Borrowing from such sources as archival recordings and news stories, A Hunger Called Music documents the early history of African-American music beginning with work songs and ending with Motown-era soul. Using each genre's historical context and the music itself as inspiration, the poems in the chapbook take on a range of voices and stories from Robert Johnson to Nina Simone, and from a white 1950s record producer to a witness to police brutality. In doing so, the poems work to unearth the commonalities of experience between previous eras and the current one through the intergenerational constant of music.