Download or read book Words and Songs of Bessie Smith Billie Holiday and Nina Simone written by Melanie E. Bratcher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-21 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relationship between three African American women's dance-art-music sensibilities within the context of a Pan African aesthetic. Its purpose is three-fold: to show commonalities between Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone's lives and original compositions; to codify, examine and evaluate their selected song performances in accordance with the Pan African aesthetic "Nzuri theory/model;" and to illuminate the vast sources of transformational values that aesthetic analysis of African American song performance can foster. Following concordant procedures and principles of Afrocentricity, the study focuses on Smith, Holiday and Simone's performances as part of a whole African artistic and cultural value system. The goal of the Afrocentric methodological structure is to locate relevant African dynamics in songs and to promote knowledge for cultural transformation and continuity. Its use in this study provides meta-criteria for analyzing African American music, which the author has used to uniquely argue connections between African cultural memory and African-derived cultural expression.
Download or read book Africana Methodology written by James L. Conyer, Jr. and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the collection, interpretation, and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from an Afrocentric perspective. The necessity of interpretive Afrocentric research is relevant to position agency and to locate Africana studies in place, space, and time. This study will provide readers with a compilation of literary, historical, philosophical, and social science essays that describe and evaluate the Africana experience from a methodological perspective. Paradoxically, the collection presents measurable and qualitative research, in order to flush out a global Pan–Africanist consciousness.
Download or read book Jazz and the Philosophy of Art written by Lee B. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman’s allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno’s critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book’s commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. It uses the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work. It then examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy.
Download or read book Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington and Miles Davis written by Aaron Lefkovitz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.
Download or read book Blues Funk Rhythm and Blues Soul Hip Hop and Rap written by Eddie S. Meadows and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the influence of African American music and study as a worldwide phenomenon, no comprehensive and fully annotated reference tool currently exists that covers the wide range of genres. This much needed bibliography fills an important gap in this research area and will prove an indispensable resource for librarians and scholars studying African American music and culture.
Download or read book Blues in the 21st Century Myth Self Expression and Trans Culturalism written by Douglas Mark Ponton and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is the fruit of Douglas Mark Ponton’s and co-editor Uwe Zagratzki’s enduring interest in the Blues as a musical and cultural phenomenon and source of personal inspiration. Continuing in the tradition of Blues studies established by the likes of Samuel Charters and Paul Oliver, the authors hope to contribute to the revitalisation of the field through a multi-disciplinary approach designed to explore this constantly evolving social phenomenon in all its heterogeneity. Focusing either on particular artists (Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson), or specific texts (Langston Hughes’ Weary Blues and Backlash Blues, Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun), the book tackles issues ranging from authenticity and musicology in Blues performance to the Blues in diaspora, while also applying techniques of linguistic analysis to the corpora of Blues texts. While some chapters focus on the Blues as a quintessentially American phenomenon, linked to a specific social context, others see it in its current evolutions, as the bearer of vital cultural attitudes into the digital age. This multidisciplinary volume will appeal to a broad range of scholars operating in a number of different academic disciplines, including Musicology, Linguistics, Sociology, History, Ethnomusicology, Literature, Economics and Cultural Studies. It will also interest educators across the Humanities, and could be used to exemplify the application to data of specific analytical methodologies, and as a general introduction to the field of Blues studies.
Download or read book African American Studies written by Jeanette Davidson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the diverse, expansive nature of African American Studies and its characteristic interdisciplinarity. It is intended for use with undergraduate/ beginning graduate students in African American Studies, American Studies and Ethnic Studies.Section I focuses on the historical development of the field and the diverse theoretical perspectives utilized in African American Studies. Section II examines African American Studies' commitment to community service and social activism, and includes exclusive interviews with acclaimed actor/activist Danny Glover and renowned scholar, Manning Marable. Section III presents international perspectives. Section IV includes selected areas of scholarship: Oral History as an important research methodology; African American Philosophy; African Aesthetics (song and dance); perspectives on Womanism, Black Feminism and Africana Womanism with a focus on literature; and African American Religion. The book concludes with African American Studies' strengths and
Download or read book Walking Raddy written by Kim Vaz-Deville and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Jennifer Atkins, Vashni Balleste, Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, Ron Bechet, Melanie Bratcher, Jerry Brock, Ann Bruce, Violet Harrington Bryan, Rachel Carrico, Sarah Anita Clunis, Phillip Colwart, Keith Duncan, Rob Florence, Pamela R. Franco, Daniele Gair, Meryt Harding, Megan Holt, DeriAnne Meilleur Honora, Marielle Jeanpierre, Ulrick Jean-Pierre, Jessica Marie Johnson, Karen La Beau, D. Lammie-Hanson, Karen Trahan Leathem, Charles Lovell, Annie Odell, Ruth Owens, Steve Prince, Nathan "Nu'Awlons Natescott" Haynes Scott, LaKisha Michelle Simmons, Tia L. Smith, Gailene McGhee St.Amand, and Kim Vaz-Deville Since 2004, the Baby Doll Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans has gone from an obscure, almost forgotten practice to a flourishing cultural force. The original Baby Dolls were groups of black women, and some men, in the early Jim Crow era who adopted New Orleans street masking tradition as a unique form of fun and self-expression against a backdrop of racial discrimination. Wearing short dresses, bloomers, bonnets, and garters with money tucked tight, they strutted, sang ribald songs, chanted, and danced on Mardi Gras Day and on St. Joseph feast night. Today's Baby Dolls continue the tradition of one of the first street women's masking and marching groups in the United States. They joyfully and unabashedly defy gender roles, claiming public space and proclaiming through their performance their right to social citizenship. Essayists draw on interviews, theoretical perspectives, archival material, and historical assessments to describe women's cultural performances that take place on the streets of New Orleans. They recount the history and contemporary resurgence of the Baby Dolls while delving into the larger cultural meaning of the phenomenon. Over 140 color photographs and personal narratives of immersive experiences provide passionate testimony of the impact of the Baby Dolls on their audiences. Fifteen artists offer statements regarding their work documenting and inspired by the tradition as it stimulates their imagination to present a practice that revitalizes the spirit.
Download or read book Voice Lessons written by Nancy Mairs and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1997-01-19 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voice Lessons is a book about writing from a woman with a remarkable story to tell and an utterly distinctive voice in which to tell it. Nancy Mairs's essays have been called "triumphs... of will, style, candor, thought and even form" (Los Angeles Times). She has won acclaim for her autobiographical writing on themes from living with depression to renewing a marriage, from sex to religion. In Voice Lessons, Mairs's subjects are literary, but as always her approach is personal, revealing, and inspiring. Mairs first shares her sharply drawn story on how "finding a voice" as an essayist transformed her life when she was a graduate student, wife, and mother in her late thirties. In a tribute to the liberating power of literature and feminist ideas, she shows how the words of other writers made possible a new career, a new life in difficult times. Voice Lessons goes on to explore other women's writing and to outline a singular kind of literary life. Always grounding her writing in personal experience, always making ideas concrete, Mairs gives us essays on writing and the body, the challenges of autobiography, the revelatory power of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker, the literature of personal disaster, and the art of dealing with rejection. Articulate, witty, incisive, and inspirational, Voice Lessons is a book for writers and aspiring writers, and for everyone who loves women's writing.
Download or read book Masterplots Two written by Tyrone Williams and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Williams (Xavier U.) presents 367 three-to-four page essays, 101 commissioned new for this edition, on significant African American works of literature, from Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, a work of cultural criticism by Molefi K. Asante,to Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, the "biomythography" of Audre Lorde. The works covered range from early colonial era writings through works of the beginning of the 21st century. Most of the essays address a single long work, while others review an author's work in a certain genre, such as short fiction, poetry, essays, or speeches. Each entry begins with information on title, subtitle, author's name and birth/death dates, type of work, date of first publication and production. For fiction, information is also presented on type of plot, setting, and principal characters. The essays then describe events or contents of the work and address broad themes and meanings connected to the work. Essays on fiction works include discussion of main character or characters, while nonfiction work includes sections on "form and content" and "analysis." All essays end with discussion of critical context. Also included with the essays are annotated bibliographies on secondary sources. The final volume includes indexes organized by type of work, title, and authors. Examples of works covered, in addition to the two already mentioned, include Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, The Black Muslims in America by C. Eric Lincoln; The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Roots by Alex Haley, The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington, and Walkin' the Dog by Walter Mosley. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Download or read book Black Power beyond Borders written by N. Slate and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume examines the transnational dimensions of Black Power - how Black Power thinkers and activists drew on foreign movements and vice versa how individuals and groups in other parts of the world interpreted 'Black Power,' from African liberation movements to anti-caste agitation in India to indigenous protests in New Zealand.
Download or read book Big Star Fallin Mama written by Hettie Jones and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portraits of five black women and the kind of music they sang during a period of social change. Includes Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin.
Download or read book The American Voice written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Billie Holiday written by John Szwed and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade ... jazz writer John Szwed considers how [Holiday's] life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy"--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Billie Holiday Her Life and Times written by John White and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life and times of Billie Holiday.
Download or read book Musicians Composers of the 20th Century written by Alfred William Cramer and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain...these are the people who helped shape the history of music. Their stories and others are told in Musicians and Composers of the 20th Century. This five volume set offers biographical and critical essays on over 600 musicians in just about every genre imaginable, from Accordion Players to Musical Theater Composers to World Music, and everything in between.
Download or read book Billie Holiday written by Rebecca Carey Rohan and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billie Holiday is one of the most beloved American musicians to this day, and a prominent artist of the Harlem Renaissance. Learn about the challenges she faced and the fame she gained as a result of her unique sound.
