Music of the Civil Rights Movement
Recommended Books
A Catalog of Music Written in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. by
In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed into law a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, the holiday was first formally observed by the federal government. In response to the growing number of musical celebrations surrounding the holiday, Anthony McDonald published in 1996 the first edition of The Catalog of Music Written in Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, more than a decade since its second edition in 1999, McDonald presents his definitive third edition of the catalog. McDonald organizes information on music suitable for concert performances by symphony orchestras, school music departments, church choirs, or solo performers, including works that celebrate not only Martin Luther King Day, but Black History Month as well. His selections comprise musical work written to honor King, as well as other Americans engaged in the struggle for equality and freedom such as Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John F. Kennedy. McDonald also incorporates works that more broadly address African American history and culture, such as William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony. This third edition contains a considerable number of revisions, updates, and new work and includes entirely new sections devoted to jazz and blues songs, sample programs of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day concerts, and a discography, along with appendixes of works listed by orchestration, subject, and a list of publishers and sources. A Catalog of Music Written in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. is the ideal tool for symphony orchestras, choruses, music departments, and other performing groups and organizations seeking to present concerts that celebrate Martin Luther King Jr., his legacy, and African American history more broadly.
Call Number: ML128.B45 C38 2012 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 2011
The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America by
Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial--an early milestone in civil rights history--on the seventieth anniversary of her performance. On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of seventy-five thousand at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington--an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history. Though she was at the peak of a dazzling career, Anderson had been barred from performing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall because she was black. When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR over the incident and took up Anderson's cause, however, it became a national issue. Like a female Jackie Robinson--but several years before his breakthrough--Anderson rose to a pressure-filled and politically charged occasion with dignity and courage, and struck a vital blow for civil rights. In the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King would follow, literally, in Anderson's footsteps. T his tightly focused, richly textured narrative by acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault captures the struggle for racial equality in 1930s America, the quiet heroism of Marian Anderson, and a moment that inspired blacks and whites alike.
Call Number: ML420.A6 A77 2009Publication Date: 2009
The Hip Hop Movement: From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation by
The Hip Hop Movement offers a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Connecting classic rhythm & blues and rock & roll to the Civil Rights Movement, and classic soul and funk to the Black Power Movement, The Hip Hop Movement explores what each of these musics and movements contributed to rap, neo-soul, hip hop culture, and the broader Hip Hop Movement. Ultimately, this book's remixes (as opposed to chapters) reveal that black popular music and black popular culture have always been more than merely "popular music" and "popular culture" in the conventional sense and reflect a broader social, political, and cultural movement. With this in mind, sociologist and musicologist Reiland Rabaka critically reinterprets rap and neo-soul as popular expressions of the politics, social visions, and cultural values of a contemporary multi-issue movement: the Hip Hop Movement. Rabaka argues that rap music, hip hop culture, and the Hip Hop Movement are as deserving of critical scholarly inquiry as previous black popular musics, such as the spirituals, blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, soul, and funk, and previous black popular movements, such as the Black Women's Club Movement, New Negro Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Arts Movement, and Black Women's Liberation Movement. This volume, equal parts alternative history of hip hop and critical theory of hip hop, challenges those scholars, critics, and fans of hip hop who lopsidedly over-focus on commercial rap, pop rap, and gangsta rap while failing to acknowledge that there are more than three dozen genres of rap music and many other socially and politically progressive forms of hip hop culture beyond DJing, MCing, rapping, beat-making, break-dancing, and graffiti-writing.
Call Number: ML3479 .R28 2013Publication Date: 2013
Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations by
One of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on the civil rights and black power movements in America, Just My Soul Responding also offers a major challenge to conventional histories of contemporary black and popular music. Brian Ward explores in detail the previously neglected relationship between Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness, and race relations within the context of the ongoing struggle for black freedom and equality in the United States. Instead of simply seeing the world of black music as a reflection of a mass struggle raging elsewhere, Ward argues that Rhythm and Blues, and the recording and broadcasting industries with which it was linked, formed a crucial public arena for battles over civil rights, racial identities, and black economic empowerment. Combining unrivalled archival research with extensive oral testimony, Ward examines the contributions of artists and entrepreneurs like Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Berry Gordy to the organized black struggle, explaining what they did for the Movement and--just as important--why they and most of their peers failed to do more. In the process, he analyses the ways in which various groups, from the SCLC to the Black Panthers, tried--with very mixed results--to use Rhythm and Blues and the politics of celebrity to further their cause. He also examines the role that black-oriented radio played in promoting both Rhythm and Blues and the Movement, and unravels the intricate connections between the sexual politics of the music and the development of the black freedom struggle. This richly textured study of some of the most important music and complex political events in America since World War II challenges the belief that white consumption of black music necessarily helped eradicate racial prejudice. Indeed, Ward argues that the popularity of Rhythm and Blues among white listeners sometimes only reinforced racial stereotypes, while noting how black artists actually manipulated those stereotypes to increase their white audiences. Ultimately, Ward shows how the music both reflected and affected shifting perceptions of community, empowerment, identity, and gender relations in America during the civil rights and black power eras.
Call Number: ML3479 .W37 1998Publication Date: 1998
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America by
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.
Call Number: ML3479 .W47 2006Publication Date: 2006
Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion by
Here is a skillful tracing of two tracks in the evolution of musical genres that have evolved from black religion. Songs of protest developed from the spiritual through social-gospel hymnody to culminate in songs of the civil-rights movement and the blues. Born in rebellion, they envision the Kingdom of God. Songs of praise, by contrast, express adoration. Beginning with the "ring-shout," Spencer follows the history of intoned declamation through the tongue song, Holiness-Pentecostal music, and the chanted sermon of the black preacher. Spencer's approach, termed theomusicology, unlocks the wealth of African-American sacred music with a theological key. The result is a fascinating account of a people's struggle with God in history.
Call Number: ML3556 .S8 1990Publication Date: 1990
Keep On Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip-Hop by
The marriage of music and social change didn't originate with the movements for civil rights and Black Power in the 1950s and 1960s, but never before and never again was the relationship between the two so dynamic. In Keep On Pushing, author Denise Sullivan presents the voices of musician-activists from this pivotal era and the artists who followed in their footsteps to become the force behind contemporary liberation music. Joining authentic voices with a bittersweet narrative covering more than fifty years of fighting oppression through song, Keep On Pushing defines the soundtrack to revolution and the price the artists paid to create it. Exclusive interviews with Yoko Ono, Richie Havens, Len Chandler, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Michael Franti, Solomon Burke, Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, Phranc, plus musician-activist Elaine Brown on the Black Panthers, Nina Simone collaborator Al Schackman, Penelope Houston and Debora Iyall on San Francisco punk rock, Ed Pearl on the L.A. folk scene and the Ash Grove, and other musical and political icons.
Call Number: ML3556 .S94 2011Publication Date: 2011
Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement by
While there have been a number of studies that have explored African American movement culture and African American movement politics, rarely has the mixture of Black music and Black politics or, rather, Black music an as expression of Black movement politics, been explored across several genres of African American movement music, and certainly not with a central focus on the major soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement: gospel, freedom songs, rhythm.
Call Number: ML3917.U6 R33 2016Publication Date: 2016
Fight the Power: Law and Policy through Hip-Hop Songs by
Taking inspiration from Public Enemy's lead vocalist Chuck D - who once declared that 'rap is the CNN of young Black America' - this volume brings together leading legal commentators to make sense of some of the most pressing law and policy issues in the context of hip-hop music and the ongoing struggle for Black equality. Contributors include MSNBC commentator Paul Butler, who grapples with race and policing through the lens of N.W.A.'s song 'Fuck tha Police', ACLU President Deborah Archer, who considers the 2014 uprisings in Ferguson, Missouri, and many other prominent scholars who speak of poverty, LGBTQ+ rights, mass incarceration, and other crucial topics of the day. Written to 'say it plain', this collection will be valuable not only to students and scholars of law, African-American studies, and hip-hop, but also to everyone who cares about creating a more just society.
Call Number: ML3918.R37 F55 2022Publication Date: 2022
Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (eBook) by
From his cavernous voice and unparalleled artistry to his fearless struggle for human rights, Paul Robeson was one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and polymaths. In Everything Man Shana L. Redmond traces Robeson's continuing cultural resonances in popular culture and politics. She follows his appearance throughout the twentieth century in the forms of sonic and visual vibration and holography; theater, art, and play; and the physical environment. Redmond thereby creates an imaginative cartography in which Robeson remains present and accountable to all those he inspired and defended. With her bold and unique theorization of antiphonal life, Redmond charts the possibility of continued communication, care, and collectivity with those who are dead but never gone.
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook CentralPublication Date: 2020
Recommended Audio Recordings
- Black Power: Music of a Revolution
Compact Disc 20574 - I Have a Dream: 10 Inspirational Songs of Hope and Triumph
Compact Disc 22406 - Soundtrack for a Revolution
Compact Disc 21136 - We Shall Overcome: Songs of the Freedom Riders and the Sit-Ins
Compact Disc 8350 - Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs, 1960-1966
Compact Disc 18233 - Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs
Compact Disc 2788
Video Resources
For an overview of the role that music has played in civil rights, check out the following DVD:
Soundtrack for a Revolution: DVD Video 10772
Individual Films available through Kanopy.com streaming video (log on required from off campus):
Mavis! Gospel Music Legend and Civil Rights Activist Mavis Staples
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.