Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation

Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation PDF Author: Barbara A. Baker
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817355936
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This is the first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert Murray. The collection consists of essays and interviews written by prominent scholars of African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray that illustrate Murray's place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer. Book jacket.

Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation

Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation PDF Author: Barbara A. Baker
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817355936
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert Murray. The collection consists of essays and interviews written by prominent scholars of African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray that illustrate Murray's place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer. Book jacket.

African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970: Volume 13

African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970: Volume 13 PDF Author: Shelly Eversley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108395279
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This volume considers innovations, transitions, and traditions in both familiar and unfamiliar texts and moments in 1960s African American literature and culture. It interrogates declarations of race, authenticity, personal and collective empowerment, political action, and aesthetics within this key decade. It is divided into three sections. The first section engages poetry and music as pivotal cultural form in 1960s literary transitions. The second section explains how literature, culture, and politics intersect to offer a blueprint for revolution within and beyond the United States. The final section addresses literary and cultural moments that are lesser-known in the canon of African American literature and culture. This book presents the 1960s as a unique commitment to art, when 'Black' became a political identity, one in which racial social justice became inseparable from aesthetic practice.

Murray Talks Music

Murray Talks Music PDF Author: Albert Murray
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452951551
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The year 2016 will mark the centennial of the birth of Albert Murray (1916–2013), who in thirteen books was by turns a lyrical novelist, a keen and iconoclastic social critic, and a formidable interpreter of jazz and blues. Not only did his prizewinning study Stomping the Blues (1976) influence musicians far and wide, it was also a foundational text for Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he cofounded with Wynton Marsalis and others in 1987. Murray Talks Music brings together, for the first time, many of Murray’s finest interviews and essays on music—most never before published—as well as rare liner notes and prefaces. For those new to Murray, this book will be a perfect introduction, and those familiar with his work—even scholars—will be surprised, dazzled, and delighted. Highlights include Dizzy Gillespie’s richly substantive 1985 conversation; an in-depth 1994 dialogue on jazz and culture between Murray and Wynton Marsalis; and a long 1989 discussion on Duke Ellington between Murray, Stanley Crouch, and Loren Schoenberg. Also interviewed by Murray are producer and impresario John Hammond and singer and bandleader Billy Eckstine. All of thse conversations were previously lost to history. A celebrated educator and raconteur, Murray engages with a variety of scholars and journalists while making insightful connections among music, literature, and other art forms—all with ample humor and from unforeseen angles. Leading Murray scholar Paul Devlin contextualizes the essays and interviews in an extensive introduction, which doubles as a major commentary on Murray’s life and work. The volume also presents sixteen never-before-seen photographs of jazz greats taken by Murray. No jazz collection will be complete without Murray Talks Music, which includes a foreword by Gary Giddins and an afterword by Greg Thomas.

The Omni-Americans

The Omni-Americans PDF Author: Albert Murray
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598536532
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Rediscover the “most important book on black-white relationships” in America in a special 50th anniversary edition introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Walker Percy) “The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of multicolored people . . . Any fool can see that the white people are not really white, and that black people are not black. They are all interrelated one way or another.” These words, written by Albert Murray at the height of the Black Power movement, cut against the grain of their moment, and announced the arrival of a major new force in American letters. In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Murray took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the “pathology” of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the “blues-hero tradition”—a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity. Reviewing The Omni-Americans in 1970, Walker Percy called it “the most important book on black-white relationships . . . indeed on American culture . . . published in this generation.” As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. makes clear in his introduction, Murray’s singular poetic voice, impassioned argumentation, and pluralistic vision have only become more urgently needed today.

The Origins of Cool in Postwar America

The Origins of Cool in Postwar America PDF Author: Joel Dinerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022659906X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
Cool. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this dynamic book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion, and a youthful search for social change. Through eye-opening portraits of iconic figures, Dinerstein illuminates the cultural connections and artistic innovations among Lester Young, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, among others. We eavesdrop on conversations among Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Miles Davis, and on a forgotten debate between Lorraine Hansberry and Norman Mailer over the "white Negro" and black cool. We come to understand how the cool worlds of Beat writers and Method actors emerged from the intersections of film noir, jazz, and existentialism. Out of this mix, Dinerstein sketches nuanced definitions of cool that unite concepts from African-American and Euro-American culture: the stylish stoicism of the ethical rebel loner; the relaxed intensity of the improvising jazz musician; the effortless, physical grace of the Method actor. To be cool is not to be hip and to be hot is definitely not to be cool. This is the first work to trace the history of cool during the Cold War by exploring the intersections of film noir, jazz, existential literature, Method acting, blues, and rock and roll. Dinerstein reveals that they came together to create something completely new—and that something is cool.

Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement

Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement PDF Author: Carmen L. Phelps
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617036803
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological foundations for what would be perpetuated as the Black Art Movement. Though there has arisen an increasing amount of scholarship that recognizes leading women artists, activists, and leaders of this period, these new perspectives have yet to recognize adequately the ways women aspired to far more than a mere dismantling of male-oriented ideals. In Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement, Carmen L. Phelps examines the work of several women artists working in Chicago, a key focal point for the energy and production of the movement. Angela Jackson, Johari Amiri, and Carolyn Rodgers reflect in their writing specific cultural, local, and regional insights, and demonstrate the capaciousness of Black Art rather than its constraints. Expanding from these three writers, Phelps analyzes the breadth of women's writing in BAM. In doing so, Phelps argues that these and other women attained advantageous and unique positions to represent the potential of the BAM aesthetic, even if their experiences and artistic perspectives were informed by both social conventions and constraints. In this book, Phelps's examination brings forward a powerful and crucial contribution to the aesthetics and history of a movement that still inspires.

Ralph Ellison in Context

Ralph Ellison in Context PDF Author: Paul Devlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108802230
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 751

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Book Description
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is the second-most assigned American novel since 1945 and is one of the most enduring. It is studied by many thousands of high school and college students every year and has been since the 1950s. His landmark essays, with their blend of personal history and cultural theory, have been extraordinarily influential. Ralph Ellison in Context includes authoritative chapters summing up longstanding conversations, while offering groundbreaking essays on a variety of topics not yet covered in the copious critical and biographical literature. It provides fresh perspectives on some of the most important people and places in Ellison's life, and explores where his work and biography cross paths with some of the pressing topics of his time. It includes chapters on Ellison's literary influences and offers a definitive overview of his early writings. It also provides an overview of Ellison's reception and reputation from his death in 1994 through 2020.

Conjugations and Reiterations

Conjugations and Reiterations PDF Author: Albert Murray
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
In an essay on Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, the critic Darryl Pinckney remarks in the New York Review of Books: "Their style is defined by humor and their humor by amplified uproar, determined vitality, robust ironies. Yet these letters also reveal a quiet reverence for the artistry to be found in black culture, the belief that true art teaches control, not abandon, a faith in music as a 'depository' of living American traditions, and their search for a literary equivalent."As with the letters, the poems of "Conjugations and Reiterations." This five-part volume is comprised of "Aubades (epic exits and other twelve bar riffs), " best described as light, blues entertainments; "Landscape with Figures, " an extended meditation on the vicissitudes of American life; "Fable in the Fabric, " poems concerned with the improvisatory and call-and-response nature of American arts: "Profiles, " including a valedictory to William Faulkner that was recently published in The New Republic; and "Gospel Reverberations, " verse evocations of the profundities of the Gospel and of gospel music.

The Future of Text and Image

The Future of Text and Image PDF Author: Ofra Amihay
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443836753
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The question of the relation between the visual and the textual in literature is at the heart of an increasing number of scholarly projects, and in turn, the investigation of evolving visual-verbal dynamics is becoming an independent discipline. This volume explores these profound literary shifts through the work of twelve talented, and in some cases, emerging scholars who study text and image relations in diverse forms and contexts. The inter-medial conjunctures investigated in this book play with and against the traditional roles of the visual and the verbal. The Future of Text and Image presents explorations of the incorporation of visual elements into works of literature, of visual writing modes, and of the textuality and literariness of images. It focuses on the special potential literature offers for the combination of these two functions. Alongside examinations of major forms and genres such as memoirs, novels, and poetry, this volume expands the discussion of text and image relations into more marginal forms, for instance, collage books, the PostSecret collections of anonymous postcards, and digital poetry. In other words, while exploring the destiny of text and image as an independent discipline, this volume simultaneously looks at the very literal future of text and image forms in an ever-changing technological reality. The essays in this book will help to define the emergent practices and politics of this growing field of study, and at the same time, reflect the tremendous significance of the visual in today’s image culture.

Futures of Comparative Literature

Futures of Comparative Literature PDF Author: Ursula K Heise
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351853031
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Futures of Comparative Literature is a cutting edge report on the state of the discipline in Comparative Literature. Offering a broad spectrum of viewpoints from all career stages, a variety of different institutions, and many language backgrounds, this collection is fully global and diverse. The book includes previously unpublished interviews with key figures in the discipline as well as a range of different essays – short pieces on key topics and longer, in-depth pieces. It is divided into seven sections: Futures of Comparative Literature; Theories, Histories, Methods; Worlds; Areas and Regions; Languages, Vernaculars, Translations; Media; Beyond the Human; and contains over 50 essays on topics such as: Queer Reading; Human Rights; Fundamentalism; Untranslatability; Big Data; Environmental Humanities. It also includes current facts and figures from the American Comparative Literature Association as well as a very useful general introduction, situating and introducing the material. Curated by an expert editorial team, this book captures what is at stake in the study of Comparative Literature today.