| Contents |
Foreword / Melanie Zeck -- Preface / Samuel A. Floyd Jr. and Melanie Zeck -- Introduction -- Black music and the African Diaspora. Out of Africa: setting sail from the motherland -- The making of the African Diaspora: ships on the oceans -- The Diaspora's concert worlds: Europe and the Americas -- Isles of rhythm: the Cinquillo-Tresillo Complex in the Circum-Caribbean -- Ties that bind: myth and ritual in the Circum-Caribbean and beyond -- Case studies. "Pip's tambourine": black music and Sterling Stuckey's revelations of Herman Melville's hidden sources -- "Git on board, lil' chillun": children and music in the Diaspora / (by Melanie Zeck) -- The movement: black identities and the paths forward -- Afro-modernism and music: on science, community, and magic in the black avant-garde / (by Guthrie Ramsey Jr.) -- Africa and the trope of the return -- Epilogue -- Appendix A: Excerpt from "Ring shout!: literary studies, historical studies, and black music inquiry" ; Appendix B: Figures and institutions from the "first black renaissance". |
| Abstract |
Powerful and embracive, this book explores the full spectrum of black musics over the past thousand years as Africans and their descendants have traveled around the globe making celebrated music both in their homelands and throughout the Diaspora. The authors discuss how the music has blossomed, permeated present traditions, and created new practices. As a companion to the ground-breaking this book situates emerging, morphing, and influential black musics in a broader framework of cultural, political, and social histories. Grappling with subjects frequently omitted from traditional musical texts, this book is guided by more than just the ideals of inclusivity and representation. This work covers overlooked topics that include classical musicians of African descent, and builds upon the contributions of esteemed predecessors in the field of black music study. Providing a sweeping list of figures rarely included in conventional music history and theory textbooks, the text elucidates the findings of ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, Americanists, Africanists, and anthropologists, and weaves these accounts into a powerful and informative narrative. This book reflects the musical phenomena generated by forced African migration and collective memory, and considers the kinds of powerful stories that these musics were meant to tell. Filling in critical musical and historical gaps previously ignored, authors Floyd, Zeck, and Ramsey infuse an engaging musical dialogue with a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between black musical genres and mainstream music. |
