June is a month with a lot of observances, and one of those observances is African-American Music Appreciation. Below is a small sampling of books, both electronic and in print, about African-American musicians from our library. If you read the descriptions below, you'll notice that many musicians were and are activists fighting for equality, respect, and recognition for the importance of African-American music and culture. Browse the titles below to see if there's any you'd like to read, and don't forget that we also have CDs and DVDs by many of the artists below, too.
Chamber Music: Wu-Tang and America [In 36 Pieces] by Will Ashon
Will Ashon tells, in 36 interlinked "chambers", the story of
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and how it changed the world. As unexpected and complex as the album itself,
Chamber Music ranges from provocative essays to semi-comic skits, from deep scholarly analysis to satirical celebration, seeking to contextualize, reveal and honor this singular work of art.
My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte grew up in Harlem and Jamaica. His mother was a complex woman, caring but withdrawn, and his father was physically abusive. It was not an easy life, but it instilled in Harry toughness and resiliency. He joined the U.S. Navy during WW II, and afterwards returned to Harlem, where he drifted between jobs until he saw his first stage play. Theater opened up a new world, one that was artistic, political, and made him realize that he had a lot to say. He was never content to simply be an entertainer and could not shy away from activism. At first it was about personal dignity: breaking down racial barriers that had never been broken before. Then his activism broadened to a lifelong involvement at the heart of the civil rights movement.
Let Love Have the Last Word: A Memoir by Common
Common believes that the phrase “let love have the last word” is not just a declaration; it is a statement of purpose. Touching on God, self-love, partners, children, family, and community, Common explores the core tenets of love to help others understand what it means to receive and, most important, to give love. He moves from the personal—writing about his daughter, to whom he wants to be a better father—to the universal, where he observes that our society has become fractured under issues of race and politics. He knows there's no quick remedy for all of the hurt in the world, but love—for yourself and for others—is where the healing begins.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis
From one of the country's most important intellectuals comes an analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey,
Bessie Smith, and
Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness at odds with mainstream America.
The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been misunderstood by critics. Through transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith—published here in their entirety for the first time—Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a consciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory.
Jay-Z: Made in America by Michael Eric Dyson
This book is the result of Dyson's teaching the work of one of the greatest poets of this nation, as gifted as
Walt Whitman,
Robert Frost and
Rita Dove. But as a rapper, he's sometimes not given the credit he deserves for how great an artist he's been for so long. This book wrestles with the themes of Jay-Z's career, and it recognizes the way that he's weaved politics into his music, making important statements about race, criminal justice, black wealth and social injustice. As he enters his fifties, and to mark his thirty years as a recording artist, this is the perfect time to take a look at Jay-Z's career and his role in making the nation what it is today.
More Myself: A Journey by Alicia Keys
As one of the celebrated musicians of our time, Alicia Keys has enraptured the nation with her lyrics, vocal range, and piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, she has grappled with private heartache.
Since her rise to fame, her public persona has belied a deep personal truth: she has spent years not recognizing her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is now exploring the questions: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I embrace it?
Alicia's journey is revealed not only through her own candid recounting, but also through vivid recollections from those who have walked alongside her. The result is a 360-degree perspective on Alicia's path—from her girlhood in Hell's Kitchen and Harlem, to the process of self-discovery she's still navigating.
What Happened, Miss Simone?: A Biography by Alan Light
From music journalist and former
Spin and
Vibe editor-in-chief Alan Light comes a biography of soul singer and Black Power icon Nina Simone, one of the most influential and least understood artists of our time. Drawn from a trove of rare footage, audio recordings and interviews (including Simone's private diaries), this examination of Simone's life highlights her musical inventiveness and unwavering quest for equality, while laying bare the personal demons that plagued her from the time of her Jim Crow childhood in North Carolina to her self-imposed exile in Liberia and Paris.
Harnessing the voice of Miss Simone herself and incorporating reflections from those who knew her, including her only daughter, Light brings us face to face with a legend.
Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride
This is more than a book about James Brown. Brown embodied the contradictions of American life: He was an unsettling symbol of the tensions between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. After receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth,
James McBride goes in search of the "real" James Brown. McBride's travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown's never-before-revealed history, illuminating not only our understanding of the immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated Godfather of Soul, but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown's enduring legacy.
Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation by Questlove
From Ahmir "
Questlove" Thompson of the award-winning hip-hop group the Roots, comes this book commemorating
Soul Train—the phenomenon that launched the careers of artists such as
Tina Turner,
Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5,
Whitney Houston, Lenny Kravitz, LL Cool J, and
Aretha Franklin. Questlove reveals the remarkable story of the captivating program, and his text is paired with more than 350 photographs of the show's most memorable episodes and the larger-than-life characters who defined it: the great host Don Cornelius, the extraordinary musicians, and the people who lived the phenomenon from dance floor.
Gladys Knight contributed a foreword to this incredible volume. Nick Cannon contributed the preface.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley by Roger Steffens
Renowned reggae historian Steffens’s riveting oral history of Bob Marley’s life draws on four decades of intimate interviews with band members, family, lovers, and confidants―many speaking publicly for the first time. Hailed by the
New York Times Book Review as a “crucial voice” in the documentation of Marley’s legacy, Steffens spent years traveling with the Wailers and taking iconic photographs. Through eyewitness accounts of vivid scenes―the future star auditioning for Coxson Dodd; the violent confrontation between the
Wailers and producer Lee Perry; the attempted assassination (and conspiracy theories that followed); the artist’s tragic death from cancer―
So Much Things to Say tells Marley’s story like never before.
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader by Greg Tate
Since launching his career at the
Village Voice in the early 1980s, Greg Tate has been one of the premiere voices on contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics.
Flyboy 2 provides a view of the past thirty years of his influential work. Whether interviewing
Miles Davis or Ice Cube, reviewing an Azealia Banks
mixtape or Suzan-Lori Parks's
Topdog/Underdog, discussing visual artist
Kara Walker or writer
Clarence Major, or analyzing the ties between Afro-futurism, Black feminism, and social movements, Tate's critical insights illustrate how race, gender, and class become manifest in American popular culture. Above all, he demonstrates why visionary Black artists, intellectuals, aesthetics, philosophies, and politics matter to twenty-first-century America.
Becoming Beyonce by J. Randy Taraborrelli
Beyonce Knowles is a woman who began her career at the age of eight performing in pageant shows and talent contests, honing her craft through her teenage years until, at the age of 16, she had her first number one record with
Destiny's Child. That hit-making trio launched Beyonce's successful solo career, catapulting her, as of 2014, to #1 on Forbes annual list of most wealthy celebrities--the same year she made the cover of
Time.
Becoming Beyonce is not only the story of struggle, sacrifice, and what it takes to make it in the cut-throat record industry, it's the story of the great rewards of such success and the devastating toll it often takes on the human spirit.
A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America by Craig Werner
A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of
Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired
Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."
