Read complete books and articles on: African American Music

At Questia, we offer:

Exclusive access to more than 67,000 books and 1.5 million articles.
Trusted resources from leading publishers.
Time saving tools to do better, faster research!

15 of the Best Books and Articles on: African American Music

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States » Read Now
by Samuel A. Floyd Jr. 316 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music. Striving to break down the barriers that remain between high art and low art, it illuminates the centuries-old linkage between the music, myths and...
Read More

The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music. Striving to break down the barriers that remain between high art and low art, it illuminates the centuries-old linkage between the music, myths and rituals of Africa and the continuing evolution and enduring vitality of African-American music. Inspired by the pioneering work of Sterling Stuckey and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the author, advocates a new critical approach grounded in the forms and traditions of the music itself.
Show less
2.

Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots » Read Now
by Maurice Peress. 254 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Drawing upon a remarkable mix of intensive research and the personal experience of a career devoted to the music about which Dvorak so presciently spoke, Maurice Peress's lively and convincing narrative treats readers to a rare and delightful glimpse behind the scenes of the burgeoning American...
Read More

Drawing upon a remarkable mix of intensive research and the personal experience of a career devoted to the music about which Dvorak so presciently spoke, Maurice Peress's lively and convincing narrative treats readers to a rare and delightful glimpse behind the scenes of the burgeoning American school of music and beyond. In Dvorak to Duke Ellington, Peress begins by recounting the music's formative years: Dvorak's three year residency as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York (1892-1895), and his students, in particular Will Marion Cook and Rubin Goldmark, who would in turn become the teachers of Ellington, Gershwin, and Copland. We follow Dvorak to the famed Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where he directed a concert of his music for Bohemian Honor Day. Peress brings to light the little known African American presence at the Fair: the piano professors, about-to-be-ragtimers; and the gifted young artists Paul Dunbar, Harry T. Burleigh, and Cook, who gathered at the Haitian Pavilion with its director, Frederick Douglass, to organize their own gala concert for Colored Persons Day. Peress, a distinguished conductor, is himself a part of this story; working with Duke Ellington on the Suite from Black, Brown and Beige and his "opera comique," Queenie Pie; conducting the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass; and reconstructing landmark American concerts at which George Antheil's Ballet Mecanique, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, James Reese Europe's Clef Club (the first all-black concert at Carnegie Hall), and Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige, were first presented. Concluding with an astounding look at Ellington and his music, Dvorak to Duke Ellington offers an engrossing, elegant portrait of the Dvorak legacy, America's music, and the inestimable African-American influence upon it.
Show less
3.

Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop » Read Now
by Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. 281 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

A history of African-American music and its influence on American music and culture, from the Great Migration to the present day.
4.

Black Orpheus: Music in African American Fiction from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison » Read Now
by Saadi A. Simawe. 276 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This text explores how music has been elevated to the level of religion primarily because of its Orphic, magical power to unsettle oppressive realities, to liberate the soul and to create, at least temporarily, a medium of freedom.
5.

Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations » Read Now
by Brian Ward. 600 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

In one of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on civil rights and black power movements in America, the author examines the relationship between rhythm and blues music and the struggle for black freedom and equality from the 50s to the 70s.
6.

Culture on the Margins: The Black Spiritual and the Rise of American Cultural Interpretation » Read Now
by Jon Cruz. 289 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"A splendid and important book that clearly establishes Jon Cruz as one of the most significant cultural sociologists of his generation. The scope, depth, and originality of his theoretical analysis contributes to the general project of understanding cultural production, cultural 'objects,' and...
Read More

"A splendid and important book that clearly establishes Jon Cruz as one of the most significant cultural sociologists of his generation. The scope, depth, and originality of his theoretical analysis contributes to the general project of understanding cultural production, cultural 'objects,' and cultural interpretation and appropriation. The richness of his deployment of historical materials--whether travel diaries, sermons, or early journal articles--brings his analytic framework alive. Because his book engages crucial debates in history, ethnic studies, and cultural studies as well as in sociology, it should have a wide readership among academics in many fields."--Elizabeth Long, Rice University
Show less
7.

Choral Arrangements of the African-American Spirituals: Historical Overview and Annotated Listings » Read Now
by Patricia Johnson Trice. 235 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Although the choral arrangements of the African-American spirituals constitute the largest group of folk song arrangements in western literature, they have received little scholarly attention. This book provides the needed historical and stylistic information about the spirituals and the...
Read More

Although the choral arrangements of the African-American spirituals constitute the largest group of folk song arrangements in western literature, they have received little scholarly attention. This book provides the needed historical and stylistic information about the spirituals and the arrangements. It traces the history and cultural roots of the genre through its inception and delineates the African and European characteristics common to the original folk songs and arrangements. Ensembles that have perpetuated the growth of the spiritual arrangements--from the Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s through those currently active--are chronicled as well.
Show less
8.

What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics and Activists » Read Now
by Eric Porter. 404 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter...
Read More

Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter overturns this tendency in his creative intellectual history of African American musicians. He foregrounds the often-ignored ideas of these artists, analyzing them in the context of meanings circulating around jazz, as well as in relationship to broader currents in African American thought.
Porter examines several crucial moments in the history of jazz: the formative years of the 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of bebop; the political and experimental projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; and the debates surrounding Jazz at Lincoln Center under the direction of Wynton Marsalis. Louis Armstrong, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Yusef Lateef, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, and Reggie Workman also feature prominently in this book. The wealth of information Porter uncovers shows how these musicians have expressed themselves in print; actively shaped the institutional structures through which the music is created, distributed, and consumed, and how they aligned themselves with other artists and activists, and how they were influenced by forces of class and gender.
"What Is This Thing Cal
Show less
9.

African-American Traditions in Song, Sermon, Tale, and Dance, 1600s-1920: An Annotated Bibliography of Literature, Collections, and Artworks » Read Now
by Eileen Southern, Josephine Wright. 372 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

"As any well-organized, carefully annotated bibliography does, this work by Southern and Wright brings order out of chaos. The 2,328 entries identify books, articles, sermons, pamphlets, and broadsides, among other formats, all centered on black folk culture with emphasis on the manifestations of...
Read More

"As any well-organized, carefully annotated bibliography does, this work by Southern and Wright brings order out of chaos. The 2,328 entries identify books, articles, sermons, pamphlets, and broadsides, among other formats, all centered on black folk culture with emphasis on the manifestations of that culture from 1600 to 1920 through song, dance, games, sermons, and illustrations. . . . This carefully done and useful bibliography is recommended for libraries on all campuses where there is an interest in the black experience." Choice
Show less
10.

Jazz in Black and White: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Jazz Community » Read Now
by Charley Gerard. 202 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form? Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their musical generation--masters such as Louis...
Read More

Is jazz a universal idiom or is it an African-American art form? Although whites have been playing jazz almost since it first developed, the history of jazz has been forged by a series of African-American artists whose styles caught the interest of their musical generation--masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. Whether or not white musicians deserve their secondary status in jazz history, one thing is clear: developments in jazz have been a result of black people's search for a meaningful identity as Americans and members of the African diaspora. Blacks are not alone in being deeply affected by these shifts in African-American racial attitudes and cultural strategies. Historically in closer contact with blacks than nearly any other group of white Americans, white jazz musicians have also felt these shifts. More importantly, their careers and musical interests have been deeply affected by them. The author, an active participant in the jazz world as composer, performer and author of several books on jazz and Latin music, hopes that this book will encourage jazz lovers to take a rhetoric-free look at the charged issue of race as it has affected the world of jazz.
Show less
11.

Negotiating Freedom: Values and Practices in Contemporary Improvised Music, in Black Music Research Journal » Read Now
by David Borgo. 24 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
12.

Ideology and Aurality in the Vernacular Traditions of African-American Music (CA. 1890-1950), in Black Music Research Journal » Read Now
by Thomas Brothers. 42 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...VERNACULAR TRADITIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC (CA. 1890-1950). by...history; for the history of African-American music, especially, this problem...main elements in my...
13.

Celebration or Pathology? Commodity or Art? The Dilemma of African-American Expressive Culture, in Black Music Research Journal » Read Now
by Berndt Ostendorf. 20 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...relevance of contemporary African American music" (11). Amen. Ward also...1998. California soul: Music of African-Americans in the west. Berkeley: University...cultural...
14.

Black Musicians from Slavery to Freedom: An Exploration of an African-American Folk Elite and Cultural Continuity in the Nineteenth-Century Rural South, in The Journal of Negro History » Read Now
by Paul A. Cimbala. 15 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...the 1970s with the African-American community participating...gatherings that featured music and dancing in the...Historians of slavery and African-American music have...
15.

The Black Authentic: Structure, Style, and Value in Group Harmony, in Black Music Research Journal » Read Now
by Stuart L. Goosman. 19 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Baraka is that if African Americans make music (no matter what...suggest that all African Americans, no matter the music, no matter the...A case for the African-American...