Download or read book A Jazz Odyssey written by Oscar Peterson and published by Bloomsbury Continuum. This book was released on 2006-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of the career of jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, from the fame of his early years as the star attraction of Canada's renowned Johnny Holmes Orchestra to the 1970s and his role as a solo pianist and television personality.
Download or read book The Lost Books of the Odyssey written by Zachary Mason and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BRILLIANT AND BEGUILING REIMAGINING OF ONE OF OUR GREATEST MYTHS BY A GIFTED YOUNG WRITER Zachary Mason's brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer's classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer's original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of African American Music 3 volumes written by Tammy L. Kernodle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-12-17 with total page 1267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Americans' historical roots are encapsulated in the lyrics, melodies, and rhythms of their music. In the 18th and 19th centuries, African slaves, longing for emancipation, expressed their hopes and dreams through spirituals. Inspired by African civilization and culture, as well as religion, art, literature, and social issues, this influential, joyous, tragic, uplifting, challenging, and enduring music evolved into many diverse genres, including jazz, blues, rock and roll, soul, swing, and hip hop. Providing a lyrical history of our nation, this groundbreaking encyclopedia, the first of its kind, showcases all facets of African American music including folk, religious, concert and popular styles. Over 500 in-depth entries by more than 100 scholars on a vast range of topics such as genres, styles, individuals, groups, and collectives as well as historical topics such as music of the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and numerous others. Offering balanced representation of key individuals, groups, and ensembles associated with diverse religious beliefs, political affiliations, and other perspectives not usually approached, this indispensable reference illuminates the profound role that African American music has played in American cultural history. Editors Price, Kernodle, and Maxile provide balanced representation of various individuals, groups and ensembles associated with diverse religious beliefs, political affiliations, and perspectives. Also highlighted are the major record labels, institutions of higher learning, and various cultural venues that have had a tremendous impact on the development and preservation of African American music. Among the featured: Motown Records, Black Swan Records, Fisk University, Gospel Music Workshop of America, The Cotton Club, Center for Black Music Research, and more. With a broad scope, substantial entries, current coverage, and special attention to historical, political, and social contexts, this encyclopedia is designed specifically for high school and undergraduate students. Academic and public libraries will treasure this resource as an incomparable guide to our nation's African American heritage.
Download or read book Pops written by Terry Teachout and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain to be the definitive word on Louis Armstrong, "Pops" paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world, and his music. Drawing on a cache of new sources, the author has crafted a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure.
Download or read book Steppin on the Blues written by Jacqui Malone and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former dancer Jacqui Malone throws a fresh spotlight on the cultural history of black dance, the Africanisms that have influenced it, and the significant role that vocal harmony groups, black college and university marching bands, and black sorority and fraternity stepping teams have played in the evolution of dance in African American life.
Download or read book Romare Bearden written by Robert G. O'Meally and published by DC Moore Gallery, New York. This book was released on 2007 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Bridget Moore. Text by Robert G. O'Meally.
Download or read book Bill Wyman s blues Odyssey written by Bill Wyman and published by DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley). This book was released on 2001 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Blues genre and its celebrated musicians discusses how African-Americans expressed poverty, injustice, faith, and love in their music as they journeyed from southern plantations to northern cities.
Download or read book Jazz in New Orleans written by Charles Suhor and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2001-04-11 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jazz in New Orleans provides accurate information about, and an insightful interpretation of, jazz in New Orleans from the end of World War II through 1970. Suhor, relying on his experiences as a listener, a working jazz drummer, and writer in New Orleans during this period, has done a great service to lovers of New Orleans music by filling in some gaping holes in postwar jazz history and cutting through many of the myths and misconceptions that have taken hold over the years. Skillfully combining his personal experiences and historical research, the author writes with both authority and immediacy. The text, rich in previously unpublished anecdotes and New Orleans lore, is divided into three sections, each with an overview essay followed by pertinent articles Suhor wrote for national and local journals—including Down Beat and New Orleans Magazine. Section One, "Jazz and the Establishment," focuses on cultural and institutional settings in which jazz was first battered, then nurtured. It deals with the reluctance of power brokers and the custodians of culture in New Orleans to accept jazz as art until the music proved itself elsewhere and was easily recognizable as a marketable commodity. Section Two, "Traditional and Dixieland Jazz," highlights the music and the musicians who were central to early jazz styles in New Orleans between 1947 and 1953. Section Three, "An Invisible Generation," will help dispel the stubborn myth that almost no one was playing be-bop or other modern jazz styles in New Orleans before the current generation of young artists appeared in the 1980s.
Download or read book People Get Ready written by Bob Darden and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, "People Get Ready!" provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of this musical genre.
Download or read book Jazz Moon written by Joe Okonkwo and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris—a moving story of traveling far to find oneself” (David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife). On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear music and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts dynamite from his horn. Ben finds himself drawn to the trumpeter—and to Paris, where Baby Back says everything is happening. In Paris, black people are welcomed as exotic celebrities, especially those from Harlem. It’s an easy life, but it quickly leaves Ben adrift and alone, craving solace through anonymous dalliances in the city’s decadent underground scene. From chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, his odyssey will bring new love, trials, and heartache, even as echoes from the past urge him to decide where true fulfillment and inspiration lie. Jazz Moon is an evocative story of emotional and artistic awakening set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age–Paris—a winner of the Edmund White Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. “Jazz Moon mashes up essences of Hurston and Hughes and Fitzgerald into a heady mixtape of a romance: driving and rhythmic as an Armstrong Hot Five record, sensuous as the small of a Cotton Club chorus girl’s back. I enjoyed it immensely.” —Larry Duplechan, author of Blackbird and Got ’til It’s Gone
Download or read book Is Jazz Dead written by Stuart Nicholson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Jazz Dead? examines the state of jazz in America at the turn of the twenty-first century. Musicians themselves are returning to New Orleans, Swing, and Bebop styles, while the work of the '60s avant-garde and even '70s and '80s jazz-rock is roundly ignored. Meanwhile, global jazz musicians are creating new and exciting music that is just starting to be heard in the United States, offering a viable alternative to the rampant conservatism here. Stuart Nicholson's thought-provoking book offers an analysis of the American scene, how it came to be so stagnant, and what it can do to create a new level of creativity. This book is bound to be controversial among jazz purists and musicians; it will undoubtedly generate discussion about how jazz should grow now that it has become a recognized part of American musical history. Is Jazz Dead? dares to ask the question on all jazz fan's minds: Can jazz survive as a living medium? And, if so, how?
Download or read book African American History Day by Day written by Karen Juanita Carrillo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proof of any group's importance to history is in the detail, a fact made plain by this informative book's day-by-day documentation of the impact of African Americans on life in the United States. One of the easiest ways to grasp any aspect of history is to look at it as a continuum. African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events provides just such an opportunity. Organized in the form of a calendar, this book allows readers to see the dates of famous births, deaths, and events that have affected the lives of African Americans and, by extension, of America as a whole. Each day features an entry with information about an important event that occurred on that date. Background on the highlighted event is provided, along with a link to at least one primary source document and references to books and websites that can provide more information. While there are other calendars of African American history, this one is set apart by its level of academic detail. It is not only a calendar, but also an easy-to-use reference and learning tool.
Download or read book This Isn t Happening written by Steven Hyden and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE MAKING AND MEANING OF RADIOHEAD'S GROUNDBREAKING, CONTROVERSIAL, EPOCHDEFINING ALBUM, KID A. In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future. For more than a year, they battled writer's block, intra-band disagreements, and crippling self-doubt. In the end, however, they produced an album that was not only a complete departure from their prior guitar-based rock sound, it was the sound of a new era-and it embodied widespread changes catalyzed by emerging technologies just beginning to take hold of the culture. What they created was Kid A. Upon its release in 2000, Radiohead's fourth album divided critics. Some called it an instant classic; others, such as the UK music magazine Melody Maker, deemed it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory... whiny old rubbish." But two decades later, Kid A sounds like nothing less than an overture for the chaos and confusion of the twenty-first century. Acclaimed rock critic Steven Hyden digs deep into the songs, history, legacy, and mystique of Kid A, outlining the album's pervasive influence and impact on culture in time for its twentieth anniversary in 2020. Deploying a mix of criticism, journalism, and personal memoir, Hyden skillfully revisits this enigmatic, alluring LP and investigates the many ways in which Kid A shaped and foreshadowed our world.
Download or read book Classic Jazz written by Floyd Levin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Floyd Levin's half-century collection of reportage, reviews and recollections are an irreplaceable and totally enjoyable trove of writing about the vibrancy, past and still-present, of traditional American jazz."—Charles Champlin, author of Back There Where the Past Was "I've known Floyd and his wife Lucille for more than fifty years. Floyd's book is a colorful, intimate account of his lifelong love affair with jazz. I'm especially fascinated when he writes about his personal encounters with some of the jazz legends of the Century. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about jazz - its present, its past, and his evolution."—Milt Hinton "Floyd Levin's dedicated and unselfish life-long work for the cause of jazz has illuminated many a corner that would otherwise have remained in the dark. All who care about the music are in his debt. Classic Jazz, like Floyd himself, is a classic."—Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University "What a rich, passionate and human book this is! Drawing on fifty years of devotion to classic, New Orleans jazz and the artists who performed it, Floyd Levin brilliantly weaves anecdotal material, primary research, intimate personal observations, and analyses to create an historical goldmine of the music's evolution in New Orleans and on the West Coast. In rendering portraits of legendary musicians in such a beautifully moving, honest way, he offers not just standard history, but a strong sense of the emotional core of the music as well."—Steve Isoardi, co-author of Central Avenue Sounds
Download or read book Music Makes Me written by Todd Decker and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in Music Makes Me, Todd Decker argues that Astaire's work as a dancer and choreographer, particularly in the realm of tap dancing, made a significant contribution to the art of jazz.
Download or read book At the Jazz Band Ball written by Nat Hentoff and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nat Hentoff, renowned jazz critic, civil liberties activist, and fearless contrarian—"I’m a Jewish atheist civil-libertarian pro-lifer"—has lived through much of jazz’s history and has known many of jazz’s most important figures, often as friend and confidant. Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and -women. This volume includes his best recent work—short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections. From Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman and Quincy Jones, Hentoff brings the jazz greats to life and traces their art to gospel, blues, and many other forms of American music. At the Jazz Band Ball also includes Hentoff’s keen, cosmopolitan observations on a wide range of issues. The book shows how jazz and education are a vital partnership, how free expression is the essence of liberty, and how social justice issues like health care and strong civil rights and liberties keep all the arts—and all members of society—strong.
