The Brewing Storm

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Composers ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
Open Question

A small number of US-based composers began experimenting with the use of African American vernacular music as the basis for instrumental works around 1880, arguing that this music formed a truly American folk repertoire. Their works found public favor in the United States and, more importantly, in several European cities in the months leading up to Dvořák’s arrival as director of the National Conservatory. Dvořák’s own position in the debate about American national style was an open question until May 1893, when he revealed his belief in the authentic American identity of Black vernacular music, thus affirming the approach of earlier American composers.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Abrams Ansari
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Composers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Changing Attitudes

The introduction provides an overview of the history of musical Americanism, from the 1920s to the 1970s, in tandem with an assessment of changing attitudes toward American identity in the United States. It introduces scholarly debates surrounding the Cold War politicization of serialism and tonality and describes the various opportunities for work with government exploited by American composers during the 1950s and 1960s. These opportunities included serving as advisers to the State Department, the US Information Agency, and organizations funded by the CIA, as well as touring overseas as government-funded cultural ambassadors. These contexts establish the basis for the book’s argument that the Cold War presented both challenges and opportunities for Americanist composers that would ultimately result in a rebranding of their style.

I Come for to Sing

2018 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
The Way

From 1930 to 1970, a second folk music revival took hold in the United States and Europe, determined to capture and preserve for posterity US and European vernacular music. Critical to this collection of folklorists, academics, political activists, and entrepreneurs was the history and impact of African American music on folklore and culture. Big Bill, quite familiar with the types of country and Delta blues the folk music revival craved stood happy to oblige. Soon, one of the most sophisticated and urbane performers of the age began performing alone accompanied by his guitar for folk audiences from New York to Chicago. Within this community, Broonzy found a culture and environment willing and able to support his transitioning career from black pop star to folk music darling. Along the way, he would meet more individuals who could aid in his career reinvention and he both accepted and rejected their expectations of him and his music.

Implication, Quotation, and Coltrane in Selected Works By David N. Baker

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-164
Author(s):  
HORACE J. MAXILE
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
American Composers ◽  
John Coltrane ◽  
Black Vernacular ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Compositional Structures ◽  
Concert Works ◽  
African American Composers

AbstractThis article explores composer David N. Baker's use of elements of jazz and vernacular music to articulate formal structures and suggest extramusical commentaries in his concert works, with particular focus on the Sonata for Cello and Piano and the Sonata I for Piano. Themes of homage to and respect for jazz saxophonist John Coltrane resonate through these works. Various features bring the jazz legend to mind, but Baker's compelling play with implication and quotation provides fertile ground for studying musical signification and the use of vernacular emblems within Western compositional structures and the concert music of African American composers. Conventional analytical methods are combined with readings of referential symbols to work toward interpretations that address both structural and expressive domains. This approach allows discussions of compositional techniques to intersect with cultural and philosophical considerations. By addressing issues of musical structure and expressivity, this article seeks to move beyond commonplace surface-level descriptions of black vernacular emblems in the concert music of African American composers.

Double Consciousness and an African American Enclave

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen R. Fellows
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
The Us

Fleeing a tremendous rise in racial tensions and an American nationality increasingly defined by whiteness, a small group of free blacks fled the US for the island nation of Haiti in 1824 and settled in what is now Samaná, Dominican Republic. The descendants of the original settlers continued to self-identify as both “American” and “black” until the most recent generations. This chapter will focus on issues of communal identity within the globally connected Caribbean, with special attention paid to intersection of race and nationality. Oral historical and archival data will reveal how the American community in Samaná continuously negotiated the “double consciousness” of their African-American identity in a place influenced first by the black Republic of Haiti and later the white, Hispanic, and Catholic nationalism of the Dominican Republic; similar to many Caribbean communities the United States has also played an important role in the development, maintenance, and dissolution of this communal identity.

Slavery Now

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Monica White Ndounou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Economic Data ◽  
African American Identity

This chapter insists that films are the most visible monuments to slavery in the United States and that memories of slavery crucially shape African American identity formation. Miniseries like Roots and The Book of Negroes also demonstrate the possibilities of capturing the complexity of slavery from the perspective of enslaved Africans rather than white slavers. Ed Guerrero recognizes that this shift in viewpoint gained mainstream momentum due to the Black Power movement with studios attempting to attract black audiences with cinematic adaptations like Mandingo (1975), Drum (1976) and Roots. Independent filmmaker Haile Gerima filmed Sankofa (1993) over a twenty-year period starting in the 1970s. This chapter shows how post-20th century films about slavery can benefit from cinematic adaptations of the 1970s. It examines the format, economic data, narrative focus, casting, reception, and genre of a sampling of films to demonstrate how exploring or exploiting the perspective of the enslaved may affect subsequent films.

scholarly journals STEREOTYPING AFRICAN AMERICANS’ RACIAL IDENTITY ON VALERIE MARTIN’S PROPERTY

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Rasiah Rasiah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Character ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
New Form ◽  
Valerie Martin

This study is intended to analyze the persistence of African American stereotype in the contemporary slavery-themed novel authored by Valerie Martin, Property (2003). Valerie Martin is a white author, who seems to have changed the slavery discourse, but the stereotyping of African Americans is still there and built in a new form of stereotyping. Postcolonial analysis showed that the stereotyping of African Americansas ‘other’ existed in direct stereotyping and indirect stereotyping. Direct stereotyping is that the author directly uses the pejorative language and symbols in forming the African American character, meanwhile indirect stereotyping is the author using the shift of discourse that seemed worthy in describing the African American character, but in the same time it affirms the stereotype of the African American identity as inferior still exists, even in the so-called Post-racial era in the United States. Keywords: Representation, Stereotyping, Identity, Race, African American

Religion, Race, and Humanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.

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