Black Talk (Da Capo Paperback) [Paperback] Review

I strongly disagree with the reader from Kenosha, WI, who claims that this book is obvious and dated. When it was first published, nobody had ever attempted to take the oral tradition of black music seriously. Sidran'sbook was the first real go at such an approach, and for that alone, it'srequired reading for any musician with an interest in black music forms. Itis true that his thoughts are everywhere today, and that some of his ideashave become canon-like, but why should that stop us from reading them? Likethe reader from Kenosha, WI, we are all free to disagree with Mr.Sidran'sline of thought. Personally, I find the book a lot more interesting thanany of his recordings. It is well written, at at times even entertaining.

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Product Description:
Black Music-whether it be jazz, blues, r&b, gospel, or soul-has always expressed, consciously or not, its African "oral" heritage, reflecting the conditions of a minority culture in the midst of a white majority. Black Talk is one of those rare books since LeRoi Jones's Blues People to examine the social function of black music in the diaspora; it sounds the depths of experience and maps the history of a culture from the jazz age to the revolutionary outbursts of the 1960s. Ben Sidran finds radical challenges to the Western, white literary tradition in such varied music as Buddy Bolden's loud and hoarse cornet style, the call and response between brass and reeds in a swing band, the emotionalism of gospel, the primitivism of Ornette Coleman, and the cool ethic of bebop. "The musician is the document," says Sidran. "He is the information himself. The impact of stored information is transmitted not through records or archives, but through the human response to life."

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