Customer Reviews

R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Covering not just hip hop and issues facing today's black artists, this collection of essays takes a highly informed historical look at how artists have fared in the music industry back from blues to jazz to R&B, up to today's contemporary music. Plus the book explores the *economic* side of the equation, which few writers touch in today's timid world of music journalism. Norman Kelley and the other contributors to this book should be applauded for raising the bar on serious music journalism.

Despite the other reviews, this book does a pretty good job showing how the music business treats musicians, especially African Americans ones, poorly. Is the perfect? No, but it does offer a nice overview of how folks have looked at this question. It is a good first book (for readers) on this topic.

This book, despite a few flaws, is a good book. The whiny musician from new york is correct that the book is a little bit redundant, but it remains a good book because no one else is talking about what they are talking about. Many of the essays are very strong and a pleasure to read, especially the editor's essay. So what if Courtney Love is in the book, so is Chuck D. Why can't a white musician speak to the exploitation of artists by the major record labels in a book that focuses on racism in the music industry? The subtitle afterall is the Political Economy of Black Music, which means that the issues discussed are race AND class. Duh? And, Courtney should be in the book because gender is a factor that matters just as much as race and class. Most of the books on the music industry out there are [bad] because they are written from the point of view of the major record labels and they are either cheezy biographies of musicians that tell you nothing important about how the industry works, or stupid boring guide books written by lawyers that try to fool you into beleiving that the corporations are ready to give you mad dough for playing your guitar if you just follow the steps outlined in their book. NOT! Thank God for Norman Kelley. We finally get a book that tells the truth about the exploitation of musicians by the major record labels. If you want to find out exactly how the major record labels and the corporate establishment exploit musicians than go buy this book.

Very satisfied with product although delivery between books even though both were ordered at the same time was ridiculous.

The previous reviewer is so on point, and the book is so bad, it doesn't even merit more than a brief dis...

This should have been fantastic, since the topic is a potent one, but unfortunately the book has been ruined by sloppy, careless editing. The end result is both repetitious and underdeveloped. Repetitious because Kelley has allowed for a redundancy in the essays included; underdeveloped because, while there is an undeniable problem with the way the music industry has treated African-American artists historically, this malignancy has by now spread to all types of music, black and white, and to all of the arts: the music business, the film business, art galleries, book publishing, etc., etc., in both the mainstream media and among the independents. In fact, some of the worst offenders among those ripping off its artists are independent music labels, film studios, art galleries, and book publishers. I am a musician and visual artist who lives and works in New York City, and it is incredible how many stories I've heard about musicians, artists, writers, and filmmakers being ripped off by independent companies, including many who have bragged about their integrity, about how much better they treat their talent than does the mainstream. Kelley has only skimmed the surface in this well-intended but fatally flawed work.

I played in a jazz quartet back in the `60s and I know from first hand experience how musicians are exploited in the music industry. I was ripped off many times and I knew a lot of other musicians, black and white, who had the same experience. That's a big reason why I quit the business. This is an important subject that deserves more than the superficial and repetitious treatment it gets here. It's too bad that it's taken so long for this to be addressed and it's too bad it took a star like Michael Jackson to get the headlines that the subject deserves. The people who put this book together seem to be really into stars too, though, since Courtney Love is the best known contributor. I think it's pretty weird that the most famous contributor to a book on R&B is white like she is, but that's another rant. My son is in an indie rock band playing in clubs in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and he tells that things are even worse now than they were when I was his age, not just in music, but in publishing and films and other art forms. He said that some independent music companies he knows about don't even want to give its musicians contracts, that the musicians are supposed to trust the owner's goodwill for some reason. Give me a break! Maybe they'd buy the Brooklyn Bridge from me. Norman Kelley seems sincere in his desire to address old injustices, but he doesn't go far enough. He has to know about some of the things that my son told me about, but he hasn't dealt with them or anything else very deeply. Hopefully one of these days all of this will be exposed more fully in another, better book. We don't need stars like Michael Jackson and Courtney Love to do it, just artists who have really been there.