All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. A volley of discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results--and this is how things will remain until we radically revise the way we think about the complex interactions between African Americans and Jews. "A Right to Sing the Blues" offers just such a revision.
"Black-Jewish relations," Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination. Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish songwriters, composers, and perfomers who made "Black" music in the first few decades of this century. He shows how Jews such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, and others were able to portray their "natural" affinity for producing "Black" music as a product of their Jewishness while simultaneously depicting Jewishness as a stable white identity. Melnick also contends that this cultural activity competed directly with Harlem Renaissance attempts to define Blackness.
Moving beyond the narrow focus of advocacy group politics, this book complicates and enriches our understanding of the cultural terrain shared by African Americans and Jews.
Music is an expressive voice of a culture, often more so than literature. While jazz and rap are musical genres popular among people of numerous racial and social backgrounds, they are truly important historically for their representation of and impact upon African American culture and traditions. This collection of essays offers interdisciplinary study of these musical styles as they relate to black culture in America. The essays are grouped under sections. One examines an Afrocentric approach to understanding jazz and rap; another, the history, culture, performers, instruments, and political role of jazz and rap. There are sections on the expressions of jazz in dance and literature; rap music as art, social commentary, and commodity; and the future. Each essay offers insight and thoughtful discourse on these popular musical styles and their roles within the black community and in American culture as a who
Meet the black musicians who created Americams greatest music — from the early years to modern times Marian Anderson Louis " Satchmo" Armstrong Chuck Berry Thomas " Blind Tom" Greene Bethune Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle James Brown Ray Charles Edmund Dede Thomas Andrew Dorsey Duke Ellington Ella Fitzgerald Aretha Franklin Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield W. C. Handy Mahalia Jackson Michael Jackson Francis Hall Johnson Scott Joplin B. B. King Queen Latifah Millie-Christine McCoy Jessye Norman Gertrude " Ma" Rainey (Pridgett) Doug and Frankie Quimby Paul Robeson Bessie Smith Stevie Wonder
This historical and critical survey discusses the lyric significance of such songs as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Steal Away to Jesus," and others. In addition, the words and music for 230 songs appear, including "You May Bury Me in the East," "Rock of Ages," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," and many more.
From the Publisher:In September 1979, there was a cosmic shift that went unnoticed by the majority of mainstream America. This shift was triggered by the release of the Sugarhill Gang's single, Rapper's Delight. Not only did it usher rap music into the mainstream's consciousness, it brought us the word "hip-hop." And It Don't Stop, edited by the award winning journalist Raquel Cepeda, with a foreword from Nelson George is a collection of the best articles the hip-hop generation has produced. It captures the indelible moments in hip-hop's history since 1979 and will be the centerpiece of the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration.This book epitomizes the media's response by taking the reader on an engaging and critical journey, including the very first pieces written about hip-hop for publications like The Village Voice--controversial articles that created rifts between church and state, the artist and journalist, and articles that recorded the rise and tragic fall of the art form's appointed heroes, such as Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E, and the Notorious B.I.G. The list of contributors includes Toure, Kevin Powell, dream hampton, Harry Allen, Cheo Hodari Coker, Greg Tate, Bill Adler, Hilton Als, Danyel Smith, and Joan Morgan.
Contributors Jasper, Kenji (Editor), Womack, Ytasha (Editor), Johnson, Robert , III(Photographer), Allwood, Mark (Other)
In this thoughtful exploration of hip-hop culture, editors Womack and Jasper have collected essays that focus on the most prominent symbols of the genre by journalists who skillfully dissect the evolution of the culture.
In Bebop, Owens conducts us on an insightful, loving tour through the music, players, and recordings that changed American culture. Combining vivid portraits of Bebop's gigantic personalities with deft musical analysis.
This volume documents Frederic Ramsey Jr.'s journeys through the 1950s South, where he traveled in search of what might still remain of an original, authentic African American musical tradition.
In these photographs, songs, interviews, and narratives, Ramsey portrays farmers, railroad workers, housewives, children, church congregations, and country brass bands from Saratoga, Florida, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Ramsey's images of a past way of life capture the deceptively poor landscapes and lives that gave birth to and sustained some of our warmest and most deeply felt music.
From its beginnings in hip hop culture, the dense rhythms and aggressive lyrics of rap music have made it a provocative fixture on the American cultural landscape. Black culture expert Tricia Rose takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, themes and styles of rap and grapples with the debates that surround it. 10 illustrations.
This is a new, thoroughly revised edition of Paul Oliver's classic study of the blues. First published in 1960, this remarkable book has not been superseded and its reappearance will be welcomed by all who wish to understand the complexity of meaning in the blues and the experiences which they expressed. The book examines the functions of the blues as black American folk music recorded during the 78 rpm era, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The lyrics are quoted extensively throughout the book, revealing their significance as a means of communication within black society. The author shows how the themes of labour and unemployment, migration and the Depression years, love, sex, and marriage, crime, violence and imprisonment, disasters, sickness, war and death are expressed in black idioms and he discusses their meaning on many levels.
In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future.
A century after Ellington's birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black history and compares the different styles of Ra, a band leader who focused on the future and cosmology, and Braxton, a contemporary composer whose work creates its own elaborate mythology. Arguing that the majority of writing on black music and musicians has -- even if inadvertently -- incorporated racial stereotypes, Lock explains how the subjects of his study each reacted to criticism and sought to break free of categorical confines. By drawing on social history, musicology, biography, cultural theory, and, most of all, statements by the musicians themselves, Lock examines the significance of their influential work in an engaging manner.
Blutopia will be a welcome contribution to the literature on twentieth-century African American music and creativity. It will interest students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies.
In Blutopia Graham Lock studies the music and thought of three pioneering twentieth-century musicians: Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton Providing an alternative to previous analyses of their work, Lock shows how these distinctive artists were each influenced by a common musical and spiritual heritage and participated in self-conscious efforts to create a utopian vision of the future.
A century after Ellington's birth, Lock reassesses his use of music as a form of black history and compares the different styles of Ra, a band leader who focused on the future and cosmology, and Braxton, a contemporary composer whose work creates its own elaborate mythology. Arguing that the majority of writing on black music and musicians has -- even if inadvertently -- incorporated racial stereotypes, Lock explains how the subjects of his study each reacted to criticism and sought to break free of categorical confines. By drawing on social history, musicology, biography, cultural theory, and, most of all, statements by the musicians themselves, Lock examines the significance of their influential work in an engaging manner.
Blutopia will be a welcome contribution to the literature on twentieth-century African American music and creativity. It will interest students of jazz, American music, African American studies, American culture, and cultural studies.
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