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A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America
"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom." —Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story
"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories." —African American Review
A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."
Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.
Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition
Introduction: “What’s Going On”
Acknowledgments
Section One: “A Change Is Gonna Come”: Mahalia Jackson, Motown, and the Movement
1. The Dream
2. Mahalia and the Movement
3. “The Soul of the Movement”: Calls and Responses
4. Motown: Money, Magic, and the Mask
5. The Big Chill vs. Cooley High: Two out of Three Falls for the Soul of Motown
The Gospel Impulse
6. Sam Cooke and the Voice of Change
7. Solid Gold Coffins: Phil Spector and the Girl Group Blues
8. SAR and the Ambiguity of Integration
9. “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”: Port Huron and the Folk Revival
10. Woody and Race
11. “Blowin’ in the Wind”: Politics and Authenticity
12. Music and the Truth: The Birth of Southern Soul
13. Down at the Crossroads
The Blues Impulse
14. Soul Food: The Mid-South Mix
15. Dylan, the Brits, and Blue-Eyed Soul
16. The Minstrel Blues
17. Otis, Jimi, and the Summer of Love: From Monterey to Woodstock
18. Last Thoughts on the Dream: Dot and Diana
Section Two: “Love or Confusion?”: Black Power, Vietnam, and the Death of the Dream
19. Sly in the Smoke
20. Death Warrants: LBJ, Martin, and the Liberal Collapse
21. “All Along the Watchtower”: Jimi Hendrix and the Sound of Vietnam
22. ’Retha, Rap, and Revolt
23. “Spirit in the Dark”: Aretha’s Gospel Politics
24. Jazz Warriors: Malcolm and Coltrane
The Jazz Impulse
25. “Black Is an’ Black Ain’t”: JB, Miles, and Jimi
26. Curtis Mayfield’s Gospel Soul
27. John Fogerty and the Mythic South
28. “Trouble Comin’ Every Day”: Southern Strategies and the Revolution on TV
29. Troubled Souls: Wattstax and Motown (West)
30. “Where Is the Love?”: Donny Hathaway and the End of the Dream
Section Three: “I Will Survive”: Disco, Irony, and the Sound of Resistance
31. Reflections in a Mirror Ball
32. Reverend Green and the Return of Jim Crow
33. Demographics 101: Hard Times in Chocolate City
34. Black Love in the Key of Life
35. Jimmy Carter and the Great Quota Disaster of 1978
36. Roots: The Messages in the Music
37. God Love Sex: Disco and the Gospel Impulse
38. Disco Sucks
39. Punks and Pretenders
40. Rebellion or Revolution: Bruce Springsteen and the Clash
41. P-Funkentelechy
42. Redemption Songs: Bob Marley in Babylon
43. The Message: Hip-hop and the South Bronx
Section Four: “And That’s the Way That It Is”: The Reagan Rules, Hip-hop, and the Megastars
44. Welcome to the Terrordome
45. Springsteen and the Reagan Rules
46. The Problem of Healing in the Hall of Mirrors
47. The View from Black America
48. The Way It Was and the Way It Is
49. Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby
50. Run-D.M.C. Negotiates the Mainstream
51. “A Hero to Most”: Elvis in the Eighties
52. Megastardom and Its Discontents: Michael and Madonna
53. Duke Ellington for Our Time: The Symbol Formerly Known as Prince
54. West Africa Is in the House
55. “Bring the Noise”: The New School Rap Game
56. “Know the Ledge”: KRS-One, Rakim, and the Gangstas
57. “Born in the U.S.A.”: Springsteen and Race
Section Five: “Holler If Ya Hear Me”: In the Nineties Mix
58. Wasteland of the Free
59. American Dreaming
60. C.R.E.A.M., or, Tupac on Death Row
61. No More Drama: Mary J. Blige and the Hip Hop Generation
62. The Gospel Impulse Gets Crunk: OutKast and the Dirty South
63. Ozomatli and the Myth of Purity: Notes on the Browning of America
64. The Gospel Impulse (Remixed): Bruce Springsteen, Kirk Franklin, and Lauryn Hill