Cover image for The grey album ; on the blackness of blackness
The grey album ; on the blackness of blackness
Title:
The grey album ; on the blackness of blackness
ISBN:
9781555976071
Publication Information:
Minneapolis, Minn. : Graywolf Press, c2012.
Physical Description:
483 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Contents:
Overture -- Elsewhere: The shadow book ; How not to be a slave : on the Black art of escape ; Chorus one : steal away : slavery and its discontents -- Strange fruit: Broken tongue : Paul Laurence Dunbar, his descendants, and the dance of dialect ; Chorus two : it don't mean a thing : the blues mask of modernism ; "If you can't read, run anyhow!" : Langston Hughes and the poetics of refusal -- Heaven is Negro: Chorus three : ugly beauty : postmodernism and all that jazz ; Broken giraffe : Bob Kaufman, the song, and the silence ; Chorus four : moanin' : soul music and the power of pleasure -- Cosmic slop: Interstellar space : toward a post-soul poetics ; Final chorus : Planet Rock : the end of the record: The third coming ; 100 guns ; 36 chambers ; 99 problems ; Deadism.
Summary:
"Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying-telling tales, fibbing, improvising, jazzing up, "storying." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art-and artfulness-to our daily lives. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young shifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix-all the grey areas of our history, literature, and music."--Cover p. [4].
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