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In the early eighteenth century, a delegation of Iroquois visited Britain, exciting the imagination of the London crowds with images of the “feathered people” and warlike “Mohocks.” Today, performing in a popular Afrodiasporic tradition, “Mardi Gras Indians” or “Black Masking Indians” take to the streets of New Orleans at carnival time and for weeks thereafter, parading in handmade “suits” resplendent with beadwork and feathers. What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three centuries and several thousand miles of ocean? Interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance along the Atlantic rim from the eighteenth century to the present, Cities...
Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves is a provocative look at the institution of slavery and how it functioned as a part of Louisiana's culture during the years of Spanish rule. Gilbert C. Din challenges the idea that conditions under the Spaniards differed little from the years of French rule and examines how local culture merged with colonial government and residual laws to create a slave system unlike any other in the Deep South. Din presents many aspects of the slavery issue, including a look at the French system, conflicts between planters who favored the established system and governors who promoted the less stringent Spanish laws, and the political favoritism that sought to benefit the wea...
Between the World Wars, New Orleans transformed its image from that of a corrupt and sullied port of call into that of a national tourist destination. Anthony J. Stanonis tells how boosters and politicians reinvented the city to build a modern mass tourism industry and, along the way, fundamentally changed the city's cultural, economic, racial, and gender structure. Stanonis looks at the importance of urban development, historic preservation, taxation strategies, and convention marketing to New Orleans' makeover and chronicles the city's efforts to domesticate its jazz scene, "democratize" Mardi Gras, and stereotype local blacks into docile, servile roles. He also looks at depictions of the ...
W. C. Handy waking up to the blues on a train platform, Buddy Bolden eavesdropping on the drums at Congo Square, John Lomax taking his phonograph recorder into a southern penitentiary - in Disturbing the Peace, Bryan Wagner revises the history of the black vernacular tradition and gives a new account of black culture by reading these myths in the context of the tradition's ongoing engagement with the law.
Highlights Henriette Delille, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family, who lived out a vision that defied social convention, cultural custom, and tepid religiosity.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw both the consolidation of American print culture and the establishment of an African American literary tradition, yet the two are too rarely considered in tandem. In this landmark volume, a stellar group of established and emerging scholars ranges over periods, locations, and media to explore African Americans' diverse contributions to early American print culture, both on the page and off. The book's chapters consider domestic novels and gallows narratives, Francophone poetry and engravings of Liberia, transatlantic lyrics and San Francisco newspapers. Together, they consider how close attention to the archive can expand the study of African American literature well beyond matters of authorship to include issues of editing, illustration, circulation, and reading—and how this expansion can enrich and transform the study of print culture more generally.
Roots of a Region reveals the importance of folk traditions in shaping and expressing the American South. This overview covers the entire region and all forms of ex-pression-oral, musical, customary, and material. The author establishes how folklore pervades and reflects the region\'s economics, history (espe-cially the Civil War), race rela-tions, religion, and politics. He follows with a catalog of those folk-cultural traits-from food and crafts to music and story-that are distinctly southern. The book then explores the Native American and Old World sources of southern folk culture. Two case studies serve as examples to stu-dents and as evidence of the author\'s larger points. The first tr...
Urban Homelands explores writing by Native Oklahomans that connects urban homelands in Oklahoma and beyond and reveals the need for a new methodology of urban Indian studies.
Over the course of the twentieth century, African Americans in New Orleans helped define the genres of jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and funk. In recent decades, younger generations of New Orleanians have created a rich and dynamic local rap scene, which has revolved around a dance-oriented style called "bounce." Hip-hop has been the latest conduit for a "New Orleans sound" that lies at the heart of many of the city's best-known contributions to earlier popular music genres. Bounce, while globally connected and constantly evolving, reflects an enduring cultural continuity that reaches back and builds on the city's rich musical and cultural traditions. In this book, the popular music scholar ...
This scholarly study demonstrates “that while post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is changing, the vibrant traditions of jazz . . . must continue” (Journal of African American History). An examination of the musical, religious, and political landscape of black New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, this revised edition looks at how these factors play out in a new millennium of global apartheid. Richard Brent Turner explores the history and contemporary significance of second lines—the group of dancers who follow the first procession of church and club members, brass bands, and grand marshals in black New Orleans’s jazz street parades. Here music and religion interplay, and Turner’s study reveals how these identities and traditions from Haiti and West and Central Africa are reinterpreted. He also describes how second line participants create their own social space and become proficient in the arts of political disguise, resistance, and performance.