{"title":"Music","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"just-around-midnight-rock-and-roll-and-the-racial-imagination","title":"Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become \"white\"?\u003ci\u003e Just around Midnight \u003c\/i\u003ereveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. 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This is how Ben Ratliff's runs started most days of the week for about a decade. Sometimes listening to music, not always. Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, he began taking notes about what he listened to. He wondered if a body in motion, his body, was helping him to listen better to the motion in music. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHe runs through the woods, along the Hudson River, and into the lowlands of the Bronx. He encounters newly erected fences for an intended FEMA field hospital, and demonstrations against racial violence. 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