Party Music

AC Spotlight Series: Rickey Vincent's Party Music

About Waldo E. Martin, Jr.: Dr. Martin is the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History and Citizenship at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research and writing interests examine the cultural politics of the modern African American Freedom Struggle. Most recently, with Joshua Bloom, he is the co-author of Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (University of California Press, 2013), which won a 2014 American Book Award. He is also the author of No Coward Soldiers: Black Cultural Politics in Postwar America (Harvard, 2005); Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford, 1998); and, The Mind of Frederick Douglass (UNC, 1985). 

About the book:Vincent's new book is Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music (Lawrence Hill 2013).  Party Music is both social movement analysis and radical music history.  Party Music tells the story of The Lumpen, the short lived R&B band comprised of rank-and-file members of the Black Panther Party in 1970.  The interaction of soul music aesthetics and black power politics is illustrated vividly through first hand narratives of members of the group.

Dr. Vincent is teaching an innovative summer session course at UC Berkeley in 2015 based on Party Music, titled "The Black Panther Party and Popular Culture."

About the author:Dr. Rickey Vincent is a Bay Area based scholar, educator, radio host and author.  He obtained his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley in 2008, and lectures on black music history, Hip Hop and globalization, and African American history and social movements.   He is the author of two music history books.  The award winning Funk: The Music, the People and the Rhythm Of The One (St. Martin’s Press 1996), and Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music (Lawrence Hill 2013).  He hosts The History of Funk on KPFA radio. www.rickeyvincent.com