Ranging across genres from the popular to the scholarly, this selection of John Szwed's published essays abides in the intersection of race and art, jazz and rap: crossovers inside and outside the academy. With reviews written for the "Village Voice" and articles from academic journals, this volume includes essays, commentary, and meditations on James Agee and Walker Evans, Cuban folklorist Lydia Cabrera, Lafcadio Hearn, Melville Herskovits, Josef Skorvecky, Patrick Chamoiseau, pop song writer Ellie Greenwich, and jazz musicians Sonny Rollins, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, and Ornette Coleman. Also included are pieces on the prehistory of hip hop, the blues, popular dance instruction songs, tap dance, and African American set dancing; creole writing and creolization; race and culture; and authenticity, representation, nostalgia, and obscenity in American popular culture, with excursions into jazz in Africa, Russia, and Argentina. Written about a country with cultural crossroads everywhere, where the question of race is thoroughly woven into the fabric of society, these essays cross boundaries and shed light on the complexities of American life.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"In this collection of thirty-one short articles, essays, and reviews written over a thirty-six- year period, John Szwed consistently displays the extraordinary imagination and ingenuity that have made him one of the most respected scholars in African-American and Afro-diasporic Studies.Crossovers is both a revealing intellectual history of Szwed's development as a scholar and critic, and a unified and integrated argument on behalf of the aesthetic, moral, and political genius of the African diaspora."--H-Urban
About the Author
John Szwed is John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including So What: The Life of Miles Davis and Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Back when I wrote the earliest essay in this book, there were virtually no college or high school courses on vernacular culture or African Americans. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
dance instruction song, instruction songs, plantation literature, dance suites, jazz literature, set dances, bass saxophone, hot dance Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, African American, New World, New York, West Indies, New Orleans, South Africa, Sun Ra, West African, Live Crew, Ornette Coleman, Alan Lomax, Lydia Cabrera, Prime Time, Ralph Ellison, West Indian, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Franklin Frazier, Lafcadio Hearn, Louis Armstrong, Tiger Rag, American Negro, Bottom Line New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Back when I wrote the earliest essay in this book, there were virtually no college or high school courses on vernacular culture or African Americans. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
dance instruction song, instruction songs, plantation literature, dance suites, jazz literature, set dances, bass saxophone, hot dance Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, African American, New World, New York, West Indies, New Orleans, South Africa, Sun Ra, West African, Live Crew, Ornette Coleman, Alan Lomax, Lydia Cabrera, Prime Time, Ralph Ellison, West Indian, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Franklin Frazier, Lafcadio Hearn, Louis Armstrong, Tiger Rag, American Negro, Bottom Line New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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- The Myth of The Negro Past by Melville Herskovits on 12 pages
- Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives (8th Edition) by Phillip Whitten on 11 pages
- Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives by Norman E. Whitten on 9 pages
- Jazz Dance: The Story Of American Vernacular Dance by Marshall Stearns on 7 pages
- Urban Blues (Phoenix Books) by Charles Keil on 5 pages
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