The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement

by Albert Murray

Overview

Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetime meditation on the blues as this musical style informs American life. Here are incisive essays on writing, music, and art that go beyond the social-science fiction of Negrohood to describe in no uncertain terms what it means to be American.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679758594
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/24/1997
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Albert Murray is the author of The Omni-Americans, Stomping the Blues, The Hero and the Blues, South to a Very Old Place, Conjugations and Reiterations, and From the Briarpatch File. He is the coauthor of Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie and the coeditor of Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

A cultural theorist examines blues and jazz stereotypes. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Long one of American literature's overlooked resources, novelist and essayist Murray (Stomping the Blues, LJ 2/1/77) here uses his considerable talent to ruminate on the impact of African American music on 20th-century American culture. Applying both his lifetime love of the jazz and blues idioms and his personal relationships with musical giants such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie, Murray examines the music in terms of the human, not merely the black, experience. It is in the human experience that Murray sees the essence of all culture-painting, music, or literature. Using the work of Ernest Hemingway as an illustration, he makes the point that treating art as sociopolitical protest is taking the easy way out. The aesthetic of jazz and blues looks for the universal in us all and celebrates it. This thoughtful book is essential for all humanities collections. [For a review of Murray's latest novel see p. 158.-Ed.]-Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.

Library Journal