An easy-to-read guide based on excavations conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The book includes contributions by D. Buitron, D. Christou, M. Loulloupis, A. H. S. Megaw, A. Papgeorhiou, S. Sinos and D. Soren. Also included are drawings maps, full-color photographs, and a bibliography. University Museum Monograph, 42
In Bamboula!, S. Frederick Starr presents an authoritatively researched, engagingly written biography of America's first authentic musical voice. Starr paints for us a striking portrait of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's childhood in 1830s New Orleans, a city madly devoted to music, where opera companies, music halls, fiddlers and banjo-pickers, church choirs, and Army bands all contributed to what Starr calls "the most stunning manifestation of Jacksonian democracy in the realm of culture to be found anywhere in America". We meet Gottschalk's French-speaking maternal grandmother and also his African-American nurse Sally, both of whom regaled him with the songs, legends, and lore of the Creole world, which would inform some of his finest music. We travel with Gottschalk to Paris, where he was a sensation, playing in fashionable salons for the likes of Lamartine, Gautier, and Dumas; and we join his flight from the Revolution of 1848 to a town north of Paris, where he composed his first great works - Bamboula, La Savane, Le Bananier, and Le Mancenillier - all published over the name "Gottschalk of Louisiana". Starr describes Gottschalk's successful return to New York City in the early 1850s, where he enjoyed a degree of popularity never before accorded to an American performer or composer, becoming our first homegrown concert idol. But Starr also examines the life-long struggle between the Catholic Gottschalk and earnest Protestant champions of "serious" music, a battle that pitted the austere values of northern Europe against the brighter sensibilities of Paris, Louisiana, and the West Indies.
Beauty pageants are wildly popular in the U.S. Virgin Islands, outnumbering any other single performance event and capturing the attention of the local people from toddlers to seniors. Local beauty contests provide women opportunities to demonstrate talent, style, the values of black womanhood, and the territory's social mores. Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean is a comprehensive look at the centuries-old tradition of these expressions in the Virgin Islands. M. Cynthia Oliver maps the trajectory of pageantry from its colonial precursors at tea meetings, dance dramas, and street festival parades to its current incarnation as the beauty pageant or “queen show.” For the author, pageantry becomes a lens through which to view the region's understanding of gender, race, sexuality, class, and colonial power. Focusing on the queen show, Oliver reveals its twin roots in slave celebrations that parodied white colonial behavior and created Creole royal rituals and celebrations heavily influenced by Africanist aesthetics. Using the U.S. Virgin Islands as an intriguing case study, Oliver shows how the pageant continues to reflect, reinforce, and challenge Caribbean cultural values concerning femininity. Queen of the Virgins examines the journey of the black woman from degraded body to vaunted queen and how this progression is marked by social unrest, growing middle-class sensibilities, and contemporary sexual and gender politics.
"Innovating American composer, virtuoso pianist, and swashbuckling Romantic hero, Louis Moreau Gottschalk produced immensely popular works combining the French, Hispanic, and African influences of his native New Orleans. Many of his syncopated compositions anticipated ragtime by half a century. S. Frederick Starr's biography, originally published as Bamboula!, is the most extensive chronicle available of Gottschalk's eventful life. Starr examines Gottshalk's music, his frenetic life on the road, his virtuosity as a performer, his effect on his audiences, and the scandals surrounding his romantic dalliances. He also reveals a generous and compassionate man who sponsored a host of young musicians and provided financial support for his many siblings."
The wealth of excavation in Cyprus conducted across a period of nearly a century and a half has revealed much evidence of ancient building of all functional categories. This picture extends over a vast range of time (ca. 10,000 years) since Cyprus is probably the place where the earliest substantial building known, the Neolithic round house style is better presented than anywhere else in the world. It is the aim of this book to set forth and document the building tradition which hitherto has received no detailed exposition. The book will fill several gaps in the library shelves at one and the same time: architectural history that presents all the archaeological evidence.
Explore the rich heritage, contemporary culture, and society of the Virgin Islands by delving into its wonderful music. Dale Francis, a resident of the Virgin Islands whose ancestry there dates back to the early 1700s, examines what Africans, Europeans, and Tainos contributed to Virgin Islands quelbe. He also chronicles key genres that were played between 1672 and 2012. As you immerse yourself into a fascinating blend of African and European music traditions, you'll learn about the anthropology of the music, what it tells us about power dynamics, the relationship between the music and religion, and deeper meanings hidden in the music. You'll also discover the ancient secret in the bamboula art form, the power of cariso, freedom in the quelbe, and learn how the music of the Virgin Islands continues to retain traditional elements despite contemporary influences. Your appreciation for life will reach new heights as you explore the social, economic, and political dynamics of mankind through the musical heritage of the Virgin Islands in The Quelbe Commentary.
Of all the styles of jazz to emerge in the twentieth century, none is more passionate, more exhilaratingly up-tempo, or more steeped in an outsider tradition than Gypsy Jazz. And there is no one more qualified to write about Gypsy Jazz than Michael Dregni, author of the acclaimed biography, Django. A vagabond music, Gypsy Jazz is played today in French Gypsy bars, Romany encampments, on religious pilgrimages--and increasingly on the world's greatest concert stages. Yet its story has never been told, in part because much of its history is undocumented, either in written form or often even in recorded music. Beginning with Django Reinhardt, whose dazzling Gypsy Jazz became the toast of 1930s Paris in the heady days of Josephine Baker, Picasso, and Hemingway, Dregni follows the music as it courses through caravans on the edge of Paris, where today's young French Gypsies learn Gypsy Jazz as a rite of passage, along the Gypsy pilgrimage route to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer where the Romany play around their campfires, and finally to the new era of international Gypsy stars such as Bireli Lagrene, Boulou Ferre, Dorado Schmitt, and Django's own grandchildren, David Reinhardt and Dallas Baumgartner. Interspersed with Dregni's vivid narrative are the words of the musicians themselves, many of whom have never been interviewed for the American press before, as they describe what the music means to them. Gypsy Jazz also includes a chapter devoted entirely to American Gypsy musicians who remain largely unknown outside their hidden community. Blending travelogue, detective story, and personal narrative, Gypsy Jazz is music history at its best, capturing the history and culture of this elusive music--and the soul that makes it swing.
The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor. Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history. T. J. Desch Obi received his doctorate in African history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on historical ethnography, which he explores through the lens of African and African diaspora martial arts. He is currently an assistant professor of African and African diaspora history at the City University of New York's Baruch College.
