Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation
264 pages, 6 x 8 1/2
5 illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:29 Jun 2010
ISBN:9780817355937
Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation
University of Alabama Press, Pebble Hill Books
The first book-length study of the writings, work, and life of Renaissance man and Alabama native Albert Murray
This collection consists of essays written by prominent African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray scholars, reminiscences from Murray protégés and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer.
Born in Nokomis, Alabama, and raised in Mobile, Albert Murray graduated from Tuskegee University, where he later taught, but he has long resided in New York City. He is the author of many critically acclaimed novels, memoirs, and essay collections, among them The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots. He is also a critic and visual artist, as well as a lifelong friend of and collaborator with artistic luminaries such as Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, and Romare Bearden. As such, his life and work are testaments to the centrality of southern and African American aesthetics in American art. Murray is widely viewed as a figure who, through his art and criticism, transforms the “fakelore” of white culture into a new folklore that illustrates the centrality of the blues and jazz idioms and reveals the black vernacular as what is most distinct about American art.
This collection consists of essays written by prominent African American literature, jazz, and Albert Murray scholars, reminiscences from Murray protégés and associates, and interviews with Murray himself. It illustrates Murray’s place as a central figure in African American arts and letters and as an American cultural pioneer.
Born in Nokomis, Alabama, and raised in Mobile, Albert Murray graduated from Tuskegee University, where he later taught, but he has long resided in New York City. He is the author of many critically acclaimed novels, memoirs, and essay collections, among them The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots. He is also a critic and visual artist, as well as a lifelong friend of and collaborator with artistic luminaries such as Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, and Romare Bearden. As such, his life and work are testaments to the centrality of southern and African American aesthetics in American art. Murray is widely viewed as a figure who, through his art and criticism, transforms the “fakelore” of white culture into a new folklore that illustrates the centrality of the blues and jazz idioms and reveals the black vernacular as what is most distinct about American art.
Murray set standards for consideration of African American centrality to American cultural identity, and Baker honors him with these 27 essays. A 'tribute as well as a critical examination,' this volume will inspire readers to look again at Murray's remarkable offerings, e.g., The Omni-Americans, Train Whistle Guitar, Stomping the Blues, and Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. Recommended.’
—CHOICE
‘[This book] makes a very important contribution to the field of African American literary and cultural studies. . . . It present[s] the many facets of Murray’s intellectual odyssey . . . [illuminating his] contribution to our national discussion on race, as well as his germinal insights on music, visual art, and literature.’
—Herman Beavers, author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson
I appreciated the way the voices ‘sound’ in the volume, from Murray’s own voice, through criticism, back to Murray in interviews, and on to other voices. It has the feeling of an ensemble—or, to use one of Mr. Murray’s metaphors, a jazz band, with Murray’s voice ‘taking the break’ at key points. The melody is Murray, and there are countless riffs on his work.’
—Carolyn J. Medine, coeditor of Teaching African American Religions
‘Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation enlarges our understanding of an artist who is, as the book makes clear, one of the most important writers of our time.’
—Mobile Press-Register
Barbara A. Baker is Director of the Women’s Leadership Institute and Associate Professor at Auburn University. She is the author of The Blues Aesthetic and the Making of American Identity in the Literature of the South.
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Related Titles
Race and Displacement
Nation, Migration, and Identity in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Maha Marouan and Merinda Simmons; Foreword by Houston A. Baker Jr.; Introduction by Philip D. Beidler; Afterword by Trudier Harris
