LEADER 02993nam 22003973a 450 001 9910645963803321 005 20230621141114.0 010 $a1-4780-9071-5 024 8 $ahttps://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392071 035 $a(CKB)5460000000185179 035 $a(ScCtBLL)ede842a1-115a-4a28-9ed3-4874c08b6aaa 035 $a(EXLCZ)995460000000185179 100 $a20211214i20092021 uu 101 0 $aeng 135 $auru|||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 02$aA Language of Song $eJourneys in the Musical World of the African Diaspora /$fSamuel Charters, Ann duCille 210 1$a[s.l.] :$cDuke University Press,$d2009. 215 $a1 online resource (365 p.) 330 $aIn A Language of Song, Samuel Charters-one of the pioneering collectors of African American music-writes of a trip to West Africa where he found "a gathering of cultures and a continuing history that lay behind the flood of musical expression [he] encountered everywhere . . . from Brazil to Cuba, to Trinidad, to New Orleans, to the Bahamas, to dance halls of west Louisiana and the great churches of Harlem." In this book, Charters takes readers along to those and other places, including Jamaica and the Georgia Sea Islands, as he recounts experiences from a half-century spent following, documenting, recording, and writing about the Africa-influenced music of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Each of the book's fourteen chapters is a vivid rendering of a particular location that Charters visited. While music is always his focus, the book is filled with details about individuals, history, landscape, and culture. In first-person narratives, Charters relates voyages including a trip to the St. Louis home of the legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin and the journey to West Africa, where he met a man who performed an hours-long song about the Europeans' first colonial conquests in Gambia. Throughout the book, Charters traces the persistence of African musical culture despite slavery, as well as the influence of slaves' songs on subsequent musical forms. In evocative prose, he relates a lifetime of travel and research, listening to brass bands in New Orleans; investigating the emergence of reggae, ska, and rock-steady music in Jamaica's dancehalls; and exploring the history of Afro-Cuban music through the life of the jazz musician Bebo Valde?s. A Language of Song is a unique expedition led by one of music's most observant and well-traveled explorers. 606 $aMusic / Ethnomusicology$2bisacsh 606 $aMusic / Genres & Styles / Blues$2bisacsh 606 $aMusic 615 7$aMusic / Ethnomusicology 615 7$aMusic / Genres & Styles / Blues 615 0$aMusic 700 $aCharters$b Samuel$0928781 702 $aduCille$b Ann 801 0$bScCtBLL 801 1$bScCtBLL 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910645963803321 996 $aA language of song$92139139 997 $aUNINA