The Sounds Of Slavery

Publisher description

This exploration of African American slavery through sound is a groundbreaking way of understanding both slave culture and American history "A work of great originality and insight." -Ira Berlin "Shane White and Graham White's book is a joy." -Branford Marsalis "A fascinating book . . . that brings to life the historical soundscape of 18th- and 19th-century African Americans at work, play, rest, and prayer . . . This remarkable achievement demands a place in every collection on African American and U.S. history and folklife. Highly recommended." -Library Journal "The authors have undertaken the difficult task of bringing to contemporary readers the sounds of American slave culture . . . [giving] vibrancy and texture to a complex history that has been long neglected." -Booklist "The book's strongest point is its attention to detail . . . [it] will not only be valuable to young scholars, but . . . to young performers and composers, especially with the explosion of interest in 'roots music,' looking for new sources of original and searing music." -Ran Blake, Christian Science Monitor "A lyrical and original treatment of the musical and spoken culture of American slaves. This book is moving testimony to how scholarship can penetrate the transcendent spirit once considered exotic or unknowable, how historians can trace social survival to the human voice in slavery's heart of darkness." -David W. Blight, professor of history, Yale University, and author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory "A seminal study of a neglected aspect of Southern and African-American culture . . . and the approach to the topic is both creative and resourceful. The book is highly recommended." -Michael Russert, The Multicultural Review Shane White and Graham White, who are not related, are professor and honorary associate, respectively, in the history department at the University of Sydney, Australia. They are the coauthors of Stylin': African American Expressive Culture, from Its Beginning to the Zoot Suit.

"... a significant contribution to the vast and rich international literature on abolitionism, its causes and consequences, main events and historical processes. Well-informed and up-to-date in relation to the most pressing debates on the abolition of slave trade, ...the study provides a much-needed counterpoint (and counterbalance) to an Anglocentric leaning that overwhelmingly dominates this field of studies." - e-Journal of Portuguese History "This book is the culmination of decades of careful research, and assumes an important place on a historiographical pitch steamrollered by an over-concentration on British perspectives." - European History Quarterly "This work elucidates, with clear prose and abundant evidence, a new and important finding: the top slave trading nation of the nineteenth century did not act only upon British will, but developed its own antislavery attitudes within a nationalistic context." - Enterprise & Society "His is a uniquely authoritative voice on abolition in Portugal, a far remove from the 'enlightened will of the masters' approach...that long dominated the historiography. The book is a spell-binding narrative with scholarship of the highest order. Marques is to be congratulated on breaking the silence surrounding the abolition of the slave trade of Portugal and bringing a Portuguese voice t6o international debates on abolition." - The International History Review "[Marques] offers an important contribution not only for those interested in the Atlantic slave trade but also enriches generally the transnationally or globally oriented historiography. " - H-Net, Clio-online Portugal was the pioneer of the transatlantic slave trade, the ruler of both Brazil and Angola - the all time champions of that trade -, and one of the last western countries to decree the abolition of slaving institutions. Paradoxically, and in spite of the overwhelming number of works devoted to the problems of slavery produced in recent decades, little was known about the way Portugal dealt with the twilight of the age of slavery and, most of all, with abolitionism. This book offers the first study of the abolition of the Portuguese slave trade, covering the period from the end of the eighteenth century to the mid-1860s, and bringing to life a dark and silenced corner in the history of the odious commerce. Based on a thorough examination of Portuguese and British historical sources - most of them never used before -, and on his awareness of the international scholarship in the field in which he writes, it investigates not only the Portuguese pro and anti-abolitionist attitudes but also the underlying ideologies, and whether and how those attitudes and ideologies changed over time and in the light of events in the political, economic and social spheres.

Originally published in 1867, this book is a collection of songs of African-American slaves. A few of the songs were written after the emancipation, but all were inspired by slavery. The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hopes, keen sorrow, and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand, the words breathe a trusting faith in the life after, to which their eyes seem constantly turned.

By comparing a diversity of documents including letters by slaves, free people of colour and planters, as well as literary works, royal decrees and court cases, Catherine Reinhardt untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that shaped the collective memory of slaves and free coloureds.

The groundbreaking, bestselling history of slavery, with a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed With the publication of the 1619 Project and the national reckoning over racial inequality, the story of slavery has gripped America’s imagination—and conscience—once again. No group of people better understood the power of slavery’s legacies than the last generation of American people who had lived as slaves. Little-known before the first publication of Remembering Slavery over two decades ago, their memories were recorded on paper, and in some cases on primitive recording devices, by WPA workers in the 1930s. A major publishing event, Remembering Slavery captured these extraordinary voices in a single volume for the first time, presenting them as an unprecedented, first-person history of slavery in America. Remembering Slavery received the kind of commercial attention seldom accorded projects of this nature—nationwide reviews as well as extensive coverage on prime-time television, including Good Morning America, Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, and CNN. Reviewers called the book “chilling . . . [and] riveting” (Publishers Weekly) and “something, truly, truly new” (The Village Voice). With a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar Annette Gordon-Reed, this new edition of Remembering Slavery is an essential text for anyone seeking to understand one of the most basic and essential chapters in our collective history.

Forging new ideas about the relationship between race and sound, Furlonge explores how black artists--including well-known figures such as writers Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, and singers Bettye LaVette and Aretha Franklin, among others--imagine listening. Drawing from a multimedia archive, Furlonge examines how many of the texts call on readers to "listen in print." In the process, she gives us a new way to read and interpret these canonical, aurally inflected texts, and demonstrates how listening allows us to engage with the sonic lives of difference as readers, thinkers, and citizens.

From the author of an acclaimed biography of Josephine Bonaparte: a stunning history of the interdependence of sugar, slavery, and colonial settlement in the New World--from the 17th century to the present.