Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me, Second Edition

Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me, Second Edition
Author: Bruce Jackson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2024-02-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1438496575

Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me celebrates the African American oral tradition of toasting, one of the key roots of contemporary rap. Jackson was among the few to appreciate the profane energy and beauty of this rhymed form, collecting such classic toasts as "Stackolee," "The Titanic," "Signifying Monkey," "Dance of the Freaks," and dozens more. This unexpurgated edition offers the raw, vibrant, and still startling imagery of these toasts shaped by decades of oral transmission through the voices of countless rhymers. Just like rap, the toasting tradition enabled previously unheard or stifled topics, including racism, sexual exploitation, economic deprivation, and social oppression, to be expressed in a form that embodied multiple layers of meaning. Jackson helped preserve a rapidly dying art form to ensure that it would be available for many generations to come. In the words of Robin D.G. Kelley, "All you Hip Hop heads need to know this book if you want to know your roots."

Towards Poetic Narratology: A New Visit to Narrative Studies and Poetic Studies

Towards Poetic Narratology: A New Visit to Narrative Studies and Poetic Studies
Author: Luo Jun
Publisher: Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. USA
Total Pages: 1368
Release: 2021-09-15
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 1649971540

For a very long time, I have been preoccupied with the exploration of the academic blind spots that have cropped up in the organic combination of poetic studies and narrative studies that is inclined to give a lot of perceptive and cognitive inspiration to the systematic and strategic con-struction of the theoretical frameworks and theoretical systems of poetic narratology to provide more perceptive and cognitive convenience for the vast majority of readers and scholars to give a much more profound and perspicacious interpretation and illustration of the ideological and epistemological values implied in the diverse and distinctive narration of most poetic narrative texts in an unnoticeable fashion and in an untraceable fashion.

Wasn’t That a Mighty Day

Wasn’t That a Mighty Day
Author: Luigi Monge
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2022-08-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1496841794

Wasn’t That a Mighty Day: African American Blues and Gospel Songs on Disaster takes a comprehensive look at sacred and secular disaster songs, shining a spotlight on their historical and cultural importance. Featuring newly transcribed lyrics, the book offers sustained attention to how both Black and white communities responded to many of the tragic events that occurred before the mid-1950s. Through detailed textual analysis, Luigi Monge explores songs on natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes); accidental disasters (sinkings, fires, train wrecks, explosions, and air disasters); and infestations, epidemics, and diseases (the boll weevil, the jake leg, and influenza). Analyzed songs cover some of the most well-known disasters of the time period from the sinking of the Titanic and the 1930 drought to the Hindenburg accident, and more. Thirty previously unreleased African American disaster songs appear in this volume for the first time, revealing their pertinence to the relevant disasters. By comparing the song lyrics to critical moments in history, Monge is able to explore how deeply and directly these catastrophes affected Black communities; how African Americans in general, and blues and gospel singers in particular, faced and reacted to disaster; whether these collective tragedies prompted different reactions among white people and, if so, why; and more broadly, how the role of memory in recounting and commenting on historical and cultural facts shaped African American society from 1879 to 1955.

The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
Author: Tom Dalzell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 864
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1317372522

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.

78 Blues

78 Blues
Author: John Minton
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2009-10-08
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1604733276

When record men first traveled from Chicago or invited musicians to studios in New York, these entrepreneurs had no conception how their technology would change the dynamics of what constituted a musical performance. 78 Blues: Folksongs and Phonographs in the American South covers a revolution in artist performance and audience perception through close examination of hundreds of key “hillbilly” and “race” records released between the 1920s and World War II. In the postwar period, regional strains recorded on pioneering 78 r.p.m. discs exploded into urban blues and R&B, honky-tonk and western swing, gospel, soul, and rock 'n' roll. These old-time records preserve the work of some of America's greatest musical geniuses such as Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson, Charlie Poole, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. They are also crucial mile markers in the course of American popular music and the growth of the modern recording industry. When these records first circulated, the very notion of recorded music was still a novelty. All music had been created live and tied to particular, intimate occasions. How were listeners to understand an impersonal technology like the phonograph record as a musical event? How could they reconcile firsthand interactions and traditional customs with technological innovations and mass media? The records themselves, several hundred of which are explored fully in this book, offer answers in scores of spoken commentaries and skits, in song lyrics and monologues, or other more subtle means.

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English
Author: Tom Dalzell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1120
Release: 2008-07-25
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1134194781

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English offers the ultimate record of modern American Slang. The 25,000 entries are accompanied by citations that authenticate the words as well as offer lively examples of usage from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, musical lyrics, and Internet user groups. Etymology, cultural context, country of origin and the date the word was first used are also provided. This informative, entertaining and sometimes shocking dictionary is an unbeatable resource for all language aficionados out there.