LEXINGTON COMMUNITY EDUCATION Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination

By 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”?

Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of “authenticity” have blinded us to rock’s inextricably interracial artistic enterprise.

Jack Hamilton grew up in Lexington and is an assistant professor of American Studies and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is also the pop critic for Slate magazine, where he writes about music, sports, film, TV, books, and other areas of culture. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, ESPN, Transition, L.A. Review of Books, Free Darko, The Classical, GlobalPost, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. Just around Midnight is his first book.

The event will be held on Wednesday, May 31 at 7:00pm at the Lexington Depot, 13 Depot Square, Lexington, Massachusetts. The cost is $10.00.

Pre-registration strongly recommended. To register, using a VISA or MasterCard, please contact Lexington Community Education at 781 862 8043.