“Death of The Negro From The Ante Bellum To The Renaissance & Beyond: The Jazz Age (Volume 2)” by Delridge La Veon Hunter, Ph. D. is now available for purchase
“In bondage as a prisoner of war, the lyric poet had the motive force to sing. Song evolved as his mode of expression, while poetry became his means of commentary. This developmental process was called the blues continuum.”
– an excerpt from the book
Author Reputation Press is honored to publish “Death of The Negro From The Ante Bellum To The Renaissance & Beyond: The Jazz Age (Volume 2)” by Delridge La Veon Hunter, Ph.D. The book is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the ARP website.
Author Delridge L. Hunter has a Ph.D. in Africana Studies from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio; a Master of Community Mental Health from Northern Illinois University; and an A.B. in Political Science with an Integrated Minor in Economics, Geography, History, and Literature from Prairie View A&M University.
He is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York. His work centers on the paradigm he has developed over the past 40 years. It is called the “Law of Position, a Position Theory.” His specialty is black popular culture.
His most recent published works are 4 Works in the Sage Encyclopedia of African American Heritage (2015), Death on the Negro: 3 Volumes (2015), and Goraka’s Memoirs of Infamy (2013). Blues: A Continuum from Africa. Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Forbidden Desires Fulfilled and Sexual Secrets Acted Out (2010), Culture of Whiteness VS. Black Popular Culture (2008), Forbidden Desires Fulfilled (2006), and Blues Aesthetics (2006). Lastly, The Lyric Poet: A Blues Continuum (2002).
“Death of The Negro From The Ante Bellum To The Renaissance & Beyond: The Jazz Age (Volume 2)” is a thought-provoking and enlightening masterpiece. Readers will learn about an African American experience in the development of black popular culture, a socio-cultural history of the African American blues experience during post-reconstruction to the Renaissance, and the progression and modernization of the African cultural form. This informative book may be used by teachers and students as a reference for understanding the aforementioned subject matters.
With the great Liberation War ending in 1865 C.E., ‘slave narratives’ immediately became the source of information for scholars who studied Black Life and Culture. After William Allen, et al, published the Slave Songs of The United States, scholars searched for narratives to uncover how the slaves lived.
The purposes were usually noble in that they were truly interested in black popular culture. The result of this interest was that many allowed the slaves to tell the story of suffering and depravation, i.e., the narrative, without the interference of another voice.
For many scholars, the intent was to speak to some moral issues affecting the treatment of slaves. The political economy that depended on agricultural production and the use of slave labor produced the most ideal time and space for the evolution of a musical form. Paul Laurence Dunbar will promote the 1890 book series of poems.
Although Dunbar has already produced the musical form of Blues-in-Print with his lyrics entitled “Blue, Dirge, Lament, e.g., Pickin’ off De Cotton, Ware, and W.C. Handy will be credited with giving “Blues” its name.
What makes this information so vital is that all of the preconditions existed for “Devil’s Songs” [Blues Form] to grow, expand, and evolve during this epoch. Africans, as people in bondage, occupied the least favored position.
As a social commentator, the lyric poet’s role was to analyze the system of slavery that kept the Africans oppressed. The audience and support were there among the people in bondage. As the reader shall see, this support was later challenged in the development of blues.
By then, however, the lyric poet had already set the stage for the creation of what the most favored will call ‘Black Music’. What is Black Music? Those styles, genres, and forms owe their existence to the people enslaved as captives in the Americas.
How did the development occur? The system of bondage was so complete that vast lyric poets were given many settings in which to materialize their works. African cultural sensibilities are expressed through song and suicide, thus endangering the social continuity of Africans.
As we are told, the Negro lived within a culture of poverty as the slaves and, through denial, suffered a poverty of culture. As a slave, the Negro was supposed to exist without culture. This was their poverty of culture.
As a slave, the Negro lives in an assigned position. That position dictated the conditions under which suffering was permitted. The Negro had no other place to call home. There was no Negro land as a place of origin. Africa was renamed, but many did not exist except as a faraway place of origin that allowed its inhabitants to be sold into bondage. Bondage was forever.
“Death of The Negro From The Ante Bellum To The Renaissance & Beyond: The Jazz Age (Volume 2)” by Delridge La Veon Hunter, Ph. D. is now available for purchase via ARP Bookstore: https://authorreputationpress.com/products/volume-2-death-of-the-negro-from-the-ante-bellum-to-the-renaissance-and-beyond.