The definitive biography of Joe Strummer, released with a new epilogue to mark the 60th anniversary of his birth. Chris Salewicz was an intimate friend of Strummer's for over 25 years. Drawing on more than 300 interviews with family, friends and associates, this is a comprehensive, compelling insight into the man behind The Clash. The Clash was the most influential band of its generation, producing punk anthems including 'London Calling', 'White Riot' and 'Tommy Gun'. For countless fans across the world, they are the ultimate iconic mainstays of their generation. With his talent, extreme good looks and laid-back attitude Joe Strummer was the driving force behind the band: he was the archetypal punk frontman. His untimely death in December 2002 shook the world to its core. Written with full approval and co-operation of relatives, companions and fellow musicians, this is the ultimate account of one of British rock & roll's most fascinating idols: his life, his work and his immeasurable impact on the world. Redemption Song is the best and last word on the subject.

Originally published in 1977. The Travellers, from those living in bow-tents and horse-drawn caravans to those dwelling in motor caravans and permanent homes, are an important source of traditional music. Their society means that songs that have died out in more settled communities are preserved among them. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, widely known as two of the founding singers of the British and American folk revivals, here display a vast fund of folklore scholarship around the songs of British travelling people. Resulting from extensive collecting in southern and southeastern England and central and northeastern Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, this book contains 130 songs with music and comprehensive notes relating them to folkloristic and historical points of interest. It includes traditional ballads and ballads of broadside origin, bawdy, tragic and humorous songs about love, work and death. Most are in English or in Scots dialect with four in Anglo-Romani.

Alice Cooper: Golf Monster is the full account of how Cooper became one of the biggest rock stars on the planet with hits like "School's Out" and "Elected", nearly lost it all to alcoholism, and then turned things around by finding a healthy obsession (golf) to replace his unhealthy addiction to alcohol. While most will be familiar with his wild, mascaraed visage and vaudevillian on-stage theatrics, perhaps few will have been aware of the double life Alice Cooper leads. He still tours the world with his band, playing a hundred gigs a year; snake coiled round his neck, beheaded by guillotine at the end of every show...but three hundred days out of that year, Cooper is on the course. Alice Cooper: Golf Monster is an unlikely and captivating tale of wretched excess, life-saving redemption, ghoulish make-up, power chords, and five-irons to the centre of the green. Both humorous and candid, this book reveals another dimension to a man who has epitomised rock 'n' roll for the last forty years.

Toward a Chican@ Hip Hop Anti-Colonialism makes visible the anti-colonial, alterNative politics in hip hop texts created by Chican@s and Xican@s (indigenous-identified people of Mexican descent in the United States). McFarland builds on indigenous knowledge, anarchism, and transnational feminism to identify the emancipating power of Chican@ and Xican@ hip hop, including how women and non-gender conforming (two-spirit) MCs open up inclusive alterNative spaces that challenge colonialism and capitalism.

This interdisciplinary volume enters the scholarly conversation about Bruce Springsteen at the moment when he has reinforced his status of global superstar and achieved the status of social critic. Covering musical and cultural developments, chapters primarily consider work Springsteen has released since 9/11-that is, released during a period of continued global unrest, economic upheaval, and social change-under the headings Politics, Fear and Society; Gender and Sexual Identity; and Toward a Rhetoric of Springsteen. The collection engages Springsteen and popular music as his contemporary work is just beginning to be understood in terms of its impact on popular culture and music, applying new areas of inquiry to Springsteen and putting Springsteen fan writing within the same binding as academic writing to show how together they create a more nuanced understanding of an artist. Established and emerging Springsteen scholars approach work from disciplines including rhetoric and composition, historical musicology, labor studies, American history, literature, communications, sociology, theology, and government. Offering context, critique, and expansive understanding of Springsteen and his work, this book contributes to Springsteen scholarship and the study of popular music by showing Springsteen's broadening academic appeal as well as his escalating legacy on new musicians, social consciousness, and contemporary culture.

Twenty-First Century Musicals stakes a place for the musical in today's cinematic landscape, taking a look at leading contemporary shows from their stage origins to their big-screen adaptations. Each chapter offers a new perspective on a single musical, challenging populist narratives and exploring underlying narratives and sub-texts in depth. Themes of national identity; race, class and gender; the 'voice' and 'singing live' on film; authenticity; camp sensibilities; and the celebration of failure are addressed in a series of questions including: How does the film adaptation provide a different viewing experience from the stage version? What themes are highlighted in the film adaptation? What does the new casting bring to the work? Do camera angles dictate a different reading from the stage version? What is lost/gained in the process of adaptation to film? Re-interpreting the contemporary film musical as a compelling art form, Twenty-First Century Musicals is a must-read for any student or scholar keen to broaden their understanding of musical performance.

Streaming Music examines how the Internet has become integrated in contemporary music use, by focusing on streaming as a practice and a technology for music consumption. The backdrop to this enquiry is the digitization of society and culture, where the music industry has undergone profound disruptions, and where music streaming has altered listening modes and meanings of music in everyday life. The objective of Streaming Music is to shed light on what these transformations mean for listeners, by looking at their adaptation in specific cultural contexts, but also by considering how online music platforms and streaming services guide music listeners in specific ways. Drawing on case studies from Moscow and Stockholm, and providing analysis of Spotify, VK and YouTube as popular but distinct sites for music, Streaming Music discusses, through a qualitative, cross-cultural, study, questions around music and value, music sharing, modes of engaging with music, and the way that contemporary music listening is increasingly part of mobile, automated and computational processes. Offering a nuanced perspective on these issues, it adds to research about music and digital media, shedding new light on music cultures as they appear today. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars of media, sociology and music with interests in digital technologies.

Technology and the Stylistic Evolution of the Jazz Bass traces the stylistic evolution of jazz from the bass player's perspective. Historical works to date have tended to pursue a 'top down' reading, one that emphasizes the influence of the treble instruments on the melodic and harmonic trajectory of jazz. This book augments that reading by examining the music's development from the bottom up. It re-contextualizes the bass and its role in the evolution of jazz (and by extension popular music in general) by situating it alongside emerging music technologies. The bass and its technological mediation are shown to have driven changes in jazz language and musical style, and even transformed creative hierarchies in ways that have been largely overlooked. The book's narrative is also informed by investigations into more commercial musical styles such as blues and rock, in order to assess how, and the degree to which, technological advances first deployed in these areas gradually became incorporated into general jazz praxis. Technology and the Jazz Bass reconciles technology more thoroughly into jazz historiography by detailing and evaluating those that are intrinsic to the instrument (including its eventual electrification) and those extrinsic to it (most notably evolving recording and digital technologies). The author illustrates how the implementation of these technologies has transformed the role of the bass in jazz, and with that, jazz music as an art form.

In Women Singer-Songwriters in Rock: A Populist Rebellion in the 1990s, Ronald D. Lankford Jr. argues that women singer-songwriters formed a substantial movement within popular music during the 1990s, making a significant social and aesthetic contribution that pushed feminism into mainstream American culture. Lankford examines in depth the work of several artists including Alanis Morissette, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Courtney Love, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, and Sheryl Crow offering thorough descriptions and analyses of their music, lyrics, and album art. By looking at both the broader movement and individual performers, this book provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the movement and its message. Lankford introduces the singer-songwriter movement and the artists and genres that paved the way for these 1990s rockers, establishing the arch of the popular movement of women in rock as it mirrored the rise of third wave feminism and sketching the cultural and political landscape that served as a backdrop to the women's singer-songwriter movement during the 1990s. Drawing from resources in books, journals, and zines, Lankford focuses on the exploration of women's issues within the music through analyses of its lyrics and album art and examines how the often hard-edged feminist content was able to filter into mainstream popular culture. To help illustrate this, the book includes a select discography of albums and singles, including their placement and number of weeks spent on various charts. A complete bibliography and index round out this important study, which is a must for fans and scholars of music, popular culture, and women's studies.

(Book). Many books about Hendrix concentrate on showmanship and rock-and-roll excess, but Keith Shadwick's Jimi Hendrix: Musician brings to Hendrix's musical legacy as a guitarist, singer, and composer a depth of analysis missing from other accounts of his career, placing Hendrix's work in the broadest possible musical context, encompassing rock, pop, soul, funk, jazz, blues, fusion, and a range of classical disciplines. The book was first published in 2003; sadly, Shadwick died from cancer in 2008 at the age of 57. This new edition in a compact format is published as a tribute to Shadwick, who was described in his obituary in the UK newspaper The Independent as "an authority on classical music who also wrote in-depth biographies of Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. He was a jazzer who rocked and championed Gorecki."

Music and Coexistence: A Journey across the World in Search of Musicians Making a Difference is both study and travelogue, as author Osseily Hanna explores the courageous work of musicians who compose and perform with their ostensible enemies or in extraordinary social situations. He documents the political and economic constraints faced by musicians, from the wall that encloses a refugee camp in Jerusalem, to the tensions among KFOR and Carabinieri peacekeepers who keep Serbs and Kosovar Albanians apart, to the cultural and linguistic suppression that afflicts minority communities in Turkey. A multilingual musician, Hanna examines the lives of the individuals and groups at the forefront of the effort to bridge ethnic, cultural, and religious divisions. Featuring musicians from thirteen different countries and territories across five continents, Hanna's story includes a remarkable cadre of performers, such as the musicians who comprise Heartbeat, a group of Israeli and Palestinian youth, who compose, record, and perform music together; the Albino musicians of Tanzania, who regularly combat persecution by local shamans; the multiracial and thriving samba musicians in Sao Paolo; and a former child soldier from Cambodia who seeks to revive traditional music following the genocide in the 1970s. With photos taken by the author during his travels, this work is a unique contribution for those interested in world music and peace studies. This unique and remarkable work will open the eyes and the hearts of every musician and music lover who recognizes music as a universal language.

Complicated Game offers a unique insight into the work of one of Britain's most original and influential songwriters-and an unprecedentedly revealing and instructive guide to how songs and records are made. Developed from a series of interviews conducted over many months, this fascinating book explores in detail some thirty XTC songs-including well-known singles such as 'Senses Working Overtime' and the controversial 'Dear God'-from throughout the group's thirty-year career. It casts new light on the writing of lyrics, the construction of melodies and arrangements, the process of recording, and the workings of the?music industry. But it is also filled with anecdotes about Partridge, his XTC bandmates, and their adventures around the world, all told with the songwriter's legendary humour. The book also includes pages from Partridge's songwriting notebooks and reproductions of his original artwork designs, as well as a guide to Andy Partridge's Swindon and a foreword by Steven Wilson, the guitarist, songwriter, and record producer best known as the founder and leader of Porcupine Tree.

Since the 1980s, music videos have been everywhere, and today almost all of the most-viewed clips on YouTube are music videos. However, in academia, music videos do not currently share this popularity. Music Video After MTV gives music video its due academic credit by exploring the changing landscapes surrounding post-millennial music video. Across seven chapters, the book addresses core issues relating to the study of music videos, including the history, analysis, and audiovisual aesthetics of music videos. Moreover, the book is the first of its kind to truly address the recent changes following the digitization of music video, including its changing cycles of production, distribution and reception, the influence of music videos on other media, and the rise of new types of online music video. Approaching music videos from a composite theoretical framework, Music Video After MTV brings music video research up to speed in several areas: it offers the first account of the research history of music videos, the first truly audiovisual approach to music video studies and it presents numerous inspiring case studies, ranging from classics by Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham to recent experimental and interactive videos that interrogate the very limits of music video.

This book features extensive lists of printed resources on 35 years of rockabilly performers, ranging from Charlie Feathers, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley to Shakin' Stevens, The Cramps, Robert Gordon, and The Stray Cats. The bibliographic survey includes biographies, historical studies, concert and record reviews, discographies, and articles from magazines such as Guitar Player, Goldmine, Now Dig This, Record Collector, and New Kommotion. More than 220 rockabilly singers and instrumentalists are included. With author index and bibliography. Should be of value to audio librarians, popular culture researchers, rock music enthusiasts, record collectors, and teachers of music, sociology, and American studies.

Black Popular Music in Britain Since 1945 provides the first broad scholarly discussion of this music since 1990. The book critically examines key moments in the history of black British popular music from 1940s jazz to 1970s soul and reggae, 1990s Jungle and the sounds of Dubstep and Grime that have echoed through the 2000s. While the book offers a history it also discusses the ways black musics in Britain have intersected with the politics of race and class, multiculturalism, gender and sexuality, and debates about media and technology. Contributors examine the impact of the local, the ways that black music in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and London evolved differently and how black popular music in Britain has always developed in complex interaction with the dominant British popular music tradition. This tradition has its own histories located in folk music, music hall and a constant engagement, since the nineteenth century, with American popular music, itself a dynamic mixing of African-American, Latin American and other musics. The ideas that run through various chapters form connecting narratives that challenge dominant understandings of black popular music in Britain and will be essential reading for those interested in Popular Music Studies, Black British Studies and Cultural Studies.

This book defines the key ideas, scholarly debates, and research activities that have contributed to the formation of the international and interdisciplinary field of Metal Studies. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including popular music, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and ethics, this volume offers new and innovative research on metal musicology, global/local scenes studies, fandom, gender and metal identity, metal media, and commerce. Offering a wide-ranging focus on bands, scenes, periods, and sounds, contributors explore topics such as the riff-based song writing of classic heavy metal bands and their modern equivalents, and the musical-aesthetics of Grindcore, Doom metal, Death metal, and Progressive metal. They interrogate production technologies, sound engineering, album artwork and band promotion, logos and merchandising, t-shirt and jewellery design, and fan communities that define the global metal music economy and subcultural scene. The volume explores how the new academic discipline of metal studies was formed, also looking forward to the future of metal music and its relationship to metal scholarship and fandom. With an international range of contributors, this volume will appeal to scholars of popular music, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as those interested in metal communities around the world.

"The new Chris Cornell biography is the book his legacy deserves." -Kerrang! "Reiff unearths plenty of unexpected details and novel anecdotes...but the book is perhaps most valuable for the way it rounds out and humanizes this man who managed to keep so many of his cards close to the vest despite decades in the spotlight." -Variety "Total F*cking Godhead brings Chris Cornell, the voice of a generation, alive on the page. Impressively researched and compulsively readable, Godhead pulls no punches in recounting Cornell's remarkable life and prolific career. It's an inspired chronicle of an impassioned soul. Read it!"-Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising With input from those who knew and worked with him-together with his own words-Total F*cking Godhead recounts the rise of Chris Cornell and his immortal band Soundgarden as they emerged from the 1980s post-punk underground to dominate popular culture in the '90s alongside Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana. "From his days as a struggling Seattle musician at the forefront of the grunge scene to becoming a global icon, Total F*cking Godhead thoroughly chronicles the life story and prolific output of one of the greatest and most influential singers of all time. You will discover the man and his music all over again."-David de Sola, author of Alice in Chains: The Untold Story Seattle resident and rock writer Corbin Reiff also examines Cornell's dynamic solo career as well as his time in Audioslave. He delves into his hard-fought battle with addiction, and the supercharged reunion with the band that made him famous before everything came to a shocking end. "For those of us still trying to sort out the tragedy of Chris Cornell's death comes this loving look back at the man's life and music. I wrote my own book about grunge, and I still learned a lot from this excellent biography." -Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge

This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for the recent international rise of K-Pop and the Korean Wave. Fuhr examines the conditions and effects of transnational flows, asymmetrical power relations, and the role of the imaginary "other" in K-Pop production and consumption, relating them to the specific aesthetic dimensions and material conditions of K-Pop stars, songs, and videos. Further, the book reveals how K-Pop is deployed for strategies of national identity construction in connection with Korean cultural politics, with transnational music production circuits, and with the transnational mobility of immigrant pop idols. The volume argues that K-Pop is a highly productive cultural arena in which South Korea's globalizing and nationalizing forces and imaginations coincide, intermingle, and counteract with each other and in which the tension between both of these poles is played out musically, visually, and discursively. This book examines a vibrant example of contemporary popular music from the non-Anglophone world and provides deeper insight into the structure of popular music and the dynamics of cultural globalization through a combined set of ethnographic, musicological, and cultural analysis. Widening the regional scope of Western-dominated popular music studies and enhancing new areas of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book will also be of interest to those studying East Asian popular culture, music globalization, and popular music.

As recommended by USA Today and excerpted on Rolling Stone.com! More than forty years after breaking up, The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most influential group in the history of popular music. Fans endlessly replay their songs, craving more, while thousands of cover versions of their songs have been recorded and performed. Band biographies, pop music histories, song books, and academic titles on the Fab Four clutter shelves. But never has there been a definitive guide to the finest songs of The Beatles after they called it quits. Still the Greatest is a love song to the songwriting and recording achievements of Paul, John, George, and Ringo after each struck out on his own. In this creative history, Jackson selects the best songs in each solo career and organizes them into fantasy albums they might have formed had the legendary group stayed together. This romp through the post-Beatles history of each artist delves into the circumstances behind the composition, recording, and reception of each work, offering a refreshing take on how spectacular much of The Beatles' second act truly is. Jackson assesses the more than seventy albums and nine hundred songs the four collectively released, selecting the creme de la creme of their output. Still the Greatest brims with facts (release dates, writing and performing credits, and information about production techniques) and insightful analyses of the music and lyrics. In telling the stories behind the songs, Jackson recounts the remarkable influence the Post Fab Four continued to have long after the big split. Both a handy reference and an engrossing cover-to-cover read, Still the Greatest is an invaluable companion for those who thought it all ended with the 1970 album Let It Be.

Since the turn of the century, the impact of digital technologies on the promotion, production and distribution of music in the Philippines has both enabled and necessitated an increase in independent musical practices. In the first in-depth investigation into the independent music scene in the Philippines, Monika E. Schoop exposes and portrays the as yet unexplored restructurings of the Philippine music industries, showing that digital technologies have played an ambivalent role in these developments. While they have given rise to new levels of piracy, they have also offered unprecedented opportunities for artists. The near collapse of the transnational recording industry in the Philippines stands in stark contrast to a thriving independent music scene in the county's national capital region, Metro Manila, which cuts across musical genres and whose members successfully adjust to a rapidly evolving industry scenario. Independent practices have been facilitated by increased access to broadband Internet, the popularity of social media platforms and home recording technology. At the same time, changing music industry structures often leave artists with no other option but to operate independently. Based on extensive fieldwork online and offline, the book explores the diverse and innovative music production, distribution, promotion and financing strategies that have become constitutive of the independent music scene in twenty-first-century Manila.

Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain explores the efforts of the current government in southern Spain to establish flamenco music as a significant patrimonial symbol and marker of cultural identity. Further, it aims to demonstrate that these Andalusian efforts form part of the ambitious project of rethinking the nation-state of Spain, and of reconsidering the nature of national identity. A salient theme in this book is that the development of notions of style and identity are mediated by social institutions. Specifically, the book documents the development of flamenco's musical style by tracing the genre's development, between 1880 and 1980, and demonstrating the manner in which the now conventional characterization of the flamenco style was mediated by krausist, modernist, and journalist institutions. Just as importantly, it identifies two recent institutional forces, that of audio recording and cinema, that promote a concept of musical style that sharply contrasts with the conventional notion. By emphasizing the importance of forward-looking notions of style and identity, Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain makes a strong case for advancing the Spanish experiment in nation-building, but also for re-thinking nationalism and cultural identity on a global scale.

E 1-2-3-4! ETHWith that quick count-off four hoppin' cretins from Queens who called themselves the Ramones launched the 1970s musical revolution known as punk rock. And ever since popular music hasn't been the same. Perhaps the most imitated band of all time the Ramones stripped rock 'n' roll down to its bare bones and beating heart and handed it back to the people making it fun again and reminding everyone that hey they could do this too.THBut da brudders didn't just influence their key comrades in the original punk explosion. Their raw tough sound and divine gift of enduring melodic songcraft has power-drilled its way into musical styles as divergent as college rock power pop hardcore punk thrash metal grunge and the avant-garde and continues to be felt in newer waves of young acts. And what about the music that influenced the Ramones themselves a early rock 'n' roll surf rock British Invasion sounds garage rock girl groups hard rock bubblegum proto-punk and glam rock? Or the nonmusical stuff that also warped the skulls beneath those trademark bowl haircuts a weird movies cartoons trashy TV shows comic books and other cultural jetsam? It's all here just waiting for you to discover and dig. Hey Ho Let's Go!

British Rock Modernism, 1967-1977 explains how the definitive British rock performers of this epoch aimed, not at the youthful rebellion for which they are legendary, but at a highly self-conscious project of commenting on the business in which they were engaged. They did so by ironically appropriating the traditional forms of Victorian music hall. Faulk focuses on the mid to late 1960s, when British rock bands who had already achieved commercial prominence began to aspire to aesthetic distinction. The book discusses recordings such as the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album, the Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society, and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and television films such as the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus that defined rock's early high art moment. Faulk argues that these 'texts' disclose the primary strategies by which British rock groups, mostly comprised of young working and lower middle-class men, made their bid for aesthetic merit by sampling music hall sounds. The result was a symbolically charged form whose main purpose was to unsettle the hierarchy that set traditional popular culture above the new medium. Rock groups engaged with the music of the past in order both to demonstrate the comparative vitality of the new form and signify rock's new art status, compared to earlier British pop music. The book historicizes punk rock as a later development of earlier British rock, rather than a rupture. Unlike earlier groups, the Sex Pistols did not appropriate music hall form in an ironic way, but the band and their manager Malcolm McLaren were obsessed with the meaning of the past for the present in a distinctly modernist fashion.

From 1976 to 1978, the young photographer Simon Barker was a member of the "Bromley Contingent"--a group of avid Sex Pistols fans who comprised the group's inner circle at the height of the punk movement. Many of them, such as Jordan and Siouxsie Sioux, were notorious for their daredevil dress sense, and several--such as Sioux, Steven Severin, Adam Ant, Poly Styrene, Billy Idol, Viv Albertine and Ari Up--went on to form some of the most important bands of the era. This compilation of previously unseen photographs by Barker shows these founders of punk in their earliest incarnations--in bedrooms and kitchens, at public gigs and private parties--before media and commerce sunk their claws into punk's iconoclastic look and class politics. Taken with the simplest and cheapest pocket cameras, the photographs in this collection constitute Barker's "family album for the years 1976 to 1978." In the spirit of the Pistols' "God Save the Queen," the volume closes with a photographic sequence taken by Barker during the 1976 Jubilee celebrations, which shows Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu hobnobbing with the Queen of England in the royal procession.

View the Table of Contents. Read Chapter 1.

aIn her book, Cheney tries to dispel the notion that all rap music is about sex, violence and bling. . . . The book is insightfulaparticularly to white Americans who don't get the appeal of Louis Farrakhan or to older African-Americans whose knowledge of black music stops at Smokey Robinson. After reading this book, both groups might at least be tempted to sample some Public Enemy music.a
--"The San Luis Obispo Tribune"

aA lively, unique, and often revisionist perspective on the sexual politics of hip-hop culture.a
--William L. Van Deburg, author of "New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965a1975"

"A study of rap singers of the 1980s and 90s that sets their political expression in the context of the racial and sexual politics of black nationalism since the early 19th century."
--"The Chronicle"

a[A] must read for anyone interested in the problems of gender and politics in rap music. Charise Cheney combines an historianas insight with an expansive knowledge of hip-hop culture to produce this remarkable study of the rise of artists influenced by black nationalismathe self-proclaimed araptivists.a Cheney dives head-on into the contentious debates regarding the articulations of masculinity and black nationalism in rap, and how these reflect black Americansa age-old desire for power and authority. A vital contribution."
--Jane Rhodes, author of "Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon"

aA provocative analysis that no one will be able to ignore. A compelling challenge to consider the ways that patriarchy has influenced the movement for blackself-determination.a--"Choice," Highly recommended

Brothers Gonna Work It Out considers the political expression of rap artists within the historical tradition of black nationalism. Interweaving songs and personal interviews with hip-hop artists and activists including Chuck D of Public Enemy, KRS-One, Rosa Clemente, manager of dead prez, and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers, Cheney links late twentieth-century hip-hop nationalists with their nineteenth-century spiritual forebears.

Cheney examines Black nationalism as an ideology historically inspired by a crisis of masculinity. Challenging simplistic notions of hip-hop culture as simply sexist or misogynistic, she pays particular attention to Black nationalists' historicizing of slavery and their visualization of male empowerment through violent resistance. She charts the recent rejection of Christianity in the lyrics of rap nationalist music due to the perception that it is too conciliatory, and the increasing popularity of Black Muslim rap artists.

Cheney situates rap nationalism in the 1980s and 90s within a long tradition of Black nationalist political thought which extends beyond its more obvious influences in the mid-to-late twentieth century like the Nation of Islam or the Black Power Movement, and demonstrates its power as a voice for disenfranchised and disillusioned youth all over the world.