Whereas research on the global impact of US African American culture and politics and transnational connections in the African Diaspora has increased significantly since the release of Gilroy ́s Black Atlantic, the hemispheric dialogues between black communities in the US and Latin America have remained somewhat understudied until now. Focusing on the role of Soul music for the popularization of the Black Power movement in Afro-Latin American contexts in the 1960s and 1970s, this book aims to contribute to a better understanding of the networks of solidarity that connected geographically and linguistically distant afro-diasporic communities in their struggles for emancipation and against the diverse manifestations of white supremacy that have shaped societies throughout the Americas in the 20th century. Drawing on field research and interviews with musicians, DJs, and activists in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Panama, this multi-sited study traces the inter-American flows of Soul music in diverse Afro-Latin American contexts. Crossing boundaries between African American and Latin American Studies this book opens new perspectives to scholars of Black Transnationalism, music and social movements in the African diaspora of the Americas.

No other word in the English language is more endemic to contemporary Black American culture and identity than "Soul". Since the 1960s Soul has been frequently used to market and sell music, food, and fashion. However, Soul also refers to a pervasive belief in the capacity of the Black body/spirit to endure the most trying of times in an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. While some attention has been given to various genre manifestations of Soul-as in Soul music and food-no book has yet fully explored the discursive terrain signified by the term. In this broad-ranging, free-spirited book, a diverse group of writers, artists, and scholars reflect on the ubiquitous but elusive concept of Soul. Topics include: politics and fashion, Blaxploitation films, language, literature, dance, James Brown, and Schoolhouse Rock. Among the contributors are Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Paul Gilroy, Lyle Ashton Harris, Michelle Wallace, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Manthia Diawara, and dream hampton.

A study of the impact of Cuban music on Senegalese music and modernity Roots in Reverse explores how Latin music contributed to the formation of the négritude movement in the 1930s. Taking Senegal and Cuba as its primary research areas, this work uses oral histories, participant observation, and archival research to examine the ways Afro-Cuban music has influenced Senegalese debates about cultural and political citizenship and modernity. Shain argues that the trajectory of Afro-Cuban music in twentieth century Senegal illuminates many dimensions of that nation's cultural history such as gender relations, generational competition and conflict, debates over cosmopolitanism and hybridity, the role of nostalgia in Senegalese national culture and diasporic identities. More than just a new form of musical enjoyment, Afro-Cuban music provided listeners with a tool for creating a public sphere free from European and North American cultural hegemony.

Party Music explores the culture and politics of the Black Power era of the late 1960s, when the rise of a black militant movement also gave rise to a “Black Awakening” in the arts--and especially in music. Here Rickey Vincent, the award-winning author of Funk, explores the relationship of soul music to the Black Power movement from the vantage point of the musicians and black revolutionaries themselves. Party Music introduces readers to the Black Panther's own band, the Lumpen, a group comprised of rank-and-file members of the Oakland, California-based Party. During their year-long tenure, the Lumpen produced hard-driving rhythm-and-blues that asserted the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers. Through his rediscovery of the Lumpen, and based on new interviews with Party and band members, Vincent provides an insider's account of black power politics and soul music aesthetics in an original narrative that reveals more detail about the Black Revolution than ever before. Rickey Vincent is the author of Funk: The Music, The People, and the Rhythm of the One, and has written for the Washington Post, American Legacy, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

Illuminating exploration of Afro-Latin music s challenge to Western cultural imperialism.

Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews offer the first systematic, book-length survey of humanities and social science scholarship on the exciting field of Afro-Latin American studies. Organized by topic, these essays synthesize and present the current state of knowledge on a broad variety of topics, including Afro-Latin American music, religions, literature, art history, political thought, social movements, legal history, environmental history, and ideologies of racial inclusion. This volume connects the region's long history of slavery to the major political, social, cultural, and economic developments of the last two centuries. Written by leading scholars in each of those topics, the volume provides an introduction to the field of Afro-Latin American studies that is not available from any other source and reflects the disciplinary and thematic richness of this emerging field.

Arte Público Presss landmark series "Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage" has traditionally been devoted to long-lost and historic works by Hispanics of decades and even centuries past. The publications of Black Cuban, Black American mark the first original work by a living author to become part of this notable series. The reason for this unprecedented honor can be seen in Evilio Grillos path-breaking life. Ybor City was once a thriving factory town populated by cigar-makers, mostly emigrants from Cuba. Growing up in Ybor City (now part of Tampa) in the early twentieth century, the young Evilio experienced the complexities and sometimes the difficulties of life in a horse-and-buggy society demarcated by both racial and linguistic lines. Life was different depending on whether you were Spanish- or English-speaking, a white or black Cuban, a Cuban American or a native-born U.S. citizen, well off or poor. (Even U.S.-born blacks did not always get along with their Hispanic counterparts.) Grillo captures the joys and sorrows of this unique world that slowly faded away as he grew to adulthood and was absorbed into the African-American community during the Depression. He then tells of his eye-opening experiences as a soldier in an all-black unit serving in the China-Burma-India theatre of operations during World War II. Booklovers may have read of Ybor City in the novels of Jose Yglesias, but never before has the colorful locale been portrayed from this perspective. The book also contains a fascinating eight-page photo insert.