An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo's key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo's beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood.

A comprehensive guide to the men and women who contributed to and defined the musical roots of South Carolina.

The ring shout is the oldest known African American performance tradition survivng on the North American continent. Performed for the purpose of religious worship, this fusion of dance, song, and percussion survives today in the Boldon community of McIntosh County, Georgia.

The ultimate front-row seat to the rise, fall, and rebirth of a band that was--for a time--the biggest in the world, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Jim Sonefeld's shattering and redeeming spiritual path from addiction to recovery and a more fruitful life. For a time, there was no bigger band in the world than Hootie & the Blowfish--rock & roll's unexpected foil to the grunge music that dominated the early 90s airwaves.

"OutKast, the Atlanta-based hip-hop duo formed in 1992, is one of the most influential musical groups within American popular culture of the past twenty-five years. Through Grammy-winning albums, music videos, feature films, theatrical performances, and fashion, André "André 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton have articulated a vision of postmodern, post-civil rights southern identity that combines the roots of funk, psychedelia, haute couture, R&B, faith and spirituality, and Afrofuturism into a style all its own.

A biography of the Afro-American musician and "ambassador of jazz" who introduced the world to "bebop." In this unique combination of memoir and cultural history, we come to know one of the greatest stars the world has ever seen--Eartha Kitt--as revealed by the person who knew her best: her daughter.

A biography of the Afro-American musician and "ambassador of jazz" who introduced the world to "bebop."

A longtime friend of James Brown offers a poignant tribute to the Godfather of Soul and a close-up look at the life and storied career of the legendary singer, examining the evolution of his musical style, his social activism, often turbulent personal life, and seminal influence on the development of modern pop music.

The Great Migration, the mass exodus of blacks from the rural South to the urban North and West in the twentieth century, shaped American culture and life in ways still evident today. The authors trace the ideas that inspired African Americans to abandon the South for freedom and opportunity elsewhere. Black Southerners fled the Low Country of South Carolina, the mines and mills of Birmingham, Alabama, the farms of the Mississippi Delta, and the urban wards of Houston, Texas, for new opportunities in New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Los Angeles.