Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South

 

In the sound of the 1960s and 1970s, nothing symbolized the rift between black and white America better than the seemingly divided genres of country and soul. Yet the music emerged from the same songwriters, musicians, and producers in the recording studios of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama--what Charles L. Hughes calls the "country-soul triangle." In legendary studios like Stax and FAME, integrated groups of musicians like Booker T. and the MGs and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section produced music that both challenged and reconfirmed racial divisions in the United States. Working with artists from Aretha Franklin to Willie Nelson, these musicians became crucial contributors to the era's popular music and internationally recognized symbols of American racial politics in the turbulent years of civil rights protests, Black Power, and white backlash.

Hughes offers a provocative reinterpretation of this key moment in American popular music and challenges the conventional wisdom about the racial politics of southern studios and the music that emerged from them. Drawing on interviews and rarely used archives, Hughes brings to life the daily world of session musicians, producers, and songwriters at the heart of the country and soul scenes. In doing so, he shows how the country-soul triangle gave birth to new ways of thinking about music, race, labor, and the South in this pivotal period.

 

Charles L. Hughes (Autor)  

 

Downtown Pop Underground New York City and the literary punks, renegade artists, DIY filmmakers, mad playwrights, and rock n roll glitter queens who revolutionized culture

 

The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn’t become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world.

 

Kembrew McLeod (Autor)  

 

El Mariachi. Simbolo Musical de Mexico

 

Jesús Jáuregui nació en Teocaltiche, Jalisco, en 1949. Creció en la costa de Nayarit y en su adolescencia se trasladó a Tepic para continuar con su educación. A los veinte años decidió dedicarse a la antropología para contribuir a la comprensión de la cultura mexicana. Obtuvo el título de etnólogo en la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, la maestría en Ciencias Antropológicas en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y el doctorado en Antropología en el Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. Se ha especializado en el estudio del parentesco, la antropología económica, la mitología, los procesos rituales y la religión popular. Su región de trabajo es el occidente de México y sus temas principales son el mariachi, las danzas de conquista y la cultura de los coras y huicholes. Es investigador del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

 

Jesus Jauregui (Autor) 

 

Art Deco 1910–1939

 

 

This lavishly illustrated book brings together nearly 40 essays from leading experts in the field to discuss the phenomenon that was Art Deco.

 

Charlotte Benton (Author),  

Tim Benton (Author),  

Ghislaine Wood (Author),  

Oriana Baddeley (Collaborator)  

 

Circa 1492 • Art In The Age Of Exploration

Marking the 500th anniversary of the meeting of worlds that took place at the end of the 15th century, Circa 1492 reflects on this watershed moment, one that has been called “the most significant secular event in human history.” Informed by the lasting perspective of art and cultural achievement, this exhibition catalog assesses what we have loosely termed the “Age of Exploration.” Including more than 600 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, maps, scientific instruments, and works of decorative art from four continents—most of them created during the late 15th or early 16th century—the exhibition provides a broad, thematic survey through space rather than chronologically through time. The juxtapositions presented generate a new, keener understanding, both intellectually and affectively, of this historic era that resulted in links among continents that forever changed the character of the relationships between the world’s cultures.

 

 

Editor Jay A. Levenson (Autor)