Black Music, White Business


Book Description

Probes the principal contradiction in the jazz world: that between black artistry on the one hand and white ownership of the means of jazz distribution -- the recording companies, booking agencies, festivals, nightclubs, and magazines -- on the other.




Blues Music in the Sixties


Book Description

In the 1960s, within the larger context of the civil rights movement and the burgeoning counterculture, the blues changed from black to white in its production and reception, as audiences became increasingly white. Yet, while this was happening, blackness-especially black masculinity-remained a marker of authenticity. Blues Music in the Sixties discusses these developments, including the international aspects of the blues. It highlights the performers and venues that represented changing racial politics and addresses the impact and involvement of audiences and cultural brokers.




Black and White Music


Book Description

In Black & White Music report I investigated a very small part of the music industry from the USA (0.09% musicians); more precisely, I investigated the contribution and the artistic merit (greater or lesser) of black artists (0.03%) and white artists (0.05%) in the production and writing of their albums. The artists investigated in this report are Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan, Adele and Beck. I selected these artists because the music produced and released by them was used by various artists and journalists as examples of allegations of discrimination and racism which takes place in the music industry in the USA. The aim of the research is split into 2 levels: in the first level: I explored, analysed and created a comparative study about the contribution and the artistic merit of black and white artists in the production and writing of their albums; to achieve this aim, I added contribution and artistic merit into one bubble of research and treated the two concepts with the same meaning, then I divided the bubble into 8 points of research. the second level: is about using the findings from the eight points of research to offer a response to three conventional wisdom advanced by black artists and their supporters against the rules and awards offered by The Recording Academy. Black & White Music report it is unique and original which investigates the artistic merit of six of the best artists in the music industry of the USA; in these pages, there is an advanced comparative analysis of the music released by famous artists that was never done before. Black & White Music report was born out of the urgent need to confront and challenge the three conventional wisdom advanced by black artists and their supporters who feel and promote the idea of injustice regarding the music released. Black & White Music report can be used to calm the realities of discrimination and racism and provides a point of reference of the quality, originality and novelty of the music investigated in these pages; also, it is for future artists waiting to be discovered, and what they need to expect once they are part of the music industry. Second Edition July 2023




The Piano in Black and White


Book Description

The full eBook version of The Piano in Black and White by Mark Tanner. In fixed-layout format, with downloadable audio. The Piano in Black and White is for everyone with an unrequited love for the piano. It will entice complete beginners to climb a few important rungs up the ladder, coax the fainthearted to become fully fledged players and welcome back those whose previous pianistic experience did not take them far enough. Packed with inspirational advice, this book demystifies the process of learning the piano through easy-to-follow photographs, 'play along' online audio and unique techniques such as Finger Pilates and The Ten-by-five Practice Method. By the end of the book you will be able to play 12 beautiful pieces - making this an unmissable book for all would-be pianists!




Souled American


Book Description

From Jim Crow to Eminem, white culture has been transformed by black music. To be so influenced by the boundless imagination of a race brought to America in chains sets up a fascinating irony, andSouled American, an ambitious and comprehensive look at race relations as seen through the prism of music, examines that irony fearlessly—with illuminating results. Tracing a direct line from plantation field hollers to gangsta rap, author Kevin Phinney explains how blacks and whites exist in a constant tug-of-war as they create, re-create, and claim each phase of popular music. Meticulously researched, the book includes dozens of exclusive celebrity interviews that reveal the day-to-day struggles and triumphs of sharing the limelight. Unique, intriguing, Souled Americanshould be required reading for every American interested in music, in history, or in healing our country’s troubled race relations. • Combines social history and pop culture to reveal how jazz, blues, soul, country, and hip-hop have developed • Includes interviews with Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, B. B. King, David Byrne, Sly Stone, Donna Summer, Bonnie Raitt, and dozens more • Confronts questions of race and finds meaningful answers • Ideal for Black History Month




Music: Black, White & Blue


Book Description




Blues People


Book Description

"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music." So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.




The White Racial Frame


Book Description

In this book Joe Feagin extends the systemic racism framework in previous Routledge books by developing an innovative concept, the white racial frame. Now four centuries-old, this white racial frame encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology emphasized in other theories of "race," but also the visual images, array of emotions, sounds of accented language, interlinking interpretations and narratives, and inclinations to discriminate that are still central to the frame’s everyday operations. Deeply imbedded in American minds and institutions, this white racial frame has for centuries functioned as a broad worldview, one essential to the routine legitimation, scripting, and maintenance of systemic racism in the United States. Here Feagin examines how and why this white racial frame emerged in North America, how and why it has evolved socially over time, which racial groups are framed within it, how it has operated in the past and in the present for both white Americans and Americans of color, and how the latter have long responded with strategies of resistance that include enduring counter-frames. In this new edition, Feagin has included much new interview material and other data from recent research studies on framing issues related to white, black, Latino, and Asian Americans, and on society generally. The book also includes a new discussion of the impact of the white frame on popular culture, including on movies, video games, and television programs as well as a discussion of the white racial frame’s significant impacts on public policymaking, immigration, the environment, health care, and crime and imprisonment issues.




Good Booty


Book Description

NPR Best Books of 2017 In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR’s acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race. In Good Booty, Ann Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and the cyborg known as Britney Spears to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom. In a survey that spans more than a century of music, Powers both heralds little known artists such as Florence Mills, a contemporary of Josephine Baker, and gospel queen Dorothy Love Coates, and sheds new light on artists we think we know well, from the Beatles and Jim Morrison to Madonna and Beyoncé. In telling the history of how American popular music and sexuality intersect—a magnum opus over two decades in the making—Powers offers new insights into our nation psyche and our soul.