
Blues People
Negro Music in White America
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Narrated by:
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Prentice Onayemi
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By:
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LeRoi Jones
About this listen
"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music - through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel, development, jazz...[If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."
So says Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) in the introduction to Blues People, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960s, Baraka traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America - not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history.
©1999 LeRoi Jones (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age 10, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker and encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark.
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Excellent
- By Sonny Garcia on 01-02-24
By: Daniel De Visé
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3 Shades of Blue
- Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
- By: James Kaplan
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. James Kaplan’s magnificent 3 Shades of Blue captures how that golden era came to be, and its pinnacle with the recording of Kind of Blue. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the cities that gave jazz its home, and the Black geniuses behind its rise. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange environments where it can flourish most.
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Great deep dive into a pinnacle of jazz, marred by author bias against later jazz years
- By Michael J. Anderson on 04-08-24
By: James Kaplan
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Black in Blues
- How a Color Tells the Story of My People
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: Imani Perry
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey.
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So many lessons in this book
- By Christina the Teacher on 02-04-25
By: Imani Perry
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Dangerous Rhythms
- Jazz and the Underworld
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.
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Keep your YouTube handy
- By Vikon on 09-12-22
By: T. J. English
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The Reformatory
- A Novel
- By: Tananarive Due
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
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Worth a listen
- By LadyLove on 11-07-23
By: Tananarive Due
What listeners say about Blues People
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Glenn
- 09-17-20
Wonderful
This book was very informative. The author , LeRoi Jones performed a very in depth research . A must read (listening) for all music lovers.
Glenn E.Caffey
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- Cara Foss Arellano
- 05-06-21
Very good
I liked it alot, that's really all I have to say so I'm just gonna drag this out so I have enough words
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tony
- 09-21-19
You can't know where you're going. unless....
Excellent narration. A thought-provoking historical thesis of Black people and their music, the blues, in America.
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- Jonathan
- 07-22-19
A journey through the roots of blues and jazz
I hadn't heard of Jones before taking an Art hum music class. I was so moved by his insight in our readings that I decided to seek out his other works and I'm glad I did. Great narration and writing. Simply put, loved it.
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- Angela
- 12-11-22
Outstanding.
Clear sighted and knowledgeable exploration of the evolutionary history of African American music from Emancipation to the 1960’s.
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- Tabitha Williams
- 01-30-24
More than a book about the Blues.
What sticks with me the most about this book is the topic of Blacks having to create our own culture because our African culture was pretty diluted by second generation slavery. How that new culture was built significantly by our artistic expression through music. As we “worked” we sang creating music based on our experience. Even today I find myself cleaning my house while singing along to Anita Baker. I am also not to familiar with the blues or jazz so found myself stopping at every mention of an artist to listen to a snippet of their music trying to find the changes in riffs and tempo the writer so vividly expressed.
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- blues38
- 05-15-21
Not about the blues
This book is about jazz & blues is only mentioned in the book's title. Dissatisfied.
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