Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation

Book Description
In Songs in the Key of Black Life, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal turns his attention to Rhythm and Blues. He argues that R&B-often dismissed as "just a bunch of love songs," yet the second most popular genre in terms of sales-can tell us much about the dynamic joys, apprehensions, tensions, and contradictions of contemporary black life, if we listen closely. With a voice as heartfelt and compelling as the best music, Neal guides us through the work of classic and contemporary artists ranging from Marvin Gaye to Macy Gray. In the first section of the book, "Rhythm," he uses the music of Meshell N'degeocello, Patti Labelle, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, and others as guideposts to the major concerns of contemporary black life-issues such as gender, feminist politics, political activism, black masculinity, celebrity, and the fluidity of racial and sexual identity. The second part of the book, "Blues," uses the improvisational rhythms of black music as a metaphor to examine currents in black life including the public dispute between Cornel West and Harvard President Lawrence Summers and the firing of BET's talk-show host Tavis Smiley. Songs in the Key of Black Life is a remarkable contribution to the study of black popular music, and valuable reading for anyone interested in how race is lived in America.


About the Author
Mark Anthony Neal is Assistant Professor of English and African-American Studies at the State University of New York, Albany. He is author of What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture and Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, both published by Routledge.


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Neal's (African American studies, SUNY at Albany) cogent, coherent, and comprehensive What the Music Said is arguably the definitive study of the relationship between 20th-century black American music and black American society as a whole. Here, he narrows his focus, addressing very specific topics related to black American music of the past 40 years. Thirteen distinct chapters analyze such subjects as the history of "Nuyorican Soul"; white singer-songwriter Laura Nyro and her groundbreaking 1971 collaboration with black vocal group Labelle; and the firing of BET's talk show host Travis Smiley. Neal's overgenerous peppering of urban slang du jour-flava, fo' sho,' uh-huh, Angie, you all woman, it's big pimpin', baby!-with postmodernist cant makes Songs at times an odd approximation of Joel Chandler Harris interpreting J rgen Habermas. And beyond simply feeling more awkward than clever, this discordant bidialectalism limits the optimal readership to those patrons who are fluent in both idioms. Beyond this caveat, however, Neal's vision is (as always) right on target, and he does analyze important subjects never heretofore treated in depth. Surely worthy of consideration by those academic libraries with a strong interest in contemporary black American cultural studies.-Bill Piekarski, Lackawanna, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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