Many genres of music—including the blues, bluegrass, country, rock and roll, and gospel—have roots in the American South, and the region has nurtured some of the world's most famous and talented musicians—from Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn to Elvis Presley and B.B. King. Seddiqui—dubbed "the Most Traveled Person in America"—leads readers on an experience-based travel journey through the music of the South. The curated itinerary features • stops in Lexington, the hollers of eastern Kentucky, Bristol, Pigeon Forge, Nashville, Memphis, the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, Lafayette, Houston, and Austin; • fun, hands-on learning opportunities—from taking a line-dancing class to hand-crafting an instrument—that allow travelers to experience firsthand the music that flows through the region; • interviews with noted makers and musicians who provide insight into the region's craft and music traditions; and • information on lodging and other attractions that travelers should be sure not to miss as they jam their way through the South.

Riding Towards Me is the epic adventure story of Jay Kannaiyan who dropped everything he had in the US to ride his motorcycle back home to India by the longest possible route. The journey took him three years and three months as he rode through Latin America, Europe and Africa, finally reaching New Delhi in 2013. Jay and his motorcycle, sanDRina, encountered mechanical meltdowns, remote Mayan villages, weeks of high altitude desert isolation, Caribbean and Atlantic voyages, humility, friendship, and landscapes that almost destroyed the bike and Jay's spirit. His go-with-the-flow attitude and engineering background deliver a story of global trails and an adventuring insight that brought him fame amongst the off-road motorcycling fraternity before his journey was even complete.

Fred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century? Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in Music Makes Me, Todd Decker argues that Astaire’s work as a dancer and choreographer —particularly in the realm of tap dancing—made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire’s work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues stylings on television, and analyzes Astaire’s creative relationships with the greats, including George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer. He also highlights Astaire’s collaborations with African American musicians and his work with lesser known professionals—arrangers, musicians, dance directors, and performers.

In the 1960s and 1970s, America experienced a sports revolution. New professional sports franchises and leagues were established, new stadiums were built, football and basketball grew in popularity, and the proliferation of television enabled people across the country to support their favorite teams and athletes from the comfort of their homes. At the same time, the civil rights and feminist movements were reshaping the nation, broadening the boundaries of social and political participation. The Sports Revolution tells how these forces came together in the Lone Star State. Tracing events from the end of Jim Crow to the 1980s, Frank Guridy chronicles the unlikely alliances that integrated professional and collegiate sports and launched women’s tennis. He explores the new forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerged during the era, including the role the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders played in defining womanhood in the age of second-wave feminism. Guridy explains how the sexual revolution, desegregation, and changing demographics played out both on and off the field as he recounts how the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers and how Mexican American fans and their support for the Spurs fostered a revival of professional basketball in San Antonio. Guridy argues that the catalysts for these changes were undone by the same forces of commercialization that set them in motion and reveals that, for better and for worse, Texas was at the center of America’s expanding political, economic, and emotional investments in sport.

From the earliest sound films to the present, American cinema has represented African Americans as decidedly musical. Disintegrating the Musical tracks and analyzes this history of musical representations of African Americans, from blacks and whites in blackface to black-cast musicals to jazz shorts, from sorrow songs to show tunes to bebop and beyond. Arthur Knight focuses on American film’s classic sound era, when Hollywood studios made eight all-black-cast musicals—a focus on Afro-America unparalleled in any other genre. It was during this same period that the first black film stars—Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge—emerged, not coincidentally, from the ranks of musical performers. That these films made so much of the connection between African Americans and musicality was somewhat ironic, Knight points out, because they did so in a form (song) and a genre (the musical) celebrating American social integration, community, and the marriage of opposites—even as the films themselves were segregated and played before even more strictly segregated audiences. Disintegrating the Musical covers territory both familiar—Show Boat, Stormy Weather, Porgy and Bess—and obscure—musical films by pioneer black director Oscar Micheaux, Lena Horne’s first film The Duke Is Tops, specialty numbers tucked into better-known features, and lost classics like the short Jammin’ the Blues. It considers the social and cultural contexts from which these films arose and how African American critics and audiences responded to them. Finally, Disintegrating the Musical shows how this history connects with the present practices of contemporary musical films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Bamboozled.

Autobiography by Eric OxendineIf you read this book carefully, you'll have a vivid, deeply personal understanding of its main character, Eric Oxendine. Eric's story begins with his family roots in east-central North Carolina. A Lumbee Native American, Eric had a childhood with sweet and sour ingredients: A good family; childhood memories of carefree summers in an area known, essentially, for tobacco farming; an early encounter with southern racism. Racism at that early stage in a child's life might have created entrenched counter-racism in its victim. But Eric's innate strength, even as a youngster, brushed aside the episode as, "... odd, but probably just because he - the racist - didn't grow up around here." Moving with his mom to "the big city," Wilmington, Eric found New Hanover High School to be interesting, appealing for its ROTC military opportunities, and attractive for the attentions of young girls who loved guitar players. Wilmington in the 60's was known for its beach scene, a place where young Eric, by then a gifted and growing guitarist, found music lovers in abundance. A highly fluid, semi-pro career developed as Eric learned and performed surf music, calypso, folk tunes and jazz - each inspirational stream contributing to the professional musician Eric would become.But New Hanover High School in 1962, for all of its appeal, was not enough to keep Eric Oxendine in Wilmington. He had topped the list of local musicians. His eye was on a horizon to the north, New York City. Eric and a guitarist friend hitch-hiked to New York, arriving just as an early winter snow was beginning to fall in... The Village. Eric, still a teenager, alighting on the wet and freezing sidewalks of New York, at the doorway entrance to a music store, knew - almost prophetically - that he'd found his musical destiny. This book chronicles, in 1st person, eye-witness details, Eric's ascent as his talents become recognized in the night club scene, NYC's trendiest venues. After a few years, wherein he earned the hard credits he deserved as a largely free-lance guitarist in New York, Eric had a fateful introduction to the great, Jimi Hendrix. Eric recalls: I remember the first time I met Jimi Hendrix was on Valentine's Day in 1966. I was performing at the Cheetah Club in Manhattan on 53rd Street and Broadway in New York City. A relationship was formed instantly when Jimi said his mother was Cherokee, and I told him I was from the Lumbee Tribe. That friendship would endure through many late-night jams, soul-searching personal disclosures, musical collaboration on stage and in the studio, before audiences and in the darkest corners of New York's most exclusive night clubs. Eric's career would take him across the U.S., and around the world many times with The Richie Havens Band, The Van Morrison Band, and with countless musical ensembles performing on stage, so many name acts, this introduction would be swamped with the mention of each. But, most importantly, Eric's path was inter-twined, in literal and spiritual ways, with the great, Jimi Hendrix. Perhaps no living guitarist, one who survived the music scene of Woodstock, the "West Coast Jam, "and all that followed, is present, and able to report that era like Eric Oxendine. And this book, "His Story," "Jammin' with Jimi," is not just the life story of a guitarist who shared the stage with the greatest names in show business. It is the story of a young Native American, possessed of great talent, and insurmountable drive, who created a career as a successful performing artist, against all odds. In doing so, Eric Oxendine has secured his place in musical history, an and now he shares it ........................... with the world.