Cultural Literature

The emergence of Jack Teagarden as an important jazz stylist was a significant feature of the '20s jazz scene. He brought a maturity to the sound of the trombone and until late in his life played with a laconic grace that few, if any, on his instrument...

From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James J Dilla Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as...

Its the Memory of an Old-Fashioned Christmas had been in the works for six years. Every year, around Christmastime, Ms. Swift reminisced about the good days when families, neighbors, and villagers had one thing in commoncelebrate Christmas by going to a...

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at life in the rap world, from the woman at the heart of the Nas/Jay-Z feud--one of the biggest beefs in hip-hop. Carmen Bryan is no stranger to the rap world. Not only did she work at Def Jam and Capitol Records but...

Dr. Lonnie Woods, Esq. resides in the Dallas- Fort Worth area. Dr. Woods graduated from Texas Christian University with a B.A. in Political Science with honors and later the University of Texas School of Law, where he obtained his law degree. He later...

This star-studded tribute traces the struggles and triumphs of the Afro-American superstars of music and film over the last century. Among the many artists featured are: Whitney Houston, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Cab...

Richard Wesley was witness to a revolution. As both a celebrated participant and eager student of the Black Theater Movement in the late 1960s, he became part of a seismic force in American culture, breaking down barriers and helping to disrupt the...

"My life has been played in symphonic harmony with the Master, by a cluster of circumstances, rhythmically interwoven for good," Dre Williams writes. "You see, I believe my life's events have been divinely arranged."These may seem like unusual words to...

In this day and age it's no longer shocking to hear of an athlete who has strangled his coach or one who has been arrested for violence and drug use. One can drive down the street and see bumper stickers suggesting people Question Authority or I don't...

Christopher R. Weingarten provides a thrilling account of how the Bomb Squad produced such a singular-sounding record: engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing - even occasionally stompingon vinyl that sounded too...

Follow me on my journey to me. Within these pages lies a collection of 65 poems chronicling the various emotions, joys, and trials a young woman may encounter in her coming of age. Though these experiences are specific to my individual journey, anyone...

It Is Well is the biography of James Russell Smith, an African American man born in Athens, Georgia in 1941. Smith grew up in the Jim Crow South and attended segregated public schools. He was a student at Tuskegee Institute during the Civil Rights...