{"product_id":"black-ephemera-9781479806881","title":"Black Ephemera","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category WinnerA framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital eraIn an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams's 1916 silent film short A Natural Born Gambler or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance.   While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the pr\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCovers, citations, and samples spill over the boundaries of form and technology in order to differently reveal the irrepressible, transformative Black archive. Neal displays his archeological talents in demonstration of Black music's ability to return, to sustain, and to answer. Vibrating with relation, \u003ci\u003eBlack Ephemera\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the fact of Black genius and the dense \u003ci\u003epossibility \u003c\/i\u003eof Black forever through those wise and committed enough to listen * Shana L. Redmond, author of \u003ci\u003eEverything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003eA majestic study of the idea and practice of Black archives. As Mark Anthony Neal analyzes the sonic, digital, literary, and visual, he unveils the power of Black maroon archives, which preserve the opacities, sonic disruptions, and glimpses of possibility that are not meant to be consumed. Black Studies needs this brilliant analysis of the uncontainable wind of Black culture, the wind that blows through open windows. * Margo Natalie Crawford, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eBlack Ephemera\u003c\/i\u003e, Neal conducts an impressive symphony of memory work. The digital frontier transformed what an archive looks like, how it functions, where it lives, and who gets access to it … As chapters diverge in theme and latitude, the book assumes the feel of a mixtape. There’s one on the pioneering Memphis record label Stax. There’s another chapter on the distillation of Black women’s trauma through pop culture, and one about how collective Black mourning is produced, shared, and preserved digitally. The whole is an impressive totem, and guide, to the importance of holding on to things forgotten in our haste to the future. * Wired *\u003cbr\u003eBlack music is part of the cultural fabric of society, and Neal offers critical insights into how one can think and learn about it. Valuable for artists, archivists, and historians as well as music students and enthusiasts. -- J. T. Pekarek, Indiana University Northwest * CHOICE *","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409048379735,"sku":"9781479806881","price":66.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781479806881.jpg?v=1730505237","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/black-ephemera-9781479806881","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}