Language, Rhythm and Sound Black Popular Culture Into the Twenty-First Century

Focusing on expressions of popular culture among blacks in Africa, the United States and the Caribbean, this collection of 15 multidisciplinary essays takes on a range of subjects, from American girls' Double Dutch games to protest discourse in Ghana; from Terry McMillan's ""Waiting to Exhale"" to the work of Zora Neale Hurston; from South African workers to ""Just Another Girl on the IRT""; from the history of Rasta to the evolving significance of kente cloth; from rap video music to hip-hop to zouk. The book places black popular culture into a global context, with an emphasis on the triangular flow of culture linking Africa, the Caribbean and the United States. ""Language, Rhythm, and Sound"" seeks to demonstrate the continuity of black cultural forms from the African past into the future while simultaneously illuminating ongoing transformations in these forms. It contends that black culture everywhere functions to give meaning to people's lives by constructing identities that resist cultural, capitalist, colonial and postcolonial domination.