The grey album on the blackness of blackness

Young, Kevin 1970- (Author).

Summary: "Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying-telling tales, fibbing, improvising, jazzing up, "storying." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art-and artfulness-to our daily lives. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young shifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix-all the grey areas of our history, literature, and music."--Cover p. [4].

Record details

ISBN: 1555976077 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9781555976071 (pbk.)
Physical Description: 483 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
print
Publisher: Minneapolis, Minn. : Graywolf Press, [2012]
Copyright: ©2012

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Overture -- Elsewhere: The shadow book ; How not to be a slave : on the Black art of escape ; Chorus one : steal away : slavery and its discontents -- Strange fruit: Broken tongue : Paul Laurence Dunbar, his descendants, and the dance of intellect ; Chorus two : it don't mean a thing : the blues mask of modernism ; "If you can't read, run anyhow!" : Langston Hughes and the poetics of refusal -- Heaven is Negro: Chorus three : ugly beauty : postmodernism and all that jazz ; Broken giraffe : Bob Kaufman, the song, and the silence ; Chorus four : moanin' : soul music and the power of pleasure -- Cosmic slop: Interstellar space : toward a post-soul poetics ; Final chorus : Planet Rock : the end of the record: The third coming ; 100 guns ; 36 chambers ; 99 problems ; Deadism.