“Counter-Bopaganda” and “Torn Riffs”

Between Beats ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 109-149
Author(s):  
Christi Jay Wells
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Oral History ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
Social Dancing ◽  
Black Popular Culture ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Off Time

This chapter focuses on the subculture of young African Americans who developed forms of social dancing to bebop music as recounted to the author in oral history interviews with self-identified bebop dancers and as documented by Russian modern dancer/choreographer Mura Dehn in her film The Spirit Moves and in her drafts for an unfinished study on jazz dance. Dehn’s work reveals fascinating creative adaptations to bebop’s accelerating tempos and complex melodic structures in new and expanded dances such as the applejack, Jersey bounce, and bop lindy. Through these developments, dancers engaged in intricate metric and hypermetric play with bebop music—which they refer to as dancing “off-time”—while also embodying bebop’s “cool” aesthetic and the emergent cynicism and radicalism that shaped postwar African American political culture. Their experiences, and Dehn’s work to document them, demand a re-examination of the discursive work performed by bebop’s reputation as a music innately hostile to social dancing, a label that has less to do with the music’s difficulty than with a desire to position bebop as “art” rather than “entertainment.” The chapter closes with a discussion of “the problem of Dizzy Gillespie” to highlight and explore the historiographic challenges that discussion of social dance poses to canonic narrative positionings of bebop. It suggests that bebop is better understood as part of a contiguous spectrum of Black popular culture that thrived alongside, rather than in opposition to, rhythm & blues and other popular music genres.

scholarly journals Based on the Puritan Concept and Ethical Spirit: the Preliminary Formation of African American Political Culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Shu Qi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Black American ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Political Idea ◽  
The Relationship

Puritan ideas and ethics are not only the cradle of the mainstream political culture in America, but also the ideological source of the African American political culture. However, what was the significance of puritanism for the emergence of early political ideas among black American? To answer the question, it is necessary to delve into the meaning of puritanism to the political culture of the black American. This paper will elaborate on the crucial role of puritanism in the formation of black political culture in America from three aspects, that is, establishing a close relationship between puritanism and African American political culture. In order to understand it profoundly, three relationships will be established and explained. Respectively, the first one is to establish the relationship between Puritan idea especially the concept of equality and African American political idea; the second one is to establish the relationship between Puritan life and African American political elites; the third one is to establish the relationship between Puritan ethical spirits and moral norms and African American self-consciousness. More specifically, First of all, the germination of the early political ideas of African American was based on Puritan ideas; Secondly, Puritan life was the cradle of the growth of black political elites; Finally, the Puritan ethical spirit, such as diligence and frugality, diligence and hard work, tidiness and cleanliness, decent behavior and other basic behavioral norms, had a deep influence on the cultivation of the moral behavior norms and the formation of self-consciousness of African American.

“Latter-Day Slavery”

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-143
Author(s):  
Susan D. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
White Led ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

My research highlights little-known aspects of African American participation in the mobilization on behalf of women’s suffrage in California, an issue of vital importance to African Americans. The history of suffrage in the United States is marked by varying degrees of denial of voting rights to African Americans. In California, African Americans were pivotal participants in three major suffrage campaigns. Based on black women’s support for the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted black men the right to vote, black men and women formed a critical political alliance, one in which black men almost universally supported black women’s suffrage. Black women began and continued their activism on behalf of male and female voting rights, not as an extension of white-led suffrage campaigns, but as an expression of African American political culture. African Americans—including black women suffragists—developed their own political culture, in part, to associate with those of similar culture and life experiences, but also because white-led suffrage organizations excluded black members. Black politics in California reflected African Americans’ confidence in black women as political actors and their faith in their own independent efforts to secure the franchise for both black men and women.

Children, and Black Children

Gone Home ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 76-100
Author(s):  
Karida L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Children ◽  
Racial Lines

This chapter analyzes the emergence of the racial self among this migrant group of “Black Appalachians.” How does a child come to learn that they are a black child? What are the institutions and practices that inform and reinforce one’s understanding of his or her own racialization? What are the ways in which this generation of African Americans affirmed and valued their own lives within the dehumanizing context of Jim Crow? Drawing on the oral history testimony of Brown’s research participants, this chapter offers a phenomenological analysis of the ways in which African American children of that generation experienced, perceived, and made sense of racism, prejudice, and segregation. The chapter argues that while the racial landscape was much different from that of their parents who grew up in post-Reconstruction era Alabama, the structure of feeling that articulates the ‘us and them’ along racial lines is the same.

Lift Every Voice and Swing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaughn A. Booker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Black Popular Culture ◽  
Duke Ellington ◽  
American Protestantism

In the twentieth century, jazz professionals became race representatives who also played an important part in shaping the religious landscape of twentieth-century African American Protestantism. They wielded the power to both define their religious communities and craft novel religious voices and performances. These music celebrities released religious recordings and put on religious concerts, and they became integral to the artistry of African American religious expression. This book argues that with the emergence of new representatives in jazz, religious authority for African Americans found a place and spokespeople in popular culture beyond traditional Afro-Protestant institutions and religious life. It examines jazz musicians’ expressions of belief, practice, and unconventional positions of religious authority. It demonstrates that these jazz professionals enacted theological beliefs and religious practices that echoed, contested with, and diverged from the predominant African American religious culture. The lives and work of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mary Lou Williams anchor this book’s narrative of racial and religious representations as well as of religious beliefs and practices in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Through these African American jazz women and men, this book illuminates the significant Afro-Protestant cultural presence that informed, surrounded, and opposed their professional and personal lives while also contributing significantly to their artistry. This book’s focus on jazz musicians offers a novel rethinking of African American religious history by bringing the significant artistic dimensions of Afro-Protestant religion into focus as it impacted black popular culture in the twentieth century.

Jesse Jackson and the Symbolic Politics of Black Christendom

1985 ◽  
Vol 480 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES MELVIN WASHINGTON
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Symbolic Politics ◽  
American Political Culture ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Political Praxis

This article examines the significance of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's bid for the Democratic party's presidential nomination. Jackson's candidacy represents a new use of political revivalism, an old evangelical political praxis recast in the modalities of African American Christian culture. This praxis is an aspect of American political culture that has often been overlooked because of past misunderstandings of American folk religion in general, and black Christianity in particular, as captives of an otherworldly and privatized spirituality. This article contends that black Christianity has an identifiable and coherent political style with both passive and active moods. The dominant manifestations of these moods are, respectively, political cynicism and political revivalism, which are the consequence of the correct folk perception that it is impossible to reason with the purveyors of the absurdities of racial injustice. A critical assessment of black Christianity's political symbolic capital seems appropriate.

Mülteci olmak: Mersin’de yaşayan Filistinli mültecilerin göç hikâyeleri

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-224
Author(s):  
Bilge Deniz Çatak
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Emotional Bonds ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Refugee Experience

Filistin tarihinde yaşanan 1948 ve 1967 savaşları, binlerce Filistinlinin başka ülkelere göç etmesine neden olmuştur. Günümüzde, dünya genelinde yaşayan Filistinli mülteci sayısının beş milyonu aştığı tahmin edilmektedir. Ülkelerine geri dönemeyen Filistinlilerin mültecilik deneyimleri uzun bir geçmişe sahiptir ve köklerinden koparılma duygusu ile iç içe geçmiştir. Mersin’de bulunan Filistinlilerin zorunlu olarak çıktıkları göç yollarında yaşadıklarının ve mülteci olarak günlük hayatta karşılaştıkları zorlukların Filistinli kimlikleri üzerindeki etkisi sözlü tarih yöntemi ile incelenmiştir. Farklı kuşaklardan sekiz Filistinli mülteci ile yapılan görüşmelerde, dünyanın farklı bölgelerinde mülteci olarak yaşama deneyiminin, Filistinlilerin ulusal bağlılıklarına zarar vermediği görülmüştür. Filistin, mültecilerin yaşamlarında gelenekler, değerler ve duygusal bağlar ile devam etmektedir. Mültecilerin Filistin’den ayrılırken yanlarına aldıkları anahtar, tapu ve toprak gibi nesnelerin saklanıyor olması, Filistin’e olan bağlılığın devam ettiğinin işaretlerinden biridir.ABSTRACT IN ENGLISHPalestinian refugees’ lives in MersinIn the history of Palestine, 1948 and 1967 wars have caused fleeing of thousands of Palestinians to other countries. At the present time, its estimated that the number of Palestinian refugees worldwide exceeds five million. The refugee experience of Palestinians who can not return their homeland has a long history and intertwine with feeling of deracination. Oral history interviews were conducted on the effects of the displacement and struggles of daily life as a refugee on the identity of Palestinians who have been living in Mersin (city of Turkey). After interviews were conducted with eight refugees from different generations concluded that being a refugee in the various parts of the world have not destroyed the national entity of the Palestinians. Palestine has preserved in refugees’ life with its traditions, its values, and its emotional bonds. Keeping keys, deeds and soil which they took with them when they departed from Palestine, proving their belonging to Palestine.

Not as It Is Written

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Benjamin Houston
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Made In

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

Nimíciwinán, nipimátisiwinán – “Our food is our way of life”: On-Reserve First Nation perspectives on community food security and sovereignty through oral history in Fisher River Cree Nation, Manitoba

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shailesh Shukla ◽  
Jazmin Alfaro ◽  
Carol Cochrane ◽  
Cindy Garson ◽  
Gerald Mason ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Community Food Security ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Indigenous Foods ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Food insecurity in Indigenous communities in Canada continue to gain increasing attention among scholars, community practitioners, and policy makers. Meanwhile, the role and importance of Indigenous foods, associated knowledges, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples (Council of Canadian Academies, 2014) that highlight community voices in food security still remain under-represented and under-studied in this discourse. University of Winnipeg (UW) researchers and Fisher River Cree Nation (FRCN) representatives began an action research partnership to explore Indigenous knowledges associated with food cultivation, production, and consumption practices within the community since 2012. The participatory, place-based, and collaborative case study involved 17 oral history interviews with knowledge keepers of FRCN. The goal was to understand their perspectives of and challenges to community food security, and to explore the potential role of Indigenous food knowledges in meeting community food security needs. In particular, the role of land-based Indigenous foods in meeting community food security through restoration of health, cultural values, identity, and self-determination were emphasized by the knowledge keepers—a vision that supports Indigenous food sovereignty. The restorative potential of Indigenous food sovereignty in empowering individuals and communities is well-acknowledged. It can nurture sacred relationships and actions to renew and strengthen relationships to the community’s own Indigenous land-based foods, previously weakened by colonialism, globalization, and neoliberal policies.

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