Language, Rhythm, and Sound: Black Popular Cultures Into the Twenty-First Century

Book Overview

Focusing on expressions of popular culture among blacks in Africa, the United States, and the Carribean this collection of multidisciplinary essays takes on subjects long overdue for study. Fifteen essays cover a world of topics, from American girls\u2019 Double Dutch games to protest discourse in Ghana; from Terry McMillan\u2019s Waiting to Exhale to the work of Zora Neale Hurston; from South African workers to Just Another Girl on the IRT; from the history of Rasta to the evolving significance of kente clothl from rap video music to hip-hop to zouk.
The contributors work through the prisms of many disciplines, including anthropology, communications, English, ethnomusicology, history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, political economy, psychology, and social work. Their interpretive approaches place the many voices of popular black cultures into a global context. It affirms that black culture everywhere functions to give meaning to people\u2019s lives by constructing identities that resist cultural, capitolist, colonial, and postcolonial domination.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822956209
• ISBN13: 9780822956204
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The musical side of black english

While this book gives plenty of examples of musical black english uses, it does not tackle the ideas of the differences of black english from standard english. As it is subtitled, "Black popular cultures into the twenty-first century," culture radically pervades the book. The chapters on rap and young girls games were fascinating!