Marsha Music

HOME – A Grown Woman’s Tales of Detroit

 

 

I wasn’t literally born in a record shop, but I might as well have been, growing up as I did, the daughter of a legendary pre-Motown record producer, Joe Von Battle – and working and playing in our records shops during all of my young years.

 

I have had a unique view of America’s economic and musical explosion of the last half of the 20th century. I grew up in Highland park, a “city within the city” of Detroit, during its lush, green, prosperous days – studying Latin, classical music and literature.

 

                                                 

 

However, I spent a good part of my life – with my siblings – around my father’s old Hastings Street and 12th Street record shops. I was witness to the intense “street life”, and the excitement of music and life in the tumultuous 1960’s.

My father, Joe Von Battle, left, in front of his record shop at 3530 Hastings, with his eldest son Joe Jr., and the barber next door. Photo by French photographer Jacques Demetre, 1959.

 

I developed a hyper-awareness of music and became a lover of many genres. I was immersed in the blues, soul and gospel of my father’s record shops, laboratories of meter and song; where bluesmen smokes cigarettes, had a “taste,” and cut a record or two before long.

 

 

My maternal family was steeped in old-time, sanctified church music where the Holy Ghost reigned – and still does. I came of age during the British Invasion and the integrated airways of Detroit’s AM radio in the 60’s. The musicality of it all is deep in my bones.

 

 

 

The music of my surroundings morphed into my own tastes – I spent my young years loving the Beatles and the new sounds, my teens knee-deep in Motown, Soul and R&B, my twenties in the Album-Rock/FM radio world. Later, I lived the jazz life. Through it all, I’ve had a love and a critical ear for the “Old School,” and today, my ear is turned towards gospel – and a hankering for Opera. Here I am below, in 2020, as “Erda, Goddess of the Earth,” in Michigan Opera Theatre’s (now Detroit Opera’s) production of Twilight:Gods – I wrote and performed the narration.  

 

 

I’m a witness to my father’s first Hastings Street record store that he opened in 1945. Along with recording many blues artists, including John Lee Hooker, he was the sole producer of the sermons and songs of the Reverend C.L. Franklin. Through this collaboration my father was the first to record the voice of Franklins daughter Aretha, at age 14; her first gospel records were on his labels. [see my story about my father, in the menu – Requiem for a Record Shop Man.]

I witnessed the relocation of his business to 12th Street, due to “urban renewal,” and I watched his business’ demise in the 67′ Rebellion (below, his record shop being looted, in the upheaval.) 

I’m a witness to the economic contraction that hit Detroit like a tsunami, and its profound effects on urban life – conflagrations from which Detroit has not yet recovered. I have seen, in recent years, the revival of sections of Detroit and the return of suburban sons and daughters to the city and urban life.

 

In addition to my writing on culture and music, I’ve been an activist, and a labor leader. I am a speaker, a presenter on media from radio to films – including on HBO, the History Channel, Amazon Prime and PBS.  I am a voice artist and narrator – including on the seminal Detroit film, 12th and Clairmount. I am a consultant for Hollywood film projects on Detroit and featured in numerous films and books, and I have contributed to over a dozen literary anthologies. 

 

Today, I write and tell my stories; I’m part of the amazing cultural community here in Detroit; where I was awarded a 2012 Kresge Fellowship in the Literary Arts, a Knight Arts Challenge award, and have been blessed to receive acclaim for my work. Today, young folks call me an OG – a complement indeed. 

Yours truly, Marsha Music, at the Max Fisher Center, during rehearsal – reading my poetry – with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for a performance of composer Tod Machover’s Symphony in D

 

Here, on Marsha Music, you’ll find mature, thoughtful observations of life in Detroit – from a Grown Black Woman. Welcome! Please keep coming back to this place where I’ll tell more of my true stories; writing from Detroit in transition, one of the most amazing cities in the world! Check the menu on the top and side for my stories. 

 

Video by Stephen McGhee for Kresge Arts in Detroit 2012: 

Marsha Music on Facebook – https://marshamusic.facebook.com

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Photo by Gabriela Cordoba Vivas, of Columbia, who was visiting Detroit, 2016.

                              My small book, The Detroitist, a collection of five works, available at Amazon.

                                                   But all of the selections are here on this site. 

Reading my commissioned poem – Memories and Dreams – for Symphony in D, with the DSO

Yours truly, little Marsha, in front of our record shop. My brother Darryl in the background. C 1960.