Collected Essays & Memoirs
By: Albert Murray ; Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin, editors
Contributors: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., editor; Devlin, Paul, 1980- editor
Series: The library of America -- 284; Library of America -- 284.
Publisher: The Library of America
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 1049
ISBN-13: 9781598535037
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: Race relations; Literature; Music; African American authors; American essays; History and criticism; Biography
Other titles: Albert Murray, collected essays & memoirs; Collected essays and memoirs
Work titles: Works
Description: In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (1916-2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the "pathology" of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the "blues-hero tradition" - a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity. Murray went on to refine these ideas in The Blue Devils of Nada and From the Briarpatch File, and all three landmark collections of essays are gathered here for the first time, together with Murray's memoir South to a Very Old Place, his brilliant lecture series The Hero and the Blues, his masterpiece of jazz criticism Stomping the Blues, and eight previously uncollected pieces.
Notes: Selected nonfiction writings originally published 1964-2004.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 956-1020) and index.
Table of contents: title: The omni-Americans --; title: South to a very old place --; title: The hero and the blues --; title: Stomping the blues --; title: The blue devils of Nada --; title: From the briarpatch file -- -- Other writings.; title: "The problem" is not just black and white ;; title: U.S. Negroes and U.S. Jews : no cause for alarm ;; title: "Soul" : thirty-two meanings not in your dictionary ;; title: "Stone" : definition and usage ;; title: Two nations? Only two? ;; title: Bearden in theory and ritual ;; title: Three omni-American artists ;; title: Jazz : notes toward a definition ---- Chronology.