scholarly journals Soul, Afrofuturism & the Timeliness of Contemporary Jazz Fusions

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Solis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Musical Expression

The rise of jazz-R&B-hip hop fusions in contemporary Los Angeles offers an opportunity to reflect on the ways jazz matters to black audiences today. Drawing on recent Afrofuturist art and theory as well as on Amiri Baraka's analysis of the “changing same” in black music, this essay traces out the significance of work by artists as diverse as Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and Robert Glasper, positing that their music tells us that jazz matters not only in itself, but also in its continuing capacity to engage in cross-genre dialogues for musicians and audiences who hear it as part of a rich continuum of African American musical expression.

Sam Cooke as Pop Album Artist—A Reinvention in Three Songs

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Burford
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Employment Equity ◽  
The Road ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Studio Musicians ◽  
The Prestige

Abstract Though African American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur Sam Cooke (1931–1964) is commonly celebrated as a pioneering soul singer, the preponderance of Cooke recordings suggesting to many critics a “white” middle-of-the-road pop sound has troubled this reception. From June 1957 until the end of 1959, Cooke recorded for the independent label Keen Records, where he charted a course for realizing his professional and socioeconomic aspirations, including his determination to harness the prestige attached to the long-playing album and the “album artist.” This article explores relationships between the repertory, performances, and production on three Keen album tracks: “Danny Boy,” “My Foolish Heart,” and “I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues.” These recordings reveal Cooke's seldom-noted proximity to contemporaneous figures and concerns: “Irish tenor” Morton Downey, who built a career on the fluidity between ethnic identity and pop's transparent “whiteness”; Billy Eckstine, who struggled to navigate the racial and sexual politics of the pop balladeer; and the black studio musicians whose campaign for employment equity in 1950s Los Angeles found resonance with Cooke's vision. Taking Cooke's endeavor seriously positions us to assess freshly Cooke's skills as a vocalist, the processes through which “pop” becomes racialized as white, and intractable methodological challenges in black music studies.

scholarly journals The Beastie Boys: Jews in whiteface

Popular Music ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
JON STRATTON
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Music ◽  
White American ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe Beastie Boys are usually described as the white hip hop group who helped break rap to a broad-based white audience. Rarely is it acknowledged that the Beasties all came from Jewish backgrounds. This article examines the implications of the Beastie Boys’ Jewishness. The Beasties can be placed in a long history of Jewish entertainers reworking black music for white American audiences. By the 1980s, Jews in the United States had been assimilated into whiteness, yet it is clear that the memory of discrimination lived on. The members of the Beasties played with whiteness – performed in whiteface – while being very aware of their own Jewishness and the implications of this. With the advice and mentoring of African American Russell Simmons and the Jewish Rick Rubin, the group gained respect in the black community as legitimate rappers and then set out to perform as uncivil rock performers for white audiences. This article argues that the Beasties’ Jewishness was central to their success as the group that brought rap to a mainstream white American audience.

Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Christopher Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Academy ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Hip Hop Culture

At the 2010 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in Atlanta, GA, a group of young scholars organized a wildcard session titled “What’s This ‘Religious’ in Hip Hop Culture?” The central questions under investigation by the panel were 1) what about hip hop culture is religious? and 2) how are issues of theory and method within African American religious studies challenged and/or rethought because of the recent turn to hip hop as both subject of study and cultural hermeneutic. Though some panelists challenged this “religious” in hip hop, all agreed that hip hop is of theoretical and methodological import for African American religious studies and religious studies in general. This collection of essays brings together in print many findings from that session and points out the implications of hip hop's influence on religious scholars' theoretical and methodological concerns.

Blackness as Riot Control: Managing Civic Unrest Through Black Appeal Programming and Black Celebrity

2020 ◽  
pp. 152747642098582
Author(s):  
Philip Scepanski
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Cosby Show ◽  
Riot Control

During the uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, black hip-hop artist Killer Mike appeared on television to ask that people remain nonviolent and in their homes. Similar events took place years earlier. James Brown performed a live concert on WGBH to keep Boston peaceful following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968. During the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, both The Cosby Show and The Arsenio Hall Show were used to similar ends. These examples demonstrate the ways in which television has activated black identity to quell certain forms of civil rights protest and implicate televisual discourses of liveness, domesticity, and public service.

scholarly journals Seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. e043584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph E Ebinger ◽  
Gregory J Botwin ◽  
Christine M Albert ◽  
Mona Alotaibi ◽  
Moshe Arditi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Delivery System ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Healthcare Delivery System ◽  
Hispanic Ethnicity ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
African American Race

ObjectiveWe sought to determine the extent of SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and the factors associated with seroprevalence across a diverse cohort of healthcare workers.DesignObservational cohort study of healthcare workers, including SARS-CoV-2 serology testing and participant questionnaires.SettingsA multisite healthcare delivery system located in Los Angeles County.ParticipantsA diverse and unselected population of adults (n=6062) employed in a multisite healthcare delivery system located in Los Angeles County, including individuals with direct patient contact and others with non-patient-oriented work functions.Main outcomesUsing Bayesian and multivariate analyses, we estimated seroprevalence and factors associated with seropositivity and antibody levels, including pre-existing demographic and clinical characteristics; potential COVID-19 illness-related exposures; and symptoms consistent with COVID-19 infection.ResultsWe observed a seroprevalence rate of 4.1%, with anosmia as the most prominently associated self-reported symptom (OR 11.04, p<0.001) in addition to fever (OR 2.02, p=0.002) and myalgias (OR 1.65, p=0.035). After adjusting for potential confounders, seroprevalence was also associated with Hispanic ethnicity (OR 1.98, p=0.001) and African-American race (OR 2.02, p=0.027) as well as contact with a COVID-19-diagnosed individual in the household (OR 5.73, p<0.001) or clinical work setting (OR 1.76, p=0.002). Importantly, African-American race and Hispanic ethnicity were associated with antibody positivity even after adjusting for personal COVID-19 diagnosis status, suggesting the contribution of unmeasured structural or societal factors.Conclusion and relevanceThe demographic factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among our healthcare workers underscore the importance of exposure sources beyond the workplace. The size and diversity of our study population, combined with robust survey and modelling techniques, provide a vibrant picture of the demographic factors, exposures and symptoms that can identify individuals with susceptibility as well as potential to mount an immune response to COVID-19.

IMAGINING A BETTER WORLD:

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 353-385
Author(s):  
Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey ◽  
Ray Block ◽  
Harwood K. McClerking
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Negative Messages ◽  
Mass Level

AbstractDespite a recent increase in research on its sociopolitical implications, many questions regarding rap music’s influence on mass-level participation remain unanswered. We consider the possibility that “imagining a better world” (measured here as the degree to which young African Americans are critical of the music’s negative messages) can correlate with a desire to “build a better world” (operationalized as an individual’s level of political participation). Evidence from the Black Youth Project (BYP)’s Youth Culture Survey (Cohen 2005) demonstrates that rap critique exerts a conditional impact on non-voting forms of activism. Rap critique enhances heavy consumers’ civic engagement, but this relationship does not occur among Blacks who consume the music infrequently. By demonstrating rap’s politicizing power and contradicting certain criticisms of Hip Hop culture, our research celebrates the possibilities of Black youth and Black music.

‘Where all my bad girls at?’

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyhanna Yoo Garza
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Performance Challenges

This article examines the polyvalence of racial(ised) representations in K-pop performances. The analysis of K-pop star CL’s (2013) song and video ‘Nappeun gijibae’ (‘The bad girl’) demonstrates how the artist projects an assertive femininity by embodying and localising the Bad Bitch: a sexually agentive figure of womanhood from US hip hop. CL’s use of African American English and conventionalised hip hop tropes helps resignify gijibae, a pejorative Korean term for women. By shifting between decontextualised styles invoking a different time and place, CL is able to build a kind of chronotopic capital that transforms fragmented styles into an empowered cosmopolitan femininity. However, although CL’s performance challenges Korean gendered norms in its use of local linguistic resources, her selective appropriations of US Black and Chicanx cultural signifiers reproduce narrow images of racialised femininities and reify a hierarchy of valuation along lines of gender and race.

Impoliteness in hip-hop music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Panagiotis Delis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
White Male ◽  
White Female ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Social ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
And Gender

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the functionality of impoliteness strategies as rhetorical devices employed by acclaimed African American and White hip-hop artists. It focuses on the social and artistic function of the key discursive element of hip-hop, namely aggressive language. The data for this paper comprise songs of US African American and White performers retrieved from the November 2017 ‘TOP100 Chart’ for international releases on Spotify.com. A cursory look at the sub-corpora (Black male/ Black female/ White male/ White female artists’ sub-corpus) revealed the prominence of the ‘use taboo words’ impoliteness strategy. The analysis of impoliteness instantiations by considering race and gender as determining factors in the lyrics selection process unveiled that both male groups use impoliteness strategies more frequently than female groups. It is also suggested that Black male and White female singers employ impoliteness to resist oppression, offer a counter-narrative about their own experience and self (re)presentation and reinforce in group solidarity.

scholarly journals Engaging African American Veterans with Health Care Access Challenges in a Community Partnered Care Coordination Initiative: A Qualitative Needs Assessment

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (Supp) ◽  
pp. 475-484
Author(s):  
Adriana Izquierdo ◽  
Michael Ong ◽  
Felica Jones ◽  
Loretta Jones ◽  
David Ganz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Health Care System ◽  
Health Care Access ◽  
Veterans Health ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Health Care Environment ◽  
Care Access ◽  
Care System

Background: Little has been written about engaging potentially eligible members of a health care system who are not accessing the care to which they are entitled. Know­ing more about the experiences of African American Veterans who regularly experi­ence health care access challenges may be an important step toward equitable, coordi­nated Veterans Health Administration (VHA) care. This article explores the experiences of African American Veterans who are at risk of experiencing poor care coordination.Design: We partnered with a community organization to recruit and engage Veterans in three exploratory engagement workshops between October 2015 and February 2016.Participants and Setting: Veterans living in South Los Angeles, CaliforniaMain Outcome Measures: Veterans were asked to describe their experiences with community care and the VHA, a division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Field notes taken during the workshops were analyzed by community and academic partners using grounded theory methodol­ogy to identify emergent themes.Results: 12 Veterans and 3 family members of Veterans participated in one or more en­gagement workshops. Their trust in the VA was generally low. Positive themes included: Veterans have knowledge to share and want to help other Veterans; and connecting to VA services can result in positive experi­ences. Negative themes included: functional barriers to accessing VA health care services; insensitive VA health care environment; lack of trust in the VA health care system; and Veteran status as disadvantageous for accessing non-VA community services.Conclusions: Veterans living in underserved areas who have had difficulty accessing VA care have unique perspectives on VA services. Partnering with trusted local com­munity organizations to engage Veterans in their home communities is a promising strategy to inform efforts to improve care access and coordination for vulnerable Vet­erans.Ethn Dis. 2018;28(Suppl 2):475-484; doi:10.18865/ed.28.S2.475.

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