During the heady days of the 2008 election cycle, playwright Rudy Paschal struggles to create a new theater that reflects a contemporary Black aesthetic using the iconic figure of Robert Johnson and the last days of his life. His girlfriend, Janet, a white feminist literary theorist at NYU, is at work on a book herself attempting to find peace between third wave feminism and womanism. The political and cultural differences dividing the two leads to a strain in the relationship which leads both characters to re-examine their core values.

The year is 1927, and Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are feverish with youth, gin, and artistic ambition. They are riding high on the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance-the most dynamic and shocking literary movement in American history. To make their mark on the world, they decide to write an authentic African American opera rooted in the folktales and songs of the South. Despite these lofty ambitions, the messiness of everyday life and the pressures of patronage get in the way. The blues opera Hughes and Hurston work so hard on never materializes. At first it's simply reduced to a play. Then its very ownership is brought into dispute. Eventually Hughes and Hurston's friendship comes to a final and irreparable end. Through all their arguments, love affairs, discussions and diversions, the characters work to create a new modernism that is both accessible and relevant to contemporary Black life, and to the generations of readers and writers, artists and poets, both Black and white, to follow. Harlem Mosaics is a fictional reimagining of true events. In lyrical prose that evokes the heady 1920's, it tells a story that reads as a cautionary tale, a love story, and a social novel, reintroducing us to these brilliant and important artists. The novel includes an introduction by Marc Primus, of the Afro-American Folkloric Troupe, who knew and produced the works of both Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

High Jack de Conqueror traverses the political development of the United States and the world in the years following the volatile cultural and political skirmishes of the 2020s and 2030s. Beginning with the murder of Lena Powers, America's transformative Black female president, events unfold that reveal deep blemishes on the soul of the country as well as revealing cultural aspects of the people that could possibly work towards repairing and healing the nation amidst environmental, political and moral collapse. Part political thriller, part historical novel from the future and part work of visionary Afrofuturism, High Jack de Conquerorexplores questions that confront us as perennially contemporary people in a globalized and digitized world.

Duke Ellington is widely held to be the greatest jazz composer and one of the most significant cultural icons of the twentieth century. This comprehensive and accessible Companion is the first collection of essays to survey, in depth, Ellington's career, music, and place in popular culture. An international cast of authors includes renowned scholars, critics, composers, and jazz musicians. Organized in three parts, the Companion first sets Ellington's life and work in context, providing new information about his formative years, method of composing, interactions with other musicians, and activities abroad; its second part gives a complete artistic biography of Ellington; and the final section is a series of specific musical studies, including chapters on Ellington and song-writing, the jazz piano, descriptive music, and the blues. Featuring a chronology of the composer's life and major recordings, this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Ellington's enduring artistic legacy.

The long-awaited autobiography of Keith Richards, guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life. Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever. With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.

CLAVE MATRIX: The entire interwoven structure of clave-based music as it relates to its generative source.CLAVE: A Spanish word meaning 'code,' or 'key,' as in the key to a mystery or puzzle. Also 'keystone,' the wedge-shaped stone in the center of an arch that ties all the stones together. Clave is the key pattern that both binds and decodes the rhythmic structure of Afro-Cuban music.MATRIX: The point of origin from which something takes form and develops; a grid-like array of elements, an interwoven pattern.