Category Archives: African-American music

2014 Conference

April 12, 2014 All these things that I didn’t know before the conference: Daniel Venegas’ Don Chiopote, the Creole folklore collected in Louisiana by the Federal Writers’ Project, and (I’m ashamed to say) Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of  Loss, writing the story … Continue reading

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Stuart Hall and vernacular modernity

February 14, 2014 The passing of Stuart Hall makes me go back to his seminal essay, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” where he talks about “vernacular modernity” as the “modernity of the blues, of gospel music, of hybrid black music in its … Continue reading

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Amiri Baraka’s luck

January 15, 2014 He must have been one of the most photographed – certainly in the 60s, and probably long after that. But the picture that’s most stuck in my head is actually one in USA Today, taken late in … Continue reading

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Faulkner’s Harlem Renaissance

November 20, 2013 This past week I was teaching Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing.  I’d never assigned them before,  but they couldn’t have been better — for my “Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner” class. How else to contextualize Light in August?  Not … Continue reading

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Suzan-Lori Parks, Diane Paulus, Deidre Murray : Three Women Collaborating

October 9, 2014 It won the 2012 Tony for the best musical revival, but the New York Times didn’t much like it,  missing Gershwin’s full operatic scores in this “thinned-out” and “heavily-cut” version. Having no deep connection to the original, … Continue reading

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Bono on Seamus Heaney

September 4, 2013 He was there at the funeral, of course, with Adam Clayton, and also wrote this short piece in the Guardian: “Every meeting I’ve ever had since I began full-time advocacy, I have brought with me a book … Continue reading

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March on Washington: unsung

August 28, 2013 No, not literally unsung.   In fact, the most memorable moments at the microphone, other than Martin Luther King’s “I had a Dream” speech,  featured singers: Mahalia Jackson; Marian Anderson; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez and … Continue reading

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Robert Pinsky, Ginza Samba

July 24, 2013 For years I hadn’t gone much beyond his translation of the Inferno.  I’d noticed a couple of things I didn’t like (might even have gone looking for them), and just stopped there, his own poetry getting all … Continue reading

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Amiri Baraka: jazz side of the brain

July 18, 2013 I’ve always loved this account of jazz from Amiri Baraka: “Jazz enabled separate and valid emotional expressions to be made that were based on older traditions of Afro-American music that were clearly not not a part of … Continue reading

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Langston Hughes’s Children Literature

May 31, 2013 My class, “Regional, National, Global,” has no special focus on children’s literature, but it does seem to come up a lot. I think it’s because of Langston Hughes — the uncertain borders of his poetry, holding a … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, African-American music, Children's literature, Cities, collaboration, Educational institutions, Ethnicity, Experimental poetry, jazz, Modernist poetry, Music, print medium, Twentieth century literature, World history | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment