The twin acts of singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand tells an essential part of that story. With lyrics penned by James Weldon Johnson and music composed by his brother Rosamond, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was embraced almost immediately as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of black Americans. Since the song's creation, it has been adopted by the NAACP and performed by countless artists in times of both crisis and celebration, cementing its place in African American life up through the present day. In this rich, poignant, and readable work, Imani Perry tells the story of the Black National Anthem as it traveled from South to North, from civil rights to black power, and from countless family reunions to Carnegie Hall and the Oval Office. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Perry uses "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as a window on the powerful ways African Americans have used music and culture to organize, mourn, challenge, and celebrate for more than a century.
What is the relationship between anger and justice, especially when so much of our moral education has taught us to value the impartial spectator, the cold distance of reason? In Sing the Rage, Sonali Chakravarti wrestles with this question through a careful look at the emotionally charged South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which from 1996 to 1998 saw, day after day, individuals taking the stand to speak—to cry, scream, and wail—about the atrocities of apartheid. Uncomfortable and surprising, these public emotional displays, she argues, proved to be of immense value, vital to the success of transitional justice and future political possibilities. Chakravarti takes up the issue from Adam Smith and Hannah Arendt, who famously understood both the dangers of anger in politics and the costs of its exclusion. Building on their perspectives, she argues that the expression and reception of anger reveal truths otherwise unavailable to us about the emerging political order, the obstacles to full civic participation, and indeed the limits—the frontiers—of political life altogether. Most important, anger and the development of skills needed to truly listen to it foster trust among citizens and recognition of shared dignity and worth. An urgent work of political philosophy in an era of continued revolution, Sing the Rage offers a clear understanding of one of our most volatile—and important—political responses.
Brer Rabbit. Uncle Remus. Song of the South. Racist? Disney thinks so. And that's why it has forbidden the theatrical re-release of its classic film Song of the South since 1986. But is the film racist? Are its themes, its characters, even its music so abominable that Disney has done us a favor by burying the movie in its infamous Vault, where the Company claims it will remain for all time? Disney historian Jim Korkis does not think so. In his newest book, Who's Afraid of the Song of the South?, Korkis examines the film from concept to controversy, and reveals the politics that nearly scuttled the project. Through interviews with many of the artists and animators who created Song of the South, and through his own extensive research, Korkis delivers both the definitive behind-the-scenes history of the film and a balanced analysis of its cultural impact. What else would Disney prefer you did not know? Plenty. Korkis also pulls back the curtain on such dubious chapters in Disney history as: Disney's cinematic attack on venereal disease Ward Kimball's obsession with UFOs Tim Burton's depressed stint at the Disney Studios Walt Disney's nightmares about his stomping an owl to death Wally Wood's Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster J. Edgar Hoover's hefty FBI file on Walt Disney Little Black Sunflower's animated extinction Plus 10 more forbidden tales that Disney wishes would go away. Whether you're a film buff, an armchair academic, or a Disney fan eager to peek behind Disney's magical (and tightly controlled) curtain, you'll discover lots you never knew about Disney. With a foreword by Disney Legend Floyd Norman, Who's Afraid of the Song of the South? is both authoritative and entertaining. Jim Korkis is the best-selling author of Vault of Walt, and has been researching and writing about Disney for over three decades. The Disney Company itself uses his expertise for special projects. Korkis resides in Orlando, Florida.
The Magic Kingdom sheds new light on the cultural icon of "Uncle Walt." Watts digs deeply into Disney's private life, investigating his roles as husband, father, and brother and providing fresh insight into his peculiar psyche-his genuine folksiness and warmth, his domineering treatment of colleagues and friends, his deepest prejudices and passions. Full of colorful sketches of daily life at the Disney Studio and tales about the creation of Disneyland and Disney World, The Magic Kingdom offers a definitive view of one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.
In recent decades, world music styles have been making increasing inroads into Western popular music, music theater, choral concerts, and even concert hall performances. So You Want to Sing World Music is an essential compendium of these genres and provides technical approaches to singing non-Western styles. Matthew Hoch gathers a cohort of expert performers and teachers to address singing styles from across the globe, including Tuvan throat singing, Celtic pop and traditional Irish singing, South African choral singing, Brazilian popular music genres, Hindustani classical singing, Native American vocal music, Mexican mariachi, Lithuanian sutartinės, Georgian polyphony, Egyptian vocal music, Persian āvāz, and Peking opera. Additional chapters offer resources for soloists and choral directors as well as primers on voice science, vocal health, and audio enhancement technology. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing World Music features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.
To Weave and Sing is the first in-depth analysis of the rich spiritual and artistic traditions of the Carib-speaking Yekuana Indians of Venezuela, who live in the dense rain forest of the upper Orinoco. Within their homeland of Ihuruna, the Yekuana have succeeded in maintaining the integrity and unity of their culture, resisting the devastating effects of acculturation that have befallen so many neighboring groups. Yet their success must be attributed to more than natural barriers of rapids and waterfalls, to more than lack of "contact" with our "modern" world. The ethnographic history recounted here includes not only the Spanish discovery of the Yekuana but detailed indigenous accounts of the entire history of Yekuana contact with Western culture, revealing an adaptive technique of mythopoesis by which the symbols of a new and hostile European ideology have been consistently defused through their incorporation into traditional indigenous structures. The author's initial point of departure is the Watunna, the Yekuana creation epic, but he finds his principal entrance into this mythic world through basketry, focusing on the eleborate kinetic designs of the round waja baskets and the stories told about them. Guss argues that the problem of understanding Yekuana basketry is the problem of understanding all traditional art forms within a tribal context, and critiques the cultural assumptions inherent in our systems of classification. He demonstrates that the symbols woven into the baskets function not in isolation but collectively, as a powerful system cutting across the entire culture. To Weave and Sing addresses all Yekuana material culture and the greater reality it both incorporates and masks, discerning a unifying configuration of symbols in chapters on architectural forms, the geography of the body, and the use of herbs, face paints, and chants. A narrow view of slash-and-burn gardens as places of mere subsistence is challenged by Guss's portrait of these exclusively female spaces as systematic inversions of the male world, "the sacred turned on its head." Throughout, a wealth of narrative and ritual materials provides us with the closest approximation we have to a native exegesis of these phenomena. What we are offered here is a new Poetics of Culture, ethnography not as a static given but as a series of shifting fields, wherein culture (and our image of it) is constantly recreated in all of its parts, by all of its members.
The first volume of a collection of short stories by Sean Dietrich, a writer, humorist, and novelist, known for his commentary on life in the American South. His humor and short fiction appear in various publications throughout the Southeast.
