Name: Race Music
ISBN: 9780520243330

Guthrie P. Ramsey

Covering the vast and various terrain of African American music, this text begins with an account of the author's own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago. It goes on to explore the global influence and social relevance of African American music.

Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop

Race Music

John Balek

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.'s Race Music is quite a mixed bag of information. While it offers a vast variety of subjects to discuss it often feels directionless and without focus. There's a lot to learn from a book like this and every chapter could fill its own book but subjects are often given only a brief overview in this book.

As someone who took a Jazz History course in college a lot of the Bebop information was a review for me. Although there was also plenty of new information I learned. I was hoping to learn more about more recent eras of Black music but they were only given sparse summaries and selective discussion.

Race Music often switches between being a book that discusses the history of Black music, a description of the music theory, and a study on Black ancestry and migration patterns. While all of these subjects are interesting and essential to understanding Black music, the volatility of the narrative made it seem like Ramsey knew he needed to cover these topics but didn't have enough information on them to fully cover them.

Out of all of these subjects, I found the Black ancestry and migration to be the most interesting. This was the subject I was least informed on and found the most new revelations from. That being said I would probably look for a book focused on this subject in the future rather than reading this hyper-focused view on it.

Ramsey gets very technical when describing music theory. As someone with a background in reading and playing music this wasn't as hard for me to get into but I can imagine this being a struggle for someone without this prior knowledge. Even with this prior knowledge I found these sections boring and uninteresting. There's only so much you can get out of reading someone describe music verbatim. At times it felt like Ramsey was padding the page length of an already short book.
 
Ramsey assumption that readers will know what he is talking about when it comes to music technicality is a strange assumption. It would make sense if this book was clearly for music literate audiences but it feels like it is supposed to have a more general, academic appeal. He won't stop to explain specific musical concepts but will stop to explain things like the commercialization of Christmas. It just feels like the intended audience isn't fully understood.

There are also many times where Ramsey will cut it with first person interjections to explain his methodology; using phrases like "as I previously discussed", " I will now detail", "In this chapter I have...". These are all very amateurish writing techniques, especially for a book that is very academic otherwise.

Overall, I think the subject matter of this book is one that needs to be written and discussed more. From that perspective I really liked reading a book like this. It did offer some occasional deeper discussions, offering a feminist perspective or a direct experience, but otherwise it felt very lacking. There are so many deeper discussions that can and should be taken on a subject like this. Personally, I think it would be valuable to discuss a subject like "How Black culture and music goes from an 'underground' movement to a part of mainstream (white) culture" as well as "How Black culture has continued to reinvent itself to reclaim its ownership".
 
I just think there are more important subjects to discuss. This book was written almost 20 years ago and as it gets further away from the current day its more contemporary points feel more and more like the history previously discussed.

Race Music Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop

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