

MUSIC
224 Pages, 6 x 9
Formats: Trade Paper, EPUB, Mobipocket, PDF
Trade Paper, $16.95 (CA $18.95) (US $16.95)
Publication Date: July 2011
ISBN 9781556528170
Rights: WOR
Chicago Review Press (Jul 2011)
Lawrence Hill Books
The marriage of music and social change didn’t originate with the movements for civil rights and Black Power in the 1950s and 1960s, but never before and never again was the relationship between the two so dynamic. In Keep On Pushing, author Denise Sullivan presents the voices of musician-activists from this pivotal era and the artists who followed in their footsteps to become the force behind contemporary liberation music. Joining authentic voices with a bittersweet narrative covering more than fifty years of fighting oppression through song, Keep On Pushing defines the soundtrack to revolution and the price the artists paid to create it.
Exclusive interviews with Yoko Ono, Richie Havens, Len Chandler, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Michael Franti, Solomon Burke, Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, Phranc, plus musician-activist Elaine Brown on the Black Panthers, Nina Simone collaborator Al Schackman, Penelope Houston and Debora Iyall on San Francisco punk rock, Ed Pearl on the L.A. folk scene and the Ash Grove, and other musical and political icons.
“Denise Sullivan . . . makes political history come alive by framing it through a series of seminal musical moments. Whether she’s detailing how Nina Simone wrote ‘Mississippi Goddam’ in response to a bombing, or when she’s outlining how the Blank Panthers rewrote ‘Louie Louie’ with their own lyrics, her sweeping narrative adds much to the discourse on this overlooked part of music history.” —Charles R. Cross, author of Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix