Portia K. Maultsby

Portia Katrenia Maultsby (born June 11, 1947)^[1] is an American ethnomusicologist and educator. She is a professor emerita at Indiana University Bloomington and specializes in African-American music. She founded the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture in 1991.

Portia Katrenia Maultsby
Born	(1947-06-11) June 11, 1947 (age 77) Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Title	Professor emerita
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin, Madison
Academic work
Discipline	Ethnomusicology
Sub-discipline	African American music
Institutions	Indiana University

Biography

Early life and education

Maultsby was born in Orlando, Florida,^[1] to Maxie C. and Valdee Maultsby (later Maultsby-Williams),^[2][3] and grew up in the segregated American South.^[4] Her older brother was psychiatrist Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr. (1932–2016).^[2][5] She also had a twin brother, Casel Hayes Maultsby (1947–1988), a pilot.^[2][6]

Maultsby graduated from Jones High School in Orlando in 1964.^[7] She attended Mount St Scholastica College (now Benedictine College) in Atchison, Kansas, on a music scholarship,^[7] graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in piano, theory, and composition.^[1] The following year, she earned a master's degree in musicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.^[1] In 1974, she was awarded a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison;^[7][8] she was the first African American to be awarded that degree in the United States.^[1]

Career

Maultsby began lecturing at Indiana University in 1971, while still a graduate student.^[1][9] She was recruited by Dr. Herman Hudson and became the founding director of the Indiana University Soul Revue, a student ensemble dedicated to Black music.^[9][7] By 1975, she was an assistant professor in the Department of African-American Studies.^[7] In 1977 Maultsby produced a song called "Music is Just a Party" for her ensemble. This song would be selected as Billboard's top single in the First-Time-Around category.^[10] She went on to become chair of the department (1985–91), then professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology (from 1992).^[1]

Maultsby's specialization in African-American music spans genres, including funk, soul, rhythm and blues, and spirituals.^[9][11] She founded the university's Archives of African American Music and Culture in 1991, and served as its director from 1991 through 2013.^[9] The archives started as Maultsby's personal collection and grew to include more than 10,000 pieces of music and music-related items (including interviews, photographs, and recordings) by 2003.^[4]

Maultsby co-edited two textbooks with her Indiana University colleague Mellonee V. Burnim: African American Music: An Introduction (2006)^[12] and Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation (2016).^[13] She wrote the foreword to the 2018 book Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection, edited by Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan.^[14]

In 2011, Maultsby received an award from National Association for the Study and Performance of African American Music. Maultsby has also served as a consultant for museums (including serving as a senior scholar at the Smithsonian Institution in 1985) and as a researcher documentary films (including the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize).^[15][16] She has consulted on various different projects such as The Motown Sound, Wade in the Water, and Chicago’s Record Row: The Cradle of Rhythm and Blues.

Selected works

Books

• African American Music: An Introduction (co-edited with Mellonee V. Burnim), 2006. ISBN 9781317934431
• Issues in African American Music: Power, Gender, Race, Representation (co-edited with Mellonee V. Burnim), 2016. ISBN 9781315472072

Book chapters

• Maultsby, Portia K. (1992). "The impact of gospel music on the secular music industry". In Reagon, Bernice Johnson (ed.). We'll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. pp. 19–33.
• Maultsby, Portia K. (2018). "Foreword". In Orejuela, Fernando; Shonekan, Stephanie (eds.). Black Lives Matter & Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. ix–xiv. ISBN 978-0-253-03843-2. OCLC 1062301971.

Articles

• Maultsby, Portia K. (1975). "Music of Northern Independent Black Churches during the Ante-Bellum Period". Ethnomusicology. 19 (3): 401–420. doi:10.2307/850793. JSTOR 850793.
• Maultsby, Portia K. (1976). "Black spirituals: An analysis of textual forms and structures". The Black Perspective in Music. 4 (1): 54–69. doi:10.2307/1214403. JSTOR 1214403.
• Maultsby, Portia K. (1983). "The use and performance of hymnody, spirituals, and gospels in the Black church". The Western Journal of Black Studies. 7 (3): 161–171.
• Maultsby, Portia K. (1983). "Soul music: Its sociological and political significance in American popular culture". The Journal of Popular Culture. 17 (2): 51–60. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.1983.1702_51.x.