New Books in Music

Cultural movements don’t exist in vacuums. Consciously or not, all movements borrow from, and sometimes reject, those that came before. In Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement (Lexington Books, 2011), the first in a trilogy of books that cast a critical eye upon hip hop as a social and cultural movement, Reiland Rabaka traces the pre-history of hip hop as a series of separate yet connected movements that dealt with inequalities of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Using Africana, feminist, and queer critical theories as tools for understanding, Rabaka follows the history of black, women’s, and LGBT resistance to heterosexual white male hegemony in U.S. culture. Rabaka’s focus is always on the roles that art and artists (literary, visual, musical) have in people’s active resistances to oppression. The Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, Black Women’s Liberation, and Feminist Art Movements are just a few of the cultural happenings that Rabaka details as precursors to today’s “conscious” rap, feminist rap, and Homo-Hop, among others. All along, Rabaka’s message is not simply academic, he is also speaking directly to contemporary hip hoppers, urging them not to forget their past and to learn from the struggles of their forbears. Reiland Rabaka is an Associate Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Humanities Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also an Affiliate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Program and a Research Fellow at the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA). He has published ten books, including Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (2012) and The Hip Hop Movement: From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation (2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

American history is all about movement: geographical, cultural, ideological. Economic depression and war make the 1930s and ’40s a dramatic example of this movement. In Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s (University of Chicago, 2012), Andrew S. Berish explores the flourishing big band dance music of these decades as it reflected and influenced movement with the United States. Conceptually, he examines the amorphous ideas of space and place, and the ways dance band jazz was defined by and helped create the places and spaces of mid-twentieth century America. Empirically, Berish’s focus is on the music of specific musicians and bands (Jan Garber, Charlie Barnet, Duke Ellington, Charlie Christian), the performances of their music (“Avalon,” “Make Believe Ballroom,” “Air-Conditioned Jungle”) and the places in which the performances took place (Casino Ballroom, Meadowbrook Inn, Chicago Civic Opera House, the road). America’s movement through war, depression, and racial integration are at the core of Berish’s analysis of big band jazz, and his detailed cultural and ethnomusicological analyses support his reasoning that music can tell us a lot about the social conditions of our times. Andrew S. Berish is assistant professor in the Humanities and Cultural Studies Department at the University of South Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Texas poet/author/historian Dave Oliphant‘s KD: A Jazz Biography (Wings Press, 2012) is a poetic tribute to the life of Jazz trumpeter and one of the original Jazz Messengers, Kenny Dorham. Dorham, who played with some of the jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Monk and many, many others, is less well known than many of his contemporaries, but Oliphant’s highly allusive and alliterative rhythms and rhymes open one’s ears, eyes and heart to the Texas-born and raised trumpet player. Oliphant describes Dorham’s small town roots: Ken’s prodigious ear at five years old Could pick out keyboard boogies cold & from Sis’s 78s he could already tell Louie on trumpet an equal of Gabriel Oliphant also describes touches on Dorham’s gigs and experiences in New York City, the West Coast, Paris, South America, Scandinavia, and his untimely death from kidney disease at the age of 48 in 1972. a brain filled with unseen notes heard within his inner ears then out of tubes & a gold or silver bell the valve lubes had speeded along Messengers’ word a prophetic phrase blues or bossa beat a chase or a smoky-toned running line to blend with any instrument compete with none but under the brothers’ sign KD: A Jazz Biography is also a trove of takes on Dorham’s performances. Readers will find themselves downloading songs and comparing Oliphant’s insights with their own. There are also comparisons to Dorham’s trumpet player peers, in particular, Clifford Brown. For those who take pride in the diversity of their jazz libraries, this is a book that is as unique, original and dignified as Dorham himself. Oliphant weaves his own extended literary, historical, biologic, poetic, and popular culture knowledge into this extended poem about one of jazz’s lesser-known but nonetheless highly talented and original players. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Harkening out of the United State’s Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and songs are still recognized by many rock fans. And those of us who do recognize these bands tend to link them to a larger artistic and musical genre known as Riot Grrrl. In Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (Harper Perennial, 2010), Sara Marcus traces the first five explosive years of Riot Grrrl, 1989-1994. She convincingly shows that although some very cool music was at its core, the movement went far beyond the bands, and far beyond Olympia, WA. Marcus follows the members of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile as they travel to Washington, D.C. forming girls-only collectives, participating in nationally organized political demonstrations, writing stridently feminist fanzines, and playing gigs to audiences of outcast girls who found there was indeed a supportive place for them to express themselves freely. By ’93 the movement was international with Riot Grrrl chapters in Minneapolis, Oklahoma, New York City, Vancouver, B.C., and London to name just a few. Toward the end of the book’s timeframe, Riot Grrrl was weakened by forces that befall many social movements: the mainstream press and music industry co-opted some of its important leaders and images, infighting among members kept some chapters from realizing their goals, and strident localism kept geographically disparate branches from forming lasting network ties. All-in-all, however, Marcus convincingly shows Riot Grrrl to have been an important wave of an ongoing feminist movement in which young women and girls redefined sex, gender, and sexuality as their own. Sara Marcus writes about music, books, and politics for numerous publications, including Bookforum, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Artforum.com, Slate, Salon, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time Out New York, The Forward, and Heeb magazine, where she was politics editor for five years; her poetry has appeared in Death, Encyclopedia, EOAGH, Tantalum, and The Art of Touring. She has taught at girls’ rock camps in Portland and New York, has played drums and keyboards in a long string of relatively short-lived bands, and continues to instigate communal, de-skilled music making whenever possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Kathy Sloane‘s Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club (Indiana UP, 2011) captures a time and place in San Francisco in the 70s and early 80s that we may never see again. Owner/impresario/musician Todd Barkan ran the club on a frayed financial shoestring, but the club’s unique ambience in San Francisco’s North Beach beckoned the greatest jazz players, where jazz aficionados and neophytes alike could appreciate America’s great cultural art form. Sloane’s fabulous black and white photographs of jazz players such as Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Betty Carter, Elvin Jones, Mary Lou Williams, Bobby Hutcherson, McCoy Tyner, and countless others range from the contemplative to the kinetic – and they all tell a story. Sloane arranges chapters thematically with titles familiar to jazz lovers like Bright Moments, Bobby and Bags and Teach Me Tonight. In each chapter, the Keystone family of employees, patrons and the players tell stories and reminisce as to what made the club special. And there was something special about the club, from the cramped confines to the smells of Ora Harris’s home cooking to the down-home good feeling – and it was next to the police precinct in North Beach to boot! Sloane includes a discography compiled by Stuart Kremsky and a CD of some of the great live performances at the Korner with liner notes by Sascha Feinstein. Like the Keystone Korner itself, Sloane’s book is a labor of love and a testament to a memorable time and place. If you were lucky enough to have been there, you can relive it; if you missed it, you can go back in time and live in the heart, art and soul of a San Francisco institution that epitomized the music and feeling of jazz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Big Bill Broonzy was a master storyteller. From his name, he was born Lee Conly Bradley, to his age, he typically added a decade, to the facts of his growing up in the pre-civil rights segregated South (not that he didn’t, he simply embellished a lot) Bill could spin a yarn. As Bob Riesman tells it in I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy (University of Chicago, 2011) Bill mythologized his life in order to tell a story that was larger than his own, the story of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bill told his story through songs–he recorded hundreds of them in his more than three decade career–some of which, like “Key to the Highway” and “Black, Brown, and White Blues,” remain popular and relevant to this day. But he also told his story through the many candid conversations he had with fellow blues travelers that were recorded by the likes of Studs Terkel, Alan Lomox, and Win Stracke. The Belgian husband and wife team of Yannick and Margo Bruynoghe compiled and edited a lengthy series of Bill’s own writings into an autobiography, Big Bill Blues. All-in-all, Big Bill Broonzy stands as one of the giants of American blues and jazz. He played with and/or influenced the blues of many musicians including, but not limited to: Roosevelt Sykes, Washboard Sam, Lil Green, Muddy Waters, Big Maceo Merriweather, Sonny Boy Williamson, Mahalia Jackson, Pete Seeger, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend. Big Bill himself may not be lodged in the memories of most people these days, but his music and stories surely are. Bob Riesman is coeditor of Chicago Folk: Images of the Sixties Music Scene: The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage. He produced and cowrote the television documentary American “Roots Music: Chicago” and was a contributor to Routledge’s Encyclopedia of the Blues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Kevin Whitehead‘s highly readable, informative and entertaining Why Jazz? A Concise Guide (Oxford University Press, 2011) is bookshelf “must have” for anyone who loves jazz – and he does it in a question/answer call and response style that is the perfect format for today’s point and click text and twitter world. It’s a primer for those who want to know more about the fascinating personalities in jazz from Louis Armstrong to Mary Lou Williams to Anthony Braxton (and Miles, Mingus, Monk and Coltrane); it’s a history lesson from New Orleans Dixieland to otherworldly free-jazz. Best of all, Kevin gives the reader a rich trove of musical examples and a wide-ranging discography certain to open new vistas for those who are just digging jazz for the first time as well as aficionados who have been listening for years. Almost a half century ago, historian Will Durant condensed his 11 volumes of a lifetime of research into a small, thin work acknowledging the folly of trying to encompass the complexity of the impossible task before him. Kevin Whitehead has worked a similar miracle in his slim volume Why Jazz? This is a gem of a book that’s got passion and insight and beckons those who dig jazz and don’t know why as well as those who think they “get it” and want to know more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a “party tape?” Bought a bootleg album? You may have done these things, but have you purchased a bootlegged song-sheet? In Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 (University of Chicago, 2011) Barry Kernfeld fills us in on the history of disobedient music reproduction and distribution since, well, before the advent of recording technology. Along the way he discusses the above mentioned disobedient distribution techniques along with a few others: fake books, music photocopying, and pirate radio round out the book. Kernfeld suggests that the history of pop music piracy is never ending, with battles of different types of disobedience taking similar forms: the music “monopolists” (song owners) attempting to enact prohibitions on illegal production and distribution, the failed containment of said production and distribution systems and, finally, the assimilation of disobedient forms into the mainstream production and distribution industries. Barry Kernfeld is on the staff of the Special Collections Library of the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians and What to Listen for in Jazz, and he is the editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. He is also a professional jazz saxophonist playing in Jazza-ma-phone and a clarinetist in local musical theater productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating narrative in which the content of a popular television show is only one element of its phenomenal impact. Nor is American Bandstand‘s popularity the limit of Delmont’s interest. In The Nicest Kids in Town, American Bandstand marks the confluence of competing, contradictory, and even some complementary forces in 1950s Philadelphia: local civil rights activism, inter-ethnic tensions, defensive localism, housing discrimination, and concerns over youth behavior influenced the content and reception of the program. Part of the book’s brilliance lies in its use of character to create a sense of the place and time. From smaller characters like Walter Palmer, a black teen who organized against the segregation of Bandstand, to earnest liberal anti-segregationists like Maurice Fagan, whose treatment is more extensive, to the television icon Dick Clark, Delmont makes the people in the book both historical agents and complex human beings. Though it is most unusual as a piece of scholarship in so fully evoking a time and place filled with real people, The Nicest Kids in Town is equally a model for American Studies research. Delmont’s painstaking thoroughness yields incredible specificity, which is most useful to making major claims about the importance of popular culture and about particular cultural products. Finally, the book offers a perspective on the major industrial shifts in the television and music industries of the period, revealing how the displacement and/or appropriation of local talent and culture through the giant apparatus of television both expanded TV’s possibilities and complicated (for better and worse) the potential for local change. In addition to the book itself (which is available both in text and for Kindle) and its website, and the author’s website , check out The Nicest Kids in Town digital project which includes 100 related images and video clips including American Bandstand memorabilia, newspaper clippings regarding protests of American Bandstand, photographs from high school yearbooks, and video clips from American Bandstand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

“New York City tends to erase its history, endlessly reinventing itself: that is its way, ” writes Will Hermes on the final page of his book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever (Faber and Faber, 2011). Nineteen seventy-three through nineteen seventy-seven, argues Hermes, were pivotal ones for New York. The city was in near socio-economic-cultural collapse during this time (the blackout of 1977, Son of Sam, a $5.3 billion debt) yet it was also a time of great musical creativity. These were birthing years for many of the artists and bands that, in coming together, created music scenes that influenced not only music in the city and nation, but also around the world: punk, salsa, disco, hip-hop, and avant-garde all took root and blossomed during this period. In Buildings on Fire, Hermes details the activities of the major players in NYC’s music communities of the mid-seventies and explains the social conditions that encouraged and constrained their actions. Will Hermes is a senior critic for Rolling Stone and a longtime contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. His work also appears in The New York Times and The Village Voice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music