Black British Gospel Music is a dynamic and multifaceted musical practice, a diasporic river rooted in the experiences of Black British Christian communities. This book examines gospel music in Britain in both historical and contemporary perspectives, demonstrating the importance of this this vital genre to scholars across disciplines. Drawing on a plurality of voices, the book examines the diverse streams that contribute to and flow out of this significant genre. Gospel can be heard resonating within a diverse array of Christian worship spaces; as a form of community music-making in school halls; and as a foundation for ‘secular’ British popular music, including R&B, hip hop and grime.

Two Dollar Weigh, a promissory note, is a creative non-fiction literature written in truth, passion, and life. This book is a form of self help and creativity placing the reader in the seat of responsibility. The basis of this book was to produce ten chapters that can be read separately but are incorporated together. Two Dollar Weigh introduces the author and prompts questions to the reader, illustrating poetic type stories, and charismatic humor ultimately delivering payment of a debt. While reading you will enter a two-door vehicle that drives you through all lanes. The lane is yours allowing for no specific destination or time. It’s you leading the way and finding your weigh. Self help comes from honestly identifying your weakness by admitting what it is that has power over you thus allowing it to become one of your greatest strengths. This is the Two Dollar Weigh.

The first book-length study of one of the most essential elements of hip-hop: musical borrowing

Emotions, especially those of impoverished migrant families, have long been underrepresented in German social and cultural studies. That Sinking Feeling raises the visibility of the emotional dimensions of exclusion processes and locates students in current social transformations. Drawing from a year of ethnographic fieldwork with grade ten students, Stefan Wellgraf’s study on an array of both classic emotions and affectively charged phenomena reveals a culture of devaluation and self-assertion of the youthful, post-migrant urban underclass in neoliberal times.

This book aims to revisit the notion of subculture for the 21st century, reinterpreting it and extending its scope. On the one hand, the notion of resistance is redefined and applied to contemporary practices of cultural production and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, contributors reconsider the connection of subcultures to everyday culture, exploring more mainstream forms of cultural production and consumption across a wider range of social groups. As a consequence, this book extends the scope to look beyond the white, male, adolescent, urban cultures identified with earlier subcultural studies. Contributors also examine fusions and crossovers between Western and non-Western cultural practices.

How can we imagine a future not driven by capitalist assumptions about humans and the wider world? How are a range of contemporary artistic and popular cultural practices already providing pathways to post-capitalist futures? Authors from a variety of disciplines answer these questions through writings on blues and hip hop, virtual reality, post-colonial science fiction, virtual gaming, riot grrrls and punk, raku pottery, post-pornography fanzines, zombie films, and role playing. The essays in Art as Revolt are clustered around themes such as technology and the future, aesthetics and resistance, and ethnographies of the self beyond traditional understandings of identity. Using philosophies of immanence – describing a system that gives rise to itself, independent of outside forces – drawn from a rich and evolving tradition that includes Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Braidotti, the authors and editors provide an engrossing range of analysis and speculation. Together the essays, written by experts in their fields, stage an important collective, transdisciplinary conversation about how best to talk about art and politics today. Sophisticated in its theoretical and philosophical premises, and engaging some of the most pressing questions in cultural studies and artistic practice today, Art as Revolt does not provide comfortable closure. Instead, it is understood by its authors to be a “Dionysian machine,” a generator of open-ended possibility and potential that challenges readers to affirm their own belief in the futures of this world. Contributors include Timothy J. Beck (University of West Georgia), Mark Bishop (Independent Scholar), Dave Collins (University of West Georgia), David Fancy (Brock University), Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (University of Western Ontario), Malisa Kurtz (Independent Scholar), Nicole Land (Toronto Metropolitan University), Eric Lochhead (Youth Author Calgary Alberta), Douglas Ord (Doctoral Student University of Western Ontario), Joanna Perkins (Independent Scholar), Peter Rehberg (Institute for Cultural Inquiry—Berlin), Chris Richardson (Young Harris College), Hans Skott-Myhre (Kennesaw State University), and Kathleen Skott-Myhre (University of West Georgia).

Meet Tony Gin. Tony finds his way onto Los Angeles' inner city streets of drug and gang infested danger. Literally free to roam at seven years of age while living in an abusive household, Tony gets lost in the heart of the "American Dream," losing his sense of purpose. The alluring temptations of street life have Tony falling into the temptation of the "dark side" which lands him in prison for ten years without any direction in this true life thriller. Chased by the police, Tony's life of adventure is one that even the best Hollywood screen writers couldn't imagine. Every parent, drug counselor, teacher, inmate, movie producer, executive, celebrity, and student in America should read this gripping story of how selfish human behavior "conditions us as products of our environment." Take the journey of hope, tragedy, and triumph with Tony as he discovers his sense of purpose by fate after stumbling upon one man, a college professor who brings Tony back to NY with him to tell his story.