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The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness
*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism*
*A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012*
The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album , Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying―storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art―and artfulness―to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.
*A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012*
The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album , Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying―storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art―and artfulness―to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.
476 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 2012
52 people are currently reading
1491 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Young
87 books374 followersKevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
June 17, 2012
If more academic books were like this we'd all be academically inclined but it would be rare for any of us to be as smart, insightful, creative, generous, and amazing as Kevin Young. You. Read. Now.
Here's a partial list of the themes he names and explores:
1) Shadow Books.
2) Contraband versus Counterfeit.
3) Masks, Mistaking the Mask for Real, Appropriating the False Mask.
4) Reversals of Meaning.
5) Escape to the North, Canaan, Outer-space.
6) Is it Better to Be Unread or Misread?
7) The Blackness of Black Culture and Black Culture is American Culture.
Just some, and they are applied to: Literature, the blues, poetry, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, novels, eras, spirituals, food, the Body, the Breaks, and more.
I was marking pages for quotes so much there isn't room here to reproduce them, so you'll have to go pick this up.
Extra points for the treatment of punk rock. It wasn't mentioned very often but it was talked about smartly when brought up and even called a "cousin" to hip-hop (which is something I always thought).
Here's a partial list of the themes he names and explores:
1) Shadow Books.
2) Contraband versus Counterfeit.
3) Masks, Mistaking the Mask for Real, Appropriating the False Mask.
4) Reversals of Meaning.
5) Escape to the North, Canaan, Outer-space.
6) Is it Better to Be Unread or Misread?
7) The Blackness of Black Culture and Black Culture is American Culture.
Just some, and they are applied to: Literature, the blues, poetry, jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, novels, eras, spirituals, food, the Body, the Breaks, and more.
I was marking pages for quotes so much there isn't room here to reproduce them, so you'll have to go pick this up.
Extra points for the treatment of punk rock. It wasn't mentioned very often but it was talked about smartly when brought up and even called a "cousin" to hip-hop (which is something I always thought).
February 12, 2012
an absolutely brilliant, essential read. just....wow
July 1, 2012
One of the best cultural histories I've read in years. A book of essays as profound and vibrant as the first time I read Greg Tate's Fly-Boy in the Buttermilk or David Toop's Ocean of Sound or Reginald Shepherd's Orpheus in the Bronx or Albert Goldbarth's Many Circles. Long stretches I had to read out loud just to see how they tasted.
Want to read
October 6, 2012After skimming this in a bookstore today, I retrospectively regretted not winning it in that GR giveaway a few months back. A whole chapter on Bob Kaufman!
Want to read
March 2, 2019Stunning. I'd recommend this to everyone based on the first ten percent alone. I have no doubt the rest will be equally brilliant.
Read
May 7, 2014Must read
December 26, 2023
I read Bunk by Kevin Young and enjoyed it very much. I was less impressed with this title, not that it didn't offer many thought-provoking ideas and point me to some authors I plan to explore, but because I thought it ranged too widely over too many areas of expression (literature, music, art, poetry, lyrics) and constructed many comparisons between these differing artforms from too many abstract theories and concepts. The abstraction began early and just dovetalied into more abstractions, too many of which remained abstract, at least for me. Though this book is interesting, the take-home meaning became just too hard to articulate. The earlier title, Bunk, also took in a wide range of subjects and sources but tended to wrap up chapters with firmer ideas that I could sort of explain later.
December 19, 2013
This was a fascinating, energetic, challenging book to read. And well worth it. The author, who as a poet, has a real talent for language - and uses it to open our eyes to the American story - in black and white (in particular). His writing about truth and lies is very powerful. His insights on American history, popular culture, music and poetry are wise and thoughtful. I learned a lot in reading this book - not only about the subject manner - but also about the varieties of ways good writing makes an appearance in our lives and nation. Fascinating. I’m very glad I read it.
November 15, 2022
Virtuosic. He takes each topic and examines it, ever so slightly, to catch all the glints and specks it gives off.
July 2, 2014
I wish I could write like this. Wow.
February 14, 2018
Maybe I’m being disingenuous when I file this under “read,” because, well, I didn’t read all of it. It’s due to the library in a couple of days, and I’m only (literally) halfway through, and I’m struggling to keep reading. Young is intelligent, no doubt, and this is incredible in just how thorough an examination it is, but . . . I’m just not all that interested any more, as bad as that may sound.
November 23, 2021
Young is a gifted writer and undoubtedly a superb poet, but as a work of cultural history/theory/criticism, this lost a lot of momentum after its first couple of dozen pages, after which it starts to feel kind of arbitrary and repetitive (especially for readers already familiar with similar authors writing about Blackness and American culture).
Read
August 11, 2015Kevin Young chronicles Black artists and how they have shaped USAmerican Culture. "I believe it is Black culture (which is distinct) that transforms American culture (making it more Black and thereby more distinct)....American culture is Black culture --and it is this unique African American culture that in large part makes American culture popular the world over."
It is beautifully written. It is a poetic, personal critique of the art and artists of the 20th century.
I was introduced to a few new names in literature and song. The chapters on Rap and Hip-hop had me running to the record store and youtube to hear the songs he talks about. I knew some of them, but not most. Or having heard them some time ago, I needed to hear the afresh in light of Young's descriptives.
As a white guy of a predominately white upbringing and in current mostly white social setting, I have grown to view
Black culture as "other". Whether it was watching Soul Train for the occasional top ten artist and marveling at the exotic "costumes" and hair styles, or dismissing as unlistenable the Rap with angry and profane and misogynist lyrics, Black culture wasn't ever derogatorily "other" or somehow "less than", but it was not welcoming. I didn't understand. It was distinct, almost as if it were political or protest songs to a struggle I couldn't weight in on. I could empathize, but I wasn't going to sing along ( most times). Kevin Young's book elucidates how all of Black culture, the Pips, Dr Dre, Hurston, Hughes, Coltrane, Parker, Lawrence Dunbar, Bob Kaufmann, and others all rise out of the their American experiences and, in turn, influence what follows. For all of us.
It is beautifully written. It is a poetic, personal critique of the art and artists of the 20th century.
I was introduced to a few new names in literature and song. The chapters on Rap and Hip-hop had me running to the record store and youtube to hear the songs he talks about. I knew some of them, but not most. Or having heard them some time ago, I needed to hear the afresh in light of Young's descriptives.
As a white guy of a predominately white upbringing and in current mostly white social setting, I have grown to view
Black culture as "other". Whether it was watching Soul Train for the occasional top ten artist and marveling at the exotic "costumes" and hair styles, or dismissing as unlistenable the Rap with angry and profane and misogynist lyrics, Black culture wasn't ever derogatorily "other" or somehow "less than", but it was not welcoming. I didn't understand. It was distinct, almost as if it were political or protest songs to a struggle I couldn't weight in on. I could empathize, but I wasn't going to sing along ( most times). Kevin Young's book elucidates how all of Black culture, the Pips, Dr Dre, Hurston, Hughes, Coltrane, Parker, Lawrence Dunbar, Bob Kaufmann, and others all rise out of the their American experiences and, in turn, influence what follows. For all of us.
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September 8, 2012Essays on race, culture, and music. The language is stilted and strange, a style particularly grating on a subject matter that is seemingly so fluid: soul music. It seemed too difficult to get through such a cerebral and obtuse take on material so intrinsically visceral and enjoyable that my reading was patchy and uneven, although a beautiful and insightful passage on the magic of falsetto singing did stand out:
You could say that black folks' very yearning is a kind of technology - a conveyance, if you will, that like the soul shout or moan is meant to usher us beyond the beyond. Falsetto in soul music, where it occurs with notable frequency, is such a chariot, partly earthbound, with claims on a sound beyond nature - reaching for the supernatural...Falsetto is the supernatural made vocal, Ariel for the airwaves: simultaneously hypermasculine and lovingly feminine, sexy yet chaste, falsetto in soul music is a sign of vulnerability that emerges from strength.It is the deepest voice, after all, that often creates the highest. As falsetto reveals, soul embodies a set of opposites, even contradictions: "Love and happiness" as Al Green sings, and helps us to know these may be two different things. Something that'll make you do wrong, will make you do right.
You could say that black folks' very yearning is a kind of technology - a conveyance, if you will, that like the soul shout or moan is meant to usher us beyond the beyond. Falsetto in soul music, where it occurs with notable frequency, is such a chariot, partly earthbound, with claims on a sound beyond nature - reaching for the supernatural...Falsetto is the supernatural made vocal, Ariel for the airwaves: simultaneously hypermasculine and lovingly feminine, sexy yet chaste, falsetto in soul music is a sign of vulnerability that emerges from strength.It is the deepest voice, after all, that often creates the highest. As falsetto reveals, soul embodies a set of opposites, even contradictions: "Love and happiness" as Al Green sings, and helps us to know these may be two different things. Something that'll make you do wrong, will make you do right.
Want to read
February 19, 2013Originally posted at http://postdefiance.com/seven-swans-a..., written by Timothy Thomas McNeely.
In The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, poet Kevin Young goes in search of what it means to be African-American in America, and comes up with an answer that may or may not surprise: African-American culture is American culture; that is, it can be taken as an encompassing example of what it means to be American.
Young traces black history in America, noting just how much personal invention – lying, storytelling, improvising – goes into creating the culture we all live in, how creativity out of adversity is the story of America as a whole, as much as it is the story of African-Americans in particular.
The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young. 483 pp. Graywolf Press. $25.
In The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, poet Kevin Young goes in search of what it means to be African-American in America, and comes up with an answer that may or may not surprise: African-American culture is American culture; that is, it can be taken as an encompassing example of what it means to be American.
Young traces black history in America, noting just how much personal invention – lying, storytelling, improvising – goes into creating the culture we all live in, how creativity out of adversity is the story of America as a whole, as much as it is the story of African-Americans in particular.
The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young. 483 pp. Graywolf Press. $25.
Read
September 12, 2013Hard to summarize. Dense and ambitious cultural criticism focusing on African American culture, with particular attention to counterfeits, masks, variable personae, and truthful lies. There's quite a bit about how African American writers and musicians did modernism and postmodernism before they were named, and how their work and fantasies of black people were appropriated and incorporated into the work of the white writers of the canon. The focus is mostly on African American works and their centrality to American culture. I particularly liked the bit talking about the elevator as a recurring symbol in African American literature.
It gave me a long list of writers to read, reread, or catch up with.
It gave me a long list of writers to read, reread, or catch up with.
October 18, 2012
The Grey Album: Music, Shadows, Lies was a good read. I found it hard to follow, but by no fault of the author. It was filled with so much information about a subject, that I realize now, I knew little about. Definitely a good read for someone who is more familiar with the literature and music of black Americans. Very well researched piece. I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
July 31, 2023
I typically like Young's writing, but these essays, while fun in juxtaposing jazz, blues, hip-hop, etc., never cohere. Even paragraph to paragraph, there is a lack of clarity. His thoughts are all over the place and often really hard to follow. Young seems to have plenty of ideas about African American poetry and music but I'd be hard pressed, even after reading 460 pages, trying to communicate what exactly they are.
That said, I did enjoy the sections on modernism and Langston Hughes.
That said, I did enjoy the sections on modernism and Langston Hughes.
August 2, 2012
I only got about half way through this book. It's very difficult but thought provoking reading. It's just that I am not steeped in all the literature he cites. I did enjoy the parts about jazz though, except when he starts praising Ezra Pound. It is an interesting book, but I couldn't not put it down.
November 27, 2012
Staggering in its comprehensiveness, Young's first collection of essays offers a sprawling consideration of African American literary and musical expression, reading those traditions through deep historical context and astute consideration of their distinct aesthetic qualities. Inventive and satisfying throughout.
April 14, 2014
Ultimately interesting look into the history of African American contributions to the arts from the 1800s up to present time, tracing the evolution from "storying" up through hip hop.
Not the easiest read, however. You'll be challenged.
Not the easiest read, however. You'll be challenged.
August 23, 2015
Terrible and incomprehensible. Honestly, I could only get 50 pages through because it felt like the author was trying to be so clever that he sounded like a moron. If I could discern the meaning in one or two of his sentences, it might have gone further to give some meaning to the book.
November 10, 2013
The introduction is sprawling and beautiful and poetic (and made me buy the book) but the rest of it reads like lit crit and I don't have time for that right now. Maybe another day!
August 14, 2014
https://wordpress.com/post/30111049/5...
I'm not sure I understood it well enough to rate it properly.
I'm not sure I understood it well enough to rate it properly.
May 21, 2013
Smart cultural criticism.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews