A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America

by Craig Werner

Overview

". . . extraordinarily far-reaching. . . . highly accessible."
—Notes

"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom."
—Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story

"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner."
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories."
—African American Review

A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."

Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.

Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472129621
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	07/20/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	488
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Craig Werner is Professor Emeritus of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse, and Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul. He is currently finishing work on Freedoms, a two-volume history of the 1960s.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface to the Revised Edition Introduction: “What’s Going On” Acknowledgments Section One: “A Change Is Gonna Come”: Mahalia Jackson, Motown, and the Movement 1. The Dream 2. Mahalia and the Movement 3. “The Soul of the Movement”: Calls and Responses 4. Motown: Money, Magic, and the Mask 5. The Big Chill vs. Cooley High: Two out of Three Falls for the Soul of Motown The Gospel Impulse 6. Sam Cooke and the Voice of Change 7. Solid Gold Coffins: Phil Spector and the Girl Group Blues 8. SAR and the Ambiguity of Integration 9. “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”: Port Huron and the Folk Revival 10. Woody and Race 11. “Blowin’ in the Wind”: Politics and Authenticity 12. Music and the Truth: The Birth of Southern Soul 13. Down at the Crossroads The Blues Impulse 14. Soul Food: The Mid-South Mix 15. Dylan, the Brits, and Blue-Eyed Soul 16. The Minstrel Blues 17. Otis, Jimi, and the Summer of Love:From Monterey to Woodstock 18. Last Thoughts on the Dream: Dot and Diana Section Two: “Love or Confusion?”: Black Power, Vietnam, and the Death of the Dream 19. Sly in the Smoke 20. Death Warrants: LBJ, Martin, and the Liberal Collapse 21. “All Along the Watchtower”: Jimi Hendrix and the Sound of Vietnam 22. ’Retha, Rap, and Revolt 23. “Spirit in the Dark”: Aretha’s Gospel Politics 24. Jazz Warriors: Malcolm and Coltrane The Jazz Impulse 25. “Black Is an’ Black Ain’t”: JB, Miles, and Jimi 26. Curtis Mayfield’s Gospel Soul 27. John Fogerty and the Mythic South 28. “Trouble Comin’ Every Day”: Southern Strategies and the Revolution on TV 29. Troubled Souls: Wattstax and Motown (West) 30. “Where Is the Love?”: Donny Hathaway and the End of the Dream Section Three: “I Will Survive”: Disco, Irony, and the Sound of Resistance 31. Reflections in a Mirror Ball 32. Reverend Green and the Return of Jim Crow 33. Demographics 101: Hard Times in Chocolate City 34. Black Love in the Key of Life 35. Jimmy Carter and the Great Quota Disaster of 1978 36. Roots: The Messages in the Music 37. God Love Sex: Disco and the Gospel Impulse 38. Disco Sucks 39. Punks and Pretenders 40. Rebellion or Revolution: Bruce Springsteen and the Clash 41. P-Funkentelechy 42. Redemption Songs: Bob Marley in Babylon 43. The Message: Hip-hop and the South Bronx Section Four: “And That’s the Way That It Is”: The Reagan Rules, Hip-hop, and the Megastars 44. Welcome to the Terrordome 45. Springsteen and the Reagan Rules 46. The Problem of Healing in the Hall of Mirrors 47. The View from Black America 48. The Way It Was and the Way It Is 49. Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby 50. Run-D.M.C. Negotiates the Mainstream 51. “A Hero to Most”: Elvis in the Eighties 52. Megastardom and Its Discontents: Michael and Madonna 53. Duke Ellington for Our Time: The Symbol Formerly Known as Prince 54. West Africa Is in the House 55. “Bring the Noise”: The New School Rap Game 56. “Know the Ledge”: KRS-One, Rakim, and the Gangstas 57. “Born in the U.S.A.”: Springsteen and Race Section Five: “Holler If Ya Hear Me”: In the Nineties Mix 58. Wasteland of the Free 59. American Dreaming 60. C.R.E.A.M., or, Tupac on Death Row 61. No More Drama: Mary J. Blige and the Hip Hop Generation 62. The Gospel Impulse Gets Crunk: OutKast and the Dirty South 63. Ozomatli and the Myth of Purity: Notes on the Browning of America 64. The Gospel Impulse (Remixed): Bruce Springsteen, Kirk Franklin, and Lauryn Hill Notes Playlist Index