Song of the Shank

Song of the Shank PDF Author: Jeffery Renard Allen
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970923
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom. Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother. As the novel ranges from Tom's boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

Song of the Shank

Song of the Shank PDF Author: Jeffery Renard Allen
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970923
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 567

Get Book Here

Book Description
A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom. Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother. As the novel ranges from Tom's boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

Rails Under My Back

Rails Under My Back PDF Author: Jeffery Renard Allen
Publisher: Harvest Books
ISBN: 9780156014151
Category : African American families
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A dazzling family saga that brilliantly reflects the reality of the African-American experience in the United States Hatch and Jesus Jones are cousins on their fathers' side and on their mothers' side, and you can't have a family much more bound than that. And family is the most important entity for these young men, even when family seems to be defined by abandonment. Rails Under My Back traces these two men from one form of bondage or freedom to another, from one job to another, as they face down danger and try to come to terms with their family's past. This ambitious novel, which has been hailed by critics nationwide as a rare achievement on the level of fiction by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright, is the communal expression of a century of African-American life in America, with its imagery of exodus and exile, departure and destiny. It wields extraordinary literary, religious, and historical power, and announces the triumphant debut of a most powerful and utterly original voice.

The Political Force of Musical Beauty

The Political Force of Musical Beauty PDF Author: Barry Shank
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082237675X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Barry Shank shows how musical acts and performances generate their own aesthetic and political force, creating, however fleetingly, a shared sense of the world among otherwise diverse listeners. Rather than focusing on the ways in which music enables the circulation of political messages, he argues that communities grounded in the act and experience of listening can give rise to new political ideas and expression. Analyzing a wide range of "beautiful music" within popular and avant-garde genres—including the Japanese traditions in the music of Takemitsu Toru and Yoko Ono, the drone of the Velvet Underground, and the insistence of hardcore punk and Riot grrrl post-punk—Shank finds that when it fulfills the promise of combining sonic and lyrical differences into a cohesive whole, musical beauty has the power to reorganize the basis of social relations and produce communities that recognize meaningful difference.

The Art of Songwriting

The Art of Songwriting PDF Author: Ed Bell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998130200
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
'The Art of Songwriting' is a comprehensive guide to life, art and making great songs.It's not about chasing a hit song. It's not about theories that are interesting but no use filling the blank page. And most of all -- it's not just about the craft of songwriting.It's about how to create, think and live like a songwriter. It's about being resilient, innovative and passionate about what you make. It's about how artists can change the world -- and why they should.

Dissonant Identities

Dissonant Identities PDF Author: Barry Shank
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819572675
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities. While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."

Holding Pattern

Holding Pattern PDF Author: Jeffery Renard Allen
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555973477
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The world of Jeffery Renard Allen's stunning short-story collection is a place like no other. A recognizable city, certainly, but one in which a man might sprout wings or copper pennies might fall from the skies onto your head. Yet these are no fairy tales. The hostility, the hurt, is all too human. The protagonists circle each other with steely determination: a grandson taunts his grandmother, determined to expose her secret past; for years, a sister tries to keep a menacing neighbor away from her brother; and in the local police station, an officer and prisoner try to break each other's resolve. In all the stories, Allen calibrates the mounting tension with exquisite timing, in mesmerizing prose that has won him comparisons with Joyce and Faulkner. Holding Pattern is a captivating collection by a prodigiously talented writer.

Rise Up Singing

Rise Up Singing PDF Author: Hal Leonard Corp
Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9781881322146
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Lyrics and guitar chords for traditional and modern folk songs.

The Cold Song

The Cold Song PDF Author: Linn Ullmann
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590516680
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Named in the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2014! Ullmann’s characters are complex and paradoxical: neither fully guilty nor fully innocent Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer’s block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri’s stylish and unforgiving mother. Siri and Jon’s marriage is loving but difficult, and troubled by painful secrets. They have a strained relationship with their elder daughter, Alma, who struggles to find her place in the family constellation. When Milla is hired as a nanny to allow Siri to work her long hours at the restaurant and Jon to supposedly meet the deadline on his book, life in the idyllic summer community takes a dire turn. One rainy July night, Milla disappears without a trace. After her remains are discovered and a suspect is identified, everyone who had any connection with her feels implicated in her tragedy and haunted by what they could have done to prevent it. The Cold Song is a story about telling stories and about how life is continually invented and reinvented.

Follow The Flickering Down

Follow The Flickering Down PDF Author: Theodore Shank
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578600659
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
THEODORE SHANK's Follow The Flickering Down blurs the distinctions between memoir, poetry, short story, and song. It oscillates through the Santa Cruz mountains and coastal communities of Capitola and Live Oak, California, diving into the energy and mystery of life's moments as they quiver in the cauldron of memory. Follow The Flickering Down cuts directly into memories and images, exposing the raw energy, emotion, and power of various levels of human experience. Its language sparkles with simplicity and directness, creating a musical atmosphere of truth and honesty.

As Lie Is to Grin

As Lie Is to Grin PDF Author: Simeon Marsalis
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1936787601
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the 2017 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Simeon Marsalis’s As Lie Is to Grin is not a satire meant to teach us lessons, nor a statement of hope or despair, but something more visionary—a portrait of a young man’s unraveling, a depiction of how race shapes and deforms us, a coming–of–age story that is also a confrontation with American history and amnesia. The book achieves more in its brief span than most books do at three times the length.” —Zachary Lazar, author of I Pity the Poor Immigrant David, the narrator of Simeon Marsalis’s singular first novel, is a freshman at the University of Vermont who is struggling to define himself against the white backdrop of his school. He is also mourning the loss of his New York girlfriend, whose grandfather’s alma mater he has chosen to attend. When David met Melody, he lied to her about who he was and where he lived, creating a more intriguing story than his own. This lie haunts and almost unhinges him as he attempts to find his true voice and identity. On campus in Vermont, David imagines encounters with a student from the past who might represent either Melody’s grandfather or Jean Toomer, the author of the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance novel Cane (1923). He becomes obsessed with the varieties of American architecture “upon land that was stolen,” and with the university’s past and attitudes as recorded in its newspaper, The Cynic. And he is frustrated with the way the Internet and libraries are curated, making it difficult to find the information he needs to make connections between the university’s history, African American history, and his own life. In New York, the previous year, Melody confides a shocking secret about her grandfather’s student days at the University of Vermont. When she and her father collude with the intent to meet David’s mother in Harlem—craving what they consider an authentic experience of the black world—their plan ends explosively. The title of this impressive and emotionally powerful novel is inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask” (1896): “We wear the mask that grins and lies . . .”