Sunday, June 8, 2014

Chimurenga Library - Art, Music and Recreation Center reading list

Chimurenga Library is a collaboration between the San Francisco Public Library, Chimurenga (a South African artistic, cultural organization), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This building wide exhibition / installation was inspired by the FESTAC '77 festival held in Nairobi.

library1.jpeg
A quotation from Randy Weston's autobiography African Rhythms, from the first floor library (image source: Andrea Lo, SF Weekly blog (June 3, 2014))

The Art, Music and Recreation hosts only a subset of this building-wide installation. Like the rest of the library, visitor / view is guided by red masking tape to quotations and to displayed video, images and text.  Books from our collection are likewise highlighted with labels hanging from wooden blocks.

More information about the Chimurenga Library installation at the San Francisco Public Library can be found at:

Chimurenga Library tumblr page
San Francisco Public Library webpage
SFMOMA website
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts website

The installation is reviewed at:

SF Weekly blog
Civic Center blog

The Chimurenga Library reading list for the Art, Music and Recreation Center:

African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston (Duke University Press, 2010). 

Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times by Robin D.G. Kelley (Harvard University Press, 2012).

The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective /edited by Ingrid Monson (Routledge, 2003).

The Beat of My Drum: An Autobiography by Babatunde Olatunji (Temple University Press, 2005).

Black Music by LeRoi Jones (Da Capo, 1998).

Black Talk by Ben Sidran (Da Capo, 1971).

Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz by Stanley Crouch (Basic Civitas Books, 2006).

Craft Traditions of the World: Locally Made, Globally Inspiring by Bryan and Polly Sentance (Thames & Hudson, 2009).

David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings: Specificity, Customization, Imbrication / edited by Peter Allison (Thames & Hudson, 2006).  

Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa by Karen E. Milbourne (National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2013).

88: The Giants of Jazz Piano by Robert L. Doerschuk (Backbeat Books, 2001).

The Face of Black Music: Photographs Valerie Wilmer (Da Capo Press, 1976).

Fela: This Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore (Omnibus, 2001).

Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway / edited by Trevor Schoonmaker (Palgrave / MacMillan, 2003). 

Fela: The Life & Times of an African Musical Icon Michael E. Veal (Temple University Press, 2000). 

The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World / edited by Robert Cozzolino (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2012).

Fresh Talk, Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art by Elaine H. Kim, Margo Machida and Sharon Mizota (University of California Press, 2003).

Global Minstrels: Voices of World Music by Elijah Wald (Routledge, 2007).

Great Spirits: Portraits of Life-Changing World Music Artists by Randall Grass (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner (Crown Publishers, 2004).

I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on their Craft by LaShonda Katrice Barnett (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007).

Lives and Works, Talks with Women Artists by Lynn F. Miller and Sally S. Swenson (Scarecrow Press, 1981; 1996).

Multiple Interpretations of Dynamics of Creativity and Knowledge in African Music Traditions: A Festschrift in Honor of Akin Euba on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday / edited by Bode Omojola and George Dor (MRI Press, 2005).

Noise of the World: Non-Western Musicians in their Own Words by Hank Bordowitz (Soft Skull Press, 2004).

Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema / edited by Phillip Hayward (J. Libby, 2004).

Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun-Ra, El Saturn and Chicago's Afro-futurist underground 1954-68 by John Corbett, Anthony Elms and Terri Kapsalis (WhiteWalls, 2006).

Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture by Shawn Michelle Smith (Duke University Press, 2004).

Radical Sensations: World Movements, Violence, and Visual Culture by Shelley Streeby (Duke University Press, 2013).

Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba by Umi Vaughan (University of Michigan Press, 2012). 

Recollections, The Detroit years: The Motown Sound by the People Who Made It by Jack Ryan (Glendower Media LLC, 2012).

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowsky (John Wiley and Sons, 2010).

Sounds of the Future: Essays on Music in Science Fiction Film by Mathew J. Bartkowiak (McFarland & Co., 2010).

The Sound of Stevie Wonder: His Words and Music by James E. Perone (Praeger, 2006).

Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra by John F. Szwed (Pantheon Books, 1997).

Stevie Wonder: A Musical Guide to the Classic Albums by Steve Lodder (Backbeat Books, 2005).

Sun Ra: Interviews & Essays by John Sinclair (Headpress, 2010).

To Smile in Autumn: A Memoir
by Gordon Parks (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

Tony Allen: An Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afro-Beat (Duke University Press, 2013).

Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music by Rob Young (Continuum, 2002).

Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century by Gary Giddins (Oxford University Press, 2004).

White Face, Black Mask: Africaneity and the Early Social History of Popular Music in Brazil by Darien J. Davis (Michigan State University Press, 2009).

The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music by Rob Young (Verso, 2009).

2 comments:

IO ANARRESTI said...

Hi! I am writing a paper and would love to use and cite the second image appearing in this post. Could you tell me who took the photograph? Thank you for your time.

San Francisco Public Library, Art, Music and Recreation Center said...

Feel free to use the image (for any non-commercial purposes). I'm not sure who took it (it might have been me, I can't remember). You could attribute it to the Art, Music and Recreation Center of the San Francisco Public Library.