Cultural Literature

A-list choreographer Laurieann Gibson guides creators of all kinds to embrace their passions and achieve success, providing a practical road map to never giving up on your dream. Have you felt stuck like you're just running in place, fearful of taking...

In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange's ability to blend movement with words when her...

From its modest beginnings in the 1960s in a Harlem church basement, to its meteoric rise to international fame, the Dance Theatre of Harlem ignited the world with one simple, still-revolutionary statement: All can do ballet. Into the 21st century, as...

What Charlie Parker was to the saxophone, Bud Powell (1924-1966) was to the piano: No jazz pianist can rival his brilliance. But his life was filled with tragedy, including years of electroshock therapy in psychiatric institutions, illnesses, physical...

Dance of the Four Winds recounts the adventures of the American psychologist Alberto Villoldo as he journeys to Peru to explore the visionary ceremonies of the native shamans. Here Quecha masters use the jungle plant ayahuasca to further their spiritual...

The dazzling, beautiful, and entertaining arrangements in the Dan Coates Popular Piano Library advanced collections are a welcome addition to any pianist's pop repertoire. Popular Christmas Hits is a collection classic and contemporary holiday favorites...

An illuminating journey to racial reconciliation experienced by two Americans--one black and one white. The 1919 Elaine Race Massacre, arguably the worst in our country's history, has been widely unknown for the better part of a century, thanks to the...

Daddy's Dying: There Is No Will is about a man and his struggle to have a family, career and peace of mind. His family was blended; however, he knew nothing about a blended family or all that it could entail. As the story unfolds, many characters emerge,...

Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as neo-soul, a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities;...

In a shattering work that shifts between a woman's private anguish over the loss of her beloved baby cousin and a scholar's fierce critique of the American prison system, Danielle Allen seeks answers to what, for many years, felt unanswerable. Why? Why...

Current Jazz Trumpet Legends, Volume 3 in the Jazz Trumpet Legends series, is an examination of the lives and contributions of jazz trumpeters born after July 1, 1938. Included are Lee Morgan, Bobby Shew, Lew Soloff, Woody Shaw, Arturo Sandoval, Wynton...

In an era of increasing interaction between the United States and the countries of the Middle East, it has become ever more important for Americans to understand the social forces that shape Middle Eastern cultures. Based on years of his own field...