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Sortals and the Subject-predicate Distinction (2001)
by Michael DurrantThis title was first published in 2001. The problem of the subject-predicate distinction has featured centrally in much of modern philosophy of language and philosophical logic, and the distinction is taken as basic or fundamental in modern philosophical logic. Michael Durrant seeks to demonstrate that the distinction should not be taken as basic or fundamental and argues that the reason for it being held to be fundamental is a failure to acknowledge the category and role of the sortal. A sortal is a symbol which furnishes us with a principle for distinguishing and counting particulars (objects) and whick does so in its own right relying on no antecedent principle or method of so distinguishing or counting. This book explores sortals and their relationship to the subject-predicate distinction; arguing that the nature of sortal symbols has been misconstrued in much modern writing in the philosophy of logic by failing to distinguish sortals from names and predicates.
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)
by Jackson BirdAn unflinching and endearing memoir from LGBTQ+ advocate Jackson Bird about how, through a childhood of gender mishaps and an awkward adolescence, he finally sorted things out and came out as a transgender man in his mid-twenties. When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an Internet connection. Assigned female at birth and having been raised a girl, he often wondered if he should have been born a boy. Jackson didn’t share this thought with anyone because he didn’t think he could share it with anyone. Growing up in Texas in the 1990s, he had no transgender role models. He barely remembers meeting anyone who was openly gay, let alone being taught that transgender people existed outside of punchlines. Today, Jackson is a writer, YouTuber, and LGBTQ+ advocate living openly and happily as a transgender man. So how did he get here? In this remarkable, educational, and uplifting memoir, Jackson chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, he candidly recalls the challenges he faced while trying to sort out his gender and sexuality, and worrying about how to interact with the world. With warmth and wit, Jackson also recounts how he navigated the many obstacles and quirks of his transition––like figuring out how to have a chest binder delivered to his NYU dorm room and having an emotional breakdown at a Harry Potter fan convention. From his first shot of testosterone to his eventual top surgery, Jackson lets you in on every part of his journey—taking the time to explain trans terminology and little-known facts about gender and identity along the way. Through his captivating prose, Bird not only sheds light on the many facets of a transgender life, but also demonstrates the power and beauty in being yourself, even when you’re not sure who “yourself” is. Part memoir, part educational guide, Sorted is a frank, humorous narrative of growing up with some unintended baggage.
Sotto Voce (TCG Edition)
by Nilo Cruz"The poetry of Cruz's writing is what those who love his work cite most often about his style, and Sotto Voce has that. Yet it also contains passages that are realistic, whimsical, sensual and heartbreaking. Cruz may be that rarity, a poet of the stage, but he is first and foremost a dramatist."--The Miami HeraldAriel Strauss, a Jewish Cuban man, strives to explore his cultural history when he encounters Bemadette Kahn, an older woman and famed novelist who seeks to relive hers. Cruz's passionate romantic drama takes place in a dreamscape, somewhere between history and memory, present and past. Sotto Voce is a work of dramatic poetry and an imaginative exploration of nostalgia and the ensuing heartbreak it comes with.Nilo Cruz was the first Latino playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics. His other plays include Night Train to Bolina, Dancing on her Knees, A Park in Our House, Two Sisters and a Piano, The Color of Desire, Hurricane, A Bicycle Country, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, Lorca in a Green Dress, Beauty of the Father, and translations of Lorca's Doña Rosita the Spinster and The House of Bernarda Alba. He is the third recipient of the Greenfield Prize, a $30,000 grant to produce new work.
Soul
by Richard Green Monique GuilloryNo other word in the English language is more endemic to contemporary Black American culture and identity than "Soul". Since the 1960s Soul has been frequently used to market and sell music, food, and fashion. However, Soul also refers to a pervasive belief in the capacity of the Black body/spirit to endure the most trying of times in an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. While some attention has been given to various genre manifestations of Soul-as in Soul music and food-no book has yet fully explored the discursive terrain signified by the term. In this broad-ranging, free-spirited book, a diverse group of writers, artists, and scholars reflect on the ubiquitous but elusive concept of Soul. Topics include: politics and fashion, Blaxploitation films, language, literature, dance, James Brown, and Schoolhouse Rock. Among the contributors are Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Paul Gilroy, Lyle Ashton Harris, Michelle Wallace, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Manthia Diawara, and dream hampton.
Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic
by Mark Anthony NealIn Soul Babies, Mark Anthony Neal explains the complexities and contradictions of black life and culture after the end of the Civil Rights era. He traces the emergence of what he calls a "post-soul aesthetic," a transformation of values that marked a profound change in African American thought and experience. Lively and provocative, Soul Babies offers a valuable new way of thinking about black popular culture and the legacy of the sixties.
Soul Care in African American Practice
by Barbara L. PeacockIn the midst of our hectic, overscheduled lives, caring for the soul is imperative.
Soul Food
by Adrian MillerIn this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and 22 recipes.
Soul Hunters: Hunting Animism and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs
by Rane WillerslevThis is an insightful, highly original ethnographic interpretation of the hunting life of the Yukaghirs, a little-known group of indigenous people in the Upper Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia. Basing his study on firsthand experience with Yukaghir hunters, Rane Willerslev focuses on the practical implications of living in a "hall-of-mirrors" world—one inhabited by humans, animals, and spirits, all of whom are understood to be endless mimetic doubles of one another. In this world human beings inhabit a betwixt-and-between state in which their souls are both substance and nonsubstance, both body and soul, both their own individual selves and reincarnated others. Hunters are thus both human and the animals they imitate, which forces them to steer a complicated course between the ability to transcend difference and the necessity of maintaining identity.
Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia
by Nicole Myers TurnerThat churches are one of the most important cornerstones of black political organization is a commonplace. In this history of African American Protestantism and American politics at the end of the Civil War, Nicole Myers Turner challenges the idea of black churches as having always been politically engaged. Using local archives, church and convention minutes, and innovative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, Turner reveals how freedpeople in Virginia adapted strategies for pursuing the freedom of their souls to worship as they saw fit—and to participate in society completely in the evolving landscape of emancipation. Freedpeople, for both evangelical and electoral reasons, were well aware of the significance of the physical territory they occupied, and they sought to organize the geographies that they could in favor of their religious and political agendas at the outset of Reconstruction. As emancipation included opportunities to purchase properties, establish black families, and reconfigure gender roles, the ministry became predominantly male, a development that affected not only discourses around family life but also the political project of crafting, defining, and teaching freedom. After freedmen obtained the right to vote, an array of black-controlled institutions increasingly became centers for political organizing on the basis of networks that mirrored those established earlier by church associations. We are proud to announce that this book will also be published as an enhanced open-access e-book on a companion website hosted by Fulcrum, an innovative publishing platform launched by Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. The Fulcrum version of the book can be located using this link: https://doi.org/10.5149/9781469655253_Turner.
Soul Medicine: Healing through Dream Incubation, Visions, Oracles, and Pilgrimage
by Edward TickAn in-depth look at ancient Greek practices for profound, lasting healing• Explores hidden soul-healing practices including dream incubation and interpretation as well as sacred pilgrimage• Examines how dreams, visions, and other non-normative events reveal the conditions needed to restore the soul and facilitate healing• Includes successful healing techniques, practices, and case studies to reveal how healings are achieved with these methodsThe modern practice of medicine and psychology grew out of the ancient Greek healing tradition, said to be founded by Asklepios, god of healing and dreams. For two thousand years the system spread all over the Mediterranean world and planted the roots of Western medicine and psychology by offering ritual and holistic practices that recognized that healing begins at the soul level. Yet, since that time, the spiritually based practices were cast aside, leaving behind only the scientific medical techniques that dominate health care today. Resurrecting and restoring the sacred, mythological, and cultural origins of medicine and psychotherapy, Edward Tick, Ph.D., explores the soul-healing practices missing in our contemporary health systems. He looks at the dream incubation tradition of Asklepios, sacred theater of Dionysos, oracle gifting of Apollo, special practices of warriors, and their roots in Neolithic shamanism and indigenous traditions. Demonstrating the ritual use of dreams, visions, oracles, synchronicities, and pilgrimage for healing and connecting to the transpersonal and divine, he explains how dream incubation is a technique in which you plant a seed for a specific healing or growth goal.Using both ancient wisdom and modern depth psychology alongside stories of healings from his more than 25 years of guiding Vietnam veterans on Greek pilgrimages, Tick explores how we all can use ancient healing philosophies and practices to achieve holistic healing today. He examines the interaction between mind and body (psyche and soma) and between physical illness and the soul to heal PTSD and trauma. He explains the art of making accurate and holistic interpretations of signs, symbols, and symptoms to determine what they reveal about the soul. Showing how dreams and other transpersonal experiences are essential components of soul medicine, the author reveals how restoration of the soul facilitates true healing.
Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left
by Cynthia A. YoungSoul Power is a cultural history of those whom Cynthia A. Young calls "U. S. Third World Leftists," activists of color who appropriated theories and strategies from Third World anticolonial struggles in their fight for social and economic justice in the United States during the "long 1960s. " Nearly thirty countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America declared formal independence in the 1960s alone. Arguing that the significance of this wave of decolonization to U. S. activists has been vastly underestimated, Young describes how literature, films, ideologies, and political movements that originated in the Third World were absorbed by U. S. activists of color. She shows how these transnational influences were then used to forge alliances, create new vocabularies and aesthetic forms, and describe race, class, and gender oppression in the United States in compelling terms. Young analyzes a range of U. S. figures and organizations, examining how each deployed Third World discourse toward various cultural and political ends. She considers a trip that LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse, and Robert F. Williams made to Cuba in 1960; traces key intellectual influences on Angela Y. Davis's writing; and reveals the early history of the hospital workers' 1199 union as a model of U. S. Third World activism. She investigates Newsreel, a late 1960s activist documentary film movement, and its successor, Third World Newsreel, which produced a seminal 1972 film on the Attica prison rebellion. She also considers the L. A. Rebellion, a group of African and African American artists who made films about conditions in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. By demonstrating the breadth, vitality, and legacy of the work of U. S. Third World Leftists, Soul Power firmly establishes their crucial place in the history of twentieth-century American struggles for social change.
Soul School: Taking Kids on a Joy-Filled Journey Through the Heart of Black American Culture
by Amber O'Neal JohnstonA must-have addition to the shelf for any parent hoping to introduce more inclusive books into the home, with 100+ essential titles for early readers through high schoolBrimming with the history and culture of Black America, this one-of-a-kind resource is delivered in a package that all children find irresistible: stories. Education expert Amber O'Neal Johnston—who homeschools her four children—offers masterfully curated booklists, sorted by age, for diving into the fullness of the African American cultural experience.Soul School books are must-have mirrors for Black children and priceless windows for others, but first and foremost, they&’re captivating stories. And while they&’re sure to hold a special place in the hearts of Black families, they are unequivocally and without hesitation for all children.In addition to the booklists, Johnston artfully weaves together knowledge of the past and awareness of the present by examining cultural values, historical highlights, and the power of storytelling while teaching families what to look for and how to enjoy prose, verse, and illustrations that celebrate Black American culture. Soul School offers the best children&’s, middle grade, and young adult books available today, each accompanied by discussion questions, activities, and related resource recommendations. Covering toddlers to teens and everyone in between, Soul School is an education for us all.
Soul Searching: A Girl's Guide to Finding Herself
by Sarah StillmanWritten by a 16-year-old, this will guide you on the path to self-discovery, for your center, your inner voice and the meaning of life.
Soul Serenade
by Rashod OllisonA coming-of-age memoir about a young boy in rural Arkansas who searches for himself and his distant father through soul musicGrowing up in rural Arkansas, young Rashod Ollison turned to music to make sense of his life. The dysfunction, sadness, and steely resilience of his family and neighbors was reflected in the R&B songs that played on 45s in smoky rooms.Steeped in the sounds, the smells, the salty language of rural Arkansas in the 1980s, Soul Serenade is the memoir of a pop music critic whose love for soul music was fostered by his father, Raymond. Drafted into the Vietnam War as a teenager, Raymond returned a changed man, "dead on the inside." After his parents' volatile marriage ended in divorce, Rashod was haunted by the memory of his itinerant father and his mama's long forgotten "sunshine smile." For six-year-old Rashod, his father's record collection--the music of Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Al Green, and others--provided solace, coherence, and escape.Moving nine times during his childhood, Rashod constantly adjusted to new schools and homes with his two sisters, Dusa and Reagan, and his mother, Dianne. Resilient and tough, while also being distant and punitive, she worked multiple jobs, striving "to make ends wave at each other if they couldn't meet." He spent time with his acerbic mother's mother, Mama Teacake, and her family's living-out-loud ways, which clashed with his father's family--religious, discreet, and appropriate--where Rashod gravitated to Big Mama and Paw Paw, his father's parents.Becoming aware of his same-sex attraction, Rashod felt further isolated and alone but was encouraged by mentors in the community who fostered his intelligence and talent. He became transformed through discovering the writing of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and other literary greats, and these books, along with the soulful sounds of the 1970s and 80s, enabled him to thrive in spite of the instability and harshness of his childhood.In textured and evocative language, and peppered with unexpected humor, Soul Serenade is an original and captivating coming-of-age story set to an original beat.From the Hardcover edition.
Soul Sisters
by Pythia PeayA unique workbook to help women cultivate their full potential through the lives and lessons of the heroines of world spiritual traditions. Filled with exercises, anecdotes, quotes, and inspiration, Pythia Peay's Soul Sisters is designed to help women foster the traits that can be found in the great spiritual traditions of the world, and that are most needed in contemporary life. Each chapter shows how to cultivate the five "divine qualities": Courage, Faith, Beauty, Love, and Magic. Soul Sisters offers an abundance of examples of different female figures from the spiritual past and present who have embodied these characteristics in a distinctly feminine way. Through the road they have walked, readers can learn to discover their own individual heart-path to these strengths. Both an immensely practical workbook and an education in spiritual ideas, Soul Sisters is a companion for a lifetime.
Soul Thieves
by Tamara Lizette Brown Baruti N. KopanoConsiders the misappropriation of African American popular culture through various genres, largely Hip Hop, to argue that while such cultural creations have the potential to be healing agents, they are still exploited -often with the complicity of African Americans- for commercial purposes and to maintain white ruling class hegemony.
Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation
by QuestloveFrom Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the award–winning hip-hop group the Roots, comes this vibrant book commemorating the legacy of television’s Soul Train.Foreword by Gladys KnightPreface by Nick CannonSoul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation celebrates the television show that was a two-decade cultural phenomenon from the ’70s through the ’90s, launching the careers of artists such as Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Whitney Houston, Lenny Kravitz, LL Cool J, and Aretha Franklin. Questlove reveals the remarkable story of the captivating program, and his text is paired with more than 350 photographs of the show's most memorable episodes and the larger-than-life characters who defined it: the great host Don Cornelius, the extraordinary musicians, and the people who lived the phenomenon from dance floor.
Soul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle
by Paul Houston Blankenship-LaiA profound exploration into the spiritual beliefs and practices of Seattle’s unhoused youthSoul Woundedness is an intimate, piercing book about everyday life for young adults living on the streets of Seattle. Based on over five years of research and as a participant-observer, Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai presents the personal experiences of “street kids,” highlighting how their spiritual beliefs and practices offer them comfort, a sense of community, and a feeling of belonging amidst their struggles. They also demonstrate how spirituality on the streets can alienate people from themselves and the world.The stories Blankenship-Lai tells here are about how social wounds go soul deep, and how seemingly antireligious spiritual practices, fashioned in an almost unlivable local world, help people create a life still worth living. By paying deep, sustained attention to what spirituality is like on the streets and what difference it makes, Blankenship-Lai uncovers an important, overlooked dimension in the experience and study of homelessness. They invite us to enter these stories and to question how our own spiritual and otherwise practices can help create “a more loving love.”Aimed at a diverse audience, Soul Woundedness is a book not merely to educate but to transform. It is particularly relevant for those interested in spirituality’s role in addressing social inequities and underscores the importance of spiritual practices in overcoming adversity and promoting social change, making a compelling case for a world where everyone has a place to call home.
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
by Walter JohnsonSoul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast and surprising interdependencies among the actors involved. Using recently discovered court records, slaveholders' letters, nineteenth-century narratives of former slaves, and the financial documentation of the trade itself, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market's slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by "feeding them up," dressing them well, and oiling their bodies, but they ultimately relied on the slaves to play their part as valuable commodities. Slave buyers stripped the slaves and questioned their pasts, seeking more honest answers than they could get from the traders. In turn, these examinations provided information that the slaves could utilize, sometimes even shaping a sale to their own advantage. Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism, and resistance in the slave market, to help us understand the centrality of the "peculiar institution" in the lives of slaves and slaveholders alike. His pioneering history is in no small measure the story of antebellum slavery.
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
by Walter JohnsonWinner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize Winner of the Avery O. Craven Award Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each. What emerges is not only the brutal economics of trading but the vast and surprising interdependencies among the actors involved. Using recently discovered court records, slaveholders’ letters, nineteenth-century narratives of former slaves, and the financial documentation of the trade itself, Johnson reveals the tenuous shifts of power that occurred in the market’s slave coffles and showrooms. Traders packaged their slaves by “feeding them up,” dressing them well, and oiling their bodies, but they ultimately relied on the slaves to play their part as valuable commodities. Slave buyers stripped the slaves and questioned their pasts, seeking more honest answers than they could get from the traders. In turn, these examinations provided information that the slaves could utilize, sometimes even shaping a sale to their own advantage. Johnson depicts the subtle interrelation of capitalism, paternalism, class consciousness, racism, and resistance in the slave market, to help us understand the centrality of the “peculiar institution” in the lives of slaves and slaveholders alike. His pioneering history is in no small measure the story of antebellum slavery.
Soul of the Court: The Trailblazing Life of Judge William Benson Bryant Sr. (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)
by Tonya BoldenLegal legend Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer once stated that there were “only two people in the world who really understood the Constitution” and its impact on American lives. One was Hugo Black, deceased Supreme Court justice. The other was William Benson Bryant Sr. (1911–2005), who in the early 1950s became the first Black assistant US attorney to try cases in Washington, DC’s federal court, and became that same court’s first Black chief judge in 1977. Written by award-winning author Tonya Bolden, Soul of the Court: The Trailblazing Life of Judge William Benson Bryant Sr. presents the story of Bryant’s remarkable, pioneering life in the law—one that began in a segregated DC and included many years as an extraordinary criminal defense attorney, most notably as the dogged defender of Andrew Mallory, a young poor Black man sentenced to the electric chair for the 1954 rape of a white woman. Bryant fought for Mallory’s life all the way to the US Supreme Court, chiefly on the grounds that Mallory’s confession—the most damning evidence against him—was the fruit of an illegal detention. The High Court overturned Mallory’s conviction. Mallory v. United States was among the cases that culminated in the landmark 1966 Miranda rule.Appointed to federal judicial service by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, Bryant’s forty-year tenure included cases ranging from overturning a corrupted election of the United Mine Workers and unconstitutional conditions at the DC jail. The biography draws upon an array of documents, newspaper articles, and interviews with the judge’s friends, colleagues, and family members, as well as oral histories, including Judge Bryant’s. Bolden beautifully narrates the story of a life of compassion, unparalleled integrity, and unwavering belief in the dignity of every human being.
Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Music in American Life)
by Tammy L. KernodleFirst time in paperback and e-book! <P><P> The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in—and stretching beyond—a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls. <P><P> Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages. In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.
Soul, Community and Social Change: Theorising a Soul Perspective on Community Practice
by Peter WestobyAt a time when inequalities are growing globally, when the pace of socio-economic transitions is rapid, and when traditional ties of community are under threat of dissolving, 'soul' offers a new way of thinking imaginatively about how people might respond both individually and collectively in social change work. In exploring ideas such as soul, soulful, 'soul of the world' and soul-force, Peter Westoby invites readers to disrupt their taken-for-granted assumptions about community practice and to foreground ethics, quality, being and the aesthetic. Drawing on work of people such as James Hillman, Thomas Moore and 'Bifo' Beradi, he insists on the need to bring more depth into practice, eschewing contemporary trends of soulless analysis, measuring, and technique. Written in dialogue with eight practitioner-scholars from around the world, the book suggests a fresh terrain for community work and social change theorising. Illustrated by images of Australian cartoonist-prophet Michael Leunig, the book also promises to unlock new imaginative spaces for dreaming. A soul perspective will resonate with people searching for both a robust socio-political response to the world and an imaginative, poetic and mindful centring of self, 'other' and the planet to their practice.
Soul, Country, and the USA
by Stephanie ShonekanIn twenty-first century America, soul music and country music hold influential positions as the two central flagships that propel the expression and evolution of American popular culture. From their respective but concentric positions on opposite ends of the perpetual continuum of American racial identity, these musical cultures attract their audiences with their distinctive musical aesthetics and characteristically relatable cultural messages. Applying ethnomusicological tools, this book examines the socio-cultural influences and consequences of these two genres: the perception of and resistance to hegemonic structures from within their respective constituencies, the definition of national identity, and the understanding of the "American Dream. " These genres communicate coded information to their enthusiasts whose experiences and world views are formed and reinforced in this transaction between producers and consumers. Each emerging American reality revolves around a unique sub-culture that is replete with its own highly developed signifiers and undergirded by its own interpretation of identity, space, vernacular, and politics. In the midst of these divergent realities, these two musical cultures are direct descendants of a common ancestor. The southern Americana musical tradition, which emerged from the experience of poverty and working class struggle, serves as the cultural and aesthetic progenitor from which these genres and their associated cultural mores have derived.