All of the “what” that Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., shows that he knows in Who Hears Here? On Black Music, Pasts & Present is of enormous value.1 His essays move seamlessly through discussions of a wide range of music and musicians, cultural sites and sensibilities, genres and generations, and authors and art forms. This virtuosity, however, may obscure at first glance what I consider to be the equally important achievement that emanates from the “how” that he knows and the ways he deploys that way of working. The ideas, evidence, and arguments in this book make extraordinary contributions to scholarship and civic life by prodding scholars and cultural critics to conduct our work in a manner that is contributive rather than competitive, that rests on commitments to conversation rather than conversion, that transcends the narrow disciplinary confines and conventions of academic musicology, that encourages us to keep open and...
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July 01 2023
The Way We Do the Things We Do: “Staying in the Pocket” with Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.
George Lipsitz
George Lipsitz
George Lipsitz is professor emeritus of sociology and Black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His single-authored books include Time Passages, Dangerous Crossroads, Footsteps in the Dark, and Midnight at the Barrelhouse. He is coauthor of The Fierce Urgency of Now (with Ajay Heble and Daniel Fischlin) and Saludarte: Building Health Equity on the Bedrock of Traditional Arts Practice (with the Alliance for California Traditional Arts).
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American Music (2023) 41 (2): 153–160.
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George Lipsitz; The Way We Do the Things We Do: “Staying in the Pocket” with Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.. American Music 1 July 2023; 41 (2): 153–160. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/19452349.41.2.02
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