Student Blog Post: "A Synthesis, via Solidarity, Practice, and Flow" by Laura Feibush

Three terms stand out to me as key words from our course together this semester, which I will outline in this brief synthesis of our collaborative work as a seminar. Of course, many others are possible. I’ll be eager to hear your responses to these in class on Tuesday, when I’ll also be talking about

Solidarity:

In that it emerges as an imperative and a struggle at the same time, the idea of solidarity strikes me as an important through-line to our semester’s reading.

Solidarity becomes an imperative in many ways, affecting those included in it and those excluded. In Earl Lovelace’s Dragon Can’t Dance, for example, Pariag approaches Aldrick about painting a sign after acquiring the bicycle. Aldrick dismisses this request, which is only one of a series of acts that keep Pariag in his outsider status. When Calvary Hill wakes to Pariag’s screams over his anonymously destroyed bicycle, the emotional impact is heavy: Pariag is conspicuously outside any sense of solidarity on the Hill, and this combined with his commercial ambition make him especially vulnerable to violence. It’s as though someone has died—a funeral-like procession takes place.

But it’s also a struggle to come up with a cohesive, functional solidarity. Brent Edwards writes in “The Practice of Diaspora” that a selective blindness to colonial aggression in other parts of the world on the part of black communities in Paris means that a “transnational black solidarity is traded in for a certain kind of national currency, an anti-racism in one country” (6). So here, solidarity in one area of the world almost demands turning a blind eye to another.

Bell hooks reminds us in each of her “Love Trilogy” books that love is not just a “feeling,” of warmth, or affection or whatever else, but rather an ongoing set of actions guided by certain concrete principles: care, commitment, respect, responsibility, trust, and knowledge. Our course readings conceptualize solidarity in many different ways, but I think one compelling formulation would make it similar to this understanding of love from hooks. By that I simply mean that solidarity should not just be thought of a concept, an idea, or a vague historical affiliation between groups, but rather a set of actions, or decisions that are made in light of events that occur.

One surprising moment for me this semester came at the unexpected intersection of blackness and Jewishness in the Beth B’nai Abraham congregation located in Harlem in the 1920’s. The congregation apparently played a major role in publishing the Universal Ethiopian Hymnal, which contained the anthem “Ethiopia,” among others. According to Redmond’s examination of anthems and their performance and circulation, this was what tied Black Jews most strongly to the UNIA. She writes: “Anthology is a method of mapping and containment, compiling evidence in service of facilitating pointed dialogues within a corps of thinking and, in some cases, acting” (47). Here, anthology is the kind of action that reflects solidarity.

Practice:

I mean practice in two senses.

1)    There are practices of doing things that form the sites of analysis for studies of race, writing, and sound. These practices can be looked at as objects, or moments that, if captured, can form the “stuff” of our studies, the “what” of what we study. The costumed parades in Port of Spain could be seen as this kind of “site,” ripe for anthropological study, as could something like Jamaican dancehall in Nadia Ellis’s “Out and Bad,” or whether or not people stand when singing Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing in Anthem.

But another sense of the word practice strikes me as extremely important:

2)    Practice as process. That’s to say, looking at race, writing, and sound requires us to look not just at artifacts, events, or scenes of different kinds, but also at processes that are ongoing or still happening.

Alexandra Vasquez’s Listening in Detail, for example, asks us to listen to Cuban music as it’s happening, to see the way it defies expectations by weaving together traditions of music in a way that reflects complex movements of people and culture. Some of her readings of Cuba Linda tracks, including the one we looked at in class on page 91-96 (of Tumbao a Peruchin), are kind of like guided tours: while walking through the “halls” of the music, our attention is guided by a knowledgeable guide who is showing us a new way to see something unfamiliar. “You’re scooped, without enough air, into a tidal wall of horns playing up and down scales together” (Vasquez 92). Yes, exactly. We’re being taught to hear anew.

I have to take moment here to touch on another very important key term that I can’t leave out here: technology. Initially I thought I’d make an argument for technology being a part of practice, in the sense that we have a practice of using speakers to amp up the sound of dancehall music so it throbs in dancers’ arms, legs, and ribs. But actually technology is not just a practice—it’s also a set of materialities that shape (and are at times shaped by) those practices. Take, for example, what for me is one of the most memorable moments from this semester’s reading, in which Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man makes plans to set up five phonographs:

“Now I have one radio-phonograph; I plan to have five. There is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body. I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time” (2).
If he succeeds, the narrator aims to set up an early version of surround-sound, designing an aural environment in which to immerse himself, an aural environment that highlights the sonic materiality of recorded sound—he wants to hear not just with his ear but with his whole body. The desire to do this seems to be related to his invisibility in daily society. He aims to exploit the technological capabilities of phonograph to reinforce, or at least highlight, the materiality of his own body.
Of black communities in early 20^th-century Paris, Brent Edwards writes: “In these transnational circuits, black modern expression takes form not as a single thread, but through the often uneasy encounters of peoples of African descent with each other” (5). Not single threads, then, but rather interconnected and far-reaching circuits, or networks. The practices that make up the stuff of our course move, expand, and disperse in multidimensional webs of influence. This gives me a segue into my third term:

Flow

I mean flow in two senses, too, although others are possible.

The first sense that I want to emphasize is the idea of movement. Diaspora takes different shapes, and practices of sound and writing precipitate in their particularities from that movement of people from place to place.

In Africa in Stereo, Tsitsi Jaji tracks efforts to connect Afro-diasporic communities, or at least a “Pan-African imaginary,” via several modes of transmission and distribution. This kind of circulation or movement of materials is what I’m referring to as “flows.” Jaji examines several multimodal flows, like songbooks (musical scores) and radio.

The other sense of the word flow I want to bring forward is its more colloquial sense. While Urban Dictionary is of course hardly a scholarly source, the distribution of its definitions for “flow” give the sense of what I mean. Looking past a surprising number of entries referring to long hair on lacrosse and hockey players, we have several entries of which these two are exemplary:

1.     A rapper’s ability to vocalize a rhythmic yet complex string [of] rhymes that fit together in a logical and seamless manner.

2.     To be in the moment, present, in the zone, on a roll, wired in, in the groove, on fire, in tune, centered, or singularly focused.

Ex.: “What I often listen to in the morning to reach 'flow'…”

I’m struck by how the second definition, pertaining to a state of being, draws on vocabulary of sound and sound technology: “wired in;” “in the groove;” “in tune.” When Aldrick, in his dragon costume, seems to become one with the year’s new calypsos, it’s an act that connects him to his history and his sense of purpose. It’s also a flow, or a jam, in which he loses himself. Maybe spirited performances of Redmond’s anthems could also be called flows. Ellis’s invisible narrator seeks out a kind of flow state in his imagining of stereo. Nicki Minaj’s mystique has to do with her flow. These are just a few: some kind of flow almost seems like it could be theorized as a critical category unto itself—recognizable and powerful, but at the same time difficult to pin down.

The way that the idea of flow doesn’t work is that the term usually connotes a kind of ease or fluidity, and much diasporic movement that was of course forced and violent. Is it still a flow if it’s forced?

I’ll end here for now, though there’s much more to say. I look forward to our conversation in class on Tuesday.

“From the Isolated Soul Body to the Eccentric Performance of Collaborative Post-Soul Bodies" by Francisco Laguna-Correa

”

 “Eccentric performances are fueled by contradictory

desires for recognition and freedom” (8–9).

Francesca Royster

When I was twelve or thirteen years old, “Cream” by Prince was continuously played on Mexican television. It was on channel four, perhaps the most heteroclite and incoherent channel of national television (some say that channel four is the worst channel of Mexican television): in the mornings you could watch old American television shows, almost always portraying white men with cowboy hats and guns or pioneers attempting to survive somewhere that now I imagine as Kansas or Oklahoma or Idaho. Channel four also broadcasted old films and modern American television series such as Step by Step or Home Improvement. Everyday, at perhaps two or three p.m., channel four uninterruptedly screened music videos featuring a wide variety of musicians and styles, including 4 Non Blondes, Mc Hammer, Inner Circle, The Police, Prince, and others. Thus, after school, it was common for me to watch Prince and his sensual troupe performing “Cream” at three p.m. on television. At first glance, Prince looked like a masculine wonder, a rock star making love to his yellow guitar, constantly surrounded by lots of hot white girls in negligees.

Something in “Cream” by Prince suggested a path towards miscegenation or performative hybridity, apparently only attainable through the enchantments of sound and dance. That is how I was introduced to Post-Soul music in Mexico City, during times of political turmoil and constant public assassinations. And it was the eccentricity of Prince, his undefined and somewhat irreverent self-portrayal, what allowed me to imagine masculinity¾and gender¾not only in terms of rigid and traditional definitions, but also as a set of ontological maneuvers directed towards identity redefinition and social change.   

            Francesca Royster suggests that soul music is “the beat of heart and cock,” a gospel based sonic aesthetic that, Royster suggests, “claims its roots in the shared cultural memory of black history” (9). Indeed, soul music sounds to me as a call for political action and trust in the future, whereas post-soul music sounds more like an invitation to indulgence and individual confinement, either through sensuality or collaborative pleasure. However, Royster accurately suggests that soul music embodies a heterosexual sound and performance, while post-soul music breaks¾or at least attempts to break¾ the boundaries of the dominant heteronormative rhythms and paces constantly shaping the energy of our bodies. Therefore, Royster invites us to listen to post-soul eccentrics as a proclamation for gender and sexual black liberation. It is the concept of the “post-soul eccentric” that I would like to focus on this blog post.

             Royster proposes that these eccentrics “have created a controversial and deeply historically informed response to the dehumanized black subject and stretched the boundaries of popular forms of music, ultimately shaping a new public dialogue” (8). Royster proposes musicians and performers Eartha Kitt, Stevie Wonder, George Clinton, Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Janelle Monáe as the eccentric objects of her study. But before I continue, I would like to focus for a moment on the performance soul icon James Brown, specifically 1966’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I feel Good” as performed in The Ed Sullivan Show.

At first, it seems that Brown is electrified, as his body meanders in its own orbit as the witness of an unprecedented corporeal freedom. James Brown is a dancing virtuoso and his body and the inner electricity fueling his performance are the sole witnesses of its virtuosity. Despite the band and chorus playing in the background, Brown’s body seems to perform in isolation, only propelled by an inner strength that will find its post-soul parallel in performances such as Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” or “Bad.”

Both James Brown and Michael Jackson exhaust themselves in their performances, as movement is accompanied in both by tension and a explosion of energy. Prince, however, does not exhaust himself: his body portrays a rhythm at times lethargic and at times gratuitously sensual. Prince’s performances are complex and collaborative mise-en-scènes where a multitude of bodies carrousel under the influence of pleasure. In this regard, Royster suggests that “Moments of collaboration and contact are especially important for exposing and exploring the contingency of identity” (27). While James Brown literally sweats alone on the stage, without having any possible physical contact with other electrified bodies, both Prince and Michael Jackson ¾and generally the post-soul performers analyzed by Royster¾ articulate a continuous collaborative embodiment of liberation, whereas collaboration serves as the performative framework to suggest both difference and the social acceptance of this difference, at least within the confines of collaborative sonic formations. We can also look at performative collaboration, as displayed in “Cream” or “Beat It” or “Tightrope” by Janelle Monáe, as means of disidentification. José Esteban Muñoz establishes in Disidentifications that “disidentification is meant to be descriptive of the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides of punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (4). Muñoz draws from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality to propose a process of production, a mode of performance, and a hermeneutic (25). I identify in the collaborative mise-en-scène of both “Cream” and “Beat It” performative and sonic strategies that position the “eccentric” as a community-based subject that through collaboration acquires her social validation, even if it is in a marginal way. The eccentric, whereas we want to recognize her as a “radical and dissonant subject,” thus challenges the normative citizenship suggested by Muñoz.

            For Royster, the “Eccentric performance includes an initial off-centeredness, the use of not-so-ordinary means and often seemingly conflicting methods of theatricality: the crossing of generic boundaries of form or the crossing of gender or racial boundaries through twice-removed actions… For musical performance, this off-centeredness is particularly important in terms of sound: falsettos, growls, shifting accents, gasps, shouts, tones that threaten to veer off-key, improvised lyrics, breaks in the ‘fourth wall’ ¾ or silence” (28). This enactment of eccentricity is evident in both Prince and Michael Jackson, but it acquires a radical theatricality in Grace Jones sonic and performative projects such as “My Jamaican Guy” & “Slave to the Rhythm,” where new notions of black sexuality and, furthermore, human identity are suggested as means of inter-subjective dialogue.

Soul music sonically materialized the black experience in the United States through the poietic transformation of gospel and rhythm and blues into a lyrical and instrumental re-discovery of the black body. But it is through post-soul sound and performance¾as Grace Jones enacts¾that both black historical memory and the radicalization of afro-national redemption merges into the global stream of capital and neoliberalism. As for my questions, I would like to invite you all to reflect on the role of the State and its dominant axiological systems in the confection of such post-soul sonic postmodernity. To what extent is the eccentricity of such post-soul sonic artifacts a medium of political resistance or mere political neutralization? How does the post-soul aesthetics have shape your lives as postmodern American normative citizens? After all, we are confined within the discursive and institutional limits imposed by the university. Is the fact that we can theorize such relatively recent sonic and cultural phenomena the evidence of its political failure? I appreciate your time and attention, and I hope that you have a great day.

Student Blog Post: Women and Hip Hop Masculinity, by Steffan Triplett

Women and Hip-Hop Masculinity

The collection of readings by Clay, McMillan, and Miller-Young contain several moments of provocative theory and important questions. In different ways, each text addresses the following theme: in what ways does hip-hop (and hip-hop masculinity) affect the roles and perceived agency of women (either as a performer or a spectator) in their actions, gender presentation, and their perception by others. I have pinpointed moments that stood out to me in each reading and proposed many questions that could be up for discussion.

Hip-Hop Pornography

In “Hip-Hop Honeys and Da Hustlaz: Black Sexualities in the New Hip-Hop Pornography,” Mireille Miller-Young looks at the historical links between hip-hop and pornography, after direct links by production companies like VideoTeam and hip-hop artists branded pornography to align with a hip-hop aesthetic.

I think that perhaps we could focus for a moment on the Can the Ho’ Speak? section. This section discusses the complex role of the black female performer and sex worker. Miller-Young highlights a need for what’s lacking amidst the industries of hip-hop and pornography, and broader, American society that is haunted by the history of slavery and racism and the reactionary politics of respectability that followed:

“What is also expressed is a pressing need for a liberatory space where the imaginary for black female sexuality transcends the dominant sexual economy in which black women continue to ‘give birth to white wealth’” (Miller-Young, 284)

What might a space like this look like?

Pornography and the hip-hop pornography aesthetic seems to be inherently visual focused. How does sound function here? Could it be more than just the lyrics of the songs or performances in hip-hop? What role does the silence of the “video girl” do in terms of sound?

In the concluding section, Clay asks “Can pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, become an anti-racist and anti-sexist platform in the way that pain and struggle has become for black communities(286) Where is there room for this in music, and where does the sonic come into play?

Something that comes to mind is Nicki Minaj’s verse in “Only.” In a song where she is, frustratingly an object of sexual desire by men, her verse does some work to subvert her role as the object: “I never f*** Wayne, I never f***** Drake….if I did I’d ménage with them, make them eat my a** like a cupcake.” In this song we even get a moment where pornography is directly brought into this hip-hop space (and thus the mainstream airwaves) when Drake says “That’s right, I like my girls BBW.”

Is Nick Minaj’s role in this working as a sonic, anti-sexist platform? Are these moments of subversion outdone by other moments of normativity of hip-hop aesthetics? Is there room for pleasure, particularly from the vantage point of a straight-identified female hip-hop artist amidst this objectification? I imagine there are better examples of songs and performances that pose answers to these questions and I am interested in any examples someone may have.

Queer Women and Hip-Hop Masculinity

In “I used to be scared of the Dick” Queer women of color and hip-hop masculinity, Andreana Clay complicates this scene by hypothesizing about what it could mean that these hip-hop masculinities are the aural backdrop in social spaces of black queer women.

Clay explores the relationship between hip-hop and black masculinity among queer women of color on the dance floor.  While the scripts and lifestyles enacted in hip-hop music and video “makes sense for a generation of disenfranchised Black men”(Clay, 153) these restricted boxes, specifically the “nigga” and the “playa,” for what black masculinity is don’t just affect women.

 Clay suggests that “there is a clear link between a black queer or lesbian identity and the nigga identity” in a shared disinterest “in anything having to do with the mainstream, though his cultural products are clearly and integral part of the mainstream popular culture”(159). However, queer women of color “construct new meaning” in the performance amidst the sonic dominance of hip-hop and popular music  in the club-space by challenging the context of masculinity and sexuality (158).

After reading this I was left wondering the portability of these notions. Do women (as active spectators rather than musical performers) need to be queer in order to change the context of sexuality and masculinity? Could straight-identified black women’s voices singing these songs amongst themselves, or in the company of straight men construct a new meaning?

Nicki-Aesthetics

Finally, I want us to be able to talk about Nicki Minaj. In “Nicki-aesthetics: the camp performance of Nicki Minaj,” Uri McMillan describes what he coins as Nicki-aesthetics. McMillan says that hip-hop and “camp” align in Nicki-aesthetics in that it is “a camp sensibility that is both black and female. Nicki-aesthetics are different from the idea of feminist camp because it allows a non-white (and in this case Black) woman to perform this “parodic play between subject and object in which [she] laughs at and plays with her own image.”

What are your thoughts on these Nicki-aesthetics in the Elle.com video that McMillan points us to? How is the sonic working in this video to convey these aesthetics?

McMillan says that Nicki-aesthetics “is a camp sensibility that is both black and female” Hip hop and camp align in nick-aesthetics. Further, it pushes past the notion of “feminist camp, “a parodic play between subject and object in which the female spectator laughs at and plays with her own image” by permitting a female performance that isn’t white(McMillan, 82).

Since the idea of sonic authenticity often comes up in class, I thought it would be important to note how McMillan challenges the notion of Nicki Minaj being considered “fake” in that her aesthetics in fact paradox authentic because she “rebukes hip-hop’s standard trifecta—masculinity, realness, and normative blackness”(85) paradoxes idea of authenticity. What do we make of Nicki and being or sounding “real?” I’m also interested in discussing the portability of Nicki-aesthetics, if anyone has thoughts about that.

The Anthems (a partial playlist for Shana Redmond's Anthem)

Nina Simone "Young, Gifted and Black"

"Ethiopia" UNIA Anthem

Paul Robeson, "Ol Man River" (Showboat)

Mahalia Jackson, "We Shall Overcome"

Public Enemy "Fight the Power"

Student Blog Post: Response to Shana Redmond's Anthem, by Candice Robinson

Lift Every Voice and Sing

“Within the African diaspora, music functions as a method of rebellion, revolution, and future vision…” – Shana Redmond

I have been waiting on Anthem: Social movements and the sound of solidarity in the African diaspora by Shana Redmond all semester based on my interests in social movements, solidarity, and traditionally black organizations. Like all the works of the semester, there is a variety of things that we can unpack that this work directly recognizes. These broad themes include:

1.     The transnational nature of music throughout the African diaspora and other countries;

a.     discussed since starting the semester with The Black Atlantic, seen in more detail in Chapter 1 “From Race to Nation: ‘Ethiopia’ and Pan-African Pageantry in the UNIA,” and Chapter 6 “Sounds of Exile: ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ I Afrika’ and ANC Ambassadors”

2.     Use of language/writing

a.     discussed during our sessions on notes on poetics with special interest to Langston Hughes, and Chapter 3 “Songs of Free Men: The Sound Migrations of Ol’ Man River’”

3.     Impact of gender;

a.     discussed in part by The Muse is Music, Dragon Can’t Dance, in chapter 4 “Women’s Work: ‘We Shall Overcome’ and the Culture of the Picket Line,” and Chapter 5 “Soul Intact: CORE, Conversations, and Covers of ‘To Be Young, Gifted, and Black’”

4.     Impact and reverberation of black music;

a.     discussed in part by Black Resonance, The Music is Music, and in the Conclusion: “The Last Anthem: Resonance, Legacy, and Loss at the Close of the Century”

5.     Performance

a.     Discussed all semester and throughout the chapters, with special attention of this discussion in Chapter 2 “Extending Diaspora: THE NAACP and Up-“Lift” Cultures in the Interwar Black Pacific”  

While each of these points are enlightening, I would like to focus on Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing (here on referred to as Lift) and contemporary anthems that serve as rallying cries for change. While I make note of these 5 points, what other points do you think are essential Race, Writing, and Sound that are brought up in this text?

Redmond begins her discussion of Lift in Chapter 2, but acknowledges the song throughout the entire book. The origins of the song predate the NAACP, but specifically non-black supporters (Joel E. Spingarn, Mary White Ovington, and Rabbi Stephen Wise) of the organization saw the importance of a national song to brand themselves as a form of solidarity and collective prayer despite emerging class cleavages among Black Americans (66-68). At its creation, the NAACP wildly held bourgeoisie morality and respectability politics which could have easily altered the reception of Lift. James Weldon Johnson’s southern roots are seen as a way to ease some of these Northern tensions. How can respectability politics alter the receptive nature of music? Distancing from bourgeoisie morality seems interested when thinking about the way Langston Hughes ensured his work had a working class sentiment. Does the class or geographical background of an anthem change the response? How does Lift allow us an opportunity build solidarity through remembrance?

While the words of the song should not be forgotten, I would instead like to spend time thinking about the performance of the song. Below are 3 ways in which Lift is performed, all brought together by the words, but still very different. Thinking about the listening exercise we have done this semester, what do you hear the sonic doing that’s different in each of these performances? Also while thinking about the performances, think about the passages in which Johnson is asked about the proper way to perform these songs (78-80). Do the performers sing as suggested by Johnson, “In singing the last stanza of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ the first six lines should be sung softly; the next two lines, the long lines, should be sung with a gradual crescendo; and the last three lines should be sung fortissimo”? Finally, while looking at these performances, how is Lift an anthem that belongs to those within the Black diaspora. As Redmond states, Johnson acknowledged that the song belong to the race and not him, in what ways can we continue to make these anthem “ours”? In the opening of each of these performances are a few of my thoughts:

1.     

This first performance of Lift is at the conclusion of a program (as opposed to the beginning of the program like many national anthems). This performance is done at a PWI, but it appears to be in largely black space where people are familiar with the song. Dr. Rudolph P. Byrd asks everyone to stand, something that Johnson acknowledged as customary of this song. This version is more closely related to my idea of this song. All three stanzas of the song are performed and words are provided for the audience.

2.     

This second performance by Ray Charles is one I was previously unfamiliar with. This is a fun performance of the song on the Dick Cavett show. The second verse was not performed. Additionally, this performance is at a more upbeat tempo; however, Ray Charles slows down for the last few lines and ends the performance by saying Amen. This performance supports the idea that this song is also a prayer (78) and is interesting to think about Ray Charles’ fusion of gospel with soul/R&B.

3.     This third performance is by the Mizzou University Singers and friends. Another thing to think about is what purpose is the performance of this song serving. Here, it is seen as “a moment of beauty in a sea of emotion” following racial tensions on the campus in the Fall of 2015. This is performed standing with linked arms, interracially, and the words available to the singers. All stanzas are performed.

University of Missouri Singers

While Lift is a classic black anthem that reminds of us of our ancestors, it may not have the same rally cry that newer songs have. Does Lift have the same impact as being able to scream “We Shall Overcome,” “To Be Young Gifted and Black,” “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” “Fight the Power,” or “We Gon’ Be Alright”? I overwhelming see contemporary protest songs as pep talks to let Blacks know that we are great despite the world saying otherwise. In thinking about Lift, what does it do sonically different than contemporary Anthems? Additionally, many of the contemporary songs come from artists with working class backgrounds and sentiments, does class change the way we digest these anthems?

Other questions I was thinking about and hope to discuss more during our class discussion are the following:

1.     

What are some of your experiences with Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing? Do you remember the first time you were introduced to this anthem?

2.     What is currently your favorite protest anthem and/or rallying cry?