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| Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus! : Photographs from the Sacred Steel Community
ISBN: 9781496831545
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / University Press of Mississippi
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Fine Arts;
Folklorist Robert L. Stone presents a rare collection of high-quality documentary photos of the sacred steel guitar musical tradition and the community that supports it. The introductory text and extended photo captions in Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus! Photographs from the Sacred Steel Community offer the reader an intimate view of this unique tradition of passionately played music that is beloved among fans of American roots music and admired by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and other scholars.
In 1992, a friend in Hollywood, Florida, introduced Stone to African American musicians who played the electric steel guitar in the African American Holiness-Pentecostal churches House of God and Church of the Living God. With the passion, skill, and unique voice they brought to the instruments, these musicians profoundly impressed Stone. He produced an album for the Florida Folklife Program, which Arhoolie Records licensed and released worldwide. It created a roots music sensation.
In 1996, Stone began to document the tradition beyond Florida. He took the photos in this book from 1992 to 2008 in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida, and at concerts in Italy. The images capture musicians as they play for worship services before spirit-filled believers singing, dancing, shouting, praying, and testifying. Stone gives the viewer much to witness, always presenting his passionate subjects with dignity. His sensitive portrayal of this community attests to the ongoing importance of musical traditions in African American life and worship.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Robert Stone is often compared to Conrad and Melville because he combines an ability to write compelling adventure stories with a concern for the moral dilemmas confronting human beings in history. Never one to avoid a conflict, he writes about the historical and political events that have structured contemporary American experience---racism, the Vietnam War, American involvement in Latin American revolutions---and creates characters who wrestle with the timeless problems of personal responsibility and commitment. Stone served in the U.S. Navy in the mid-1950s, then went to Stanford University, where he became politically active in the 1960s. He draws on these experiences to explore the motives of characters who become involved in the historical and political events of their age. (Bowker Author Biography) |
