Greg Tate has a racial agenda. A well-known black journalist with a large following, both black and white, he has written widely about literature, music, and popular culture. But here he tackles a subject he has never written about before -- Jimi Hendrix: his social meaning, his sexual mystery, his scientific explorations in the field of sound. And Tate shows us everything through a black prism, as it were. "Jimi Hendrix was a black man from a black world who made extraterrestrial black music," he writes. This book, which he calls "a kind of Jimi Hendrix Primer for Blackfolk," is an introduction to a man who, despite his universal appeal, has never made it into the pantheon of 20th-century black icons. Incorporating extensive interviews with black Americans who can shed light on Hendrix's complicated racial relationships, Midnight Lightning explores, among other issues, how Hendrix exploded our complacently segregated world to emerge as an icon for white boys; why we never hear his songs on black radio; why black people once viewed him as a hippie Uncle Tom; his connection to the Black Power movement; how he electrified soul music and made the electric guitar supplant the human voice; how he revolutionized the use of technology in popular music; how he redefined rock fashion; his sex appeal, especially for black women; why nobody was mad at him for sleeping with white women; and how he has subverted and destabilized black masculine stereotypes, changing the way we think not only about black music, but about black identity itself. Book jacket.