On Point - 34 - Jack Hamilton: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

Assistant professor of American Studies and Media Studies at University of Virginia joins us to discuss his new book, Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (2016). The difficulty in choosing representative bands from the 60s. The “move” from “rock and roll” to “rock.” The racial politics of perceptions of rock as “high art.” The concept of “soul” and how it suggests the stereotype that black musicians are inherently musical, or even “magical.” Jimi Hendrix’s supernatural obsession and cultivated weirdness. How to reconcile the tensions between mash-up culture and cultural appropriation.