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Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.3 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
Enslaved African Americans longed for freedom, and that longing took many forms including music. Drawing on biblical imagery, slave songs both expressed the sorrow of life in bondage and offered a rallying cry for the spirit. Like a Bird brings together text, music, and illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award-winning illustrator Michele Wood to convey the rich meaning behind thirteen of these powerful songs.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"It was at the age of three, sitting in the front seat of her father's car, that Alice Randall began to write her first country song: "Daddy, don't go in that B-A-R." To Randall, country music is a beating heart, shared communally with her family alive and gone, and the origin of a singular distinction she holds in American music history: the first Black woman to cowrite a #1 country hit, Trisha Yearwood's "XXX's and OOO's." Randall found inspiration...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The twin acts of singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand tells an essential part of that story. With lyrics penned by James Weldon Johnson and music composed by his brother Rosamond, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was embraced almost immediately as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of black Americans. Since the song's creation, it has been adopted by the NAACP and performed...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly-line approach to Black genius. And these critical inquiries are complemented by his own memories as a music fan, and the way his appetite for pop culture taught him about America. A history of the last half-century and an intimate...
Author
Language
English
Description
This survey of the music of black Americans begins with the arrival in 1619 of the first black men in the English colonies. It discusses the work of black composers and performers, the role of the black churches in the North, theatrical activities, the songs of work and play, the development of jazz, and art music.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Since their enslavement in West Africa and transport to plantations of the New World, black people have made music that has been deeply entwined with their religious, community, and individual identities. Music was one of the most important constant elements of African American culture in the centuries-long journey from slavery to freedom. It also continued to play this role in blacks' post-emancipation odyssey from second-class citizenship to full...
Language
English
Description
In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten,...
Language
English
Formats
Description
This acclaimed documentary covers the 200 year history of African-American Christianity, featuring the legends of Gospel music, including The Staple Singers, The Clara Ward Singers, The Dixie Hummingbirds, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.. Culled from hundreds of hours of music, tracing the evolution of gospel music through its many styles – the spirituals and early hymns, the four-part harmony-based quartets, the integration of blues and swing, the emergence...
Author
Language
English
Formats
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The influence of African Americans on music in the United States cannot be overstated. A large variety of musical genres owe their beginnings to black musicians. Jazz, rap, funk, R&B, and even techno have roots in African American culture. This volume chronicles the history of African American music, with spotlights on influential black musicians of the past and present. Historical and contemporary photographs, including primary sources, contribute...
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English
Formats
Description
In The Emancipation of Slaves Through Music, music mogul Dr. Mathew Knowles presents a keen examination of the liberating effects of music on an oppressed people. By taking readers on the journey of its secret use during slavery up through its eventual commercialization in the industry, he exposes the art form's true power. Between its informative pages, the book explores the uprooting of Africans via the transatlantic slave trade and the evolving...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
It was not until the mid-1920s that the full spectrum of this music black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and crude made it onto records for all to hear. This book brings a forgotten music, hot music, to life by describing how it became the dominant American music how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlor ballads, symphonic marches and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers and how it became rock n roll. It reveals that the young men and women...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Will Ashon tells, in 36 interlinked 'chambers', the story of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and how it changed the world. As unexpected and complex as the album itself, Chamber Music ranges from provocative essays to semi-comic skits, from deep scholarly analysis to satirical celebration, seeking to contextualize, reveal and honor this singular work of art. Chamber Music is an explosive and revelatory new way of writing about music and culture."--...
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