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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

The Songs of Blind Folk: African American Musicians and the Cultures of Blindness

by Terry Rowden - £22.95  The University of Michigan Press (2009)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780472050642 | ISBN 10: 0472050648

The Songs of Blind Folk explores the ways that the lives and careers of blind and visually impaired African American musicians and singers have mirrored the changes in America's image of African Americans and the social positioning and possibilities of the entire black community.
 
The book offers a historically grounded consideration of African American performers and their audiences, and the ways that blindness, like blackness, has affected the way the music has been produced and received. Author Terry Rowden considers the controversial nineteenth-century prodigy Blind Tom Bethune; blues singers and songwriters such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, who achieved an unprecedented degree of visibility and acceptance in the 1920s and '30s; spiritual and gospel musicians such as the Blind Boys of Alabama; celebrated jazz and rhythm and blues artists Art Tatum, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Ray Charles; and finally, perhaps the best known of all blind performers, Stevie Wonder.

(Price & availability last checked: July 2019)

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In booklists: Black American Music, Blindness,
In categories: Music & Performing Arts, Black, Asian & Other Diasporas, Disability,

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