Student Blog Post on Emily J Lordi's Black Resonance: Le'Mil Eiland

Literary historian and critic, Emily Lordi, begins Black Resonance with a theoretical reevaluation. Lordi writes, “I propose a theoretical revaluation of the relationship between music and writing in black expressive culture by staging singers and writers as collaborators in the creation of twentieth-century black aesthetics” (8). This intentional revaluation prompts a historiographical intervention on the privileging of black musical traditions over literary practices. Simply put, Lordi advocates for a musical-literary reciprocity. This dialectical relationship centers Black women’s “intellectual labor.” Focusing on black women’s performance practices, across two generations, allows Lordi to intervene on music’s masculinist musical biases. Through Lordi’s case studies, Black women are not celebrated as muses for literary work-in a contemporary hood vernacular, “they puttin’ in that work.” Writing in the tradition of Daphne Brooks’ Bodies in Dissent and Jayna Brown’s Babylon Girls, Lordi exalts Black women’s artistic/technical aesthetic choices to “value of black women’s creativity…” (4). In addition to repositioning black women, Lordi makes a novel theoretical and methodological provocation: “…writings about music occupy the middle space [between literary and vocal practice]” (5). This provocation allows Lordi to argue that music writings provide a lexicon to illuminate vocal and literary practices. For the purposes of this blog, I will only work through two case studies, in efforts to pose some provocations (of my own that are implicit in Lordi’s project) and consider the interdisciplinary implications on theatre and performance studies (i.e. my scholarly research).

Whereas I think vivid lyricism provides an important lens to reengage Smith’s work, I struggle with (what I perceived as) the generous reconsideration of Wright’s film Native Son. For Lordi, vivid lyricism is “the practice of exploiting the sound of language to enhance visual description” (31). Wright’s proclaimed vivid lyricism in Smith’s vocality illuminates how “social exclusion might yield uniquely intense, musical visions of the world” (31).

BESSIE SMITH’S BACKWATER BLUES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXShOJVwaM

And for the most part I was on board with Lordi’s analysis of vivid lyricism in Wright’s work. In general, I was unclear about two of Lordi’s claims: “Wright’s embodiment of his protagonist align these female characters more closely with the author” (44) and “By drawing Wright into alignment with Native Son’s singers, the film revises Wright’s own performance of black masculinity” (45). By positioning these women to Bigger/Wright, Lordi posits the film unsettles his carefully constructed persona of the stoic black male exile. Yet, I was unclear about that claim based on the notion that “Bessie and Hannah are no longer tethered to Bigger’s consciousness…” (45). Is this a reflection of Wright’s artistic intentionality or genre conventions? The development of female characters that are separate from Bigger’s conscious seems like a genre convention (or maybe I’m misreading this). Lordi makes this intentional shift in decoupling Wright’s mis/readings and troubling gender politics in Native Son (fiction).

In Chapter Two, Lordi couples Mahalia Jackson and Ralph Ellison through the concept of sincere ambivalence. For Lordi, ambivalence is the integrative practice which conveys conflicting ideas or emotions (68). These multiple ideas and emotions reflect a timbre of sincerity that do not alternate but instead coexist. This double-ness in performance permits the telling of multiple truths.

Mahalia Jackson’s SUMMERTIME/MOTHERLESS CHILD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc2vVPV_ZTQ

Through the “timbre of sincerity,” Jackson is able to sustain “affirmative and subversive attitudes towards ‘Summertime’” (79).  In particular, I am interested in how space informs notions of sincerity. Ellison argued that the church was the location where Jackson should be heard. By focusing on Jackson’s vocal performance how can we reconsider how blackness and black aesthetics traverse black spaces and black sites? Even though Ellison advocated for a reverse crossover effect, by affirm the black church, he misses an opportunity to complicate the relationship with black space and black expression. How can the practice of “timbre of sincerity” respond/expand/or complicate DuBois’ concept of “double consciousness?”

In Chapter Three, we examine understatement with James Baldwin, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Understatement, as a practices, allows for artists to privilege black listeners. Understatement seems to traffic in phenomenology, because more than “commonly held assumptions,” understatement is build upon listening and experience. I push further beyond assumptions because understatement seems inclusive of experienced abjection and suffering. Can we listen for understatement in Billie Holiday’s Billie’s Blues?

Billie Holiday’s Billie’s Blues

Larger Thoughts:

In your responses, you can address any of the chapters, I will incorporate your thoughts into my Tuesday presentation. I am also curious about the ways in which instrumentality, space, and technologies (inclusive of literary writing practice) form and impact sonic practices. What are your thoughts on this? Also, how does Lordi use of musical writing alter how we listen? Is something lost when vocal performance is structured through literary analysis? Furthermore, in thinking about Nikki Giovanni and Aretha Franklin, in relation to the Black Arts Movement and Etta James relationship with Jean Grae, how can these sonic reconsiderations benefit contemporary artists like Lil’ Kim? Lil’ Kim’s artistic skill has always been challenged due to the acknowledgment that Biggie wrote her earlier lyrics. However, focusing on her sonic performance could potentially reframe discussions typically shaped by visual performances (ex. clothing and sexuality)..

Lil’ Kim Video

Larger Implications of Lordi’s work in my field

In the field of theatre and performance studies, I am currently interested in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ (BJJ) An Octoroon (2014). BJJ’s contemporary play is a revisionist adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859) about racial anxieties regarding miscegenation. It is important to mention that BJJ maintains Boucicault’s plot, characters, and dramaturgical structure (form). Textually, it is clear that BJJ is challenging the racist and sexist underpinnings that traffic Boucicault’s Victorian melodrama. But what is interesting is the way the sonic articulates itself in BJJ’s contemporary adaptation. During the prologue of this contemporary reenactment, A$AP Rocky’s “Fu*kin’ Problems” plays. In thinking through this play, Lordi’s Resonance presents a divergent opportunity to ponder about the relationship with sonic performances with dramatized literary works. Although there will not be enough time to discuss this. I think this pushes the parameters of musical-literary reciprocity.

“A$AP Rocky’s “Fu*kin’ Problems”