Hardback
June 4, 2024
9780814346471
English
138
20 b&w illus.
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6.00 Inches (US)
1.5 Pounds (US)
$94.99 USD, £72.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Paperback / softback
June 4, 2024
9780814346488
English
138
20 b&w illus.
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6.00 Inches (US)
$36.99 USD, £28.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

On Rhetoric and Black Music

This groundbreaking analysis examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Author, musician, and scholar Earl H. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music. Through rhetorical studies, archival research, and musical analysis, Brooks establishes the "sonic lexicon of Black music," defined by a distinct constellation of sonic and auditory features that bridge cultural, linguistic, and political spheres with music. Genres of Black music such as blues and jazz are discursive fields, where swinging, improvisation, call-and-response, blue notes, and other musical idioms serve as rhetorical tools to articulate the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped African American cultural and political development. Examining the resounding artistry of iconic musicians such as Scott Joplin, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson, this work offers an alternative register in which these musicians and composers are heard as public intellectuals, consciously invested in crafting rhetorical projects they knew would influence the public sphere.

About the Author

Earl H. Brooks is a musician and assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research in African American expressive culture, rhetoric and composition, and sound studies also appears in Sounding Out!, Rhetoric Review, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, Langston Hughes Review, and College Composition and Communication.

9780814346471 : on-rhetoric-and-black-music-brooks
Hardback
June 4, 2024
$94.99 USD
9780814346488 : on-rhetoric-and-black-music-brooks
Paperback / softback
June 4, 2024
$36.99 USD

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