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A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America
". . . extraordinarily far-reaching. . . . highly accessible."
-Notes
"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom."
-Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story
"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner."
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories."
-African American Review
A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."
Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.
Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.
-Notes
"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom."
-Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story
"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner."
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories."
-African American Review
A Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."
Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.
Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.
488 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1998
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March 4, 2023
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America, Revised Edition 2006 (first edition 1998), Craig Werner, 469 pages, ISBN 9780472031474, Dewey 780.8996073
Musical and political calls and responses in America, mid-twentieth through early 21st century. Blues realism, jazz vision, and the gospel sense of community. p. 313. "The music got there first and stayed well ahead of the political game." p. 339. "Music is a language more universal than politics." p. 347.
Craig Werner is a hippie emeritus and a professor emeritus of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. B.A. 1973, M.A. 1975 American Literature, Ph.D. 1979 English. https://afroamericanstudies.wisc.edu/... A member of the Nominating Committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Books by Craig Werner: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
Craig Werner is on goodreads. His book reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
"September 11, 2001, changed the tone of life in the United States more drastically than any event of my lifetime." p. xi [Really? I'd list:
* television's domination of news and entertainment,
* the availability of the birth-control pill,
* white flight to suburbs, ghettoization of cities (after Brown vs. Board),
* the murders of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and other lifters (http://www.ellawheelerwilcox.org/poem... ),
* the Vietnam War and its protests,
* the moon landing,
* Watergate and mistrust of government, leading to
* the Reagan presidency, ending the 40-year governmental attempt to protect us from monopoly and oligopoly power,
* the deindustrialization of America, movement of manufacturing to low-wage, low-environmental-protection, countries,
* the replacement of countless Main Street businesses by Walmart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
* the end of the fairness doctrine in broadcasting, the radio career of Rush Limbaugh, and the rise of Fox News, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_f...
* the advent of the World Wide Web,
* Clinton's dismantling of welfare (p. 45) and multiplying the prison population,
* the replacement of countless retail stores by amazon.com,
* the increasing control of media, academia, and government by oligarchs (detailed in /Dark Money,/ 2016, Jane Mayer, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ),
* the continuing world-population increase at a rate of 1 billion more people every 12 years https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=... , the more-than-tripling of the U.S. population, the quadrupling of the Hispanic fraction of U.S. population (remember, these are changes, not /all/ of them disasters https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/... ),
* And musically, as Werner tells in the book: p. 32, the murder of Sam Cooke in 1964, and many other early deaths of musical pioneers, such as Otis Redding, 1967, pp. xvi, 94, ended promising music.]
"Music has registered the emotional texture of the changed world." p. xi.
1619: first slave ship arrives at Jamestown, Virginia. p. xiv.
We can never separate who we are from the people around us. Their fate is our own. p. xviii.
Gospel music gave the civil-rights marchers the strength to go on. p. 4. [There's a wonderful 2001 TV movie, "We Shall Not Be Moved," about the role of the African-American church in the civil-rights struggle, https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3030887/ ]
Motown had great instrumentalists, the Funk Brothers. pp. 20-21. [There's a terrific 2002 documentary about them, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314725/ ]
B.B. King singing Sandra Boynton's "One Shoe Blues," 2009 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8rLu...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" is Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," note for note. p. 86. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLV4N... Chuck Berry, 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4sl... Beach Boys, 1963.
The "sixties" actually took place between about 1965 and 1974. p. 103. Polls revealed that the only thing less popular than the Vietnam War was the antiwar movement, to cite only one of the bitter ironies. It helped if you were--and you probably were--stoned. Anyone who remembers the sixties wasn't there. --Robin Williams. p. 105.
Sly and the Family Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_and... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/s/slythefami...
"Underdog," 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqzp5... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slyth...
"Everyday People," 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhD... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slyth...
LBJ speaks to Congress for the Voting Rights Act, March 1965: pp. 106-107. https://speakola.com/political/lyndon... Lyndon Johnson made civil rights a cornerstone of his Great Society agenda for the most unlikely of political reasons: he simply thought it was right. But. "The United States spent $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, but only $35 a year to assist each American in poverty. The bombs of Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities of a decent America." --Martin Luther King. p. 108. MLK speaks against the Vietnam War, 1967: https://speakola.com/ideas/martin-lut... pp. 108-109. The liberal movement died in Vietnam.
In the early years of the Vietnam War, blacks suffered 23% of the casualties, despite being only 12% of the military force. p. 111. (/Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace,/ David Giffey, 2006, tells us that wounded whites were sent to the rear; wounded blacks were sent back out to fight. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... )
"Best books on the Vietnam War," according to Craig Werner: p. 113
/Dispatches,/ Michael Herr, 1977 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
/Winners & Losers,/ Gloria Emerson, 1976 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
/Bloods,/ Wallace Terry, 1984 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Pete Seeger sings his "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," on the Smothers Brothers TV show, 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHETC... p. 114. Lyrics https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-waist-...
Aretha Franklin sings Elton John's "Border Song (Holy Moses)," 1970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzY45... p. 125. Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/areth...
John Coltrane, "Alabama," 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu297... with images of the bombing that killed four little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. p. 130.
Jazz is music that's never played the same way once. --Louis Armstrong. p. 132.
Play something the world's never heard and chances are, it won't hear it this time, either. p. 143.
Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions - "People Get Ready" (1965) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKEb...
Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/curti...
All ten initial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (1986) were Southerners. p. 153.
Gil Scott-Heron, "Whitey on the Moon," 1969 https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-wh... p. 159. Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoP...
"Where is the Love," Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, 1972
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwPri...
Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rober...
"Why? The King of Love Is Dead," 1968, Nina Simone,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uy8c...
Lyrics https://www.best-poems.net/lyrics/son...
The revolution never really happened, on TV or anywhere else. p. 173.
White flight, and flight of successful blacks, made American cities increasingly ghettoes. p. 185.
Paul Simon, accepting the 1975 best-album Grammy: "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder for not making an album this year." p. 187.
More than half the students in Stevie Wonder's Detroit school district came from single-parent homes, in part because Michigan welfare rules denied economic assistance to households in which the father was present. p. 189.
Stevie Wonder once volunteered to judge a beauty contest. p. 189.
Stevie Wonder, "Village Ghetto Land," 1976: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZNk...
"You Haven't Done Nothin'," 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrzT...
"Big Brother," 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3cAs... p. 190.
1978 marks a turning point in American racial history. Since then, every appeal for racial justice has been attacked for giving "special consideration" to "groups." The crucial debate on equal opportunity never really began. Carter's failure to focus attention on the serious questions raised by the concept of group opportunity ceded the moral high ground and the political majority to Ronald Reagan. The movement has never recovered. p. 196.
"TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB (Mother Father Sister Brother), 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2PQ... pp. 198-199. "Funk with a bow tie."
Before 1976, no clear line separated "disco" from "funk." p. 206.
"The Low Rider," War, 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsrqK... p. 210.
The attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism, and homophobia. After nearly a quarter century, white America had recovered its sense of self. p. 211.
"Cosmic Slop," Funkadelic, 1973. p. 227. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SS7...
As far as the South Bronx was concerned, Reagan's Republicans and Carter's Democrats amounted to pretty much the same thing. p. 237.
"The Message," Melle Mel, 1980, p. 241. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYMkE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mes...
In places like the South Bronx--and they were in every city--the gospel hopes and jazz visions of the sixties had faded away. What was left was a kind of blues you couldn't always distinguish from pure despair. The new world looked a lot like hell. By the time "The Message" started receiving airplay in 1982, black America was two years into the Reagan administration. The edge loomed close and it was a long long fall. p. 242.
When Reagan convinced us that empty nostalgia was preferable to grim realities, especially the realities of a black America sinking into profound social chaos and despair, we were in bad trouble. p. 245.
The Reagan Rules: pp. 248-249
*Reality is determined by image and anecdote. Reagan was master of transforming a single example, however far removed from any representative situation, into proof of a sweeping generality. When he was finished putting his spin on a situation, reality didn't get a hearing. A black woman who had been convicted of fraud in a case involving $8,000 was transformed into a "welfare queen" with a fleet of Cadillacs and a tax-free income of $150,000, proving that the poor were getting too much help. It sounded good; we bought it.
*Too much money is never enough. The rich don't share.
*Violence rules. People were sick of being pushed around by little countries like Vietnam and Iran and they were ready to prove they weren't going to take it anymore.
*/We/ deserve our success. /They/ deserve their failure. The homeless were sleeping on heat grates because that's what they wanted. AIDS was punishment for an immoral lifestyle. /We/ never got high or slept around.
Evil isn't out /there/. It's in /here/. You can't hide from yourself. p. 249.
White and black Americans in effect occupy different nations. p. 253. So says:
1835: /Democracy in America/, Alexis de Toqueville,
1944: /An American Dilemma/, Gunnar Myrdal,
1968: /Report … on Civil Disorders/, Kerner Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_...
1992: /Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal/, Andrew Hacker
Nearly three times as many whites are murdered by blacks as blacks by whites. p. 255.
Americans elected Reagan in nostalgia for "a time when movies were in black and white and so was everything else." --Gil Scott-Heron. p. 258.
Sign o' the Times, Prince, 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EdxM... p. 279.
It turned out that policies that hurt blacks wound up hurting a whole lot of whites too. p. 297.
"Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen, 1984, pp. 300-304:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_7Ng...
"My Hometown," Bruce Springsteen, 1985, p. 299: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0DJZ...
There were more black people on stage at a Springsteen show than there were in the audience. p. 299.
Iris Dement, "Living in the Wasteland of the Free," 1996, pp. 307-308:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak6E6...
Measured by his actions, Bill Clinton may go down in history as the greatest Republican president of the twentieth century. p. 312.
While well over half of crack users were white, 90% of those convicted on crack-related offenses were black. p. 321. The leading cause of death among black men ages 15 to 24 was homicide. p. 322.
"No Tengo Dinero,"
Juan Gabriel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loV5Z... w/lyrics,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIfb-... w/ El Gran Silencio & A.B. Quintanilla. p. 342.
"It's been forty years since Sam Cooke promised that a change was gonna come. Change came and change is coming still. Our history's still being lived. What it will be is up to us. Holler if ya hear me.
"Peace." --Craig Werner. p. 361.
There's a 29-page playlist, pp. 398-426, of songs mentioned in the text: over 1000 songs. Source notes, pp. 363-397: many books.
Quiz question:
https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...
Errata:
The book by James Ridgeway is /Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture/, 1996. p. 288.
Musical and political calls and responses in America, mid-twentieth through early 21st century. Blues realism, jazz vision, and the gospel sense of community. p. 313. "The music got there first and stayed well ahead of the political game." p. 339. "Music is a language more universal than politics." p. 347.
Craig Werner is a hippie emeritus and a professor emeritus of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. B.A. 1973, M.A. 1975 American Literature, Ph.D. 1979 English. https://afroamericanstudies.wisc.edu/... A member of the Nominating Committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Books by Craig Werner: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
Craig Werner is on goodreads. His book reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
"September 11, 2001, changed the tone of life in the United States more drastically than any event of my lifetime." p. xi [Really? I'd list:
* television's domination of news and entertainment,
* the availability of the birth-control pill,
* white flight to suburbs, ghettoization of cities (after Brown vs. Board),
* the murders of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and other lifters (http://www.ellawheelerwilcox.org/poem... ),
* the Vietnam War and its protests,
* the moon landing,
* Watergate and mistrust of government, leading to
* the Reagan presidency, ending the 40-year governmental attempt to protect us from monopoly and oligopoly power,
* the deindustrialization of America, movement of manufacturing to low-wage, low-environmental-protection, countries,
* the replacement of countless Main Street businesses by Walmart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
* the end of the fairness doctrine in broadcasting, the radio career of Rush Limbaugh, and the rise of Fox News, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_f...
* the advent of the World Wide Web,
* Clinton's dismantling of welfare (p. 45) and multiplying the prison population,
* the replacement of countless retail stores by amazon.com,
* the increasing control of media, academia, and government by oligarchs (detailed in /Dark Money,/ 2016, Jane Mayer, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ),
* the continuing world-population increase at a rate of 1 billion more people every 12 years https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=... , the more-than-tripling of the U.S. population, the quadrupling of the Hispanic fraction of U.S. population (remember, these are changes, not /all/ of them disasters https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/... ),
* And musically, as Werner tells in the book: p. 32, the murder of Sam Cooke in 1964, and many other early deaths of musical pioneers, such as Otis Redding, 1967, pp. xvi, 94, ended promising music.]
"Music has registered the emotional texture of the changed world." p. xi.
1619: first slave ship arrives at Jamestown, Virginia. p. xiv.
We can never separate who we are from the people around us. Their fate is our own. p. xviii.
Gospel music gave the civil-rights marchers the strength to go on. p. 4. [There's a wonderful 2001 TV movie, "We Shall Not Be Moved," about the role of the African-American church in the civil-rights struggle, https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3030887/ ]
Motown had great instrumentalists, the Funk Brothers. pp. 20-21. [There's a terrific 2002 documentary about them, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314725/ ]
B.B. King singing Sandra Boynton's "One Shoe Blues," 2009 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8rLu...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" is Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," note for note. p. 86. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLV4N... Chuck Berry, 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4sl... Beach Boys, 1963.
The "sixties" actually took place between about 1965 and 1974. p. 103. Polls revealed that the only thing less popular than the Vietnam War was the antiwar movement, to cite only one of the bitter ironies. It helped if you were--and you probably were--stoned. Anyone who remembers the sixties wasn't there. --Robin Williams. p. 105.
Sly and the Family Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_and... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/s/slythefami...
"Underdog," 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqzp5... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slyth...
"Everyday People," 1969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhD... lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/slyth...
LBJ speaks to Congress for the Voting Rights Act, March 1965: pp. 106-107. https://speakola.com/political/lyndon... Lyndon Johnson made civil rights a cornerstone of his Great Society agenda for the most unlikely of political reasons: he simply thought it was right. But. "The United States spent $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, but only $35 a year to assist each American in poverty. The bombs of Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities of a decent America." --Martin Luther King. p. 108. MLK speaks against the Vietnam War, 1967: https://speakola.com/ideas/martin-lut... pp. 108-109. The liberal movement died in Vietnam.
In the early years of the Vietnam War, blacks suffered 23% of the casualties, despite being only 12% of the military force. p. 111. (/Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace,/ David Giffey, 2006, tells us that wounded whites were sent to the rear; wounded blacks were sent back out to fight. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... )
"Best books on the Vietnam War," according to Craig Werner: p. 113
/Dispatches,/ Michael Herr, 1977 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
/Winners & Losers,/ Gloria Emerson, 1976 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
/Bloods,/ Wallace Terry, 1984 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Pete Seeger sings his "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," on the Smothers Brothers TV show, 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHETC... p. 114. Lyrics https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-waist-...
Aretha Franklin sings Elton John's "Border Song (Holy Moses)," 1970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzY45... p. 125. Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/areth...
John Coltrane, "Alabama," 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu297... with images of the bombing that killed four little girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. p. 130.
Jazz is music that's never played the same way once. --Louis Armstrong. p. 132.
Play something the world's never heard and chances are, it won't hear it this time, either. p. 143.
Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions - "People Get Ready" (1965) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKEb...
Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/curti...
All ten initial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (1986) were Southerners. p. 153.
Gil Scott-Heron, "Whitey on the Moon," 1969 https://genius.com/Gil-scott-heron-wh... p. 159. Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nzoP...
"Where is the Love," Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, 1972
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwPri...
Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rober...
"Why? The King of Love Is Dead," 1968, Nina Simone,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uy8c...
Lyrics https://www.best-poems.net/lyrics/son...
The revolution never really happened, on TV or anywhere else. p. 173.
White flight, and flight of successful blacks, made American cities increasingly ghettoes. p. 185.
Paul Simon, accepting the 1975 best-album Grammy: "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder for not making an album this year." p. 187.
More than half the students in Stevie Wonder's Detroit school district came from single-parent homes, in part because Michigan welfare rules denied economic assistance to households in which the father was present. p. 189.
Stevie Wonder once volunteered to judge a beauty contest. p. 189.
Stevie Wonder, "Village Ghetto Land," 1976: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZNk...
"You Haven't Done Nothin'," 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxrzT...
"Big Brother," 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3cAs... p. 190.
1978 marks a turning point in American racial history. Since then, every appeal for racial justice has been attacked for giving "special consideration" to "groups." The crucial debate on equal opportunity never really began. Carter's failure to focus attention on the serious questions raised by the concept of group opportunity ceded the moral high ground and the political majority to Ronald Reagan. The movement has never recovered. p. 196.
"TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB (Mother Father Sister Brother), 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2PQ... pp. 198-199. "Funk with a bow tie."
Before 1976, no clear line separated "disco" from "funk." p. 206.
"The Low Rider," War, 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsrqK... p. 210.
The attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism, and homophobia. After nearly a quarter century, white America had recovered its sense of self. p. 211.
"Cosmic Slop," Funkadelic, 1973. p. 227. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SS7...
As far as the South Bronx was concerned, Reagan's Republicans and Carter's Democrats amounted to pretty much the same thing. p. 237.
"The Message," Melle Mel, 1980, p. 241. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYMkE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mes...
In places like the South Bronx--and they were in every city--the gospel hopes and jazz visions of the sixties had faded away. What was left was a kind of blues you couldn't always distinguish from pure despair. The new world looked a lot like hell. By the time "The Message" started receiving airplay in 1982, black America was two years into the Reagan administration. The edge loomed close and it was a long long fall. p. 242.
When Reagan convinced us that empty nostalgia was preferable to grim realities, especially the realities of a black America sinking into profound social chaos and despair, we were in bad trouble. p. 245.
The Reagan Rules: pp. 248-249
*Reality is determined by image and anecdote. Reagan was master of transforming a single example, however far removed from any representative situation, into proof of a sweeping generality. When he was finished putting his spin on a situation, reality didn't get a hearing. A black woman who had been convicted of fraud in a case involving $8,000 was transformed into a "welfare queen" with a fleet of Cadillacs and a tax-free income of $150,000, proving that the poor were getting too much help. It sounded good; we bought it.
*Too much money is never enough. The rich don't share.
*Violence rules. People were sick of being pushed around by little countries like Vietnam and Iran and they were ready to prove they weren't going to take it anymore.
*/We/ deserve our success. /They/ deserve their failure. The homeless were sleeping on heat grates because that's what they wanted. AIDS was punishment for an immoral lifestyle. /We/ never got high or slept around.
Evil isn't out /there/. It's in /here/. You can't hide from yourself. p. 249.
White and black Americans in effect occupy different nations. p. 253. So says:
1835: /Democracy in America/, Alexis de Toqueville,
1944: /An American Dilemma/, Gunnar Myrdal,
1968: /Report … on Civil Disorders/, Kerner Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_...
1992: /Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal/, Andrew Hacker
Nearly three times as many whites are murdered by blacks as blacks by whites. p. 255.
Americans elected Reagan in nostalgia for "a time when movies were in black and white and so was everything else." --Gil Scott-Heron. p. 258.
Sign o' the Times, Prince, 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EdxM... p. 279.
It turned out that policies that hurt blacks wound up hurting a whole lot of whites too. p. 297.
"Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen, 1984, pp. 300-304:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_7Ng...
"My Hometown," Bruce Springsteen, 1985, p. 299: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0DJZ...
There were more black people on stage at a Springsteen show than there were in the audience. p. 299.
Iris Dement, "Living in the Wasteland of the Free," 1996, pp. 307-308:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak6E6...
Measured by his actions, Bill Clinton may go down in history as the greatest Republican president of the twentieth century. p. 312.
While well over half of crack users were white, 90% of those convicted on crack-related offenses were black. p. 321. The leading cause of death among black men ages 15 to 24 was homicide. p. 322.
"No Tengo Dinero,"
Juan Gabriel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loV5Z... w/lyrics,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIfb-... w/ El Gran Silencio & A.B. Quintanilla. p. 342.
"It's been forty years since Sam Cooke promised that a change was gonna come. Change came and change is coming still. Our history's still being lived. What it will be is up to us. Holler if ya hear me.
"Peace." --Craig Werner. p. 361.
There's a 29-page playlist, pp. 398-426, of songs mentioned in the text: over 1000 songs. Source notes, pp. 363-397: many books.
Quiz question:
https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...
Errata:
The book by James Ridgeway is /Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture/, 1996. p. 288.
August 27, 2015
This has to be one of the best books on popular music I've ever read. Werner's knowledge is encyclopedic and his reach expansive -- he covers the performers I'd expect him to cover, and connects them to other musicians and writers in ways I wouldn't have anticipated. Every few pages I felt the impulse to explore some new piece of music he'd just dissected, or revisit a well-known piece from a fresh perspective he'd just given me. He provides excellent historical and social context for the musical analysis, and each of the 64 chapters gets its own Notes section in the back. Each of the five sections also gets its own Playlist, which is going to keep me busy for years to come.
Particularly strong chapters included the ones on the birth of Southern Soul, Hendrix and the sound of Vietnam, Curtis Mayfield, the (Republican) Southern Strategy, Wattstax, P-Funk, and OutKast and the Dirty South, although every chapter is solid.
There are a few flaws, but no showstoppers. At times it seems like he's trying a bit too hard to shoehorn the evidence into his framework of Gospel Impulse/Blues Impulse/Jazz Impulse/Call & Response, but given that he got props from Bruce Springsteen after a show for identifying those impulses in The Boss's music, I'm going to defer to the dude's expertise.
He's on slightly less solid ground with the punks, overlooking the funk in for instance The Contortions/James Chance/James White, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Bush Tetras, etc, as well as not mentioning pioneering reggae punks Bad Brains. But it's true that most of the punk/early postpunk bands influenced by black music were British (Gang of Four, Slits, Mekons, Au Pairs, A Certain Ratio), and may have fallen outside the scope of his argument. He does cover the Clash pretty accurately.
Anyway, go read this now.
Particularly strong chapters included the ones on the birth of Southern Soul, Hendrix and the sound of Vietnam, Curtis Mayfield, the (Republican) Southern Strategy, Wattstax, P-Funk, and OutKast and the Dirty South, although every chapter is solid.
There are a few flaws, but no showstoppers. At times it seems like he's trying a bit too hard to shoehorn the evidence into his framework of Gospel Impulse/Blues Impulse/Jazz Impulse/Call & Response, but given that he got props from Bruce Springsteen after a show for identifying those impulses in The Boss's music, I'm going to defer to the dude's expertise.
He's on slightly less solid ground with the punks, overlooking the funk in for instance The Contortions/James Chance/James White, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Bush Tetras, etc, as well as not mentioning pioneering reggae punks Bad Brains. But it's true that most of the punk/early postpunk bands influenced by black music were British (Gang of Four, Slits, Mekons, Au Pairs, A Certain Ratio), and may have fallen outside the scope of his argument. He does cover the Clash pretty accurately.
Anyway, go read this now.
February 11, 2023
a great analysis of the history of black music as well as its cultural and political influences and impacts. my issues are that with some statements, i don't believe the author truly understands some of the music, and as we get into the last few chapters he starts to veer more into the territory of fanboy instead of historian
March 11, 2021
There's so much ground covered in this book! And it reads, often, like a textbook. Which makes sense, and partway through I read some reviews and learned that it is used as that by its author (or was? I didn't dig deep enough to learn if he remains a professor at Wisconsin.). That's not a good or bad observation, just reflects the type of text you'll be diving into.
I learned a lot from this book, and enjoyed the journey. It definitely would benefit from being consumed over a semester instead of the 5 weeks I spent with it. But I'm long-done with college so I made do. I brought to it a fair survey of knowledge of the music it covers. Some much more than others. I trusted the author's viewpoint in areas I had little knowledge. And, most powerfully, I was willing to re-examine my feelings on some artists/music based on his perspective. It was jarring, for example, to have him be so dismissive of a stalwart of my youth: Run-DMC. I was tempted to dismiss him. But I quickly realized that his perspective could be valid & accurate AND I could remain a fan of music I liked (well, still like; good music doesn't fade). Your mileage may vary depending on how interested you are in critiques of music you know. The key for me was differentiating the dissection Werner is doing from being a "review" of the music. In the same way he could identify the lack of "the community" throughout the disco era without ever claiming it's not catchy and fun to dance to, he can compare to Run-DMC to their contemporaries without me having to stop enjoying how Walk This Way sounds on my stereo.
So, good stuff. A very good book to read.
I learned a lot from this book, and enjoyed the journey. It definitely would benefit from being consumed over a semester instead of the 5 weeks I spent with it. But I'm long-done with college so I made do. I brought to it a fair survey of knowledge of the music it covers. Some much more than others. I trusted the author's viewpoint in areas I had little knowledge. And, most powerfully, I was willing to re-examine my feelings on some artists/music based on his perspective. It was jarring, for example, to have him be so dismissive of a stalwart of my youth: Run-DMC. I was tempted to dismiss him. But I quickly realized that his perspective could be valid & accurate AND I could remain a fan of music I liked (well, still like; good music doesn't fade). Your mileage may vary depending on how interested you are in critiques of music you know. The key for me was differentiating the dissection Werner is doing from being a "review" of the music. In the same way he could identify the lack of "the community" throughout the disco era without ever claiming it's not catchy and fun to dance to, he can compare to Run-DMC to their contemporaries without me having to stop enjoying how Walk This Way sounds on my stereo.
So, good stuff. A very good book to read.
December 1, 2012
An excellent book as the author Craig Werner takes the reader on a musical journey of a blend of musical genres, juxtaposed against the sociopolitical moving landscape of America from the 1920's to the 21st Century. Craig Werner also highlights the importance of black music during the civil rights movement, as an important moment in the history of America.
January 22, 2016
1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D is a hugely ambitious attempt to explore the roots of Black music in America (from the blues to hip-hop), the political conditions this music emerged from, and how that music went on to influence political organisations like the Civil Rights Movement.
The goal of the author Craig Werner, Professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, is to cover all of the "moments of resistance, celebration, (and) joy" that have reverberated through black music across the last 50 years. It is a hugely comprehensive study of how race and protest have driven the music of the last half century. This means 1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D sweeps in everything from civil rights and the Vietnam War through to the Aids epidemic and Bill Clinton 19s triangulations; and, in musical terms, it encompasses everything from Sam Cooke and Sly Stone, on to Curtis Mayfield and Bob Marley, through to Public Enemy and the conscious hip-hop of the 1990s.
The great joys in Werner 19s text are the unexpected tangents he drifts off on and the unlikely connections he makes; for example, his analysis of the black roots of such white artists as Bruce Springsteen and The Clash, and the debt that early hip-hop owes to Jamaican soundsystem culture.
While Werner is undoubtedly an adherent of the progressive left, he is not afraid to excoriate his own side. One of many surprising arguments he puts forward is how he believes the ham-fisted way that Affirmative Action was introduced ushered in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Werner is also eager to critically re-evaluate genres previously left out of the traditional narrative about rock and politics. He describes how the much-reviled Disco scene of the late 1970s actually offered an arena where women, blacks and gays could feel a sense of freedom and unity.
1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D was originally published in 1998 and, as an analysis of the interchange between music and political activism, it has perhaps been surpassed by such works as Dorian Lynskey 19s 1C33 Revolutions per minute 1D. And, at times, this is quite a sad book, given how many of the political hopes of artists and activists alike for black empowerment remain unfulfilled, with much of their original idealism burnt out through a mixture of addiction, disillusionment or compromise. In effect, 1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D serves as an elegy for the lost dream of Martin Luther King.
The goal of the author Craig Werner, Professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, is to cover all of the "moments of resistance, celebration, (and) joy" that have reverberated through black music across the last 50 years. It is a hugely comprehensive study of how race and protest have driven the music of the last half century. This means 1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D sweeps in everything from civil rights and the Vietnam War through to the Aids epidemic and Bill Clinton 19s triangulations; and, in musical terms, it encompasses everything from Sam Cooke and Sly Stone, on to Curtis Mayfield and Bob Marley, through to Public Enemy and the conscious hip-hop of the 1990s.
The great joys in Werner 19s text are the unexpected tangents he drifts off on and the unlikely connections he makes; for example, his analysis of the black roots of such white artists as Bruce Springsteen and The Clash, and the debt that early hip-hop owes to Jamaican soundsystem culture.
While Werner is undoubtedly an adherent of the progressive left, he is not afraid to excoriate his own side. One of many surprising arguments he puts forward is how he believes the ham-fisted way that Affirmative Action was introduced ushered in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Werner is also eager to critically re-evaluate genres previously left out of the traditional narrative about rock and politics. He describes how the much-reviled Disco scene of the late 1970s actually offered an arena where women, blacks and gays could feel a sense of freedom and unity.
1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D was originally published in 1998 and, as an analysis of the interchange between music and political activism, it has perhaps been surpassed by such works as Dorian Lynskey 19s 1C33 Revolutions per minute 1D. And, at times, this is quite a sad book, given how many of the political hopes of artists and activists alike for black empowerment remain unfulfilled, with much of their original idealism burnt out through a mixture of addiction, disillusionment or compromise. In effect, 1CA Change is Gonna Come 1D serves as an elegy for the lost dream of Martin Luther King.
October 18, 2015
Werner does not simply present abundant facts and anecdotes to the reader in regards to the recent history of black music in America, instead he weaves a tapestry (beautiful at times, sobering at others) that connects the songs, artists, and movements into a comprehensive road map. Terms such as the blues, gospel, and jazz impulses serve as Werner's compass and legend, as he guides the reader through a truly incredible journey.
In my opinion, the only thing really missing from this book is the soundtrack in CD form.
In my opinion, the only thing really missing from this book is the soundtrack in CD form.
August 15, 2007
Today, I was reminded that I love this man, Craig Werner. I read _A Change Is Gonna Come_ a little while back, but never picked up the revised and updated version ('til two days ago). I am seeking all good discussions or beginnings of discussions of gospel and this text helps me think about it (and its impulse). The last four chapters of Werner's book are new (on newer soul/r&b/gospel/etc), so I looked at them. Like my fave Sam Cooke track to play in the car, the whole thing is "wonderful."
June 4, 2015
In depth, and compelling discussion of the ways in which soul music has defined, or been defined by social and political events in the United States. Unlike other books I've read, the music is always a touchstone - which makes it a particularly good read. Werner's references to the various impulses (blues, gospel and jazz) can be a bit vague, but in other parts make a good deal of sense out of the social differences between the genres.
August 18, 2008
This is one of the best books I ever read in college.
March 18, 2009
Immensely readable and I learned a ton about American music.
May 14, 2012
One of my favorites of all time. Changed both the way I listen to music and the way I view history.
March 4, 2014
Terrific tour through mid to late 20th century music scene, with sharp insights on the social context of much of it.
December 21, 2020
A very enjoyable read, though also one that's extremely fragmented and struggles to arrange its enormous amount of social, political and musical history into a single overall structure.
June 14, 2023
An insightful trip into the heart of America. Navigating through the world of black American music (at an almost breakneck pace) to show its relationship to the politics at the time and the echoing of its implications, this well written piece of non-fiction entertains and educates. I specifically loved its notions of the gospel, blues and jazz impulse and Craig Werner’s personal playlist of top 40 songs that fit into each category. I’ve come away with a lot more to listen to!
January 9, 2026
I think sometimes this type of book loses it's argument by virtue of the amount of evidence it provides. this is the case at points in this book but it is pretty good about continually going back to *why* each piece of evidence is provided
I thought there could have been a bit more coverage of songs by white artists about racial solidarity without explicitly taking on systemic racism - I feel that's quite an interesting angle that is only briefly touched on
I thought there could have been a bit more coverage of songs by white artists about racial solidarity without explicitly taking on systemic racism - I feel that's quite an interesting angle that is only briefly touched on
September 14, 2023
I dont think I've ever read book with a subject so close to my heart that I was this disappointed in. The writing is that of a dillatante more than that of a scholar, long-debunked myths are presented as factual history, it's amazing that the author didnt seriously injure himself jumping to some of his conclusions.
Not recommended for anyone.
Not recommended for anyone.
August 1, 2025
FINALLY finished this book…
very surprising that a book on this topic could bore me, and yet…
it felt super disorganized and disconnected so i found myself drifting off in thoughts of my to-do list and having to constantly go back and re-read
very surprising that a book on this topic could bore me, and yet…
it felt super disorganized and disconnected so i found myself drifting off in thoughts of my to-do list and having to constantly go back and re-read
April 7, 2018
Read this for a class in college. Very eye opening to how music affects culture and vice versa
September 19, 2021
I now have a bazillion songs to listen to.
February 10, 2025
must read for all music lovers
February 16, 2026
Professor wrote this book and I read it for his black music class. Amazing work and almost reads like a song telling history.
Best class I’ve ever taken and Professor Warner is one of the best
Best class I’ve ever taken and Professor Warner is one of the best
June 23, 2023
It’s a textbook, what can I say, it’s boring in some sections but really engaging in others. However I do like how many examples this book uses to support how music changes and involves but stays rooted in its history.
February 6, 2022
I think I read the original edition of this when it was new - there were definitely bits that sounded familiar, even if a lot more had been forgotten after 24 years. Werner posits three key impulses in the history of post-1960 African-American music (and its white acolytes) which he tells.
The gospel impulse is that search for redemption, the desire to create a community that can make things better. The blues impulse is the acknowledgement of reality, the knowledge that each of us is in our own situation and that situation will often be bad, but will allow for survival. The jazz impulse is the search for the new, the necessity and power of changing what has been received, of creating out of each situation.
Werner doesn't like music which doesn't fit one or more of these impulses, which puts him at odds with late-period disco's embrace of hedonism, and gangsta rap's machismo-fueled violence and misogyny. But, he does allow for the fact that even there, things are more complex than they might at first seem. Werner is very big on busting past received wisdom regarding historical stories, and finding ways in which more than one thing can be true. (His chapter on Elvis Presley is fascinating in this regard, even if he doesn't recognize the complexity of some of the 70s work which didn't fit the wasted artist mold of the familiar story.)
It's a fascinating book filled with insights and examples and occasional head-scratching puzzlers.
The gospel impulse is that search for redemption, the desire to create a community that can make things better. The blues impulse is the acknowledgement of reality, the knowledge that each of us is in our own situation and that situation will often be bad, but will allow for survival. The jazz impulse is the search for the new, the necessity and power of changing what has been received, of creating out of each situation.
Werner doesn't like music which doesn't fit one or more of these impulses, which puts him at odds with late-period disco's embrace of hedonism, and gangsta rap's machismo-fueled violence and misogyny. But, he does allow for the fact that even there, things are more complex than they might at first seem. Werner is very big on busting past received wisdom regarding historical stories, and finding ways in which more than one thing can be true. (His chapter on Elvis Presley is fascinating in this regard, even if he doesn't recognize the complexity of some of the 70s work which didn't fit the wasted artist mold of the familiar story.)
It's a fascinating book filled with insights and examples and occasional head-scratching puzzlers.
January 17, 2017
Werner quotes James Baldwin from the story “Sonny’s Blues” - “For, while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” (34) Werner situates the music in a larger political and social context from one (white) author’s perspective. Well researched history, excellent artistic examples, and definitely not a new story in the time of Trump.
Want to read
March 19, 2009non fiction
Want to read
February 22, 2009I took this course in college (taught by the author). I took it a Summer that the book was not available from the publisher so we never had to read it. I have always wanted to though.
January 21, 2009
See my review at LivinginStereo.com:
http://livinginstereo.com/?p=103
http://livinginstereo.com/?p=103
December 22, 2014
A very interesting read for anyone interested in the history of American (and British in some cases) music and its effect on race relations in the United States.
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