Secular devotion
Subtitle: Afro-Latin music and imperial jazz
By: Timothy Brennan.
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9781844672912; 9781844672905
Subjects: Popular music -- Latin America -- History and criticism; Popular music -- United States -- History and criticism; Latin jazz -- History and criticism; Blacks -- Latin America -- Music -- History and criticism; World music -- Latin America -- History and criticism; World music -- History and criticism
Description: "Popular music in the Americas, from jazz, Cuban and Latin salsa to disco and rap, is overwhelmingly neo-African. Created in the midst of war and military invasion, and filtered through a Western worldview, these musical forms are completely modern in their sensibilities: they are in fact the very sound of modern life. But the African religious philosophy at their core involved a longing for earlier eras - ones that pre-dated the technological discipline of labor forced on captive populations by capitalism. In this groundbreaking new book, Timothy Brennan shows how the popular music of the Americas - the music of entertainment, nightlife, and leisure - is involved in a devotion to an African religious worldview that survived the ravages of slavery and found its way into the rituals of everyday listening. He explores the challenge that Afro-Latin music poses to Western cultural imperialism, and the processes by which it has been absorbed into the imperial impagination."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [247]-274) and index.
Table of contents: title: World music does not exist; title: Surrealism and the Son; title: Face down in the mainstream; title: Rap and American business; title: Global youth and local pleasure; title: The war of writing on music : Mumbo jumbo; title: Imperial jazz.