The Prehistory of Jazz

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Ted Gioia
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Context ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Early Evolution ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bessie Smith ◽  
Work Songs ◽  
Musical Context

This chapter explores the cultural and musical context for the birth of jazz. It examines the styles of music that influenced the early evolution of the music, including ragtime, blues, spirituals, and work songs. It also includes thumbnail sketches of the leading performers in these idioms, including Scott Joplin, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, and others. The chapter also describes the social context for early jazz, with special focus on African American culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.

1998 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1471
Author(s):  
V. P. Franklin ◽  
Jack Salzman ◽  
David Lionel Smith ◽  
Cornel West
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture

History and Memory in African-American Culture.

1995 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 1174
Author(s):  
Craig Werner ◽  
Genevieve Fabre ◽  
Robert O'Meally
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
History And Memory

African Female Circumcision and the Missionary Mentality

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
Joyce Russell-Robinson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Women ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
African Countries ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
American Women ◽  
Do So

Alice Walker and former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado have something in common. Both advocate the cessation of female circumcision in African countries, and both tout themselves as feminists, though Walker, borrowing from African American culture, prefers to be labeled as a womanist. What the elders had in mind when they described young African American women as “womanish,” or as “omanish,” the eclipsed form of that same word, was that such girls were too fast, or that they obtruded upon areas that were not their business. While Schroeder cannot properly be called a womanist (to do so would be to misapply the term), one can say that, similar to Alice Walker, Schroeder is putting herself into other people’s business, specifically the business of female circumcision in African communities.

Conclusion: Noah’s Kin

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Scott Parrish
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Mass Audience ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

This chapter considers the question of what made the recent disaster called Katrina in 2005, and its mediation, distinct from its 1927 forerunner. It argues that what was most different about the two events is that artists and commentators in 2005 could be more openly critical of the racial and class dimensions of their disaster before a multiracial mass audience. The chapter also considers a poem that appeared in print in April 1927, which must have seemed a providential coincidence to many readers. The poem, called “Noah Built the Ark,” moves from the halcyon days in Eden to the point at which “God got sorry that he ever made man.” Like other works of the Harlem Renaissance, the poem called upon the currency of folk form to create a public awareness of traditions within African American culture.

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