Pub Date : 2016-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0001
Sabia McCoy-Torres
“Puerto Limón hands in the air!” The DJ shouted into the microphone in Spanish inflected with a West Indian accent. It was reggae night at Ebony, a San Jose nightclub, in January 2012, and the DJ was calling all limonenses to raise their hands and celebrate their hometown on the dance floor. This form of address had additional significance. In Costa Rica, the Caribbean coastal province Limón—whose capital is Puerto Limón—has historically been associated with the country’s Afro-Caribbean population: the descendants of immigrant laborers mostly of Jamaican origin. Although today Limón is racially mixed, the historic formation of the province, widely referred to as el caribe (the Caribbean), is such that in the popular imagination to claim limonense is also to claim black racial identity and Afro-Caribbean culture. That night, the DJ was invoking both black and Caribbean identities in the multiracial, though predominantly white, space. As excitement built, a black dancer (I will call him Anthony in keeping with the English names Afro-Caribbean people tend to have) entered an empty space in the middle of the crowd and began to display his skill in dancehall reggae-style dance. Inciting improvisational challenges is central to dancehall performance practices and gives competing dance collectives and individuals the opportunity to display their ingenuity and win the admiration of spectators. In keeping with this performance practice,
{"title":"\"Cien porciento tico tico\": Reggae, Belonging, and the Afro-Caribbean Ticos of Costa Rica","authors":"Sabia McCoy-Torres","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"“Puerto Limón hands in the air!” The DJ shouted into the microphone in Spanish inflected with a West Indian accent. It was reggae night at Ebony, a San Jose nightclub, in January 2012, and the DJ was calling all limonenses to raise their hands and celebrate their hometown on the dance floor. This form of address had additional significance. In Costa Rica, the Caribbean coastal province Limón—whose capital is Puerto Limón—has historically been associated with the country’s Afro-Caribbean population: the descendants of immigrant laborers mostly of Jamaican origin. Although today Limón is racially mixed, the historic formation of the province, widely referred to as el caribe (the Caribbean), is such that in the popular imagination to claim limonense is also to claim black racial identity and Afro-Caribbean culture. That night, the DJ was invoking both black and Caribbean identities in the multiracial, though predominantly white, space. As excitement built, a black dancer (I will call him Anthony in keeping with the English names Afro-Caribbean people tend to have) entered an empty space in the middle of the crowd and began to display his skill in dancehall reggae-style dance. Inciting improvisational challenges is central to dancehall performance practices and gives competing dance collectives and individuals the opportunity to display their ingenuity and win the admiration of spectators. In keeping with this performance practice,","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127269494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0059
Chris Goertzen
“Freedom songs” is the umbrella term for the diverse body of songs adapted or composed for the civil rights movement, particularly songs in most frequent use in that struggle during the early 1960s. Many of these songs remain familiar today, among them “This Little Light of Mine,” “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round” and, of course, “We Shall Overcome.”1 Two activists—one white, one black—attest to the powerful roles freedom songs played. Veteran singer and activist Pete Seeger (2004) made the broad claim that the civil rights movement could not have succeeded without the songs. Cordell Reagon, organizer and song leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was more specific in an earlier interview with scholar Kerran Sanger (1995, 40): “The music is what held the Movement together.” Regional studies are emerging as a sound route to a more nuanced understanding of the remarkable political, demographic, and event-related complexities of civil rights history (Moye 2011). John Dittmer’s Local People:
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Pub Date : 2016-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0087
Meagan Sylvester
Ragga soca, a music indigenous to the twin island Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago, incorporates the freestyle aesthetics of hip-hop lyricists, the political critique and social commentary of calypso, the “chant down Babylon” demeanor and stagecraft of reggae and dancehall performers, and the spontaneous delivery of “biting” lyrics popular among Trinidadian extempo artists, another subgenre of calyspo. Typically, it can be loosely described as a fusion of soca and indigenous Jamaican musical forms, namely Jamaican dancehall and, to a lesser extent, reggae beats and soca rhythms. From my knowledge of the music industry in Trinidad, having been a member of several music networks during the years 2006–16, I posit that Bunji Garlin, who began his public career in 1999, is the singular most successful and widely known ragga soca artist performing the genre today. Bunji Garlin’s ragga soca “fire” songs produced between 2004 and 2011 make use of the “fire bun dem” theme. In these, we see Garlin’s direct use of biblical verses drawn from Revelation 21:8 (which describes how hellfire will be meted out to unrepentant wrongdoers). Further, his lyrics seek to adress the punishment to be delivered to those individuals involved in profane acts against society. In 2012, I began a project to review and analyze the lyrics of his songs in an attempt to chart to what extent his ragga soca lyrics have retained any of the political and social commentary “bite” and “sting” of its progenitor,
拉格索卡是加勒比海双岛国家特立尼达和多巴哥的一种本土音乐，融合了嘻哈词作者的自由式美学、卡里普索的政治批判和社会评论、雷鬼和舞厅表演者的“吟唱巴比伦”风格和舞台技巧，以及在特立尼达快节奏艺术家(卡里普索的另一个分支)中流行的“尖刻”歌词。通常，它可以被粗略地描述为soca和牙买加本土音乐形式的融合，即牙买加舞厅，在较小程度上，雷鬼节拍和soca节奏。从我对特立尼达音乐产业的了解来看，在2006年至2016年期间，我曾是几个音乐网络的成员，我认为1999年开始他的公共事业的Bunji Garlin是当今最成功和最知名的ragga soca艺术家。Bunji Garlin在2004年至2011年间创作的ragga soca“fire”歌曲使用了“fire bun dem”主题。在这些书中，我们看到加林直接使用了启示录21:8中的圣经经文(描述了地狱之火将如何向不悔改的不法之徒释放)。此外，他的歌词试图表达对那些参与亵渎社会行为的个人的惩罚。2012年，我开始了一个项目，对他的歌词进行回顾和分析，试图找出他的ragga soca歌词在多大程度上保留了其前身的政治和社会评论的“咬”和“刺”，
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Pub Date : 2016-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.36.1.0031
David Racanelli
Before the rise of rap and hip-hop in Africa during the 1990s, the guitar reigned supreme for over a half a century as an integral instrument in syncretized forms of African jazz and popular music. It served as an indispensable resource in an array of musical styles, speaking a mutually intelligible language that transcended differences of race and ethnicity. During the 1920s and 1930s, numerous commercial recordings of West African acoustic guitar music were made, signifying the growing popularity and appeal of guitar playing in sub-Saharan Africa. However, while Kru sailors and other itinerant musicians developed and disseminated palm wine highlife idioms, including dagomba, ya amponsah, and mainline, their playing style has only tenuous ethnographic, ethno-linguistic, or musical connections to Copperbelt guitar music, which developed in Central Africa during the immediate post–World War II era. During the 1950s, distinct acoustic guitar playing styles emerged in urban mining camps and towns located along the Copperbelt, a region in Katanga in southeastern Zaïre (southern Belgian Congo) and northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Gerhard Kubik
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Pub Date : 2015-09-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.2.0149
G. Dor
Indigenous African knowledge and frameworks are increasingly gaining discursive currency in African studies and its cognate fields. While Indilinga: African Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems has exclusively been devoted to "African indigenous knowledge," for example, the 2006 book edited by David Millar, Stephen Bugu Kendie, Agnes Atia Apusigah, and Bertus Haverkort consists of thematically related articles on indigenous African knowledge that advocate development in different spheres of Africans' lives. Yet, closer to the geo-cultural focus of my article is Gbolonyo (2009), a study of forms of indigenous knowledge in Ewe musical practices. With a strong conviction about the importance of the preceding direction for African music scholarship, I write this article aiming to abstract paradigms of indigenous epistemology. Given that conferences are fertile sites for advocating new directions in scholarship, I presented this article at the Third International Symposium on the Music of Africa at Princeton University in April 2009. (2) I argue that ethnomusicology and its related disciplines will become richer when scholars rigorously and constantly explore the hermeneutical and epistemological tools that are embedded in the very African music cultures we study. They are an integral facet of indigenous knowledge and would contribute to our African-centered representation of Africa and Africans in revealing ways with added fresh insights. In this article, I examine Vinoka Akpalu's use of metaphors in (1) the nomenclature of an Ewe music genre he invented, (2) his song texts and poetry, and (3) his sayings and position on dissemination strategies of his songs. This discussion is based on my 1998-1999 and 2003 field conversations with selected Ghanaian Ewe traditional music composers, Nicholas Nayo's seminal study of Akpalu (Nayo 1964, 1973), (3) Sheshie's (1991) biographical insights on Akpalu's life and work, (4) and perspectives from Daniel Avorgbedor, Kofi Gbolonyo, Kofi Anyidoho, and James Essegbey (Anlo Ewe Africanist scholars). Also, Kobla Ladzekpo (a renowned Ghanaian master drummer from Anyako) shared perspectives that complementarily enrich this article. Further, as this article advocates the use of conceptual metaphors, an element of indigenous knowledge, as interpretive frameworks in African music scholarship, I give each of the preceding themes a critical discussion at vantage points, intended to illuminate and legitimize Akpalu's case evidence and my positioning. Interpretive Frameworks: Prevailing Practices and Landscape Although it has long been proven that the attribute of humans as knowledgeable beings is not the exclusive monopoly of certain cultural communities (Boas [1894] 1982), the place of prize and prominence given to different forms of local knowledge within the larger academic community is far from satisfactory. Admittedly, most of today's ethnomusicologists and other ethnographers have, to some extent, acknowledged the ri
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Pub Date : 2015-09-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.2.0229
Johnny Frías
The tonadas trinitarias are an Afro-Cuban musical manifestation native to Trinidad de Cuba, a town on Cuba's south-central coast. They represent a transcultural product of guajiro (1) and Bantu-derived musical practices, originating among members of Trinidad's Cabildo de San Antonio de Congos Reales in the late nineteenth century. Now confined to the local folkloric stage as tourist entertainment, in their original form they were performed by neighborhood groups of singers and drummers during nocturnal transits through the town's streets. In this article, I hope to accomplish three things. The first is to draw attention to and contribute to the gap in research on the music of Cuba's provincial areas (commonly referred to as las provincias)--particularly the central provinces--which are often sidelined in favor of research focusing on the cities of Havana, Matanzas, and Santiago. The second is to provide a comprehensive history of the origins and evolution of a local, small-scale creole (2) genre in Cuba, drawing on literary sources and the oral histories of elder musicians in Trinidad. Finally, I will assess both the positive and negative effects of state support of the tonadas trinitarias and the accompanying process of folkloricization. My conclusions are drawn primarily from fieldwork I conducted in Trinidad in 2009 for my master's thesis, during which I interviewed various local musicians involved with the tonadas trinitarias and took percussion lessons in order to learn the parts. I also attended the daily performances of the Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad, which are put on for tourists at El Palenque bar and restaurant. I met my informants through Cuban musicologist Enrique Zayas Bringas, a native of Trinidad, who encouraged me to document the tradition. Many of the musicians were longtime friends of Zayas Bringas, including members of the Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad as well as elder musicians who were no longer active participants. These elder musicians proved to be my most interesting informants, and their accounts are included here. Since the tonadas trinitarias are currently only performed in staged tourist performances and primarily by younger musicians, the elders' recollections served to paint a portrait of the tradition in its original community-oriented context. Nonetheless, the input provided by my younger informants in the Conjunto Folklorico de Trinidad allowed me to contrast their experiences with those of the elder performers and assess recent changes, such as the effects of folkloricization. The tonadas trinitarias (also referred to as simply tonadas (3)) underwent a process of folkloricization under Cuba's Revolutionary government. Hagedorn defines folkloricization as "the process of making a folk tradition folkloric," and uses the performance of Afro-Cuban religious repertoire by the state-sponsored Conjunto Folklorico Nacional in Havana as an example (2001, 12). She explains how the creation of state-sponsored folklor
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Pub Date : 2015-09-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.2.0185
D. Malcolm
In his autobiography, Dizzy Gillespie recognizes the impact racism had on his youthful behavior and acknowledges his misreading of Louis Armstrong's minstrelsy-influenced performance style: "Hell, I had my own way of Tomming. Every generation of blacks since slavery has had to develop its own way of Tomming, of accommodating itself to a basically unjust situation. ... Later on, I began to recognize what I had considered Pops's [Armstrong's] grinning in the face of racism as his absolute refusal to let anything, even anger about racism, steal the joy from his life and erase his fantastic smile" (2009, 296). Since jazz, from its origins in the early 1900s in New Orleans, was increasingly performed by black musicians for white audiences, African-American jazz musicians have often been a focal point for racial conflict in the United States, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. As Gillespie suggests, black musicians frequently dealt with racial prejudice by relying on strategies derived from African-American culture, in particular signifying, which includes a variety of rhetorical strategies including indirection, irony, and verbal disjunction. "Tomming," a reference to the eponymous character from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin ([1852] 1982), is generally used pejoratively to criticize blacks who apparently ingratiate themselves with white society by unctuous and exaggerated servility; however, this persona might equally be regarded as a form of signifyin(g), or more specifically, indirection or masking that facilitates ironic subversion. Although the guise it took in jazz performance changed from apparent submission to feigned aggression, signifying often characterized black dealings with the dominant white culture both in slavery and during the 1940s when the social changes that occurred in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century gradually began to mitigate the racist oppression African Americans had suffered for several centuries. Critical Approach The primary focus of this discussion is on the gradual decline in irony used in jazz during the first half of the twentieth century as a "political" (Gates 1988, 45) and satiric tool to attack the ideology of white supremacy. During this period, the parodic revisioning of the various elements that constitute jazz performance (e.g., musical narrativity, costume, gesture, and language), which has been a seminal characteristic of jazz since its inception, gradually achieved greater expression and became a significant factor in the emergence of bebop. A discussion of this nature is problematized by the complexity of irony and the related genres of satire and parody, the still relatively opaque nature of musical meaning, and the difficulty of tracking microlevel social change. Irony, as Linda Hutcheon argues, is "a discursive strategy operating at the level of language (verbal) or form (musical, visual, textual)" (1994, 10). It also involves, according to
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Pub Date : 2015-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.1.0097
S. Redmond
Oh! how shall I speak of my proud country's shame Of the strains on her glory, how give them their name? How say that her banner in mockery waves-Her star-spangled banner--o'er millions of slaves? --Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "Eliza Harris" (1853) I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all the chains holdin' me I wish I could say all the things that I should say Say 'em loud say 'em clear for the whole wide world to hear. --Nina Simone, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free" (1967) On July 1, 2008, Denver, Colorado, hosted its annual State of the City address. This typically pro forma occasion was, in this year, a high profile event for the city and the nation at large; in addition to celebrating the nation's independence, that year's address served as a prelude to the city hosting the Democratic National Convention at which the Democratic Party would announce its presidential nominee. Wavering, as it was in this moment, between two viable candidates--an African American male and a white American female--the party's decision was eagerly anticipated. Denver's heightened function in ushering in the nation's future made the performances staged that day all the more significant, and it was in recognition of that profile that the mayor's office chose jazz musician and performance artist Rene Marie to sing the national anthem. After an introduction by City Council President Michael Hancock in which he mistakenly identified her as "Rene Martin," Marie approached the microphone. As she sang the B flat note to announce "The Star Spangled Banner," her text deviated, as she sung not "Oh, say can you see" but, instead, "Lift ev'ry voice and sing." In this deconstructed and hybrid performance, which combined the melody of "The Star Spangled Banner" with the lyrics of the Negro National Anthem "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," Marie set a new tone for discussions of race and patriotism at the dawning of a "postracial" America. Marie's performance, which left city representatives "as surprised as anyone," is a dynamic example of how our racial present continues to be informed by considerations of past political struggle (Osher 2008). Her use of the lyrics of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" signals a reconfigured citizenship that grapples with the lived experience of race through a national anthem emblematic of liberty built by settler colonialism and chattel slavery. One generation after the end of slavery in the United States, W. E. B. Du Bois famously articulated the plight of the nation's Negroes as "double consciousness," an identity tug-of-war between race and nation that is never fully reconciled in spite of its constant negotiation. Marie's performance signals Du Bois, yet it moves through and beyond it by way of a sonic praxis in which she constructs an alternative national genealogy of political engagement and allegiance. As Hazel Carby rightly argues, Du Bois's judgments in The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1996) "reveal highly
哦!我怎能说出我骄傲的祖国的耻辱?我怎能说出她荣耀的苦楚?她的旗帜——她的星条旗——嘲弄地飘扬在千百万奴隶之上，怎么说呢?——弗朗西丝·艾伦·沃特金斯·哈珀，《伊丽莎·哈里斯》(1853)我希望我能知道自由是什么感觉我希望我能挣断束缚我的枷锁我希望我能说出所有该说的话大声说清楚说给全世界听。——妮娜·西蒙，《我希望我知道自由的感觉》(1967)2008年7月1日，科罗拉多州丹佛市举行了一年一度的城市国情咨文演讲。今年，这一典型的形式盛会成为了纽约乃至整个国家备受瞩目的盛事;除了庆祝美国的独立之外，那一年的演讲也是民主党全国代表大会的前奏，民主党将在大会上宣布其总统候选人。此时此刻，共和党在两名可行的候选人——一名非裔美国男性和一名美国白人女性——之间摇摆不定，人们热切地期待着该党的决定。丹佛在引领国家未来方面的重要作用使那天的演出更加重要，正是出于对这一形象的认可，市长办公室选择了爵士音乐家和表演艺术家勒内·玛丽来演唱国歌。市议会主席迈克尔·汉考克(Michael Hancock)在介绍她时误把她认作“勒内·马丁”，玛丽走到麦克风前。当她唱降B调来宣布《星条旗永不落》时，她的歌词偏离了方向，因为她唱的不是“哦，说你能看见吗”，而是“举起每一个声音来唱”。在这场解构和混合的表演中，玛丽将《星条旗永不飘扬》(the Star Spangled Banner)的旋律与黑人国歌《举起你的声音，歌唱》(Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing)的歌词结合在一起，为“后种族”美国的黎明时分关于种族和爱国主义的讨论奠定了新的基调。玛丽的表现让城市代表们“和任何人一样惊讶”，这是一个充满活力的例子，说明我们的种族现状如何继续受到过去政治斗争的影响(Osher 2008)。她使用的歌词《扬声歌唱》(Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing)标志着一种重新配置的公民身份，通过一首象征着移民殖民主义和动产奴隶制建立起来的自由的国歌，与种族的生活经历作斗争。在美国废除奴隶制的一代人之后，w·e·b·杜波依斯(W. E. B. Du Bois)将美国黑人的困境表述为“双重意识”，这是一种种族与国家之间的身份拉锯战，尽管不断进行谈判，但从未完全和解。玛丽的表演是杜波依斯的标志，但它通过一种声音实践的方式贯穿并超越了杜波依斯，在这种实践中，她构建了另一种政治参与和忠诚的国家谱系。正如黑兹尔·卡比正确地指出的那样，杜波依斯在《黑人的灵魂》([1903]1996)中的判断“揭示智力和政治思想和情感的高度性别结构”(1998,12)。父权制、性别歧视和厌女症通过这些性别差异的结构被复制和传播，这些结构被安装和暴露在日常的智力和艺术创作场景中，以及国家更壮观的展示中。玛丽的作品与这些性别结构进行了协商，并突出了黑人女性在流行文化和(黑人)公共领域中扮演的复杂角色，这两个影响地点在黑人表演艺术家的身体中找到了交集。虽然我在这里关心的是美国非洲人后裔的音乐和表演，但我忍住了批评或评价玛丽表演在技术上的成功的冲动;比起音乐品味和偏好，人们更关心的是当天制作的音乐的视觉效果和影响。她的表演的重要性首先体现在它能够引发一场公开辩论，揭示国家象征背后的紧张关系。…
{"title":"Indivisible: The Nation and Its Anthem in Black Musical Performance","authors":"S. Redmond","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.1.0097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.1.0097","url":null,"abstract":"Oh! how shall I speak of my proud country's shame Of the strains on her glory, how give them their name? How say that her banner in mockery waves-Her star-spangled banner--o'er millions of slaves? --Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, \"Eliza Harris\" (1853) I wish I knew how it would feel to be free I wish I could break all the chains holdin' me I wish I could say all the things that I should say Say 'em loud say 'em clear for the whole wide world to hear. --Nina Simone, \"I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free\" (1967) On July 1, 2008, Denver, Colorado, hosted its annual State of the City address. This typically pro forma occasion was, in this year, a high profile event for the city and the nation at large; in addition to celebrating the nation's independence, that year's address served as a prelude to the city hosting the Democratic National Convention at which the Democratic Party would announce its presidential nominee. Wavering, as it was in this moment, between two viable candidates--an African American male and a white American female--the party's decision was eagerly anticipated. Denver's heightened function in ushering in the nation's future made the performances staged that day all the more significant, and it was in recognition of that profile that the mayor's office chose jazz musician and performance artist Rene Marie to sing the national anthem. After an introduction by City Council President Michael Hancock in which he mistakenly identified her as \"Rene Martin,\" Marie approached the microphone. As she sang the B flat note to announce \"The Star Spangled Banner,\" her text deviated, as she sung not \"Oh, say can you see\" but, instead, \"Lift ev'ry voice and sing.\" In this deconstructed and hybrid performance, which combined the melody of \"The Star Spangled Banner\" with the lyrics of the Negro National Anthem \"Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,\" Marie set a new tone for discussions of race and patriotism at the dawning of a \"postracial\" America. Marie's performance, which left city representatives \"as surprised as anyone,\" is a dynamic example of how our racial present continues to be informed by considerations of past political struggle (Osher 2008). Her use of the lyrics of \"Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing\" signals a reconfigured citizenship that grapples with the lived experience of race through a national anthem emblematic of liberty built by settler colonialism and chattel slavery. One generation after the end of slavery in the United States, W. E. B. Du Bois famously articulated the plight of the nation's Negroes as \"double consciousness,\" an identity tug-of-war between race and nation that is never fully reconciled in spite of its constant negotiation. Marie's performance signals Du Bois, yet it moves through and beyond it by way of a sonic praxis in which she constructs an alternative national genealogy of political engagement and allegiance. As Hazel Carby rightly argues, Du Bois's judgments in The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1996) \"reveal highly ","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"22 24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116554386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.1.0071
Jennifer A. Griffith
But within all the varied components of black music and throughout all the changes it underwent, it remained a group-oriented means of communication and expression. --Lawrence Levine (1977, 239) In the mid-1950s Charles Mingus embraced two historical African-derived approaches that emphasized group expression: (1) the collective improvisation of early New Orleans jazz, whose roots lay in (2) the ecstatic worship and singing rituals of the black Pentecostal church. Mingus's recordings from the mid-1950s to early 1960s musically progressed from short sections of frontline collective interplay and group improvisation reminiscent of early jazz to longer forms of ecstatic ritual. This latter practice--in the form of solos, band, and audience participation--was a direct invocation of the "Holy Ghost-filled" spiritual communion (Booker 1988, 32), or Holy Spirit possession that Mingus had witnessed in Pentecostal church services as a youth. Many writers have observed Mingus's diverse influences. Eric Porter (2002) writes that Mingus challenged all musical boundaries, invoking his aesthetic of late Romanticism, his anticipations of free jazz, and points between in tributes to Jelly Roll Morton. Brian Priestley (1982) remarked on influences from Mingus's work as a sideman for Louis Armstrong and big-band leaders Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. Both Porter and Priestly also note influences of the black church, bebop harmonies, and rhythms modeling Charles Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk as well as Lennie Tristano's modernist jazz sounds. Finally, Todd Jenkins mentions Mingus's jazz-rock and world-music fusions (2006, 4). Relatively little has been written regarding the contexts of these influences, particularly of early New Orleans jazz and the black Pentecostal church, nor have they been explored in close readings of Mingus's works and recordings. In this article, I argue that Mingus's use of New Orleans-style collective improvisation and composition (as in his response to Jelly Roll Morton) and the influence of church music follows a stylistic trajectory. I also explore his use of these influences contextually and through a musical analysis of the recordings. The elements of the two African-derived approaches are most evident in five recordings from the 1950s. The New Orleans style can be heard in the frontline's collectively improvised sections, in recordings as early as "Jump Monk" (1955), in "Pithecanthropus Erectus" (1956), "Dizzy Moods" (1957), and implicated in "Moanin" (1959), where melodic instrumental interplay--along with group and solo improvisation--create texture and timbre, but also determine a tight structure. Later, such elements evolved into the pivotal idea of "growth" or expansion, what Mingus referred to as "extended form." Here he gives soloists room to enact a spiritual transcendence within this more flexible form; Mingus's reenactments of the communal dynamics of the black church play out most obviously in "Better Gi
但是，在黑人音乐的各种组成部分中，在它经历的所有变化中，它仍然是一种以群体为导向的交流和表达方式。——劳伦斯·莱文(1975,239)在20世纪50年代中期，查尔斯·明格斯接受了两种历史上源自非洲的方法，强调群体表达:(1)早期新奥尔良爵士的集体即兴创作，其根源在于(2)黑人五旬节教会的狂喜崇拜和歌唱仪式。从20世纪50年代中期到60年代初，明格斯的唱片在音乐上从前线集体互动的短段和让人想起早期爵士乐的群体即兴演奏发展到更长的欣喜若狂的仪式形式。后一种做法——以独奏、乐队和观众参与的形式——是对“圣灵充满”的精神交流的直接召唤(Booker 1988, 32)，或明格斯年轻时在五旬节派教堂礼拜中目睹的圣灵占有。许多作家都注意到明格斯的各种影响。埃里克·波特(Eric Porter, 2002)写道，明格斯挑战了所有的音乐界限，唤起了他对晚期浪漫主义的审美，他对自由爵士的期望，以及对杰里·罗尔·莫顿(Jelly Roll Morton)的致敬。布莱恩·普里斯特利(1982)评论了明格斯作为路易斯·阿姆斯特朗和大乐队领袖莱昂内尔·汉普顿和艾灵顿公爵的助手的工作对他的影响。波特和普利斯特里也注意到黑人教堂的影响，比波普音乐的和声，以及模仿查尔斯·帕克、迪兹·吉莱斯皮和Thelonious Monk的节奏，以及Lennie Tristano的现代爵士乐声音。最后，Todd Jenkins提到了明格斯的爵士摇滚和世界音乐的融合(2006,4)。关于这些影响的背景，特别是早期新奥尔良爵士乐和黑人五旬节派教会的影响，相对较少的文章，也没有在仔细阅读明格斯的作品和录音中进行探讨。在这篇文章中，我认为明格斯使用新奥尔良风格的集体即兴创作和作曲(就像他对杰里·罗尔·莫顿的回应一样)以及教会音乐的影响遵循着一种风格轨迹。我还通过对录音的音乐分析，探讨了他对这些影响的使用。这两种源自非洲的方法的元素在20世纪50年代的五份录音中最为明显。新奥尔良风格可以在“frontline”的集体即兴演奏部分中听到，早在“Jump Monk”(1955)，“Pithecanthropus Erectus”(1956)，“Dizzy Moods”(1957)和“Moanin”(1959)中就有涉及，其中旋律乐器的相互作用-连同团队和独奏即兴演奏-创造了质感和音色，但也决定了紧凑的结构。后来，这些元素演变成“增长”或扩张的关键概念，明格斯称之为“扩展形式”。在这里，他给了独奏家空间，让他们在这种更灵活的形式中实现精神上的超越;明格斯对黑人教堂社区动态的再现在《Better Git Hit in Your Soul》(1959)和《周三晚祷告会》(1959)中表现得最为明显。明格斯利用这两种方式，不仅推进了音乐表达，而且推进了政治和精神思想。在他的音乐和证词中，在发霉的无花果/现代主义辩论之后(Gendron 2002, 121-123;在20世纪40年代的“迪克西兰”复兴中，明格斯在20世纪50年代将新奥尔良爵士乐作为他更广泛地拥抱团体表达的一部分。他的使用超越了比波普的“头-独奏-头”(或“独奏-节奏”)的小团体形式，也超越了大乐队的类似安排。虽然明格斯的音乐与雷·查尔斯(Ray Charles)和其他人在这个时代所挖掘的灵魂音乐(受福音音乐的影响)相同，但他对非裔美国人教会传统的习惯用法在音乐形式上发展了一种“根”风格的有限使用，这可以在查尔斯的当代唱片或纳特和加农鲍尔·阿德利(Nat and Cannonball Adderley)的工作歌曲中看到。．..
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Pub Date : 2015-03-22DOI: 10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.35.1.0041
Rachel L. Lumsden
In May 1911 the well-known ragtime composer Scott Joplin filed a copyright application for his only surviving opera, Treemonisha. Unable to find a publisher (the work was rejected by at least three companies, several of which had previously championed his ragtime works), Joplin chose to publish the score to the opera himself and began to offer it for sale shortly before receiving copyright. (1) Joplin wrote both the music and libretto to Treemonisha, a three-act opera that contains an overture, orchestral interludes, and dance numbers. Joplin also composed a lengthy written preface to the opera that not only outlines in detail the backgrounds of the main characters and the setting of the work, but also describes his use of a recurring leitmotiv to represent "the happiness of the people when they feel free from the conjurors and their spells of superstition" (Joplin [1911] 1971,3). The opera centers on the efforts of a young, educated, African-American woman (Treemonisha) to enlighten her rural community, highlighting Treemonisha's conflicts with the evil conjuror Zodzetrick; by its conclusion, Treemonisha has been captured by Zodzetrick, rescued by her friend Remus, and selected leader of her community. Although opera certainly has its share of heroines, Joplin's fascinating decision to feature an educated African-American woman--one who does not fall hopelessly in love, die, or go insane by the end of the opera, but instead is chosen to lead her community--deserves serious scholarly consideration. Scholars have increasingly come to recognize the significance of Treemonisha within the American operatic canon, and research such as that of Berlin (1991/1994), de Lerma (1990), and Sears (2012) has substantially broadened our understanding of the opera and its reception. (2) Still, little attention has been paid to the actual musical content of this profoundly important work (with the exception of a single chapter in Latham 2008, which contains broad, long-range analyses using a Schenkerian perspective). Even more surprisingly, no scholarship has focused on the complicated relationship between Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha and prevailing discourses about black womanhood at the turn of the twentieth century. These issues are particularly pertinent for developing a nuanced understanding of the complex ways in which both race and gender are constructed in Treemonisha; recent work such as Andre, Bryan, and Saylor (2012) has emphasized the necessity for scholars to consider "blackness" not as a rigid, uniform category, but instead as a multivectored field informed by other intersectional considerations, such as gender, class, nation, and sexuality. (3) This article examines how the character of Treemonisha intersects with contemporaneous ideologies of African-American womanhood, arguing that Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha illustrates some of the core fractures, debates, and contradictions surrounding racial uplift and gender during this era. After
1911年5月，著名的拉格泰姆作曲家斯科特·乔普林(Scott Joplin)为他唯一幸存的歌剧《Treemonisha》提交了版权申请。由于找不到出版商(至少有三家公司拒绝了这部作品，其中几家之前曾支持过他的拉格泰姆音乐作品)，乔普林选择自己出版这部歌剧的乐谱，并在获得版权前不久开始出售。乔普林为《Treemonisha》写了音乐和歌词，这是一部三幕歌剧，包括序曲、管弦乐插曲和舞曲。乔普林还为这部歌剧写了一篇很长的序言，不仅详细地概述了主要人物的背景和作品的背景，而且还描述了他使用一个反复出现的主题来代表“当人们从魔术师和他们的迷信咒语中解脱出来时的幸福”(乔普林[1911]1971,3)。这部歌剧主要讲述了一位受过良好教育的年轻非裔美国女性(Treemonisha饰)为启蒙她所在的农村社区所做的努力，突出了Treemonisha与邪恶的魔术师佐泽特里克(Zodzetrick)的冲突;故事的结尾，Treemonisha被佐泽特里克抓住，被她的朋友Remus救出，并被选为社区的领袖。虽然歌剧当然也有女主角，但乔普林决定以一位受过良好教育的非裔美国女性为主角——她没有无可救药地坠入爱河，没有死亡，也没有在歌剧结束时发疯，而是被选中领导她的社区——这一令人着迷的决定值得认真的学术思考。学者们越来越认识到《Treemonisha》在美国歌剧经典中的重要性，柏林(1991/1994)、德·勒玛(1990)和西尔斯(2012)等人的研究大大拓宽了我们对这部歌剧及其接受程度的理解。(2)然而，很少有人关注这部意义深远的重要作品的实际音乐内容(除了莱瑟姆2008年出版的一章，其中包含了使用申克视角的广泛而长期的分析)。更令人惊讶的是，没有学者关注乔普林对Treemonisha的描述与20世纪初流行的黑人女性话语之间的复杂关系。这些问题对于深入理解《Treemonisha》中种族和性别构成的复杂方式尤为重要;安德烈、布莱恩和塞勒(2012)等人最近的研究强调，学者们有必要将“黑人”视为一个不严格的、统一的类别，而是一个由其他交叉考虑因素(如性别、阶级、民族和性)通知的多向量领域。(3)本文考察了Treemonisha的性格是如何与当代非裔美国女性的意识形态相交叉的，认为乔普林对Treemonisha的描绘说明了这个时代围绕种族提升和性别的一些核心断裂、争论和矛盾。在初步讨论了世纪之交关于性别和提升的一些不同意见之后，本文的下一部分将重点讨论Treemonisha在情节和歌词方面的特点;本文的最后一部分通过考虑两个特定的音乐问题来扩展这些想法:减少七和弦和降降中音。乔普林创作《Treemonisha》的时期通常被描述为“华盛顿和杜波依斯的时代”，在这个时代，黑人男性知识分子提出并辩论种族提升，这是一种通过教育、自助、服务以及非洲裔美国人的道德和物质进步来寻求“种族改善”的意识形态。黑人男性领导人之间的争论往往使非裔美国女性的贡献黯然失色，然而，正如Hazel Carby(1987)、Paula Giddings(2006)和Patricia Hill Collins(2009)等学者所指出的那样，黑人女性在这个时代远非沉默。…
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