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This “Forgotten Manuscripts” feature spotlights the folk music songbook Negro Songs of Protest, published in 1936 by white radical music collector Lawrence Gellert. In the 1930s, Gellert gained acclaim for a field archive of black musical protest compiled in the U. S. South. In the political realignments after WWII, however, Gellert fell under a cloud of disrepute for allegedly ghostwriting his documentary material. This article details elements of Gellert’s life and work in order to rehabilitate his reputation and, most important, call attention to his valuable archival collection of blues, work songs, spirituals, hollers, and hybrids from the 1920s through WWII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented of African American music during slavery in the U.S. It highlights arguments on its value which falls from the anomaly of its production within the setting of slave labor forming a cultural property under another ownership known as a property-in-slaves. The author also points out its secret animation.

Through examining Jarena Lee's employment of hymns in her spiritual autobiography, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a Coloured Lady, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel, I demonstrate how hymnody, a largely understudied literary genre in rhetorical studies, proved a critical instrument in authenticating her spiritual conversion and validating her qualifications to serve as a ministerial leader. Using Chaim Perelman's concept of "presence" and recent research in neuroscience (on the brain and music) I show how Lee's excerpts of the nineteenth century's most popular hymns create an aural ambience reminiscent of a worship service that engages her Christian readers' pathos and sense of piety in order to disengage their prejudice against her race and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of African American music and art that challenge past events by critically engaging with them. Topics discussed include the nostalgia presented by artists in their art works and performances and the retelling and rehearsing of history that ensues with their production. The creation of new forms of art that link to both the past and the present and their implications for the future are then mentioned.

The article considers aspects of racial identity, stage persona as a social construct, masculinity, and the association with violence of hip hop performers. Hip hop, also referred to as rap, began as a popular music genre during the 1970s as part of an African American urban youth culture movement. It explores depictions of hip hop culture in the 2006 documentary film "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" by Byron Hurt, as well as in the 1993 motion picture "CB4." The plot for "CB4," in which middle-class African Americans adopt the persona of gansta-rappers to gain celebrity, is presented.

The article discuses the use of African American music and related cultural practices to teach the history of 20th-century civil rights movements in the northern U.S. Particular focus is given to the interpretation of movement-related messages in music by black and white contemporary audiences. According to the author, songs by artists like the Temptations, Martha Reeves, and Aretha Franklin could be heard as personal expressions unrelated to racial issues, celebrations of black identity, or calls to action depending on the attitude of the listener. The author also suggests a curriculum of songs and reading selections for students and teachers to discuss.

The article discusses the role of music and dance in mid-20th century African American culture, with particular focus given to the writer Ralph Ellison's criticism of the style of Bebop and the difference between participation and spectatorship in the consumption of music. The author's application of the Marxist critical models of cultural production and social reproduction to African American music and dance culture is also explored.

The article presents an examination into the "traditional" elements of hip hop music in the 1990s, discussing the ways in which the style was connected culturally to other African American musical genres such as jazz. The practice of hip hop artists sampling older recordings of African American music is noted. The place of cultural memory and tradition within the composition of hip hop music is discussed in depth.

An essay is presented examining the aesthetics of bebop music, situating it within the scope of African American Modernist philosophical and cultural discourse. A quote from the saxophonist Charlie Parker is referenced as a launching point to discuss the "unbounded" or abstract nature of bebop's form and philosophy. The interconnections of bebop between musical, racial and cultural boundaries of the mid-20th century are also analyzed.

The article focuses on the misunderstanding of the music of African Americans. It mentions the music "Haitian Fight Song" by Charles Mingus that reflects the slave revolt of Haiti, was used as backdrop song for the love scene of Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in the film "Jerry Maguire." It states that the novel "Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville reflects how misunderstanding of works of African Americans could be dangerous to people.

The article looks at singer Michael Jackson, focusing on the aspects of race present in his songs. The author considers the definition of popular music and how Jackson fit into mainstream culture. The history of African Americans in American popular music is discussed. The author feels that Jackson's music transcended racial boundaries, and presents comments on his place in both black and white culture.

The article presents an exploration into the history of African American Blues music in Texas, focusing on the development of the oil patch song genre. Accounts are given describing the employment opportunities which existed for African Americans in the oil fields of Texas at the beginning of the 20th century and the development of the music tradition which grew out from it. Analysis of the common features and tropes seen in the songs is provided. Notable figures in the genre are also profiled, including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Walter Davis, and Amédé Ardoin.

The article presents a musicological examination into the rhythmic teleology of African American popular music of the mid-20th century. Discussion is offered regarding the primary aesthetics and features of the rhythm and blues, gospel, and Motown genres, highlighting the centrality of rhythm as an element of African American racial identity vested within the music at its most basic level.

At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, writing about hip-hop is at an interesting crossroads. On the one hand, we continue to see a wealth of fine academic writing published by scholars in fields as diverse as cultural studies, musicology, and women's studies; on the other, we have noticed a dramatic decline in the quality of popular writing about hip-hop, much of which has succumbed to crude street language in an attempt to increase readership. This kaleidoscope, by turns overly pedantic and gratuitously coarse, creates a conundrum as hip-hop struggles to define—and redefine—itself. This article distinguishes three categories of writing about hip-hop—works by academics, works by journalists and cultural critics, and works by hip-hop's devotees—and discusses a handful of significant publications written between 1988 and 2008. This twenty-year written history of hip-hop is considered through a variety of lenses, with the hope that the various points of view might illuminate new directions for hip-hop's chronicled future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The striking and affecting 1986 opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, composed by Anthony Davis, uses clever theatrical devices in concert with Malcolm X's own doctrines to realize its objectives. The opera draws upon events as they were posited by the memoirs of Malcolm X, coauthored by Pulitzer Prize-winner Alex Haley, as well as additional historical sources. Composed by Anthony Davis, with a book by his brother, actor-director Christopher Davis, and a libretto by his cousin, poet Thulani Davis, X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X premiered professionally in 1986 at the New York City Opera. The work inaugurated a new genre: the opera based on a contemporary political subject. Davis's score is composed of an effortless blending of swing, bebop, gospel, hip-hop, traditional West Africans rhythms, classical Western music, and improvised sections. The piece is successful at examining from several innovative angles the seminal association between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad and inevitability of the relationship's thoroughly vituperative end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the erotic and religion has received attention within both black theology and womanist theology. Figures such as Baker-Fletcher and Kirk-Duggan have offered both literature and music as source material for unpacking the nature and the meaning of the erotic as religious force. While methodologically, the 'polyvocal' approach Baker-Fletcher and Kirk-Duggan offer has allowed scholars to explore the erotic with more creativity and epistemological flexibility, certain complexities associated with the erotic's nature and function still remain under-explored. I suggest in this essay that correction of this dilemma at least in part involves an examination of new source material. I argue that greater attention to rap music, such as the work of Missy Elliott, as source material offers a more robust exploration of the religious significance of the erotic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief essay, I argue that the type of attention to rap music suggested by the various contributors to this special issue requires a rethinking of the shape, content, and proper vocabulary and grammar for marking and describing the religious. That is to say, when critically examined for their take on religion and religious experience, rap artists force theoretical complexity and methodological comfort with tension. They express this desire for a fuller sense of meaning through the felt reality of their bodies, as they take up time and space and force their recognition. It is through this forced recognition - involving a certain hold on the world - that they express the renewal of self that marks religious life. Rap music as a terrain for the articulation of religious struggle and redemption forces a re-examination of the assumed cartography of religious engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a child of the blues, hip hop culture and rap music bring together the 'best of both worlds' of culture and religion respectively. The interrogation of cultural production by African-American scholars across fields is not a new phenomenon, however, a rigorous examination of the religious and theological contours of hip hop culture, such as rap music, are slowly beginning to take shape. In this Introduction, we contextualize one such attempt as expressed in this journal you hold, to think religion and hip hop together in new and exciting ways. Here, we give thought to the multifaceted ways in which the changing syncretic cultural cartography of hip hop in general and rap music specifically push and force a re-thinking of religious sensibilities and the quest for life meaning. More than that, we take the position that not only does the genius of hip hop culture and rap music call and yearn for a more complicated terrain of the religious, but likewise, offers a rich opportunity to rethink the rugged terrain of the cultural. Here, we not only interrogate rap music from the corners of religion, more than that, we open ourselves up to be confronted and gripped by the rugged terrain of African American cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relation of the African American hip-hop community to the American frontier consciousness and frontier myth. It particularly examines Western American images and themes in African American rap music, commenting on gangs, violence, sectionalism, gangsters, and cowboys. Struggles for wealth, fame, power, and success in rap music are also considered. The ideas of rapper Tupac Shukar, also known as 2Pac, are addressed, and the East versus West Coast rivalry within the American hip-hop community is explored.

This essay examines the intersection between the literary works of the mid-20th century African American writer Langston Hughes and contemporary Jazz and Blues music of his era. Introductory comments are given noting how Hughes recognized and commented on African American music in his literature. Questions are then raised evaluating the extent to which Hughes' literature has been received and incorporated into the works of Jazz musicians.

An essay is presented which discusses the relationship between religion and rap music. The history and evolution of hip hop and rap music are discussed. The author describes the way that rap artists combine rhetoric of African-American religion and musical traditions into their music. The author also explains that one of rap music's key elements is it's questioning of major life questions.

Highlights the history of black music as studied by musicologists. Historiography of black music; Inheritance of narratives of racial and musical difference from earlier generations of scholars; Inculcation of shortcomings of the past.

Features musician Jimi Hendrix and deals with his relationship with blackness as a category of representation. Questions surrounding the history of African-American music; Observation on how Hendrix negotiated his status as a crossover artist; Relationship between music, race and technology.

Discusses black music on radio during the jazz age. Demand by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) against radio stations; Pioneering African American dance bands; New York radio debuts by African American radio performers; Vaudeville routines of the comedy team Flournoy Miller and Aubry Lyles; Broadcasting of black religious and blues music.

Discusses the role of the Ira Aldridge Troupe in the history of minstrelsy in the United States. Performance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1863; Troupe's reception by a largely black audience; Race and ethnicity thoughts expressed by spectators; Hostility of some black audience members toward whites; History of minstrelsy as the history of piracy and distortion of black culture by whites.

Discusses the connection between the art of digital sampling in African American hip hop and an African American/African diasporic aesthetic. Transformations in African American aesthetic history; References to Harlem in early Duke Ellington compositions; Contexts for exercising musical technology historically in the United States; Musico-social collaborations.

Cites the influence of African-American music on 18th century mainstream American music. Ancestry of rock and roll; Assimilation of musical elements of Christian songs in African singing styles.

Traces the evolution of African American music. Sacred and secular traditions; Folk spirituals; Ragtime; Folk gospel; Vaudeville blues; Swing bands; Bebop; Gospel choirs; Rock `n' roll; Rhythm and blues; Soul jazz; Jazz fusion; New jazz swing; Funk; Techno funk.