Literature / City history
Marsha Music
· writer, essayist, spoken-word artist, oral historian
Self-described 'primordial Detroiter', daughter of a pre-Motown record producer, whose essays and monologues preserve the music and neighborhoods of Black Detroit.
- Also known as
- Primordial Detroiter
- Detroit years
- 1950s–present
- Field
- Literature, City history
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Marsha Music is the daughter of Joe Von Battle, the pre-Motown record man whose Joe's Record Shop on Hastings Street, in the heart of Black Bottom, recorded John Lee Hooker and the sermons of the Rev. C. L. Franklin before the neighborhood was razed for the Chrysler Freeway. She grew up in Highland Park and has spent her life writing and performing about Detroit: its music, its lost neighborhoods, its people. Her essays and monologues appear in books such as Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit's African American Community and Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies, about Mies van der Rohe's Lafayette Park, where she lives, and she contributed to the University of Michigan's Living Music oral history project and an HBO documentary on the Detroit Tigers. In 2012 she received a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the literary arts.
Highlights
- Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts (2012)
- Daughter of record producer Joe Von Battle of Joe's Record Shop on Hastings Street
- Essays in Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit
- Contributor to Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes and the Living Music oral history project
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1940s–1950s
Joe's Record Shop (Hastings Street, Black Bottom)
Demolished
Her father Joe Von Battle's record shop and studio on Hastings Street, lost when the street was cleared for the Chrysler Freeway; a frequent subject of her writing.