Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture | 
| Creators: Harry Justin Elam, Kennell Jackson
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 374088
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0472068407
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.89607309051
EAN: 9780472068401
ASIN: 0472068407
Publication Date: December 5, 2005
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Condition: New softcover book in factory shrinkwrap.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"A shrewdly designed, generously expansive, timely contribution to our understanding of how 'black' expression continues to define and defy the contours of global (post)modernity. The essays argue persuasively for a transnational ethos binding disparate African and diasporic enactments, and together provide a robust conversation about the nature, history, future, and even possibility of 'blackness' as a distinctive mode of cultural practice."
--Kimberly Benston, author of Performing Blackness
"Black Cultural Traffic is nothing less than our generation's manifesto on black performance and popular culture. With a distinguished roster of contributors and topics ranging across academic disciplines and the arts (including commentary on film, music, literature, theater, television, and visual cultures), this volume is not only required reading for scholars serious about the various dimensions of black performance, it is also a timely and necessary teaching tool. It captures the excitement and intellectual innovation of a field that has come of age. Kudos!"
--Dwight A. McBride, author of Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch
"The explosion of interest in black popular culture studies in the past fifteen years has left a significant need for a reader that reflects this new scholarly energy. Black Cultural Traffic answers that need."
--Mark Anthony Neal, author of Songs in the Key of Black Life
"A revolutionary anthology that will be widely read and taught. It crisscrosses continents and cultures and examines confluences and influences of black popular culture -- music, dance, theatre, television, fashion and film. It also adds a new dimension to current discussions of racial, ethnic, and national identity."
--Horace Porter, author of The Making of a Black Scholar
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| Customer Reviews:
Twenty Six Views on Black Performances June 21, 2006
This book contains twenty six essays on black culture and how it has moved from Africa to the United States and from there to the world. It is specifically oriented to the performing arts, loosely defined to include everything from gospel music to sports to television series. The contributors are an eclectic mix of scholars (mostly), critics and practicing artists who express their own views about black culture.
The writers, like people everywhere offer a diverse set of views from their own perspectives. In these times the influence of Black culture in areas like popular music and sports that even these writers have a hard time defining things like Black Music. Music for instance that started as black has found homes in other cultures as diverse as Gospel groups in Australia and Broadway.
This book could be used for readings in Black studies, or by anyone interested in the differentiation in Black performing arts.
A thought-provoking discussion March 23, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is not a collection of essays celebrating the tremendous influence of black culture around the world.
Instead, as Tricia Rose states in the Foreword, "The traffic in black culture to which this volume is dedicated is tethered to the trafficking in black bodies on which these cultural exchanges are based. They share several disheartening characteristics: similar trade routes, unequal forms of exchange, and often, a soulless focus on capital gain." But she adds, "Despite the troubled ground on which these traffic patterns are set, a good deal of black culture emphasizes sacrifice for the larger good and a steadfast commitment to affirmation and confirmation against relentlessly long odds."
I suspect that if the 26 contributors - an international and interdisciplinary mix of scholars, critics, and practicing artists - met together in a room, they would not reach consensus on exactly what constitutes "black culture" or "appropriation" or "authenticity." But therein lies the book's strength; there is no company line here, but rather a dynamic, thought-provoking discussion.
Racial "hybridization" and public perceptions are a common thread, as in Caroline Streeter's "Faking the Funk? Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys and (Hybrid) Black Celebrity."
Others explore the commodification - or "trafficking" - of black culture. It is not addressed as a simple matter of whites exploiting blacks. As Kennell Jackson notes in "The Shadows of Texts: Will Black Music and Singers Sell Everything on Television?" the sort of collaboration taking place between black artists and television ad creators "reminds us that in late capitalism black cultural material often travels in commercial contexts with collusion of the makers of cultural products."
It's impossible to sum up this diverse collection in a few paragraphs. Suffice to say I think it provides much food for thought to anyone interested in cultural studies, African American Studies, vernacular culture or the arts in general.
The book came out too early to address Dave Chapelle's rationale for terminating his show, which he summed up to Oprah as discomfort over "the white guy laughing." Here's hoping the second edition includes something by or about him, since it would be a perfect fit.
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