Belafonte,Harry, (Author) and Shnayerson,Michael, (Collab.)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
01/01; 2011
Published:
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
A personal account of an era of enormous cultural and political change, which reveals Harry Belafonte as not only one of America's greatest entertainers, but also one of our most profoundly influential activists. Belafonte spent his childhood in both Harlem and Jamaica, where the toughness of the city and the resilient spirit of the Caribbean lifestyle instilled in him a tenacity to face the hurdles of life head-on and channel his anger into positive, life-affirming actions. He returned to New York City after serving in the Navy in World War II, and found his calling in the theater, before transitioning into a career as a singer and Hollywood leading man. During the 1960s civil rights movement, Belafonte became close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., and used his celebrity as a platform for his activism in civil rights and countless other political and social causes. This book tells the inspiring story of an original and powerful entertainer who has always engaged fiercely with the issues of his day.
Examines how Connecticut-born reggaetón artist Notch incorporates oratorical, visual, and musical cues in his music video, Qué te pica (What's itching you?), to establish connections between Latino and Caribbean communities in the U.S. These communities have typically been disavowed by hegemonic racial categories that distinguish between them. While Notch’s music disrupts these particular racial hierarchies, he also maintains hetero-normative patriarchal relations in his video. An analytic, Afro-Latino space is proposed to account for the ways that reggaetón as a musical genre, and Notch more specifically, unsettle certain distinctions between blackness and Latinidad, while simultaneously relying on stereotypes of black hypermasculinity.
