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The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

Online ISBN:
9780520932241
Print ISBN:
9780520245914
Publisher:
University of California Press
Book

The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles

Published:
10 April 2006
Online ISBN:
9780520932241
Print ISBN:
9780520245914
Publisher:
University of California Press

Abstract

While he was still in his twenties, Horace Tapscott gave up a successful career in Lionel Hampton's band and returned to his home in Los Angeles to found the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community arts group that focused on providing affordable, community-oriented jazz and jazz training. Over the course of almost forty years, the Arkestra, together with the related Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA) Foundation, were at the forefront of the vital community-based arts movements in black Los Angeles. Some three hundred artists—musicians, vocalists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, and graphic artists—passed through these organizations, many ultimately remaining within the community and others moving on to achieve international fame. Based primarily on one hundred in-depth interviews with current and former participants, this book is a history of the important and largely overlooked community arts movement of African American Los Angeles. The book completes the account begun in Central Avenue Sounds, which documented the secular music history of the first half of the twentieth century.

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