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In this lecture, DC based author Norman Kelley examines how 'race' leadership failed to institutionalize the economic power of Black popular music.
Why did a people whose greatest export is music never develop an industry around it?
In this provocative lecture, author and critic Norman Kelley examines how 'race' leadership - Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Marcus Garvey, and Nannie Hellen Burroughs - failed to institutionalize the economic power of Black popular music. Drawing on his unpublished book, An Industry Beneath Their Feet, Kelley argues that the political economy of Black music reveals a deeper story of class bias, cultural neglect, and missed opportunities for both collective advancement and economic self-sufficiency.
Norman Kelley is the author of R&B (Rhythm & Buisiness): The Political Economy of Black Music and The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Black History Month | Author Talk |
