Crossovers: Essays on Race, Music, and American Culture - Softcover

Szwed, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812219724 ISBN 13: 9780812219722

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006

Synopsis

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About this title

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."--George Lipsitz, H-Urban

Synopsis:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0812219724
• ISBN 13: 9780812219722
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296