Hey America!

The Epic Story of Black Music and the White House

by Stuart Cosgrove

Imprint: Polygon

368 Pages, 6.3 x 9.45 in, b/w throughout

Hardcover
9781846975844
October 2022
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$40.00

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9781788855198
October 2022

$19.95

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Description
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This is the untold story of black music – its triumph over racism, segregation, undercapitalised record labels, media discrimination and political anxiety – told through the perspective of the most powerful office in the world: from Louis Armstrong's spat with President Eisenhower and Eartha Kitt's stormy encounter with Lady Bird Johnson to James Brown's flirtation with Nixon, Reaganomics and the 'Cop Killer' scandal.

Moving, insightful and wide-ranging, Hey America! charts the evolution of sixties soul from the margins of American society to the mainstream, culminating in the rise of urban hip-hop and the dramatic stand-off between Donald Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Stuart Cosgrove, originally from Perth, was a fanzine writer on the northern soul scene before joining the black music paper Echoes, as a staff writer. He became media editor with the NME and a feature writer for a range of newspapers and magazines. A graduate of Hull University, he completed a PhD in modern American theatre history. In 2005 he was named Broadcaster of the Year in the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards and in 2012 he won numerous awards including a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award for Channel 4's coverage of the London Paralympics 2012.

"An erudite and deeply passionate dive into the complex relationship between American music and politics." ~Sean O'Hagan, The Observer

"The author has done a terrific job of accentuating the social tensions and ambiguities among various racial groups which still exist in the United States and which, if anything, have been heightened since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president in 2017." ~Neil Drysdale, Dundee Courier

Hey America! delivers another startling, detailed account melding music and politics as [Cosgrove] charts how black music has coloured the White House' ~Sunday Post