Secular Devotion

Popular music in the Americas, from jazz, Cuban Latin and salsa to disco and rap, is overwhelmingly neo-African. Created in the midst of war and military invasion, and filtered through a Western worldview, these musical forms are completely modern in their sensibilities: they are in fact the very sound of modern life. But, the African religious philosophy at their core involved a longing for earlier eras - ones that pre-dated the technological discipline of labor forced on captive populations by capitalism.In this groundbreaking new book, Timothy Brennan shows how the popular music of the Americas - the music of entertainment, nightlife, and leisure - is involved in a devotion to an African religious worldview that survived the ravages of slavery and found its way into the rituals of everyday listening. He explores the challenge posed by Afro-Latin music to Western cultural imperialism, and the processes by which Afro-Latin music has been absorbed into the imperial imagination: how what was originally the artistic creation of a colonized people was transformed overnight into proof of what was most liberating about the society that did the enslaving.