Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music/Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip-Hop

Behind Black Music Two intriguing critical overviews Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music by Arthur Kempton Pantheon, june 2003 $27.50, ISBN 0-375-40612-3

Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip-Hop by Guthrie R Ramsey Jr. University of California Press, june 2003 $29.95, ISBN 0-520-21048-4

As legendary jazz saxophonist John Collrane once reflected after reading a Downbeat article deconstructing his sound: "Everybody writing about music don't know what they're talking about." Most serious jazz lovers distrusted many of the declarations coming from noted white so-called music experts, spouting their academic analysis of black music, a majority of their …