| Description |
1 online resource |
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text file |
| Contents |
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: RJP and the Rhythm and Blues Imagination -- 1. Reading Race, Gender, and Sex: Black Intimate Relations, Black Inequality, and the Rhythm and Blues Imagination -- 2. "Whip Appeal": Reading Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds -- 3. "Freak Like Me": Reading Adina Howard -- 4. "Didn't We Almost Have It All?": Reading Whitney Houston -- Epilogue: "It's Just Another Sad Love Song": Reading Toni Braxton -- Appendix A: Select List of Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds's Songs -- Appendix B: Select Awards and Honors -- Appendix C: Robert J. Patterson Interviews Adina Howard -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author |
| Summary |
Despite rhythm and blues culture's undeniable role in molding, reflecting, and reshaping black cultural production, consciousness, and politics, it has yet to receive the serious scholarly examination it deserves. Destructive Desires corrects this omission by analyzing how post-Civil Rights era rhythm and blues culture articulates competing and conflicting political, social, familial, and economic desires within and for African American communities. As an important form of black cultural production, rhythm and blues music helps us to understand black political and cultural desires and longings in light of neo-liberalism's increased codification in America's racial politics and policies since the 1970s. Robert J. Patterson provides a thorough analysis of four artists--Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Adina Howard, Whitney Houston, and Toni Braxton--to examine black cultural longings by demonstrating how our reading of specific moments in their lives, careers, and performances serve as metacommentaries for broader issues in black culture and politics. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Rhythm and blues music -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.
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Rhythm and blues music. |
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Social aspects. |
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United States. |
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History. |
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Rhythm and blues music -- Political aspects -- United States -- History.
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Rhythm and blues music -- History and criticism.
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African Americans -- Attitudes.
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African Americans -- Attitudes. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Patterson, Robert J., 1980- Destructive desires. New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2019] (DLC) 2018027677 |
| ISBN |
1978803613 (electronic book) |
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9781978803619 (electronic book) |
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9781978803596 (hardcover) |
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9781978803589 (paperback) |
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1978803583 |
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