Holy Ghost Key

Joshua Myers's Holy Ghost Key celebrates the essential role of African music in the continuity and sustenance of African Diasporic life and culture. Myers weaves his broad knowledge of African and African American music practices, genres and instruments with his memory of gospel lyrics and symbols evoking African spirituality, showing us the ways in which this music has been both the light on our path and the grounding of our historic journey. Though many of the poems pay tribute to the genius of contemporary musicians who have won popular acclaim, the entire collection reminds of a persistent African ancestral legacy.

Joshua M. Myers is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He is the author of Of Black Study, Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition, and We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989, as well as the editor of A Gathering Together: Literary Journal. In addition to serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and the editorial board of The Compass: Journal of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, he is the senior content producer at the Africa World Now Project, and served as the co-coordinator of the SNCC Legacy Project's Black Power Chronicles Oral History Project and as an organizer with Washington DC's Positive Black Folks in Action.