A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of AmericaUniversity of Michigan Press, 2006 M01 9 - 468 pages ". . . extraordinarily far-reaching. . . . highly accessible." —Notes "No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom." —Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story "This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University "[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories." —African American Review A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On." Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers. Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul. |
Contents
A Change Is Gonna Come Mahalia Jackson Motown and the Movement | 1 |
The Dream | 3 |
Mahalia and the Movement | 4 |
Calls and Responses | 11 |
Money Magic and the Mask | 15 |
Two out of Three Falls for the Soul of Motown | 22 |
The Gospel Impulse | 28 |
Sam Cooke and the Voice of Change | 31 |
Hard Times in Chocolate City | 183 |
Black Love in the Key of Life | 187 |
Jimmy Carter and the Great Quota Disaster of 1978 | 191 |
The Messages in the Music | 197 |
Disco and the Gospel Impulse | 203 |
Disco Sucks | 209 |
Punks and Pretenders | 212 |
Bruce Springsteen and the Clash | 218 |
Phil Spector and the Girl Group Blues | 37 |
SAR and the Ambiguity of Integration | 40 |
Port Huron and the Folk Revival | 44 |
Woody and Race | 49 |
Politics and Authenticity | 53 |
The Birth of Southern Soul | 56 |
Down at the Crossroads | 65 |
The Blues Impulse | 68 |
The MidSouth Mix | 72 |
Dylan the Brits and BlueEyed Soul | 79 |
The Minstrel Blues | 85 |
From Monterey to Woodstock | 89 |
Dot and Diana | 94 |
Love or Confusion? Black Power Vietnam and the Death of the Dream | 101 |
Sly in the Smoke | 103 |
LBJ Martin and the Liberal Collapse | 106 |
Jimi Hendrix and the Sound of Vietnam | 109 |
Retha Rap and Revolt | 116 |
Arethas Gospel Politics | 121 |
Malcolm and Coltrane | 125 |
The Jazz Impulse | 132 |
JB Miles and Jimi | 137 |
Curtis Mayfields Gospel Soul | 144 |
John Fogerty and the Mythic South | 151 |
Southern Strategies and the Revolution on TV | 158 |
Wattstax and Motown West | 165 |
Donny Hathaway and the End of the Dream | 172 |
I Will Survive Disco Irony and the Sound of Resistance | 175 |
Reflections in a Mirror Ball | 177 |
Reverend Green and the Return of Jim Crow | 179 |
PFunkentelechy | 226 |
Bob Marley in Babylon | 230 |
Hiphop and the South Bronx | 236 |
And Thats the Way That It Is The Reagan Rules Hiphop and the Megastars | 243 |
Welcome to the Terrordome | 245 |
Springsteen and the Reagan Rules | 246 |
The Problem of Healing in the Hall of Mirrors | 251 |
The View from Black America | 253 |
The Way It Was and the Way It Is | 257 |
Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby | 260 |
RunD M C Negotiates the Mainstream | 262 |
Elvis in the Eighties | 263 |
Michael and Madonna | 271 |
The Symbol Formerly Known as Prince | 277 |
West Africa Is in the House | 281 |
The New School Rap Game | 284 |
KRSOne Rakim and the Gangstas | 290 |
Springsteen and Race | 297 |
Holler If Ya Hear Me In the Nineties Mix | 305 |
Wasteland of the Free | 307 |
American Dreaming | 309 |
R E A M or Tupac on Death Row | 314 |
Mary J Blige and the Hip Hop Generation | 319 |
OutKast and the Dirty South | 330 |
Notes on the Browning of America | 338 |
Bruce Springsteen Kirk Franklin and Lauryn Hill | 348 |
Notes | 363 |
Playlist | 398 |
427 | |
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Common terms and phrases
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