| Abstract |
Popular music in the Americas, from jazz, Cuban and Latin salsa to disco and rap, is overwhelmingly neo-African. Created in the midst of war and military invasion, and filtered through a Western worldview, these musical forms are completely modern in their sensibilities: they are in fact the very sound of modern life. But the African religious philosophy at their core involved a longing for earlier eras--ones that pre-dated the technological discipline of labor forced on captive populations by capitalism. In this groundbreaking new book, the author shows how the popular music of the Americas--the music of entertainment, nightlife, and leisure--is involved in a devotion to an African religious worldview that survived the ravages of slavery and found its way into the rituals of everyday listening. He explores the challenge that Afro-Latin music poses to Western cultural imperialism, and the processes by which it has been absorbed into the imperial impagination. |
