A knotty but worthy attempt to stoke new conversations about a genre sometimes dismissed as moribund.
An outline for an alternative history of soul music that emphasizes the intersection of blackness, struggle, and femininity.
As Vanderbilt English professor Lordi argues in this academic but spirited book, too much recent writing about soul music treats the genre as if it were trapped in amber. Though the music had a relatively brief moment of prominence on the charts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, it speaks to enduring elements of black experience that were often suppressed. To that end, the author’s guiding lights aren’t James Brown or Stax and Motown legends; rather, she spotlights the likes of Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, and Minnie Riperton, less-appreciated artists for whom “stylization of survival is conditioned by pain, often led by women, and driven by imagination, innovation, and craft.” Lordi shows how this attitude manifests through the artists’ song choices (often reinterpretations of pop hits by white artists), live ad-libs and false endings, and falsetto singing, which explores “how vulnerable it is permissible to be—how sexy, how extravagant, how cool and effervescent.” The author’s use of jargon is sometimes overly thick, especially when she tussles with the “post-soul” theorists who downplay the music’s themes of femininity and struggle. However, Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon. (Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul and Aretha Frankin’s live gospel album Amazing Grace draw special attention.) The author’s argument for soul’s continuing relevance would be stronger with more contemporary examples, but she concludes with some brief but thought-provoking commentaries on artists like Erykah Badu and Janelle Monáe. They are, she writes, representative of what she calls “Afropresentism,” a mindset that is beholden neither to the past nor Afrofuturist fantasias but instead speaks to black struggles in the moment.
A knotty but worthy attempt to stoke new conversations about a genre sometimes dismissed as moribund.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4780-0959-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the...
A concise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”
In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1310-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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