Black Ephemera

Black Ephemera PDF Author: Mark Anthony Neal
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479806919
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
PROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category Winner A framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital era In an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams’s 1916 silent film short “A Natural Born Gambler” or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance. While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the pre-digital era, Neal argues that Black music has itself been reduced to ephemera, at best, and at worst to the background sounds of the continued exploitation and commodification of Black culture. The crisis and challenges of Black archives are not simply questions of knowledge, but of how knowledge moves and manifests itself within Blackness that is obscure, ephemeral, fugitive, precarious, fluid, and increasingly digital. Black Ephemera is a reminder that for every great leap forward there is a necessary return to the archive. Through this work, Neal offers a new framework for thinking about Black culture in the digital world.

Black Ephemera

Black Ephemera PDF Author: Mark Anthony Neal
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479806919
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book

Book Description
PROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category Winner A framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital era In an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams’s 1916 silent film short “A Natural Born Gambler” or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance. While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the pre-digital era, Neal argues that Black music has itself been reduced to ephemera, at best, and at worst to the background sounds of the continued exploitation and commodification of Black culture. The crisis and challenges of Black archives are not simply questions of knowledge, but of how knowledge moves and manifests itself within Blackness that is obscure, ephemeral, fugitive, precarious, fluid, and increasingly digital. Black Ephemera is a reminder that for every great leap forward there is a necessary return to the archive. Through this work, Neal offers a new framework for thinking about Black culture in the digital world.

Black Ephemera

Black Ephemera PDF Author: Mark Anthony Neal
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479806889
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
"Black Ephemera explores the crisis and the challenge of the Black Musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global import, yet the cultural DNA of that culture is becoming obscured in the transformation from analog to digital"--

Songs in the Key of Black Life

Songs in the Key of Black Life PDF Author: Mark Anthony Neal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135206791
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In Songs in the Key of Black Life, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal turns his attention to Rhythm and Blues. He argues that R&B-often dismissed as just a bunch of love songs, yet the second most popular genre in terms of sales-can tell us much about the dynamic joys, apprehensions, tensions, and contradictions of contemporary black life, if we listen closely. With a voice as heartfelt and compelling as the best music, Neal guides us through the work of classic and contemporary artists ranging from Marvin Gaye to Macy Gray. In the first section of the book, Rhythm, he uses the music of Meshell N'degeocello, Patti Labelle, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, and others as guideposts to the major concerns of contemporary black life-issues such as gender, feminist politics, political activism, black masculinity, celebrity, and the fluidity of racial and sexual identity. The second part of the book, Blues, uses the improvisational rhythms of black music as a metaphor to examine currents in black life including the public dispute between Cornel West and Harvard President Lawrence Summers and the firing of BET's talk-show host Tavis Smiley. Songs in the Key of Black Life is a remarkable contribution to the study of black popular music, and valuable reading for anyone interested in how race is lived in America.

Encyclopedia of Ephemera

Encyclopedia of Ephemera PDF Author: Michael Twyman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136787798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
The joy of finding an old box in the attic filled with postcards, invitations, theater programs, laundry lists, and pay stubs is discovering the stories hidden within them. The paper trails of our lives -- or ephemera -- may hold sentimental value, reminding us of great grandparents. They chronicle social history. They can be valuable as collectibles or antiques. But the greatest pleasure is that these ordinary documents can reconstruct with uncanny immediacy the drama of day-to-day life. The Encyclopedia of Ephemera is the first work of its kind, providing an unparalleled sourcebook with over 400 entries that cover all aspects of everyday documents and artifacts, from bookmarks to birth certificates to lighthouse dues papers. Continuing a tradition that started in the Victorian era, when disposable paper items such as trade cards, die-cuts and greeting cards were accumulated to paste into scrap books, expert Maurice Rickards has compiled an enormous range of paper collectibles from the obscure to the commonplace. His artifacts come from around the world and include such throw-away items as cigarette packs and crate labels as well as the ubiquitous faxes, parking tickets, and phone cards of daily life. As this major new reference shows, simple slips of paper can speak volumes about status, taste, customs, and taboos, revealing the very roots of popular culture.

Sebastian

Sebastian PDF Author: Anne Bishop
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 0730492311
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
A rich new tapestry of worlds from the acclaimed author of the Black Jewels trilogy. Long ago, in a time that has faded from memory, a mother's tears forged the bridge that, ever after, connected the power of the living, ever-changing world to the human heart. A story set in the world of Ephemera, in which the link between the land and the human heart is unbreakable, and the world is nothing more or less than a reflection of the people's fears and desires. Once, the Eater of the World caused great destruction and horror until it was able to be contained; now that horror is about to be unleashed again. And those who create the landscapes may not be strong enough to resist the evil. Sebastian lives in the Den of Iniquity, a town for demons created by the most famous landscaper of all, Glorianna Belladonna. Sebastian is restless and yearning for more in his life, but until he comes to terms with his father's hate and with his own latent powers, Sebastian will be of no use to anyone. An emotionally powerful story about the difference between the heart's truth and one's expressed desires - sometimes the outcome of this difference is not at all what we want ...

What the Music Said

What the Music Said PDF Author: Mark Anthony Neal
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415920711
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Black Handsworth

Black Handsworth PDF Author: Kieran Connell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520971957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In 1980s Britain, while the country failed to reckon with the legacies of its empire, a black, transnational sensibility was emerging in its urban areas. In Handsworth, an inner-city neighborhood of Birmingham, black residents looked across the Atlantictoward African and Afro-Caribbean social and political cultures and drew upon them while navigating the inequalities of their locale. For those of the Windrush generation and their British-born children, this diasporic inheritance became a core influence on cultural and political life. Through rich case studies, including photographic representations of the neighborhood, Black Handsworth takes readers inside pubs, churches, political organizations, domestic spaces, and social clubs to shed light on the experiences and everyday lives of black residents during this time. The result is a compelling and sophisticated study of black globality in the making of post-colonial Britain.

Black Cultural Traffic

Black Cultural Traffic PDF Author: Harry Justin Elam
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472068401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Fresh takes on key questions in black performance and black popular culture, by leading artists, academics, and critics

Black Women's Liberation Movement Music

Black Women's Liberation Movement Music PDF Author: Reiland Rabaka
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000966798
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music argues that the Black Women’s Liberation Movement of the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s was a unique combination of Black political feminism, Black literary feminism, and Black musical feminism, among other forms of Black feminism. This book critically explores the ways the soundtracks of the Black Women’s Liberation Movement often overlapped with those of other 1960s and 1970s social, political, and cultural movements, such as the Black Power Movement, Women’s Liberation Movement, and Sexual Revolution. The soul, funk, and disco music of the Black Women’s Liberation Movement era is simultaneously interpreted as universalist, feminist (in a general sense), and Black female-focused. This music’s incredible ability to be interpreted in so many different ways speaks to the importance and power of Black women’s music and the fact that it has multiple meanings for a multitude of people. Within the worlds of both Black Popular Movement Studies and Black Popular Music Studies there has been a long-standing tendency to almost exclusively associate Black women’s music of the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s with the Black male-dominated Black Power Movement or the White female-dominated Women’s Liberation Movement. However, this book reveals that much of the soul, funk, and disco performed by Black women was most often the very popular music of a very unpopular and unsung movement: The Black Women’s Liberation Movement. Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music is an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and researchers of Popular Music Studies, American Studies, African American Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender Studies, and Sexuality Studies.

Encountering Ephemera 1500-1800

Encountering Ephemera 1500-1800 PDF Author: Joshua B. Fisher
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443864854
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This volume addresses two key questions: 1) How can ephemera be understood as a critical category of literary and historical inquiry? and 2) How can ephemera serve pedagogical purposes in the classroom? Each of the essays in Encountering Ephemera 1550-1800: Scholarship, Performance, Classroom addresses these questions by exploring a diverse range of materials as well as periods. The essays collectively work to define ephemera as a complex and multi-faceted critical category in terms of its literary, cultural, and historical significance. Each contributor works to complicate the traditional binary opposition between the ephemeral/transitory and the canonical/enduring, in part by recognizing how attending to the material processes of textual production, transmission, and dissemination highlights the potential instability and mutability of texts (and textual relationships), whether discussing broadside ballads or coterie poetry. By shifting the focus to the processes by which texts are constructed and construed, the prospect of recognizing any text (regardless of its canonical status) as a static and fixed entity becomes difficult and, in turn, the ephemeral qualities that define and constitute the text’s materiality come more sharply into focus. Along these lines, the “ephemeral spaces” across and between discourses – what might be called the “ephemera of cultural poetics” – play a key role in shaping literary texts. Thus, early modern and eighteenth century ephemera constitute both the material (texts not intended to last or designed for limited cultural life) and the process (fleeting and transitory aspects of cultural production). Whether discussing the circulation of cheap print, the performative traces of music and gesture in Shakespeare’s plays, or the diffuse cultural influences that both surround and pervade literary texts, attending to ephemeral matters underscores the dynamic unfixity of early modern and eighteenth century cultural practices.