RICKEY VINCENT.COM

"PARTY MUSIC"

"PARTY MUSIC: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band

and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music"

 

Party Music connects the Black Power Movement with the Soul Music Revolution, and tells the story from the streets - the Revolution from the revolutionaries themselves.

 

 Party Music is about the Black Panther Party's own rhythm and blues band

The Lumpen, and so much more.

 

Check out these reviews and stories about  Party Music: 

 

Record Collector

 

The East Bay Express 

 

Colorlines

 

Amoeba

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

above: The Black Panther Party's R&B band The Lumpen.  

L-r  James Mott, William Calhoun, Michael Torrence, Clark Bailey.

 

Party Music is the new book by Rickey Vincent, which is an exploration of Black Power and Soul Music. What makes Party Music so important is that it features the story of the Black Panther Party's own funk band The Lumpen. Through exclusive interviews, relentless research and his own award-winning writing style, Rickey Vincent takes us into the Oakland based Black Panther Party in 1970, in which Minister of Culture Emory Douglas and Panther Party leaders had asked their rank-and-file members to produce a high performance band that could play the beats on the street and reach the people on the dancefloor - with the Party's message of revolution.

 

The Lumpen delivered The Funk with the force of the James Brown band, and pushed the message of "Off The Pigs" and "Power to the People" that the Panthers and their supporters had come to expect. Never before has this dimension of black radicalism been brought to light. Party Music will change everything you know about Black Power and Soul Music.

 

In addition to the story of The Lumpen, "Party Music" goes in-depth into the Black Power Movement and explores the many ways that Soul and Black Power overlapped and converged during that turbulent time. "Party Music" is the definitive treatment of Soul Music and the explosion of black consciousness at the flashpoint of the Black Revolution a the end of the 1960s.

 

Here are some reviews of Party Music:

 

Until now, the story of The Lumpen has never been told. Comprised of four ‘rank & file’ Black Panther Party members, this politically charged R&B group left behind few recordings, but broke ground both musically and socially. Using the band’s own first person accounts, Ricky Vincent effortlessly weaves their personal story with the larger then life personalities and the pain-ridden struggles they encountered. Party Music captures an era when music and politics did mix, with all the subtlety of a Molotov Cocktail.

 

- Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey! The sights and sounds of Black Power 1965-1975

 

 

"In most accounts of the Black Power revolution, the stoic nationalist and the ultra-cool soul brother/sister never meet; culture and politics don't dance together. But here Rickey Vincent reveals a lost but fecund moment from a brief era of ferment when the Black Panthers and James Brown were both at their creative peaks. In this brilliant and riveting book on the Panthers' funk band The Lumpen—and the sweep of culture and politics that produced them—Vincent conjures the rhythms of the revolution and gets everyone dancing to the music again."

 

—Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America and Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

 

 

Rickey Vincent, our Minister of Funk among music writers, has unearthed in splendid fashion a little known facet of the Black Panther Party: it's funk band The Lumpen.  Party Music, the richly contextualized story of this collective, deepens our understanding of the strategic cultural position of the Black Panthers in American society by bringing to life the "soul" of the organization. With this bold contribution, Vincent shows just how liberating "the One" was at this important historical juncture. 

 

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. is the author of  Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop and The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Bebop. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a full page advertisement of The Lumpen in the Black Panther Party newspaper from November of 1970.  This little known history is now avaiable in full effect in my new book.  Don't sleep on it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At right: William Calhoun, James 

Mott of the Lumpen with Rickey 

Vincent at Marcus Books, Oakland

Oct 5, 2013.