King's Vibrato

"King's Vibrato provides the opportunity to listen to and hear black cultural history through the ears of Maurice O. Wallace."

- Diane Grams (Ethnic and Racial Studies)

"King’s Vibrato is a commendable entry into the growing discourse around history, blackness, and aesthetics, and will be of particular interest to historians of American religion looking for ways to further develop the kinds of subjects available for this sort of inquiry-in this case, the sound of an individual’s voice. This book has relevance, too, for scholars of African American history interested in an innovative look at a familiar subject."

- Adam Sweatman (Reading Religion) "The achievement of Maurice O. Wallace’s superb King’s Vibrato is that it allows us to understand King’s epochal abilities beyond the singularity of King himself. . . . Wallace’s focus on sound lets us understand King’s celebrated orations as collaborations between King, his audiences, and the physical environments in which they met. King’s Vibrato goes into intricate detail about how various churches were designed and built with sonic effects in mind." - David T. Smith (Journal of Religious History) "Wallace’s tome is a compelling distillation of the Black modern life that produced King’s sound. As he plumbs the depths of the spiritual, spatial, and sonic landscape of King’s vibrato, Wallace brings to bear a bevy of interdisciplinary modes of critique to make sense of Black modern life’s infrangible links to one of the world’s most recognizable voices." - Joshua Lawrence Lazard (Yale Journal of Music & Religion)