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Author: Adam Gussow
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469660377
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
Mamie Smith's pathbreaking 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" set the pop music world on fire, inaugurating a new African American market for "race records." Not long after, such records also brought black blues performance to an expanding international audience. A century later, the mainstream blues world has transformed into a multicultural and transnational melting pot, taking the music far beyond the black southern world of its origins. But not everybody is happy about that. If there's "No black. No white. Just the blues," as one familiar meme suggests, why do some blues people hear such pronouncements as an aggressive attempt at cultural appropriation and an erasure of traumatic histories that lie deep in the heart of the music? Then again, if "blues is black music," as some performers and critics insist, what should we make of the vibrant global blues scene, with its all-comers mix of nationalities and ethnicities? In Whose Blues?, award-winning blues scholar and performer Adam Gussow confronts these challenging questions head-on. Using blues literature and history as a cultural anchor, Gussow defines, interprets, and makes sense of the blues for the new millennium. Drawing on the blues tradition's major writers including W. C. Handy, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka, and grounded in his first-person knowledge of the blues performance scene, Gussow's thought-provoking book kickstarts a long overdue conversation.
Author: Adam Gussow
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469660377
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Get Book
Book Description
Mamie Smith's pathbreaking 1920 recording of "Crazy Blues" set the pop music world on fire, inaugurating a new African American market for "race records." Not long after, such records also brought black blues performance to an expanding international audience. A century later, the mainstream blues world has transformed into a multicultural and transnational melting pot, taking the music far beyond the black southern world of its origins. But not everybody is happy about that. If there's "No black. No white. Just the blues," as one familiar meme suggests, why do some blues people hear such pronouncements as an aggressive attempt at cultural appropriation and an erasure of traumatic histories that lie deep in the heart of the music? Then again, if "blues is black music," as some performers and critics insist, what should we make of the vibrant global blues scene, with its all-comers mix of nationalities and ethnicities? In Whose Blues?, award-winning blues scholar and performer Adam Gussow confronts these challenging questions head-on. Using blues literature and history as a cultural anchor, Gussow defines, interprets, and makes sense of the blues for the new millennium. Drawing on the blues tradition's major writers including W. C. Handy, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka, and grounded in his first-person knowledge of the blues performance scene, Gussow's thought-provoking book kickstarts a long overdue conversation.
Author: Jesse R. Steinberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111815326X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
The philosophy of the blues From B.B. King to Billie Holiday, Blues music not only sounds good, but has an almost universal appeal in its reflection of the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Its ability to powerfully touch on a range of social and emotional issues is philosophically inspiring, and here, a diverse range of thinkers and musicians offer illuminating essays that make important connections between the human condition and the Blues that will appeal to music lovers and philosophers alike.
Author: Edward Komara
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135958327
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1279
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Book Description
This comprehensive two-volume set brings together all aspects of the blues from performers and musical styles to record labels and cultural issues, including regional evolution and history. Organized in an accessible A-to-Z format, the Encyclopedia of the Blues is an essential reference resource for information on this unique American music genre. Coverage includes: · The whole history of the blues, from its antecedents in African and American types of music to the contemporary styles performed today · Artists active throughout the United States and from foreign countries · The business of the blues, including individual record labels active since the prewar era · Aspects particular to blues lyrics and music · Specific issues such as race or gender as related to the blues · Reference lists of blues periodicals, blues newsletters, libraries, and museums.
Author: Edward M. Komara
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780415927017
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 746
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Book Description
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Author: Edward M. Komara
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415926998
Category : Blues
Languages : en
Pages : 1274
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Book Description
This comprehensive two-volume set brings together all aspects of the blues from performers and musical styles to record labels and cultural issues, including regional evolution and history. Organized in an accessible A-to-Z format, the Encyclopedia of the Blues is an essential reference resource for information on this unique American music genre. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of the Blues website.
Author: Allan Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107494532
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
From Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson to John Lee Hooker, blues and gospel artists figure heavily in the mythology of twentieth-century culture. The styles in which they sang have proved hugely influential to generations of popular singers, from the wholesale adoptions of singers like Robert Cray or James Brown, to the subtler vocal appropriations of Mariah Carey. Their own music, and how it operates, is not, however, always seen as valid in its own right. This book provides an overview of both these genres, which worked together to provide an expression of twentieth-century black US experience. Their histories are unfolded and questioned; representative songs and lyrical imagery are analysed; perspectives are offered from the standpoint of the voice, the guitar, the piano, and also that of the working musician. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact the genres have had on mainstream musical culture.
Author: Edward Komara
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810889226
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Search the Internet for the 100 best songs or best albums. Dozens of lists will appear from aficionados to major music personalities. But what if you not only love listening to the blues or country music or jazz or rock, you love reading about it, too. How do you separate what matters from what doesn’t among the hundreds—sometimes thousands—of books on the music you so love? In the Best Music Books series, readers finally have a quick-and-ready list of the most important works published on modern major music genres by leading experts. In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, Edward Komara, former Blues Archivist of the University of Mississippi, and his successor Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre. Komara and Johnson provide a short description of the contents and the achievement of each title selected for their “Blues 100.” Entries include full bibliographic citations, prices of copies in print, and even descriptions of specific editions for book collectors. 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles—or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: “The Books behind the Blues 100.” 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own serves as a guide for any blues fan looking for a road map through the history of—and even history of the scholarship on—the blues. Here Komara and Johnson answer the question of not only what is a “blues” book, but which ones are worth owning.
Author: Paul Oliver
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393303575
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
'Max Harrison . . . surveys the whole history and development of jazz in a concise, well written and well illustrated . . . article together with an extensive bibliography.' —Richard D. C. Noble, Times Literary Supplement The chapters of this book are in roughly chronological sequence: Spirituals, Blues, Gospels, Ragtime, and Jazz. The first three are by Paul Oliver, whose New Grove entry on the Blues is widely regarded as the definitive brief history of the genre. He has revised and expanded it for this book publication and, in addition, has extended the coverage of his essays on Spirituals in The New Grove to discuss both black and white traditions. Similarly, Oliver has revised and recast his coverage of Gospel music, which has been considerably expanded. Max Harrison's long entry on Jazz, which has also been extended, draws together the separate strands of the book to discuss the concept of Jazz as a matrix of mutually influential folk and popular styles. William Bolcom's short and definitive article on Ragtime has been revised, and all the bibliographies have been updated to include new and important works.
Author: Coretta M. Pittman
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496843053
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries traces the evolution of Black women’s literacy practices from 1892 to 1934. A dynamic chronological study, the book explores how Black women public intellectuals, creative writers, and classic blues singers sometimes utilize singular but other times overlapping forms of literacies to engage in debates on race. The book begins with Anna J. Cooper’s philosophy on race literature as one method for social advancement. From there, author Coretta M. Pittman discusses women from the Woman’s and New Negro Eras, including but not limited to Angelina Weld Grimké, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, and Zora Neale Hurston. The volume closes with an exploration of Victoria Spivey’s blues philosophy. The women examined in this book employ forms of transformational, transactional, or specular literacy to challenge systems of racial oppression. However, Literacy in a Long Blues Note argues against prevalent myths that a singular vision for racial uplift dominated the public sphere in the latter decade of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. Instead, by including Black women from various social classes and ideological positions, Pittman reveals alternative visions. Contrary to more moderate predecessors of the Woman’s Era and contemporaries in the New Negro Era, classic blues singers like Mamie Smith advanced new solutions against racism. Early twentieth-century writer Angelina Weld Grimké criticized traditional methods for racial advancement as Jim Crow laws tightened restrictions against Black progress. Ultimately, the volume details the agency and literacy practices of these influential women.
Author: Michael Urban
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501717200
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Michael Urban chronicles the advent of blues music in Russia and explores the significance of the genre in the turbulent, postcommunist society. Russians, he explains, have taken a music originating in the "low" culture of the American South and transformed it into an object of "high" culture, fashioning a social identity that distinguishes blues adherents from both the discredited Soviet past and the vulgar consumerism associated with the country's Westernization. While adapting the idiom to their own conditions, Russia's bliuzmeny (bluesmen) have absorbed the blues ethos encoded in the music by their American forebears, using it to invert their social world, thus deriving dignity and satisfaction from those very things that give one the blues.Based on more than forty interviews with blues musicians and fans, nightclub managers, and others, Russia Gets the Blues reveals the fascinating history of blues in Russia, from the initial mimicry of British blues-rock to the recent emergence of a specifically "Russian blues." The gradual mastering of the idiom in Russia has been conditioned by the culture of the country's intelligentsia, a fact explaining why, on one hand, bliuzmeny feel compelled to proselytize on behalf of the music, to share with others this treasure of "world culture," while, on the other, they perform blues almost exclusively in English—which almost no one understands—and condemn any and all efforts to make the music commercially successful.
