In Meta DuEwa Jones’s The Muse Is Music, the act of
representation in its various modes and how this representation challenges
reading and writing practices and counters sexist and heteronormative notions
of jazz are central themes in the analysis of jazz(-influenced) poetry. I’m
interested in how Jones highlights both writing and performance as mediums
through which to translate jazz onto the poetic page, bringing a focus to the
body of the text as well as the body of the poet. Since it’s familiar to the
class already, I thought I’d start with Langston Hughes. Last week, looking at Fine Clothes to the Jew, we noted the
poem “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret,” particularly the moment in which the
speaker slips into multilingualism:
“May I?
Mais oui?
Mien gott!
Parece una rumba.
Play it, jazz band!
You’ve got seven languages to speak
in
And then some,
Even if you do come from Georgia.”
(Hughes, Fine Clothes 74)
This moment sticks out as
pointing to an international appeal of jazz. A similar impulse can be found in Ask Your Mama, particularly in the
section “Ride, Red, Ride.” Within the body of the poem we see the incorporation
of French and Spanish, as well as references to Mont Pelée in Martinique
(invoking the French Caribbean), Patrice Lumumba (first Congolese Prime
Minister), and Granada (last Muslim stronghold in Moorish Spain) (Hughes, The Collected Poems 482-483). Ask Your Mama also asks us to consider
how we read with the incorporation of marginalia (Jones 62-64). Do we read it
against the text as musical direction for the poem or as part of the poem when
read horizontally across blank space? In “Ride, Red, Ride,” this “marginalia”
works in concert with the text of the poem, once again pointing to an
international prominence of jazz, invoking Latin American and Caribbean music
while also returning to the American South. Yet Hughes, in his recording of Ask Your Mama, omits these cues from his
reading (Jones 63). While this could point to them solely being musical cues,
Jones also points out that these musical cues are highly poetic in their
construction and contribute to the political implications of the text (62-63),
begging the question of whether these political implications are fully realized
without the recognition of the text. Take for example a performance of “Ride,
Red, Ride” by The Langston Hughes Project. Does
the music do the same work in conjunction with the poem as the musical cue? What
do the differences between the text as we read it and the text as it is
performed indicate about a poetry steeped in jazz (or any other music for that
matter)?
Langston Hughes Project:
“Red, Ride, Red”
This question of how text and
performance also comes into focus with the Coltrane poems, in particular
Cornelius Eady’s “Alabama, c. 1963: A Ballad by John Coltrane” and Sonia
Sanchez’s “a/coltrane/poem.” In discussing “Alabama, c. 1963,” Jones points to
the interplay between the performance of the text and the performance of the
poet in incorporating Coltrane’s “Alabama.” The opening gesture of the poem, the
reference to long and lost breaths could point to Coltrane’s breaths, the
breaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the performance styles of both
Coltrane instrumentally in “Alabama” and Eady vocally in his “Alabama, c. 1963”
(Jones 109). This multiple meaning is significant as it points to Eady
emulating Coltrane not just in terms of writing but in his bodily performance.
Eady’s text as well as controlled reading style act as a mute, altering the
resonance of the poem without taking away its intensity (Jones 111).
John Coltrane: “Alabama”
Cornelius Eady: “Emmett
Till’s Glass-Top Casket”
When looking at Sonia Sanchez’s
“a/coltrane/poem,” the text likewise becomes a manner in which to emulate
Coltrane, although in this case orthographically. Jones details Sanchez’s use
of repetitive arrangement of letters and altering capital and lower-case
letters as a textual representation of Coltrane’s use of multiphonics, making
multiple tones sound simultaneously (102). This textual representation of
Coltrane can also be viewed as challenging the gendered representations that
accompany jazz. The textual representation of Coltrane’s sound grounds Sanchez
as instrumentalist, combating the masculinist discourse around jazz which
conflates instrumental virtuosity with masculine virility (Jones 135). Further,
in asserting “yo / fight is my fight,” Sanchez decenters masculinity while
asserting the political nature of Coltrane’s music.
As mentioned earlier, similar
questions I have regarding Hughes’s Ask
Your Mama and the performance of it emerge when examining Eady and
Sanchez’s Coltrane poems. Relating the structure of the poems (and even the
performance of them) back to Coltrane almost necessitates a knowledge of
Coltrane. Sanchez admits this herself when talking about “a/coltrane/poem.”
Sonia Sanchez on “a/coltrane/poem”
Sanchez’s laments regarding
“a/coltrane/poem” mirror Jones’s relaying that many critics saw the typography
as, “at best, evidence of a lack of aesthetic appeal and, at worst, evidence of
poor craftsmanship” (103). This raises questions regarding Eady and Sanchez’s
work, but also questions regarding jazz poetry (and any music-based poetry in
general) that I’ll leave the class with: do
we need a working knowledge of Coltrane’s work for these poems to resonate with
us? Given the intertextuality of music-based poems, how should we judge them?
By how they incorporate/represent the music, how they interact with criticism,
or simply on “the value of the poem”? Do we hold a different standard for the
bodily performance than the written text? I’m excited to hear your
thoughts.
The Muse is Music resonated with me this week in reference to the use of black women in a variety of contexts, but especially in reference to music. Jones askes the question (and Imani asked a similar question at the beginning of the semester): “What is the black in black poetics?” (5). This may be something we need to revisit based on the discussion of Hughes last week and in the inclusion of this topic in Muse is Music. Jones also asks about the use of tradition in music. Are we capable of moving beyond traditions in music? I wonder how black women are steeped in the tradition of black poetics and music.
ReplyDeleteIn my comment from last week, I reference James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing; when I think about that as a Black National Anthem, I get chills whenever I hear a black women leading the room in the song. I get the same chills when hearing sorority hymns led by older black women, their voice give a certain calm and sincerity in the words their singing that I don’t get when hearing from other voices. This may be related to the expectations of traditions and growing up among black women who were trained in the church.
Muse is Music makes me concerned and wonder about the use of black women, whether or not we are empowered by bringing an additional life to words on a page or are further exploited by persons who are not black women. Malcolm asked what do the difference between the text as we read it and the text as it is performed indicate about poetry steeped in jazz. I feel as though black women bring a life to music that is often not replicated, not just jazz but other musical forms. I think of Billie Holidays “Strange Fruit,” written by a Jewish man, but brought to life and memorialized by her performance and Aretha Franklin singing “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” written by Carole King, but brought to a new life with the voice of Aretha. A fact that Carole King notes that really only Aretha can do justice to that song. In these cases, it’s easy and familiar to acknowledge the originating voice; however, black women’s voices are often disjointed from their bodies. This makes me wonder, what kind of life does black women give to words on a written page? I would argue that black women’s voice are used as a commodity, especially in cases in which no one else could do the song justice. Additionally, in my own interests, what are the classed elements of the works we discuss in class?
I do believe that we hold a different standard for the bodily performance than written text. With written texts, you can be as creative as you want in the readings and interpretations. Unless you openly discuss the interpretations, there is little push back. However, the performance of works is held at a different standard because it may be in opposition in the ways in which we expect text to be performed (if we have previously read the text). Even if we go back to read words following seeing a performance, we may feel as though the performance is not in line with our expectations. Beyonce’ dropping her
“Formation” video is an example of this. I watched and listened to her performance, but after reading the words I was in slight opposition of how it should have actually been performed.
My major question that will probably carry over throughout the weeks is how does class complicate our racialized understandings of texts?
-Candice C. Robinson
A Meditation on “When Malindy Sings: A Mediation on Black Women’s Vocality”
ReplyDeleteI was sitting watching the super bowl yesterday (more specifically watching Lady Gaga sing the Nation Anthem), and, after reading Griffin’s article, I was thinking a lot about the musical performances. In the beginning passage, Griffin points to various black women singing the National Anthem during the Super Bowls, inaugural events, political events, and after tragedy. She makes this claim that the black woman’s voice initiates a challenge to assessing what American culture means, all while serving as the representative of “communicating black frustration, anger, aspiration, and hope.” (103)
When I think of black female singers, I think of soul. I think of the crescendos, the elongated trills in octaves, and I think of that bass-like vibrato which arises from the diaphragm. There is a power within their voices and cadence. Historically, as Griffin points out, the black femal voice identifies an epiphytic moment within literature in relation to discovering artistic potential. And, as Griffin observes, “voices create an aural space where listeners can mentally experiences themselves as outside of themselves, as ‘home’ or as ‘free.’ This space can be simultaneously political, spiritual, and sensual.” (111)
As musical trends have shifted, how has the black female voice changed in tandem? What would Griffin say about an icon like Beyoncé and her blonde hair, performing in harmony with Coldplay and Bruno Mars singing about intangible concepts like “hope, peace, love, and togetherness”? What message do performances like these communicate when there are still social justice movements like Black Lives Matter? What would Gilroy have to say about her authenticity as a black musical performer?
If we look at Griffin’s archetype of the matriarchal figure synonymous with Black female signers, do we still see “Mothers of the Nation” or rather, has this ideology changed?
Daphne Brooks’ introduction to Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, articulates a black aesthetic of oddness and eccentricity that operates oppositionally to damning and limiting transatlantic constructions of blackness in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This reactionary aesthetic ultimately registers the “wedding social estrangement with aesthetic experimentation and political marginalization with cultural innovation,” as a tool by which, “resourceful cultural workers envisioned a way to transform the uncertainties of (black) self-knowledge into literal and figurative acts of self-liberation” (3). Brooks follows this with the example of the Henry Box Brown and Adah Isaacs Menken, both used the visual spectacle of blackness to free themselves and to affirm their identities respectively. Between Brooks and Menken, Brooks points to the interesting intersection between the spectacle and black bodies. Spectacle speaks from the position of an audience member, it inherently affirms a gaze constructed by the audience member. This spectacle and the gaze attached to it embody the dominant cultural understandings, thus the display affirms cultural notions and desires (Griffith’s article explores this idea even more thoroughly). However, Brooks enters this power play between the viewed and the gaze by seeking ways to understand black bodies in spectacle outside of these contraints. Asking framing questions like, how does the spectacle work when thinking of black agency? How can blacks use this spectacle to subvert, poke at, and full on question the system? Brooks explores Afro Alienation Acts as a possible place for this type of exploration citing, “The potential of unruly performance to articulate heterogonous identities” (4). Defined as “the condition of alterity (being outside, other, alternate) converts into cultural expressiveness and specific strategy of cultural performance,” with the goal of “render(ing) racial and gender ‘strange’ and thus to ‘disturb’ cultural perceptions of identity formation” (5) In this way the spectacle of blackness reverts the gaze and stares back into the audience.
ReplyDeleteThis idea blends beautifully into Farah Jasmine Griffith’s article, “When Malady Sings: A Meditation on Black Women’s Vocality,” and the ways Griffith explores the dual usages of the image of black women singing as tools for nationhood both for America and within the New World black nation. “Black audiences endowed them with the responsibility of communicating black frustration, anger, aspiration, and hope. . . The voice and spectacle of the singing black woman has been used to suggest a peacefully interracial version of America” (102-104). As Griffith explored the ways in which black women’s voices are sites of origin and resistance, I was struck by the ways in which it felt that black women’s voices seemed perpetually attached to a masculinist narrative of either silencing/placating minority groups, or voicing the male gendered resistance. While acknowledging this space of origin as ultimately a space of power, I wonder at Miles Davis’ connection to an anonymous church woman crooning to Jesus through the spook filled woods. I wonder at ways in which the disembodied voice that signifies blackness and particularly black womanness is always connected to a body. What does it mean for the black female body to be used as either tool for resistance or for America political make believe? This line of questioning makes me think very specifically of Meta DuEwa Jones’ The Muse is Music and Jones’ initial musing on voice as embodied in the trickster figure in African American literature, and the ways in which “the many valences of voice during slavery that endured its aftermath include veiling and unveiling strategies to achieve authority; they also include resistant and submissive performances of race, class, and gender” (2). As we trace black women’s vocality through jazz and other forms, I am interested in the ways in which veiling and unveiling works within their art. Also, how can we talk about black women’s vocality in way that breaks it from the mythicizing of Griffith’s understanding of origin? Can we understand this vocality in another way?
DeleteAs I picked up the book “The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to spoken word” I looked up the word Muse to refresh my memory. To my surprise I found that muse meant “a women, or force personified as a women, who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.” It was interesting to see that the author chose this title especially because Black women have been inspirational to the music scene since the start of the states. And as described by Griffin, “These various images (referring to the list of black women that the author presented in their article) demonstrate the way the black women’s voice can be called upon to heal crisis in national unity as well as provoke one”
ReplyDeleteI enjoy this class very much for several reasons, which include, but are not limited to, discovering new artist and songs as well as seeing old videos that demonstrate clearly how these artists sounded and looked. After going through Griffin’s piece I had never heard of Marian Anderson so I youtubed the scene that they were explaining. What I saw was interesting in that the power that Marian had to really bring together so many people. What I also found very awesome was that as she was singing the cameraman got several shots of young Black children in the front row. And just seeing them at the event made me feel good. It was not as though Mrs. Anderson was just performing for a whole white crowd.
Other thoughts that came to mind as I was reading these articles was the idea that “black people have likened themselves to birds” (Griffin, p.107) and I quickly thought about R. Kelly’s song “I believe I can fly.” In addition Griffin ends her piece by bringing this image of a butterfly and stating that their beauty is born of fierce, difficult, and dangerous struggle. She adds that “for a time, free before returning to a reality that might be filled with danger and struggle. This quote reminded me of Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp a Butterfly” and the way he ended it by reciting a poem that he shares to Tupac Shakur. The title reminds me that even if artists are on the top of their game producing great music, there are those that will take advantage of them, those that sign their checks, those that own these big music corporations.