Audiotopia: Music, Race, and AmericaRanging from Los Angeles to Havana to the Bronx to the U.S.-Mexico border and from klezmer to hip hop to Latin rock, this groundbreaking book injects popular music into contemporary debates over American identity. Josh Kun, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, insists that America is not a single chorus of many voices folded into one, but rather various republics of sound that represent multiple stories of racial and ethnic difference. To this end he covers a range of music and listeners to evoke the ways that popular sounds have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity. Artists as diverse as The Weavers, Café Tacuba, Mickey Katz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bessie Smith, and Ozomatli reveal that the song of America is endlessly hybrid, heterogeneous, and enriching—a source of comfort and strength for populations who have been taught that their lives do not matter. Kun melds studies of individual musicians with studies of painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and of writers such as Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. There is no history of race in the Americas that is not a history of popular music, Kun claims. Inviting readers to listen closely and critically, Audiotopia forges a new understanding of sound that will stoke debates about music, race, identity, and culture for many years to come. |
Contents
| 29 | |
The Yiddish Are Coming | 48 |
Life According to the Beat | 86 |
Basquiats Ear Rahsaans Eye | 113 |
I Too Sing America | 143 |
Rocks Reconquista | 184 |
La Misma Cancion | 219 |
NOTES | 227 |
| 255 | |
DISCOGRAPHY | 277 |
| 283 | |
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Common terms and phrases
African American Afro-Cuban album Amer America Singing Angeles artists Ask Your Mama audio audiotopias aural band Basquiat beat bebop become Bessie Smith black music blues body border Café Tacuba called Chant Chicano citizenship color Cuba Cuban cultural dance ethnic Gómez-Peña Guillén Hear America Singing heard hip-hop Hughes's Ibid identity immigrant inter-American James Baldwin jazz Jewish Jews Kallen Kirk's klezmer Langston Hughes Latin America liner notes listening live Maldita Vecindad Mambo melting pot Mexican rock Mickey Katz Mingus musicians Negro Speaks Ozomatli pachuco painted performance phonograph play poem poem's poetry political popular music race racial Rahsaan Roland Kirk record rhythms rock en español Rufus Santo Seeger sexual singer social song sonic spaces Speaks of Rivers Tigres Tijuana tion tradition transform transnational U.S. rock U.S.-Mexico U.S.-Mexico border United Vivaldo voice Whitman writing wrote Yiddish Yinglish
Popular passages
Page 37 - I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick...
Page 43 - As in an orchestra, every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form ; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization...
Page 43 - ... and form ; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society each ethnic group is the natural instrument, its spirit and culture are its theme and melody, and the harmony and dissonances and discords of them all make the symphony of civilization, with this difference : a musical symphony is written before it is played ; in the symphony of civilization the playing is the writing, so that there is nothing so fixed and inevitable about its progressions as in...
Page 32 - ... to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse ! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.
Page 38 - I too, hear America singing But from where I stand I can only hear Little Richard And Fats Domino. But sometimes, I hear Ray Charles Drowning in his own tears or Bird Relaxing at Camarillo or Horace Silver doodling, Then I don't mind standing a little longer. The new SNCC organization, that summer and early fall of 1960, found that "coordinating
Page 21 - American nationality can still be taken for granted as a monolithic and self-contained whole, no matter how diverse and conflicted, if it remains implicitly defined by its internal social relations, and not in political struggles for power with other cultures and nations, struggles which make America's conceptual and geographic borders fluid, contested, and historically changing (1993, 15), Hence a postcolonial rather than a multicultural approach would better serve postnational studies of the United...