Africa speaks, America answers : modern jazz in revolutionary times / Robin D. G. Kelley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kelley, Robin D. G.

Series:

Nathan I. Huggins lectures.

The Nathan I. Huggins lectures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Warren, Guy, 1923-2008.

Warren, Guy.

Weston, Randy, 1926-.

Weston, Randy.

Abdul-Malik, Ahmed.

Benjamin, Sathima Bea.

Fela, 1938-1997.

Fela.

Jazz--African influences.

Jazz.

Jazz--1951-1960--History and criticism.

Jazz--1961-1970--History and criticism.

Jazz musicians--Biography.

Jazz musicians.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (267 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Harvard University Press : Cambridge, Mass., 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, pianist Randy Weston and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik celebrated with song the revolutions spreading across Africa. In Ghana and South Africa, drummer Guy Warren and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin fused local musical forms with the dizzying innovations of modern jazz. These four were among hundreds of musicians in the 1950's and '60's who forged connections between jazz and Africa that definitively reshaped both their music and the world. Each artist identified in particular ways with Africa's struggle for liberation and made music dedicated to, or inspired by, demands for independence and self-determination. That music was the wild, boundary-breaking exultation of modern jazz. The result was an abundance of conversation, collaboration, and tension between African and African American musicians during the era of decolonization. This collective biography demonstrates how modern Africa reshaped jazz, how modern jazz helped form a new African identity, and how musical convergences and crossings altered politics and culture on both continents. In a crucial moment when freedom electrified the African diaspora, these black artists sought one another out to create new modes of expression. Documenting individuals and places, from Lagos to Chicago, from New York to Cape Town, Robin Kelley gives us a meditation on modernity: we see innovation not as an imposition from the West but rather as indigenous, multilingual, and messy, the result of innumerable exchanges across a breadth of cultures.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Prelude

1. The Drum Wars of Guy Warren

2. The Sojourns of Randy Weston

3. Ahmed Abdul-Malik's Islamic Experimentalism

4. The Making of Sathima Bea Benjamin

Coda

Notes

Further Listening

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674065246

0674065247

9780674068339

0674068335

OCLC:

797813378