A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America

A newly revised, expanded, and updated edition, A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race, And The Soul Of America by Craig Werner (Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin) is an informative and "reader friendly" survey of forty years worth of music and events in African-American history which played such an influential role in shaping the path of the American popular culture. Professor Werner manages to present an engaging and knowledgeable perspective of Afro-American music's intimate connection with its composers, performers, and audiences, while carving a vivid picture of the political credit it deserves. Very strongly recommended for Black Studies, Music History, and American Popular Culture library collections, A Change Is Gonna Come is both the perfect scholarly reference and an ideal nostalgic documentation of the history of African-American influence upon their own ethnic musical traditions.

I read "A Change is Gonna Come" last year and found it be a very informative, well written, history of the relationship between soul/Black music and the Civil Rights/Black Power movement. Werner treats the music like a literary tradition--showing how artists from Sam Cooke, to Aretha Franklin, to rapper KRS-One both were influenced by and helped shape the struggles of social justice. Aretha's fameous signature song "Respect," for example, was about the Black female call for respect from men, but also the Black movement's call for respect by a White racist power structure. Likewise, by the Reagan era, Public Enemy got it just right when they produced "Welcome to the Terrodome," and "Don't Believe the Hype," while N.W.A produced "Fuck the Police"--fameous *speeches* for a repressive era. Werner shows how the music never stops. That while there's always music that makes artists a quick rich buck, there's also serious music that seeks to document and comment on what's happening in the world. I look forward to rereading it again and listening to many of the popular songs he writes about.

Marvellous stuff. Possibly the best book to be written about music and popular culture for quite some time. Determinedly in the tradition of Greil Marcus & Peter Guralnick, the book re-writes the now well-told tale of "rock" music's history, from what is perhaps the only true perspective - that is, race. Read it.

Talk about a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the popular music literature out there seems to fall into two camps. The first populates journalism school dropouts who, because of their love for the music, feel the need to share their passion with the whole wide world. Their writings are usually superficial and they're the crowd Dylan complained about when he said (paraphrase), "they're a bunch of 40 year olds writing for a bunch of 10 year olds." The other group is made up of academics who, though often having brilliant insights, are more often impenetrable to the masses of popular music listeners. Indeed, this ilk is just as likely to write *about* listeners rather than for them.Craig Werner skillfully accomplishes what only a handful have done before him: marrying the insights of a well read, thoughtful academic with a down-to-earth (way far away from any ivory tower), yet passionate style of writing. Using the "calls" and "responses" found in black music (and communities) and the "impulses" of gospel, blues and jazz, Werner seamlessly connects such varied artists as Mahalia Jackson, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Public Enemy, Madonna, Prince, Duke Ellington, Ani Difranco, and seemingly hundreds more. Though the "huh?" factor may be high at times (the jazz impulse includes Neil Young's "Arc"), through fresh, direct insights an "oh yeah" factor always neutralizes it (usually within a page or two).The subtitle of the book suggests this is an explanation of "music, race and the soul of America." Well, it's not. This is merely Werner's "response," based on the many "calls" he writes of in his book. This is now my "response" to Werner's "call" - Wow, you gotta read this book.

Craig Werner takes us on a lively guided tour of American popular music over the past several decades, focusing on how this music reflects--and promises, in a certain sense, to heal--the enduring racial chasm in American life. It is funny, tragic, and always engaging. The writing is often brilliant and always to the point. This is probably the best book about American music that I have ever read. Werner does such an excellent job, not only writing about the music itself, which he does with remarkable clarity and intelligence, but in placing the music in the historical context from which it emerged. This would be a great book for 20th century American history courses, courses about the 1960s, courses about African American history and culture. This is a book about the soundtrack of our lives, and how it speaks to the lasting dilemmas of race.