Ocean State Libraries

Some time ago Rafi Zabor sat down to write a brief narrative of the year 1986. That was the year he set out across two continents in a used Mercedes-"Wabenzi" is the Swahili word for a member of the Mercedes-owning class-to buy a grave stone for his friend Mahmoud Rauf and to outrun the shadow of his own parents' recent death. But like a boat against the current, the writer was drawn back into the past: his father's escape from the Nazis, Rafi's...

The Place Of Jazz In World Music... Its history from new Orleans to the present day... Its beauty as music... And the greatness of the people who made it... This is a book for everyone who loves music-classical or jazz; for the one who performs or the one who makes up his audience. To either one it will contribute much for a better understanding and appreciation of this greatest and most widely participated in art. Everyone knows about jazz....

"Based on more than 250 interviews, this meticulously researched history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through three longtime kings of jazz-Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie-who opened America's eyes and souls to their magnificent music, writing the soundtrack for the civil rights movement."--