"The blues - what is it, or what are they? Singular or plural - a way to sing or the way you feel? Big Star Fallin' Mama tells what the blues is about, in an extraordinary narrative of five black women and black music." "With grace and style, Hettie Jones explores the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin. Each of these gifted singers made a unique contribution to the blues, and to the world." "This revised edition features new material which covers musical trends and performers relevant to today's culture, such as the rap and hip-hop movements and the pop singer Whitney Houston. It includes over thirty photographs and a foreword by the music critic Nelson George, as well as an updated bibliography, discography, and index."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"A signal event in the history of the music." — Ted Gioia. A noted blues historian and folklorist explores blues lyrics as poetry, quoting lyrics at length to reveal their depth of feeling and incorporation of complex literary forms.

From one of this country's most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as powerful articulations of an alternative consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American culture. The works of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday have been largely misunderstood by critics. Overlooked, Davis shows, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability. Through meticulous transcriptions of all the extant lyrics of Rainey and Smith−published here in their entirety for the first time−Davis demonstrates how the roots of the blues extend beyond a musical tradition to serve as a conciousness-raising vehicle for American social memory. A stunning, indispensable contribution to American history, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph.

This is a comprehensive guide to popular music literature, first published in 1986. Its main focus is on American and British works, but it includes significant works from other countries, making it truly international in scope.

Teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults who work with adolescents must recognize that our society influences who teenagers are and how they develop as language users. This unique resource provides guidance to these professionals by pairing literacy specialists with counselors who introduce information about social issues important to today's adolescents. These experts then explore literature in which issues such as: body image, sexuality, and leaving home are addressed in ways likely to interest teens. By examining fictional characters, these experts provide guidance to those working with teenagers, so they can encourage adolescents to deal with the conflicts and issues imposed upon them by our society while improving their reading and writing skills. Eight important social issues are explored each in a separate chapter. While providing in-depth exploration of fictional characters grappling with these societal issues, each chapter also provides a question and answer section in which specialists answer questions many adults have raised regarding social influences on teenagers. Readers are given insight into how they can help teenagers with similar problems, and extensive annotated bibliographies recommend appropriate books to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems. This collaboration across academic specialties provides an innovative approach to attaining the goal of helping adults and adolescents in gaining a better understanding of each other.

Covering from 1900 to the present day, this book highlights how female artists, actors, writers, and activists were involved in the fight for women's rights, with a focus on popular culture that includes film, literature, music, television, the news, and online media. Women's Rights: Reflections in Popular Culture offers a succinct yet thorough resource for anyone interested in the relationship between feminism, women's rights, and media. It is ideally suited for students researching popular culture's role in the modern history of women's rights and representation of women, women's rights, and feminism in popular culture. This insightful book highlights of some of the most important moments of women taking a stand for women throughout popular culture history. Each section focuses on an aspect of popular culture. The television section covers important benchmarks, such as Julia, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Roseanne, Murphy Brown, and Ellen. Coverage of films includes Christopher Strong, Foxy Brown, and Thelma & Louise; the literature section features the work of influential individuals such as Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison. The book celebrates early musical ground-breakers like Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and Bessie Smith as well as contemporary artists Janelle Monáe and Pussy Riot. The work of key women activists—including Margaret Sanger, Angela Davis, and Winona LaDuke—is recognized, along with the unique ways women have used the power of the web in their continued effort to push for women's equality.

Includes indexes.