Dancing Revolution: bodies space and sound in american cultural history

 

Book Description: 

Dancing Revolution presents richly diverse cases studies to illuminate patterns of subaltern movement and influence in movement and sound in the history of American public life. Christopher J. Smith spans centuries, geographies, and cultural identities as he delves into a wide range of historical moments, recovering transgressive communities' physical expressions of dissent and solidarity. Multidisciplinary and wide-ranging, Dancing Revolution examines how Americans turned the rhythms of history into the movement behind the movements (Earle H Johnson Subvention from the Society for American Music)

Author Bio:

Chris Smith is Professor, Chair of Musicology, and founding director of the Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech University. He composed the theatrical show Dancing at the Crossroads (2013), the “folk oratorio” Plunder! Battling for Democracy in the New World (2017), and the immersive-theater show Yonder (2019). His monograph The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy (Illinois, 2013) won the Irving Lowens Award; his newest book is Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space, and Sound in American Cultural History (Illinois, 2019), and is a collaborator, with Thomas Irvine (Southampton), on the Turing Institute project “Jazz as Social System.” A former student of jazz pedagogue David N Baker, he conducts the Elegant Savages Orchestra symphonic folk group at Texas Tech, and concertizes on guitar, bouzouki, banjo, and diatonique accordion. He is a former nightclub bouncer, carpenter, lobster fisherman, and oil-rig roughneck, and a published poet. [150]