Full-color illustrations.

    George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images.Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall’s kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, A Power Stronger Than Itself uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art.

    One hundred years later, his descendant Fortis James (Lick) Holden grows up in a life of poverty in Mount Marter, Louisiana with his grandmother, mother, half-sisters, and stepsister, the beautiful fair-skinned “quadroon” Sylvie Black. At the age of ten shows his skill with playing the coronet, but when he runs afowl of the law he is sent away to reform school. There he joins a band and learns to play with his “head, chops, and heart” from a man called the Professor.The story then shifts to present-day Zimindo, now the fictional African nation of Zambawi, and follows the reactions of chief Tongo, his argumentative pregnant wife Kudzai, and Musa, his zukulu, to the arrival of the African-American archaelogist from Northwestern University named Olurunbunmi (Bunmi) Durowoju (formerly Coretta Pink). She has excavate the remains of an old tribal village nearby and turned up a fantastic tribal headdress but needs Tongo’s permission to take it, which he refuses (hoping to sleep with her in exchange), but his wife intervenes, and when he goes to Musa for advice the shaman tells him he can’t help, because he is about to embark on a journey…Meanwhile in 1912 Lick returns from reform school and begins making a name for himself among the juke joints of his small home town. He soon travels to New Orleans at the height of its jazz age glory at the suggestion of a local star (and also to search for the missing Sylvie), but his connection doesn’t pan out—though a young Louis Armstrong takes him under his wing, which transforms his sound, but he departs the Big Easy once he hears that Sylvie has returned to his hometown, abandoning the prostitute he married.Back in 1998, a black Englishwoman, Sylvia di Napoli is boarding a plane bound for New York, to untangle the secret of his ancestry. Born of two ostensibly white parents, she had run away from her angry father’s household as a teenager, becoming a prostitute before deciding that she wanted to turn her life around and become a singer. She meets an Englishman named Jim on the plane who she tells her story to Jim over the course of the planeride and at a bar in New York. He decides to join her in meeting her great uncle in Harlem.In 1920 Mount Marten, Louisiana, Sylvie Black has become a prostitute for the young white gentlemen of the town, while Lick searches for her in between infrequent performances. Lick encounters her at a dance but she leaves him for the young white man she came with.In 1998 New York, Jim and Sylvia meet with Fabrizio Berlone, her long-lost grand uncle, who reveals the mystery of her racial heritage: her grandmother was a mixed-race blues singer named Sylvia who was passing for white and gave birth while in New York. They head to Chicago in search of her great aunt (where Musa the zukulu has also turned up) and go to the Apostolic Church of All Saints, where the pastor reveals that her great aunt has been survived by a daughter: Coretta Pink. They head to her office at the university, where they are informed that she is in Africa, but Musa is there to meet them.Back in Zambawi, Kudzai abandons Tongo in a fury and he makes a rash pass at Bunmi, who rejects his moves with a swift knee to the groin—but after Tongo agrees to let her take the mask, she relents. But six months later, after Musa has returned to the village Tongo reveals he did not sleep with her, and Kudzai has returned to the village with a son, now named Tongo.Six months earlier in New Orleans, Jim, Sylvia, and Musa, frequent an “Irish” bar where a blues guitarist named Fortnightly plays. There Jim reveals his jealousy at Sylvia’s attraction to Musa and Musa reveals that Fortnightly is Fortis Holden Jr.Back in 1920 Mount Martin, LA, Sylvie seeks out Lick and stays with him for five days but leaves to return to her white lover, and sees Lick on the side and begins performing with his band. But when she becomes pregnant, they decide they must leave. Fortis Holden Jr. explains the rest of the story to Jim, Sylvia, and Musa in 1998 New Orleans, and tells of how Sylvie’s white lover comes to kill Lick, Sylvie goes to New York and becomes the wife of the Italian man who Sylvia knows as her grandfather. After an ugly bout of jealousy, Jim reveals his love for Sylvia, and months later Sylvia meets Bunmi to complete the circle and the story.

    We hear it in the poems of Langston Hughes, E. E. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, and Gwendolyn Brooks, and in those of Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Ntozake Shange, Mark Doty, William Matthews, and C. D. Wright. Here are poems that pay tribute to jazz’s great voices, and poems that throb with the vivid rhythm and energy of the jazz tradition, ranging in tone from mournful elegy to sheer celebration.

    Born Walker Smith, Jr., in 1921, Robinson had an early childhood marked by the seething racial tensions and explosive race riots that infected the Midwest throughout the twenties and thirties. After his mother moved him and his sisters to the relative safety of Harlem, he came of age in the vibrant post-Renaissance years. It was there that—encouraged to box by his mother, who wanted him off the streets—he soon became a rising star, cutting an electrifying, glamorous figure, riding around town in his famous pink Cadillac. Beyond the celebrity, though, Robinson would emerge as a powerful, often controversial black symbol in a rapidly changing America. Haygood also weaves in the stories of Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, and Miles Davis, whose lives not only intersected with Robinson's but also contribute richly to the scope and soul of the book.From Robinson's gruesome six-bout war with Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta and his lethal meeting with Jimmy Doyle to his Harlem nightclub years and thwarted show-biz dreams, Haygood brings the champion's story, in the ring and out, powerfully to life against a vividly painted backdrop of the world he captivated.

    Now he has produced another thrilling, iconoclastic work of cultural history that is a trailblazing biography of an era--from the eve of the First World War and the rise of Hitler to the fall of the Berlin Wall--that illuminates our current world, with its cults of celebrity and the crisis of the authentic. Solar Dance is a penetrating examination of legitimacy and truth, fakery and pretence--highly relevant to all of us today.

    Representing almost every genre of popular music, from folk to Tin Pan Alley to jazz, from blues to pop rock, these are the figures who have shaped American music as we know it. Here they share their secrets and personal methods for converting inspiration into song: Robbie Robertson of the Band an Tom Petty talk about working with Bob Dylan; Dylan himself, in his only in-depth interview in more than ten years, says that the world doesn't need any new songs; R.E.M. name their favorite R.E.M. songs; Madonna describes collaborating with Prince; Sammy Cahn talks about writing standards for Sinatra; Pete Seeger recounts hitting the road with Woody Guthrie; Frank Zappa admits to loving "Louie Louie"; Todd Rundgren explains how he dreams his songs; and, in the book's most extensive interview, Paul Simon delves into his opus from "The Sound of Silence" to "Graceland." And almost all of them express delight at being able to talk about the mechanics of music itself, something that they have rarely been asked to discuss. Here expanded with new interviews with Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, Yoko Ono, Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Richard Thompson, and many others, Songwriters on Songwriting is a rare volume: one of the best books on the craft of musicmaking, an informative source for musicians and songwriters, and an invaluable historical record of the popular music of this century.

    Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander follows suit, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe. Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics-a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim-The Jazz of Physics reveals that the ancient poetic idea of the Music of the Spheres," taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics. The Jazz of Physics will fascinate and inspire anyone interested in the mysteries of our universe, music, and life itself.

    J. Albany's recollection of life with her father, the great jazz pianist Joe Albany, is the story of one girl's unsentimental education. Joe played with the likes of Charles Mingus, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, but between gigs he slipped into drug-induced obscurity. It was during these times that his daughter knew him best. After her mother disappeared, six-year-old Amy Jo and her charming, troubled father set up housekeeping in a seamy Hollywood hotel. While Joe finished a set in some red-boothed dive, chances were you'd find Amy curled up asleep on someone's fur coat, clutching a 78 of Louis Armstrong's "Sugar Blues" or, later, a photograph of the man himself, inscribed, "To little Amy Jo, always in love with you--Pops."Wise beyond her years and hip to the unpredictable ways of Old Lady Life at all too early an age, A. J. Albany guides us through the dope and deviance of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Hollywood's shadowy underbelly and beyond. What emerges is a raw, gripping, and surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a young girl trying to survive among the outcasts, misfits, and artists who surrounded her.

    Wooten comes The Music Lesson, the story of a struggling young musician who wanted music to be his life, and who wanted his life to be great. Then, from nowhere it seemed, a teacher arrived. Part musical genius, part philosopher, part eccentric wise man, the teacher would guide the young musician on a spiritual journey, and teach him that the gifts we get from music mirror those from life, and every movement, phrase, and chord has its own meaning...All you have to do is find the song inside.

    As Dizzy’s cheeks puff out like a frog with glasses, the two friends beep and bop and push each other to create a new kind of music—a thrilling fast jazz full of surprises. Blending a playful, rhythmic narration with expressive illustrations as fluid and dynamic as their subjects, this tribute to the masters of bebop by acclaimed biographer Gary Golio and beloved artist Ed Young will have readers hankering to listen for themselves.

    More than just a series of shrewd and evocative portraits of these and sixteen other performers, this book is also a paean to a forsaken time of relentless excess, sudden ruin, and fierce music. For this edition, the author has contributed a new listing of recent CD reissues. From 1945 to 1955, from Chinese hillbillies to Elvis's long-lost twin brother, here are the Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll.

    One of the great women of American music, equally at home singing blues and jazz, Etta regales us with tales of her chaotic childhood, the stars she has known, and her troubled trip to stardom in this mesmerizing autobiography.

    Now Dick and Jane and all their pals are back with revised editions of these classic readers for a whole new generation of readers to enjoy! We Look Look, Jane. Look, Dick. See funny Sally. Funny, funny Sally.

    Before we can truly express our inner self, we must first learn to be at peace and overcome the distractions that can make performance difficult. Kenny's remarkable work deals directly with these hindrances, and presents ways to let our natural creative powers flow freely with minimal stress and effort. Includes inspiring recordings of meditations designed to initiate positive thought. This book has become a favorite of many musicians who credit it with changing their lives! Many are so impressed that they buy copies for their musician friends as gifts. Easy, effortless reading paperback.Effortless Mastery is a book that the world really needs. It was not written by a philosopher or an academic. Kenny Werner, is one of my favorite pianists I've ever had the pleasure of working with, and in my opinion one of the best pianists living on the planet. Kenny teaches that 'The joy of practicing is concentration. The joy of playing is liberation.' Effortless Mastery teaches the seeker how to achieve both at the highest levels. It also shows how to practice effectively, promoting real growth and how to play and perform free from fear and self-judgment. I highly recommend this book. ---Quincy Jones