Below is a music video from DJ Dangermouse’s The Grey Album. It’s blending of the Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album was controversial in the sense that it pirated music from both artists. But what it succeeds in doing is translating black music through white authenticity. If we think about music’s evolution being a blend of various influences rooted deeply in historical importance, what are we to take away from new genres as they emerge?
(DJ Dangermouse, The Grey Album-Encore)
This begs the question: in what ways is blackness communicated? Kevin Young introduces the idea of storying in which black artists use form and content in a “counterfeit tradition” which embellishes on the plight of black life through dichromatic themes. “Black writers,” as Young claims “create their own authority in order to craft their own alternative system of literary currency and value….functioning both within and without the dominant, supposed gold-standard system of American culture.” (24) He presents this idea of the “trickster” in tandem with this narrative tradition, where the act of storying “provides an easing of passage” (30) between white and black audiences.
Storying as means of communication in its most primitive form, is both an aural and oral tradition. Storying, in both music and literature is fragmented experience which has evolved and changed in tandem to societal and political movements, however, it is important to stress that these works are rooted in the spiritual gospels of the antebellum South.
Young observes Paul Laurence Dunbar and Langston Hughes’ choice of using dialect in their poetry. Of course the common misconception in such experimental writing is that the Negro dialect is a lesser form connotative with unintelligence and was met with negative response. But what’s interesting is that Young notes that writing in Black vernacular was a linguistic display to communicate racial difference where “classicism is a form of defense.” (122) As Blues becomes engrained with American pop culture, the marriage of the negro spiritual and blackness becomes redefined. Hughes seizes this opportunity to return to his roots thus using vernacular to translate the commonality of the black struggle—through controversial characters such as the prostitute, the abusive drunkard, the gambler, etc—in relation to the great migration of Black Americans to the North.
With the emergence of jazz in America, we see the birth of Afro-modernity. Black artists use creativity to answer the call of what it means to be black. Art becomes more abstract in performance, but nonetheless effective in communicating political discourse (whether intentionally or not). In her song “Strange Fruit” Billie Holliday uses her song as political platform against the injustice of Black Americans in the South. Her song is revolutionary in the sense that it empowered a black woman’s voice through technology. Young points out that “Holiday’s song and storying provide a new kind of grammar…not just reworking or ‘recomposing’ a tune, but also rewriting the notion of how we sing.” (225)
(Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit)
Similarly, writer and composer (and musical prodigy) Mary Lou Williams is another example of an artist who uses her music as a way to correspond social and political response. Though her music was largely abstract, Williams made a conscious point to support the black community through performing for local politicians. Farah Jasmine Griffin observes that “Williams passion for racial and economic justice was as spiritually driven as it was politically motivated.” (140) It’s important to note that many of Williams’ actions were motivated by a desire of spiritual enlightenment—something Griffin infers that Williams never found. In 1943 Williams starts to compose her masterpiece Zodiac Suite where it is later referred to as “a series of vividly evocative tone poems in the jazz idiom.” (165) Again we see Williams attempt at finding spirituality through music and literal astrology.
Mary Lou Williams, Zodiac Suite--Aries
Yona Harvey’s interpretation to Zodiac Suite is interesting in it’s composition in response to Williams’ music. For sake of time and space on this post I will look at the first stanza “Aries” in comparison to William’s song. The music begins first with a playful melody (much like ragtime) for seven seconds then blending into gospel like chords, the performance seems hymnal but the melody is no longer recognizable. “Elusive little g-o-d-/shoot above frost” (17) Then, the chords blend back into upbeat tempo much like Ellington’s train songs, but then, a minute in, the audience is given dissonant keys, and the tone and structure begin to waver to a fractured and trailing sadness. “Air in crocus throat/&therein my mother” (17) Finally, in this trailing dissonance where there seems to be no resolve, the piano booms and crashes like thunder in an arraying of keys and octaves that call and respond to another and we wait in this fragmented sound waiting for resolution to come. “[My first, my prayer, my hurdle]” (17)
Yona Harvey is definitely not the first to write poetry in response to music. We’ve looked at Amiri Baraka write about Coltrane. We’ve seen Hughes’ blues poems. But I still have not come away with a clear idea of how music is translated into poetry and how, as Young constantly refers to as storying is communicated within a contemporary lens. Does something inherently get lost in the message? Are we to read these interpretations differently? As society changes how does the story change both sonically and visually?
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteI thin you're right to focus on storying and asking the question "In what ways is blackness communicated." These seem to be the central questions of The Grey Album, and I'm still waiting to better understand what exactly storying is, in particular when separated from language.
Young is particularly interested in the relationship between storying and truth/troof. Young writes (in book 1 under the heading "SAY WHO: THE TROOF"--my kindle edition won't display page numbers for some reason) "We don't need proof that we exist and can write and are literature; we need 'troof,' a funky, vernacular truth that doesn't answer to white-based or any other preconceptions of black reality."
This reminded me of other writers, including Jaji, who talked about the monopoly of white people on "rationality," which has been wielded as a racial weapon, to justify white supremacy and imperialism. It would seem that Young here is looking to "storying" through literature, folktale, and yes, even music, to speak back against the racist constructions of rationality and independent verifiability as measures of truth.
I can follow all this, and I'm on board with the idea that literature, though "not true" speaks truths beyond what can be spoken/written under the umbrella of rational, verifiable "fact," and I agree that other forms of art like music can do the same thing, but the "how" of it all is I think what you're asking about and that's also what I failed to really pick up on in The Grey Album. But the close readings of music like the ones you've listed above are helpful in determining how this happens.
As a graduate student/teacher of English, I responded most to Young's discussions of literature and literacy. His explanation of how black men and women were able to use literacy, as well as their presumed illiteracy, to counterfeit their way to freedom--through forged notes that let them do anything from check out library works to travel freely in the South.
There's something going on in this book that is really quite profound. Young is demonstrating the power of literacy, but in a particular way, and with an expanded understanding of what literacy actually is. Alice Walker is connected to Zora Neale Hurston through her writing, and is able to story that she is her niece with conviction, and the black men and women she encounters seem to be able to read/understand/perceive what that connection means--that she both is and isn't kin to Zora--through their ability to read signs like the honorifics/lack of honorifics Walker uses, for example. Young simultaneously celebrates the importance of the literary while also demonstrating the importance of being a part of a community.
I'm not sure if I'm being totally clear here. I found Young's text intriguing and a bit challenging at times. He writes so naturally and his easy way of writing conveys such authority that it was hard for me to critique what he was saying throughout the text. I think and hope that I've at least understood storying and its unique position in relation to troof. I hope your presentation goes into the way sound/music story, too. Looking forward to hearing from you!
I found the grouping of this week’s readings particularly provocative. In reading “Rollin with Mary Lou Williams,” what stood out to me was Mary Lou’s constant movement from one point of her life and artistic career to the next. In a way she really seemed to embody the changing musical scene she traversed in her life. Williams “created her own family and community”(150), never really “settled down” with a man and she was, as Young alludes to as well, looking for a spiritual enlightenment that she perhaps never found—although this is debatable, as Harlem Nocturne also tells us, while Williams operated in the “secular world” of show business and jazz, “the jazz world itself was nonetheless characterized by its own expressions of the spirit”(164). This may begin to get at the fuzzy bridge between music and poetry that Caitlyn brings up.
ReplyDeleteBeing primed with the text about Mary Lou Williams, really effected my reading of Yona Harvey’s Hemming the Water. I was familiar with a couple of these poems before reading the entire collection, but knowing the relation of the text to the work and life of Mary Lou Williams (and both Harvey and Williams’ Pittsburgh ties) made for a more in-depth reading experience. I am still particularly struck (and haunted) by the particular pairing of the two opening epigraphs of the book. The quotes “…I didn’t have no religion. But I didn’t want my parents to look bad,” and “The resilience in you comes from your artistry…the way your mind is put together and the fact that you cannot desert your children,” by Mary Lou Williams and Ruth Stone, respectively, really amplified the themes of womanhood—especially of a particular region, for me (and I can’t ignore the fact that one woman is black and one is white). On their own these quotes are provocative, but pairing them together had me thinking about the effect that womanhood, motherhood, and family (and the sexism experienced in each of these) have on artistry (particularly in black, female artists).
Zoning in on poems that speak particularly to themes of the class, Chatterblue (and Turqouise on its adjacent page) really stood out to me. Chatterblue seemed to put into words the fact that [jazz and blues accolades] were often given to men, despite having feminist traditions. I use brackets there to suggest that what’s inside could be interchangeable, and this poem could stand for much more. In the way that placement of poems in Hughes’ Fine Clothes seemed intentional, this poem’s position next to Turquoise reinforced the idea of the “husband” and his manhood being celebrated in his sadness or faults or whatever their work embodies, in a way that women are not. I’m interested to know what the rest of the class’s thoughts are on this.
Further, what does the rest of the class make of the opening epigraphs? What other poems in Hemming the Water are we seeing parallels to Mary Lou Williams’ life? To the jazz tradition?
I’m interested in the idea of storying that Young puts forth, “the ‘lies’ black folks tell to amuse themselves and to explain their origins” (17), and in particular how that interacts with the notion that “the desire of all art, particularly that of African Americans, [is] for freedom of various sorts” (Young 71-72).
ReplyDeleteThe example of Phillis Wheatley was particularly powerful (especially given our recent discussion regarding her place in James Weldon Johnson’s writing). As Young states, two criticisms of Wheatley’s work often brought up are that she was “insufficiently critical of slavery” and that she was “a mockingbird of sorts, less an artist than a copyist…merely imitative” (Young 68). However, neither of these criticisms are sufficient for Young. They don’t allow for Wheatley to “protest her condition on her own terms” (Young 70). In fact, it doesn’t allow for the act of writing itself to function as it did for other slaves. Wheatley’s writings allowed her to travel to Europe, granting her a certain degree of freedom (Young 72). In this way Wheatley’s acknowledged literacy functions much like other slaves’ presumed illiteracy, working to fashion her a free pass.
This is also something that comes up in the discussion of Paul Laurence Dunbar and his use of dialect in poetry. Young makes sure to note that Dunbar used dialect not in place of form but as “a form to be used when it suited the mood he wanted to convey” (Young 112). This is something expanded upon in comparing Dunbar’s “A Death Song” and “Compensation.” In “A Death Song,” the music is the message, dialect granted its space here (Young 113-114). This seems grounded in that definition of storying as explaining origins. “A Death Song” brings the reader back to a number of origins: the return to the earth is the most obvious one taken from the content, and in that sense the return to a music and a dialect form aids Dunbar. This discussion of Dunbar brings me back to our discussion on Hughes, of why Hughes would use the blues as a poetic form and incorporate dialect even if he isn’t going to read it exactly as it appears on the page. Caitlyn in this post notes a return to roots (it’s interesting how origins get tied to land even in vernacular). In this sense, the idea that the music is the message, that the dialect is being given its space, speaks to a different kind of freedom. Much like Wheatley and other slaves negotiated forms of freedom through writing, Dunbar and later Hughes utilize dialect as a way to find freedom through art. Young notes this freedom when discussing Black English (which he’s also firm to make sure we don’t confuse with “dialect”): “African American vernacular is often spoken to confuse…it seeks to divide: black from white…yet another means by which the supposedly conquered instead became the conqueror” (Young 129).
With this in mind, I think one of the questions becomes where we see storying in Yona Harvey’s Hemming the Water. Is it in the turn to Mary Lou Williams, the way in which we can see origins being negotiated by going back to well-known figures? I’m particularly interested in how we might read “Communion with Mary Lou Williams” with storying in mind. How do the numerous addresses of “Dear Composer, Dear Mother…Dear Plays Like a Man…Dear Holy Spirit, Dear Glory, Dear Daughter of the Imperfect Mother,” (Harvey 42-43) an exploration of origins? Can we read the desire “a low down connection. / Boogie-woogie promise / of call & response” (Harvey 44) as that search for freedom so important to Young?
Caitlyn,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy “storying” as praxis. I found myself pondering over your provocation regarding if something is inherently lost through the contemporary message. For me, storying is about working within and outside of form. In Young’s words, “…storying also counters the ongoing reflexive desire in our culture for ‘realness’ in all its forms” (34). The openness of forms allows Young to engage in a very musically composed text tracking blackness through varying modalities. However, it isn’t so much about losing something in the message as it is pushing, expanding, and defining the form. From the literary and the musical we can consider how these black artists worked against the form. I was also return to another one of Young’s points: “Throughout, I am interested in the ways in which black folks use fiction in its various forms to free themselves from the bounds of fact” (34). Storying presents an opportunity to acknowledge an intentional aesthetic practice. Black cultural producers intentionally broke convention for aesthetic and political means. And in doing so they defined an American aesthetic.
Music and literary products operate as differing modalities of cultural production. By placing them in dialogue, I considered how artists worked across genre. In particular, I was struck by Young’s deployment of the blues in the Chapter on Dunbar. “Perhaps it is not that Dunbar is natural but ‘neutral’—the musical term for the tones that some would call blue” (124). These blue notes occur in the breaks-between Standard English and dialect, pathos and humor, and comedy and tragedy. Blues, in this capacity, sits in the break. Theorizing from this blues aesthetic, Young considers how it traffics through Black vernacular and the Black musical form. Although Young did not go into detail about the musically of vernacular speech, I thought about, not just grammatical innovations, but rhythmic sensibilities of vernacular speech and music. Nevertheless, there can be multiple interpretations, yet as Young posits, “What I am calling for here is for us, as readers, to be effective code switchers, moving with ease, elegance, and recognition…” (145). Even through Young is explicitly commenting on Dunbar, his comments provide scope for thinking across forms and how knowledge and knowing are coded and transmitted. And by recognizing the tensions moving between dialects and other forms “drives black poetics, and in the end, the vernacular itself” (145). Young’s provocation situates various form in a dialectic relationship with black poetics and vernacular.