Keep On Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip-hop

Fascinating and informative look at the music of protest, rooted in slavery and still incredibly relevant, and needed, today. The timeliness of this book struck me - when so many are in desperate economic straits and are finally making themselves heard over the din of corporate lobbyists. Lots of information here - a must for any follower of music.

This is an important book for both the novice and expert alike, the novice because it is a virtual encyclopedia on the subject matter, the expert because there is so much well researched information about SO much music that even the well informed will find much to learn and discover. Add to that the author's deep understanding of, and it would seem, passion for the subject matter. This book is a must read for anyone interested in music and social and racial justice issues.

Insightful fully researched a must read

This was an interesting read. I bought this because i'm digging deep into civil rights related music. This book has a lot of insightful information. The book focusses however on a lot more than that. A better title in my opinion would have been something like "human rights and music" since it also focusses on music related to gay-rights, female rights and anti-war protestmusic. Besides that there's a lot of attention for non-blackmusic like punkrock (especially a lot on MC5), folkmusic (from Guthrie to Lennon). From the cover it looks like it handles on black-music only. Nonetheless this was an interesting read. It's more a sociological study on the subjects than a who's who in human rightsmusic. I'm already familiair with a lot of music on these subjects so there weren't a lot of new discoveries for me here, but it's nice to see a lot of already known music to be placed in it's historical context.

The entire progression book is very loosely held together by speculative connections and name dropping. The writing style reminds me of a highschool essay. Some things mentioned were interesting, but I was disappointed in the lack in depth. My analogy for this entire book is similar to when a teenager first finds out the lyrics of a song are about drugs and then goes to tell all their friends.

interesting, informative, good illustrations...