Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop [Hardcover] Review

Race Music is a wonderful example of music scholarship. Ramsey's work provides a rigourous, fresh, and inciteful look into African American Music. Unlike many music scholars who unsuccessfully negotiate the academic and popualar terrains simultaneously, Ramsey presents an unflinchingly academic book in a way that allows the lay public access into his wonderful world of idas. A must read!!!!

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African American Music: An Introduction [Hardcover] Review

Co-edited by Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby for a college-level introduction perfect for classroom text use or library reference, you can't go wrong with African American Music: An Introduction - it gathers thirty essays by leading scholars to survey major Afro-American musical genres both sacred and secular over the extent of American history, uses studies from both ethnographic fieldwork and recordings, and adds biography, photos and illustrations, and references which bring the scholarly focus to life. The blend of scholarly research, field research and cultural observation makes African American Music: An Introduction the perfect text for study.

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Product Description:

African American Music: An Introduction is a collection of thirty essays by leading scholars whch survey major African American musical genres, both sacred and secular, from slavery to the present. The work brings together, in a single volume, treatments of African American music that have existed largely independent of each other. The research is based in large part on ethnographic fieldwork, which privileges the voices of the music-makers themselves, while interpreting their narratives through a richly textured mosaic of history and culture. The book is replete with references to seminal recordings and recording artists, musical transcriptions, photographs, and illustrations that bring the music to life as expressions of human beings. At the same time, it includes the kind of musical specificity that brings clarity to the structural, melodic, and rhythmic characteristics that both distinguish and unify the music of African-Americans.



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The African-American Century : How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country [Paperback] Review

Even though this book gives brief biographical sketches ofsignificant African Americans, I still give it five stars for the following reasons:
1) It is a very neatly organized resource for notable African-Americans, that can give quick and accurate information about these people and their times.I like that each page clearly shows the decade during which that person made major accomplishments. For each person profiled, there is at least onephoto, and a provocative, "boxed" quote.
2) This kind of book is desperately needed by most of America's schoolteachers. Many are not well-informed about the achievements of African-Americans, and here they get a quick, clear, and stimulating profile of many who made major contributions.Further, Professors Gates and West provide a bibliography that leads the reader to at least one significant in-depth work about each person profiled, so those who want to know more are "pointed in the right direction."
3) While there are some sports and entertainment figures, I don't think there is any bias in that direction. With personages like Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Hank Aaron, you MUST include them in a work like this because they really transcended sports, and became larger-than-life symbols of social issues.
4) Professors Cornel West and Henry Gates Jr. write in a very clear manner, and don't candy-coat their subject manner.They point out the contradictions in many of these peoples' lives, mention their social critics, and demonstrate that meaningful lives are seldom neat and tidy ones.To professors Gates and West, I say "Thanks, fellas, for not coming across like the stereotypical "stuffy Harvard scholars!"

Finally, if you know of a school teacher who is well-intended about teaching more about African American history, but maybecan benefit from an attractively presented and easily accessible resource book, think of this as a thoughtful gift to that person.Next time February (Black History Month) rolls around, they will have lots of suggestions for class projects and pupil reports.

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Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s [Paperback] Review

Did you know that women were the first popular blues singers? Black Pearls explores the pioneering women who in the 20's changed the record instustry and music as we know it. Having read a few blues books by now, I found that portions in the introductory sections lacked the sort of awe-inspiring insight that makes for an excellent blues book. And my attention span had me skipping half-way through the chapter on lyrical analysis. Howvever, once I got to the sections that focus on the individual performers, this book excelled. There are many who seem hellbent on denying these particular women a hallowed place in the history of popular music (read Alan Lomax's brief dismissal of the classic blues era in his "The Land Where the Blues Began"), but Harrison's prodigious biographical and musical insights really open the door to a greater appreciation of the women she features. As a companion, I might suggest the cd "Classic Blues Women" by Rhino Records.

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Songs of the Unsung : The Musical and Social Journey of Horace Tapscott [Hardcover] Review

SONGS OF THE UNSUNG: THE MUSICAL & SOCIAL JOURNEY OF HORACE TAPSCOTT is an engaging read. Not only is the book the autobiography of Los Angeles pianist and bandleader Horace Tapscott, it is an informative history of West Coast jazz and Los Angeles black arts.

Tapscott worked with writer Steve Isoardi for several years through the 1990s. They first connected for the Isoardi-led book CENTRAL AVENUE SOUNDS. Read both of these books as well as THE DARK TREE for the hidden hitory of West Coast community arts. Horace Tapscott was a major musical pioneer for over 40 years, read details of his amazing story here.

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FOUR LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS [Paperback] Review

Spellman, a lucid analyst of the avant garde jazz movement in the '60s (see his liner notes, for example, on the original release of Coltrane's "Ascension"), has contributed with this book four compellingportraits of musicians who gave and have given their lives tojazz.
"Four Lives in the Bebop Business" profiles two altoists,Jackie McLean and Ornette Coleman; and two pianists, Cecil Taylor andHerbie Nichols. Spellman skillfully crafts the narratives, while wiselyallowing his subjects to tell large chunks of their stories in their ownwords.
It becomes clear as one reads the book that it took a lot of gutsto be a jazz musician during the '50s and '60s (and still does). All fourof the musicians faced major obstacles in pursuing their art.
McLean,who enjoyed the greatest amount of commercial success of the four,especially early on, battled drug addiction. Taylor and Coleman faced openhostility because of their challenging, groundbreaking approaches toplaying their instruments. Nichols (the only one of the four who is notstill alive) was just plain ignored, despite his brilliantly originalplaying (check out the two-disk Blue Note compilation of his music), andspent much of his all-too-brief career playing in Greenwich Villagedives.
In spite of bad accommodations, poor pay, public indifference,critical hostility and difficulty finding gigs, these artists, the bookmakes clear, would never play anything other than jazz. In this sense, thebook has an underlying inspirational message. Still, it remains for Americato fully embrace its only true indigenous art form, something which to thisday has not occurred.
The book also offers insights from the musicians onthe creative process and about the historic changes in jazz that occurredduring the '60s, from the perspective of men who were on the front lines ofthe battles between critics, musicians, and the listening public.
Required reading for the serious jazz listener.

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Product Description:
This book offers biographical sketches and quotations from four black musicians: Herbie Nichols, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and Jackie McLean. Photographs.

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