0:08 Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers Band, and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music
Despite being a professor of Black music history at UC Berkeley and counting Bobby Seale and Huey Newton as dinner guests in his childhood home, Rickey Vincent (@rickeyvincent) never knew that the Black Panthers had a funk band until his 40s. In his newest book, Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers Band, and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music, Vincent explores the story of The Lumpen, the funk band formed on the Black Panthers’ orders. Vincent also hosts “History of Funk,” which KPFA airs Friday evenings beginning at 10pm.
1:08 The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
In The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, journalist Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) takes us back to January, 1973. Before the year was out, the nation would have a new President in Gerald Ford. In his newest work, Perlstein — who has been called the “chronicler extraordinaire of American conservatism” by Politico and the “hypercaffeinated Herodotus of the American century” by The Nation — illustrates the invisible bridge running from Nixon, to Carter, Reagan, and beyond.