Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music

by Rickey Vincent, Boots Riley (Foreword by)

Overview

Connecting the black music tradition with the black activist tradition, Party Music brings both into greater focus than ever before and reveals just how strongly the black power movement was felt on the streets of black America. Interviews reveal the never-before-heard story of the Black Panthers’ R&B band the Lumpen and how five rank-and-file members performed popular music for revolutionaries.  Beyond the mainstream civil rights movement that is typically discussed are the stories of the Black Panthers, the Black Arts Movement, the antiwar activism, and other radical movements that were central to the impulse that transformed black popular music—and created soul music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613744925
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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. Boots Riley is a rapper, producer, activist, and the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club.

Table of Contents

Foreword Boots Riley ix

Preface xiii

Introduction: "Revolution in the Air" 1

1 "Party Music": The Story of the Lumpen 19

2 "Power to the People": Bay Area Culture and the Rise of the Party 49

3 "The Lumpen Theme": James Brown, the Rhythm Revolution, and Black Power 87

4 "People Get Ready": Civil Rights, Soul Music, and Black Identity 125

5 "For Freedom": Cultural Nationalism and the Black Panther Party 167

6 "Bobby Must Be Set Free": Panther Power and Popular Culture 217

7 "Ol Pig Nixon": The Protest Music Tradition, Soul, and Black Power 263

8 "Revolution Is the Only Solution": Protest Music Today and the Legacy of the Lumpen 309

Acknowledgments 339

Sources 343

Notes 363

Index 383

Editorial Reviews

08/12/2013
It’s not common knowledge that the fiery Black Panthers organization had a rocking house band, the Lumpen, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but Vincent (Funk) sets the record straight in this book about a tight-knit group of activist musicians who sang their revolutionary ideology to the community. Although the band performed for less than a year, Vincent, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, stresses the important role of music in black culture at that time, with the Lumpen piggybacking on the triumphs of James Brown, Sam Cooke, and Aretha Franklin, giving high-energy performances “of blackness, hyper-masculinity and hyperbole, of smack talk that put the Man in his place and exalted everything gloriously black.” If this well-detailed book accurately chronicles the funky black power groove of the Panther band, it truly succeeds in recapturing the mood of that turbulent time when Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party stole national attention with their bravado and purpose. Comprehensive, complex, and revealing, Vincent’s nostalgic journey provides an insider’s look at a remarkable band and a piercing snapshot of black history. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Comprehensive, complex, and revealing, Vincent’s nostalgic journey provides an insider’s look at a remarkable band and a piercing snapshot of black history." —Publishers Weekly


"Apart from introducing a new name to many black music scholars, fresh interviews with the band and Party members feed an eye-of-the-hurricane account of this often-misrepresented time. Combined with Vincent’s beautifully readable style, the results are a definitive work on the late 60s black revolution and its previously neglected soundtrack." —Record Collector


"A fascinating history of the Black Panthers, their house band and the music that inspired them. Rickey Vincent is well qualified to tell the story of the Black Panthers; his mother was a party member, his father a black politics historian and it's that combination of first-person insight and thorough research that makes this book so riveting. Like the Panthers, Vincent thinks outside the box, telling their story through the lens of The Lumpen, the Panthers' house band. ... Vincent takes each song played at a 1970 Oakland show as the springboard for discussion. For example: Their radical reworking of Sly And The Family Stones' 'Dance To The Music' leads to a brief history of Sly; the intelligent debate on the Bay Area counter culture revolution, the 10 point programme and so on." —MOJO, Four Stars

From the Publisher