
If the negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music. So says amiri baraka in the introduction to Blues People, musical, his classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, economic, and cultural history.
In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates the influence of African Americans on American culture and history. The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at.
Black Music AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series

. Jones has learned—and this has been very rare in jazz criticism—to write about music as an artist. Nat hentoff ksblack music is a book about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk, and others.
Also includes amiri baraka's reflections in a 2009 interview with Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly. Leroi jones now known as Amiri Baraka is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta

Blues is the cornerstone of American popular music, the bedrock of rock and roll. In this extraordinary musical and social history, Robert Palmer traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to international popularity, recognition, to the steamy bars of Chicago’s South Side, and imitation.
King, and many others. Entrancing study" -- greil Marcus "Palmer has a powerful understanding of the music and an intense involvement in the culture. The nation Used book in Good Condition. B. A lucid. Penguin Books.
The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States

For example, the jazz clarinetist sidney bechet said, who died a slave as a young man, in speaking of his grandfather Omar, "Inside him he'd got the memory of all the wrong that's been done to my people. Striving to break down the barriers that remain between high art and low art, it brilliantly illuminates the centuries-old linkage between the music, myths and rituals of Africa and the continuing evolution and enduring vitality of African-American music.
That's what the memory is. When a blues is good, that kind of memory just grows up inside it. Grounding his scholarship and meticulous research in his childhood memories of black folk culture and his own experiences as a musician and listener, Floyd maintains that the memory of Omar and all those who came before and after him remains a driving force in the black music of America, a force with the power to enrich cultures the world over.
When jimi hendrix transfixed the crowds of woodstock with his gripping version of "The Star Spangled Banner, in part, to the revolutionary guitar playing of Howlin' Wolf and the other great Chicago bluesmen, " he was building on a foundation reaching back, and to the Delta blues tradition before him.
Penguin Books.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

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. 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, as boldly insightful as the women Davis praises, indispensable contribution to American history, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism is a triumph. Used book in Good Condition. Overlooked, has been the way their candor and bravado laid the groundwork for an aesthetic that allowed for the celebration of social, Davis shows, moral, and sexual values outside the constraints imposed by middle-class respectability.
Penguin Books.
Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

38 illustrations Used book in Good Condition. King, delta blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B. B. The essential history of this distinctly American genre.
Atlanta journal-constitution in this “expertly researched, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” Gary Giddins, elegantly written, award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” Publishers Weekly, starred review. Penguin Books.
W w norton Company.
Mumbo Jumbo

W w norton Company. In it, one of our preeminent african-American authors, Reed, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy.
The History Of The Blues: The Roots, The Music, The People

Used book in Good Condition. Penguin Books. The lives of major figures such as robert johnson, and Leadbelly, in addition to contemporary artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, Charlie Patton, are examined and skillfully woven into a riveting, provocative narrative.
Black Power : The Politics of Liberation

W w norton Company. Used book in Good Condition. Da capo Press.
Jazz: A History of America's Music

Visually stunning, this book, with more than five hundred photographs, some never before published, like the music it chronicles, is an exploration—and a celebration—of the American experiment. Jazz provided the background for the giddy era that F. Bix beiderbecke, whose search for fresh ways to sound made him the most influential jazz musician of his generation, the doomed cornet prodigy who showed white musicians that they too could make an important contribution to the music; Benny Goodman, but who grew up to teach a whole country how to dance; Billie Holiday, the immigrants' son who learned the clarinet to help feed his family, whose distinctive style routinely transformed mediocre music into great art; Charlie Parker, only to destroy himself at thirty-four; and Miles Davis, who helped lead a musical revolution, and then led him to abandon jazz altogether.
W w norton Company. Born in the black community of turn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning by musicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at their best. Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: louis armstrong, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turned a whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly two thousand pieces for it, every instrumentalist who came after him; Duke Ellington, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art and influenced every singer, and captured more of American life than any other composer.
Buddy bolden, dave brubeck, jelly roll morton, and ella fitzgerald are all here; so are Sidney Bechet, Ornette Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane, Artie Shaw, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, and a host of others. But jazz is more than mere biography.
The History of Jazz

He also evokes the many worlds of jazz, the bawdy houses of new orleans, the cotton Club, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the rent parties of Harlem, the Savoy, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made.
Ted gioia's history of jazz has been universally hailed as a classic--acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world. Now gioia brings his magnificent work completely up-to-date, drawing on the latest research and revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present. Da capo Press. Used book in Good Condition.
Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. Gioia tells the story of jazz as it had never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved.
Penguin Books.