Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music

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University of Chicago Press, 2003 - 417 pages
What is black music? For some it is a unique expression of the African-American experience, its soulful vocals and stirring rhythms forged in the fires of black resistance in response to centuries of oppression. But as Ronald Radano argues in this bracing work, the whole idea of black music has a much longer and more complicated history-one that speaks as much of musical and racial integration as it does of separation.
 

Contents

Preface
xi
Telling Stories Telling Lies Revisionist Listening and the Writing of Music History
1
Resonances of Racial Absence Black Sounding Practices Prior to Negro Music
45
First Truth Second Hearing Audible Encounters in Antebellum Black and White
101
Magical Writing The Iconic Wonders of the Slave Spiritual
160
Of Bodies and Soul Feeling the Pulse of Modern Race Music
226
A Nations Gift
274
Notes
283
Index
375
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About the author (2003)

Ronald Radano is a professor of music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique and coeditor of Music and the Racial Imagination, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

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