Description
In Alive in the Sound, Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities - spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians' status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them - as "natural" musicians - indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, where enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slavery's seminal contests of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the music's place in US and global culture.
About the Author
Ronald Radano is Professor Emeritus of African Cultural Studies and Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his books is Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews
"Uncovering striking and novel parallels across various forms of African American music while challenging conventional formulations of identity and historical periodization, Ronald Radano upends settled wisdom around African American music and presents a new historical and critical model for its development." - George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
"Ronald Radano's ambitious, well-researched book challenges some assumptions of the distinctness of Black music in the United States. Through careful scholarship and compelling argument, Radano demonstrates that the critical production of Black music as distinct from other US music produces notions of US culture, and produces the frameworks through which notions of music-in-general develop. Alive in the Sound is a significant achievement and a major book." - Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production
Book Information
ISBN 9781478028918
Author Ronald Radano
Format Hardback
Page Count 576
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 572g
About the Author
Ronald Radano is Professor Emeritus of African Cultural Studies and Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his books is Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews
"Uncovering striking and novel parallels across various forms of African American music while challenging conventional formulations of identity and historical periodization, Ronald Radano upends settled wisdom around African American music and presents a new historical and critical model for its development." - George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
"Ronald Radano's ambitious, well-researched book challenges some assumptions of the distinctness of Black music in the United States. Through careful scholarship and compelling argument, Radano demonstrates that the critical production of Black music as distinct from other US music produces notions of US culture, and produces the frameworks through which notions of music-in-general develop. Alive in the Sound is a significant achievement and a major book." - Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production
Book Information
ISBN 9781478028918
Author Ronald Radano
Format Hardback
Page Count 576
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 572g
