scene that was
developing in the 1950s. Most interestingly, however, I also found that Prince’s
348 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

maternal grandfather was a Pullman Porter, African-American men who worked on

sleeping cars for the Pullman Company and played a very influential role in the cultural
landscape of the Great Migration era.
During our class discussion on family history and the Great Migration, I shared the
census documents that I found on Prince’s connection to the Great Migration and the
Pullman Porters. Along with Prince’s family history, we read an article on Michael
Jackson’s family history which also includes a maternal grandfather who was a
Pullman Porter. Students found it quite interesting that two of the twentieth century’s
biggest music icons both had connections to Pullman Porters and we talked for a long
time about the impact that their grandfathers’ social status as Pullman Porters could
have had on their lives. As part of our discussion, we analyzed the lyrics of Prince’s
live version of BFamily Name^ from the One Nite Alone Live CD. Students were
especially struck with the lyrics from family name that talk about the Transatlantic
Slave Trade as well as the clip from Martin Luther King Jr.’s BI Have a Dream
Speech^ and a audio skit of Thomas Jefferson (BMy name is Thomas Jefferson, yes I
owned slaves too…and if there is a just God, we’re going to pay for this^ (Prince
2002)). The former African-American Studies professor in me could not help but
point out that the Bif there is a just God, we’re going to pay for this^ portion of the skit
was taken from actual words that Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in Notes on the
State of Virginia. BI would never have known Prince had these kinds of connections
or even this kind of interest in Black history^ one of my students shared with the class
Bseeing the Black history in his family documents makes me want to go out and find
out stuff about my own family history.^
In the Spring of 2016, I was planning to reprise my curriculum unit on Prince and
his connections to the Pullman Porters and the Great Migration. I was excited about
his upcoming Piano and a Microphone tour and looked forward to the new inspira-
tion his live performance would bring to my classroom discussion. Unfortunately, my
anticipation would be shattered with the tragic news of his death. In the days that
followed, I heard from dozens of my former and current students who offered their
condolences to me and shared their stories of past class discussions like he was a
member of our school family—I suppose in many ways he was. Inspired by my
students, I decided to revamp my entire 6-week summer online literature course so
that it would focus on Prince and his connection to the Pullman Porters and the Great
Migration. With an overarching theme of the power of voice, we would spend
3 weeks talking about Prince’s use of voice and his connection to the Pullman Porters
followed by a city tour field trip that focused on the Great Migration and the impact of
the Pullman Porters in Chicago.
The course entitled, Pullman Porters, Prince and the Voices of Change in Inner City
Literature examined the literary and social uses of voice in various forms of urban
literature including the music of Prince. We began with an examination of voice as a
literary term and the definitions of voice as a tool of social activism as we analyzed
Frederick Douglass’ BWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?^ and Jesse Williams
speech at the 2016 BET Awards. In the next 2 weeks, we looked at the history of the
Pullman Porters and their use of voice during their struggle to address unfair labor
conditions and to form the first African-American union in the USA. In the remaining
weeks, we explored Prince’s family history connection to the Pullman Porters and
speculated on how that could have impacted his development as an artist. We also
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 349

analyzed Prince’s use of voice in the lyrics of BSexuality,^ BSign O’ the Times,^
BFamily Name,^ and BBaltimore.^
Since it was an online course, I designed a virtual lecture that outlined key
themes that I wanted students to think about as they listened to each song and
completed the course readings. Given the position of Pullman Porters to provide
their families with greater socio-cultural exposure through migration and travel
throughout the country, I asked students what this could have meant for descen-
dants like Prince:

(Johnson 2016)
I also asked students to think about Prince’s use of his physical voice, particularly
his distinct falsetto to express social commentary in the song BSexuality.^ Lastly, I
asked students to take note of the social issues that Prince raised in all four of our
designated songs, with special attention to his references to the murder of Freddy Gray
in BBaltimore.^ Along with analyzing the songs, I asked students to think about
Prince’s social activism work in donating to the family of Trayvon Martin and the
Black Lives Matter Movement. Student discussion assignments were guided by the
prompt Bhow does understanding Prince’s family history and contribution to music
help us better understand the Great Migration and the impact of the Pullman Porters on
African-American culture?^
In addition to the discussion board assignment, students also participated in a day
long Great Migration/Pullman Porter tour which took them to sites in the historic
Bronzeville and Pullman communities. As we stopped by blues icon Buddy Guy’s
legends club, tour guide and community preservation activist Harold Lucas spoke of
the cultural foundation that musicians such as Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, and Buddy
Guy made in the development of Chicago’s blues sound. Mr. Lucas then joined me in a
conversation with students about the way Prince took the influence of urban blues and
transformed the sound of popular music in the 1980s.
350 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

Student responses to the online discussion board assignment reflected the connec-
tions they were able to make between Prince and the larger concepts of the course. In
his response to the online lecture and tour, one student noted that learning of Prince’s
family history connection helped him to understand what a tremendous impact Pullman
Porters made as a revolutionary group of labor activists. Another student commented
that after learning of Prince’s Pullman Porter family history, she could parallel the
family history of Prince to her own family. BBoth Prince’s grandparents and mine left
the South to seek jobs and better opportunities^ she wrote, BBlack migrants brought
their cultural expressions to cities across the nation. Mississippi blues, jazz and gospel
exploded as genres which influenced many musical geniuses like Prince.^
A student from the Justice Studies Department at Northeastern responded in his
assignment that the Prince lecture and tour helped broaden his understanding of
diversity in the African-American community:

The content that I studied in this course helped me understand how truly diverse
the African-American community was and still is to this very day. For example, I
did not know that Michael Jackson and Prince’s grandfathers were Pullman
Porters. I always assumed they came from money but learning this piece of
information changed my perspective of these late entertainers to more than just
pampered celebrities. Knowing that they came from working class backgrounds
gives them a more humanistic quality to me and a sense of BI guess they really
weren’t that different^, which makes them seem more like the average Joe.^

Along these same lines, another student commented that learning about Prince’s
Pullman Porter connections broadened her understanding of both Pullman Porters and
the Great Migration-topics that she was previously unfamiliar with before the course.
BThe subject for this assignment was indeed interesting^ she wrote BPrior to this class I
had no idea what a Pullman Porter was or what they did. Learning about Prince in these
readings and music videos showed me that having parents and grandparents that were
part of the Great Migration played a big part in his connection and passion for what’s
going on in our world today.^
Similar to my incorporation of Prince into course units with students at Olive-
Harvey College, my course units with Inner City Studies students also offered oppor-
tunities to bridge their understandings with broader course concepts. In the unit on
blues music and August Wilson, the incorporation of Prince helped students not only
connect to August Wilson’s use of the genre but also contextualize blues as a part of
their own cultural knowledge. As students examined the music of Prince alongside their
exploration of the defining characteristics of the blues, they were able to understand
blues music as a foundational part of both African-American and American expressive
culture. In turn, their broadened understanding of blues helped them better understand
the critical role that the blues plays as a leading theme in August Wilson’s work.
Of all the units involving Prince that I have developed, I am most proud of the
connections I have been able to make with students on Prince, the Great Migration and
the history of the Pullman Porters. In this case, our analysis of Prince played an
instrumental role in helping students bridge their lived experience of being descendants
of the Great Migration to our course unit. For many of my students, viewing the Great
Migration through the lens of Prince’s (and Michael Jackson’s) family history
J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352 351

encouraged not only their engagement with the class unit but also inspired them to
further investigate their own family history. Analyzing Prince along our theme of the
literary and social issues of voice gave students an opportunity to explore Prince’s
commentary on contemporary social inequalities including racialized police violence.
The inclusion of these themes framed around the literary and social uses of voice
provided a space for critical analysis in a wide range of both historical and contempo-
rary contexts.

Conclusion

As I reflect on the many years that I have discussed Prince’s music in the classroom, I
am reminded of a faculty mentor who told me in my early days as a college professor
how important it was to him that every student who crossed his path understood the
genius of John Coltrane. BColtrane was it as far as musical genius was concerned for
my generation^ he shared with me Band it’s critical that our students understand a
genius that looks like them and a genius that they can relate to. If our memory of the
genius fades away, so much is lost that could have been learned by our students.^ In
many ways, my use of Prince as critical pedagogy has followed this philosophy. Very
much like Coltrane for my mentor’s generation, Prince represents a style of genius
within my generation that students can both identify with and learn from in a variety of
contexts. Just the mention of his name in my classes these days and students immedi-
ately have something to say about his provocative lyrics, his iconic performance style,
or the impact that his work has had on our culture.
In their discussion of popular culture and critical pedagogy, Daspit and Weaver
(2000) argue that we think about popular culture texts as forms of critical pedagogy
where Bsocietal problems are addressed, silenced voices heard and alternatives
envisioned^ (p. xxvi). The incorporation of Prince in my course units with adult
returning students has hinged on this style of thinking in an effort to show them the
many analytic possibilities available to them as engaged learners. Through the lens of
Prince’s prolific creative output and multi-faceted performance aesthetic, my students
have been able to engage a wide variety of societal problems, explore marginalized
voices of several social issues, and consider the many alternate ways of understanding
that are represented in his work.
Though it is still difficult to come to terms with teaching his legacy of genius in
the past tense, I am encouraged by the tributes to him I have seen in classrooms
across the country. Perhaps the most endearing of these is a video clip circulating
on the internet of a music class from Girard College Lower School in Philadelphia
where elementary age band and choir students perform Prince’s BLet’s Work^ as
their teacher looks on with pride. It comforts me to see that other teachers are
exposing their students to the genius of Prince; perhaps someday the future
teachers among these students will grow up as I did with a love for his music that
will translate into the next generation of engaged class discussion. The eager
enjoyment of these children and pride of their instructor encourages me that as
long as teachers are here to envision critical pedagogies to capture the analytic
imagination of their students of all ages, Prince’s legacy of genius will live on for
many generations to come.
352 J Afr Am St (2017) 21:337–352

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