Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination

This book examines reforms in company and takeover law, crucial to modern business and economics. Reform activity is underway in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and most other member States of the European Union. In addition, the EU is developing its own rules and reform plans. The European 13th directive was enacted in December 2003- this requires modifications of member State takeover law. The European Commission has outlined the company law action plan which willlead to important directives from 2004 to 2010. This book is the first to deal comprehensively with both the 13th directive and the EU company law action plan, providing commentary on the action plan, and critically assessing what the future may hold. The takeover law provisions in the 13thdirective, including the 'break-through' rule and the controversial level playing field for takeover activities amongst European member states and between them and the United States are examined.The contributions also address a wide range of topical issues including corporate disclosure, board structure, the role of non-executive and supervisory directors, remuneration of directors, responsibility of the management and the board, personal liability of board members, auditors, and conflicts of interest.The company law action plan and the two reports of the High Level Group of Company Law Experts upon which the plan was based are reproduced in full in a useful annex.Between the first and last words of a black gospel song, musical sound acquires spiritual power. During this unfolding, a variety of techniques facilitate musical and physical transformation. The most important of these is a repetitive musical cycle known by names including the run, the drive, the special, and the vamp. Through its combination of reiteration and intensification, the vamp turns song lyrics into something more potent. While many musical traditions usevamps to fill space, or occupy time in preparation for another, more important event, in gospel, vamps are the main event. Why is the vamp so central to the black gospel tradition? What work-musical, cultural, and spiritual-does the gospel vamp do? And what does the vamp reveal about thetransformative power of black gospel more broadly? This book explores the vamp's essential place in black gospel song, arguing that these climactic musical cycles turn worship services into transcendent events. A defining feature of contemporary gospel, the vamp links individual performances to their generic contexts. An exemplar of African American musical practice, the vamp connects gospel songs to a venerable lineage of black sacred expression. As it generates emotive and physical intensity, the vamp helps believers access an embodiedexperience of the invisible, moving between this world and another in their musical practice of faith. The vamp, then, is a musical, cultural, and religious interface, which gives vent to a system of belief, performance, and reception that author Braxton D. Shelley calls the Gospel Imagination. In theGospel Imagination, the vamp offers proof that musical sound can turn spiritual power into a physical reality-a divine presence in human bodies.