I’ve been reading Amiri Baraka’s Blues People, specifically “Swing—From Verb to Noun,” and I think a lot of what he was describing in jazz still applies to how Black music enters white America today, especially once money gets involved.

Baraka’s point is that Black music comes out of a specific way of living and seeing the world. White musicians could learn the sound without sharing the life that produced it. Once that happens, the white artist can become a kind of shell for that music, a familiar face that helps carry it into a market already built to understand him.

Condition becomes costume.

A lot of Black culture comes from adapting to circumstances that weren’t chosen. Poverty, segregation, incarceration. Black people experience those conditions and create culture inside of them.

Later somebody else can purchase that aesthetic.

You can put on the clothes, use the slang, copy the posture, rap about the lifestyle, and take it back off whenever you want. The cultural appearance gets separated from the experience that produced it.

From verb to noun.

I love the name of Baraka’s chapter.

The verb is the living thing. People doing something because it means something inside their actual lives.

Then American capital turns it into a noun. It gets named, packaged and sold as a genre.

Black experience produces slang, flow, cadence, fashion and sound. Then those things can be packaged so cleanly that somebody can buy the image without ever touching the life underneath it.

The Trojan horse.

This is what I keep thinking about with white UG rappers.

For a lot of America in the 1920s, their first idea of jazz came through white musicians influenced by
Black musicians instead of the Black founders. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band became the first jazz band to record, and Baraka points out that they were heard by much of America before the actual Black innovators.

That’s the Trojan horse role.

The Black culture inside. The white artist gives it a face America already knows how to understand.

The parasitic translation.

As swing moved further into American culture, white swing musicians got access to studio work and higher-paying opportunities while Black musicians were being excluded from those same opportunities.

The creature feasting on it thrives. The people who made it don’t.

Participation isn’t automatically exploitation.

I wanna make this clear because Baraka does too.

He says white participation in jazz wasn’t always just imitation. He gives Bix Beiderbecke credit as an actual innovator and talks about white musicians who genuinely entered the music and made something of their own through it.

The debt still exists.

Even when white musicians developed legitimate styles of their own, Baraka still says the debt to Black music and the culture it came from had to be understood.

You can participate. You can innovate. You can make great shit.

But the lineage doesn’t disappear just because the music wears a different face.

Would love to hear thoughts or criticisms.

"Things were different then," he said. "To get a black female singer on my show… you couldn't do certain songs if it had anything to do with relationships. 

"I couldn't believe it, because in Britain it's not like that... In Britain, on British television shows, I never had any trouble."

IN America things were different.

Tom's of American rhythm and blues helped Welsh singer score international hits and achieve fame and fortune. But, back in 1969, that love also gave him a taste of something far less pleasant.

Jones had just welcomed American singer Wilson Pickett to his TV show This is Tom Jones and had been thrilled with their soulful duet of the Beatles classic Hey Jude.

After post-show drinks, Jones told Pickett how much he loved singing R&B and that's when things got a bit "unlovely."

"He said 'That was an excuse for rhythm and blues,'" Jones recalled in an interview with CBC's The National.

Welsh singer Tom Jones published his autobiography Over the Top and Back in 2015. (Penguin Books )

"I said, 'It didn't seem like that to me.'  

"'No,' he said. 'Because you're white.'" 

Pickett went further. 

"'Before long we're not going to need you. We'll have our own TV shows,' Jones recalled the soul singer-songwriter saying.

"I said, 'Wait a minute. Whoa. What's going on? I just love singing it. You know what I mean?'

Jones is among a wide group of British musicians of the era — from the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton to Joe Cocker — who were inspired by, embraced and borrowed heavily from black American peers.

He recalled that, as his 1965 hit It's not Unusual climbed the charts in the U.S., one black radio DJ found it hard to believe Jones was actually from Wales.

"'Whoever is singing this song is not white. He may be passing for white, but he's not white,'" Jones recalled the DJ saying.

In the years since, Jones has reinvented himself — singing everything from pop to rock to country. But it's R&B he still seems to cherish the most, harkening back to his days listening to BBC Radio as a child.

*Pictured above with Florence LaRue and Marilyn McCoo of the 5th Dimension.

One of Howlin’ Wolf’s most iconic recordings — hypnotic, driving, and unmistakably his. This side captures Wolf’s haunting vocal style and the band’s tight, pulsing groove that helped define the Chicago blues sound. A cornerstone track in blues history and one of the most influential sides ever cut for Chess.

From The Neven78 Radio Archive

https://youtube.com/@mamlishblues?si=Gqffijs3211mMsnH

Hello everyone,I’m an independent content creator from Rome, Italy. I run a small sanctuary for "lonely people" where I deeply analyze the darkest and most emotional pages of music history.Last night, in the dark, I dedicated a full narrative documentary to the immense Elis Regina and "Como Nossos Pais". To me, that song is not just music; it’s a clinical autopsy of a crushed generation.I wanted to focus heavily on the historical atmosphere of 1976, her inner cracks, and the dark shadow surrounding her death at 36—knowing that the coroners who signed her autopsy were deeply tied to the military regime.Even though my video essay is in Italian, I wanted to share this with you as a sincere act of love and respect for Brazilian music and history from an Italian perspective. You can feel the atmosphere and her voice fading into the dark at the end.Long live the Hurricane.

https://youtu.be/N0T869MWny0?is=hqFBE8cqR\_h2kNAl

Thank you

Afro‑Cuban / Cuban dance music

Mid‑20th‑century Latin orchestra.

A vibrant Cuban dance classic from Ernesto Lecuona, performed by Armando Orefiche’s celebrated Havana Cuban Boys. This ffrr London pressing captures the group’s polished orchestral sound and Orefiche’s elegant piano work. A lively, rhythmic piece reflecting the golden era of Cuban popular music.

Brand new - interesting music page.

Not that many records yet but being added regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/@nevencernobori8145

Recorded at the historic St. James Hotel sessions in Knoxville, Tennessee, "Satan Is Busy In Knoxville" is a rare and haunting piece of pre-war blues by singer Leola Manning.

​Rather than a typical blues standard, the track acts as real-time musical journalism detailing two actual local murders that took place in Knoxville in early 1930. Accompanied by piano and guitar, Manning's powerful vocals and moral warning ("the Good Book says they've got to reap just what they sow") make this one of the most remarkable narrative blues recordings of the Great Depression era. Original 78 RPM pressings on the classic blue Vocalion label are exceptionally rare pieces of American music history.

From The Neven78 Radio Archive.

Digitized and available at:

https://youtube.com/@mamlishblues?si=xds1-xSMpttHSXi\_