What the Music Said

A history of black communities in America, which focuses on musical traditions from early jazz to hip-hop. The author also considers the social forces and organisations which countered these artistic movements, including the FBI and the Nixon administration.

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First Published in 1999. In What the Music Said, Mark Anthony Neal provides a timely study of from be-bop to Hip Hop. This book looks at the last fifty years of black popular music and provides an intriguing portrait of the existential and social forces that drove black communities to make music in protest, reaction and to fulfil their material and spiritual needs.