Black Music Research Journal最新文献

{"title":"An Ethnographic Comparison of Caribbean Quadrilles","authors":"Y. Daniel","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0215","url":null,"abstract":"Research on Caribbean dance movement has revealed consistent, ongoing contredanse-related practices since the seventeenth century in the Spanish islands and since the eighteenth century in the French, British, Dutch, and former Danish islands. Despite variation within European influence that distinguishes one area of the Caribbean from another, Africans were generally prohibited from dancing the dances of their origins except on special occasions, like Dias de los reyes in the Spanish islands and at times, at Corpus Christi on other islands, but dancing within their own spaces was well-noticed by colonists and missionaries (e.g., Labat [1724] 1972, 401-404). At other times, \"dancers of all colors,\" i.e., Europeans, Europeans born in the Americas or Creoles, (1) and mixed descent persons participated in dance lessons with dance masters, as in the case of Martinique that was observed in 1789 by Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint Mery (40). Dance instruction was in preparation for bals de societe, for special performances after Mass (see Fray Francisco Padilla's 1691 account in Allende-Goitia 2006, 137-138), and for less formal social events on haciendas and plantations (e.g., Fray Inigo Abbad y Lasierra ([1782] 1969, 188-190; Moreau de Saint Mery [1789] 1803; Ledru [1797] 1957, 47; Bremer [1851] 1980, 37-39, 64-65, 72-74; Alonso [1882-1883] 200l, 100-l08). With few opportunities to continue their own dances, some Africans and their descendants were able to observe the dance training and dance performance of colonial families. Over time, they replaced the African performance that was abhorred by Europeans with imitations, parodies, and creative extensions of the colonial performances that they could observe. At times, African imitations of European court imitations were used to entertain colonists and their guests; however, across the Caribbean, African descendants perfected their versions of European body orientation, dance steps, and dance sequences, stating nonverbally that they, too, could dance socially esteemed dances (Cyrille 1996, 2006; Danie12006). They took from the dominant group what the dominant group valued most: their elaborate dance practices. Just as European performers since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had attempted also through dance performance, African-descended performers signaled good manners and impressive social standing through a variety of contredanse-related performances. Over time, African descendants appropriated European contredanse-derived performance across the entire Caribbean region. The Caribbean contredanse-derived forms that emerged do not stand together in an obvious manner because of diverse names for similar dance configurations and similar names for very different forms. The following discussion, based on comparative fieldwork and a survey of Caribbean dance practices, attempts to overcome some of these difficulties and to show pointedly that Africans and their descendants asserted their human di","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128157537","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}

{"title":"\"Two Souls, Two Thoughts, Two Unreconciled Strivings\": The Sound of Double Consciousness in Roland Hayes's Early Career","authors":"J. Hildebrand","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0273","url":null,"abstract":"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. W. E. B. Du Bois There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion. Ralph Waldo Emerson The Gods will not descend without song. Common West African aphorism Tenor Roland Hayes was one of a small handful of black singers to bring spirituals before the American public in the early twentieth century, declaring that the music of slaves--and therefore, to an extent, the music of Africa--was worthy of display in America's halls of honor. Breaking down the barriers that had kept black singers and black songs confined to the black community in the United States' post-emancipation years, however, proved challenging on a number of levels. Even within the black community, there were some who wanted to distance themselves from African-inspired music that reminded them too painfully of the days of slavery. White America, moreover, did not usually smile upon such offerings, and some resisted forcefully the idea that black Americans or their music had any place on the concert stage. Despite such challenges, Hayes helped open the stage to black American artists who were dedicated to shattering the blackface minstrel tradition. He insisted on incorporating spirituals into his performances, and, fairly early in his career, recognized and celebrated the black timbres and enunciations that he found in his voice. \"Before my time,\" he remarked, \"white singers had too often been in the habit of burlesquing the spirituals with rolling eyes and heaving breast and shuffling feet, on the blasphemous assumption that they were singing comic songs\" (Helm 1969, 188-189). (1) Music and art critic Alain Locke wrote that because of Hayes, \"barriers raised for generations against Negro musicians fell like the Walls of Jericho; international acclaim forced American recognition and a great musical personality clinched it. ... Roland Hayes vindicated Negro musicianship\" ([1936] 1969, 123). A young American studying music in Berlin put it somewhat more succinctly: \"Goddamn it,\" he said, greeting Hayes after a performance and reaching out to shake his hand, \"[P]ut it there! This is the first time I have seen the Germans admit that good art can come out of America\" (quoted in Helm 1969, 212). Simultaneously, however, Hayes felt pressure to conform to the standards of white America, and to some degree he internalized white America's expectations. He judged his own success as a musician using the measures established by Europeans and white Ameri","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"86 1-2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131830077","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}

{"title":"An Opportunity to Rise: Reinterpreting Esther, the Beautiful Queen","authors":"J. Karpf","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0241","url":null,"abstract":"In 1934, Zora Neale Hurston wrote that \"the Negro is a very original being. While he lives and moves in the midst of a white civilization, everything that be touches is reinterpreted for his own use\" (304). Of all modes of cultural expression, the reinterpretation of music by African Americans has been especially prevalent and compelling, as composer Olly Wilson describes: For several hundred years now since our forefathers' involuntary departure from the homeland, black people have been adapting machines in the American environment to suit their purposes. Everything from food and dress to language and religion has been adapted to conform to an essentially African way of doing things. Nowhere has this adaptation been truer than in music .... The point here is that, as in African Bantu philosophy, a thing is given meaning only by the will of a human being. The media is a vehicle of expression, not the substance of expression. Since the substance stems from the wellsprings of the individual, the media may be derived, therefore, from any source. (1973, 36) Taking Wilson's assertion as a starting point, how might African Americans have adapted music, written by a white composer for white performers and audiences, \"to suit their purposes?\" In the discussion to follow, I consider aspects of African-American reinterpretation of one such work--the choral drama Esther, the Beautiful Queen, written by William Bradbury in 1856. In the very least, the association of black singers with this piece simultaneously disrupted and transcended Bradbury's original intentions and thus, their performances assumed activist purpose. By extension, then, African-American performances of Esther challenged Eurocentric interpretive expectations and standards. In addition, the text of this work, based on the book of Esther, became a vehicle of specialized sociopolitical and spiritual messages. To illustrate these points, I consider three performances of this work that took place in the nineteenth century. The earliest of these, by the Fisk Singers in 1871, may have been the first time an African-American ensemble staged this work. Next, I turn to performances of Esther in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1880s, under the direction of soprano Amelia L. Tilghman. A teacher and aspiring concert artist, Tilghman organized and managed her productions, rehearsed singers, and starred in the title role. The final performance under consideration took place in New York's famous Daly's Theatre, where the Hampton Singers performed Esther in 1893. William Bradbury and Esther Perhaps no other American musician cultivated and achieved the popularity and prominent commercial and pedagogical profile enjoyed by William Batchelder Bradbury (1816-68) during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Born in Maine to parents dedicated to amateur music making, Bradbury began music lessons as child. In his youth he enrolled at Lowell Mason's Boston Academy of Music. By 1840 he ha","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116934952","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}

{"title":"The Southern Syncopated Orchestra: Addenda","authors":"Howard Rye","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0383","url":null,"abstract":"As previously remarked (Rye 2009, 156), research such as this into the Southern Syncopated Orchestra has no realistic end, and new information continually emerges. The opportunity is here taken to present some of the most significant recent findings and also to correct a couple of the major errors and omissions that inevitably escaped the most conscientious editing and checking. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra in Belfast The acquisition by Konrad Nowakowski of a program printed by Belfast News-Letter Ltd., relating to the Orchestra's engagement in Ireland's second city for two weeks from November 7, 1921, enables more detail to be given about the program there. It also enables two new names to be added to the Roster (see below). The copy of the program to hand has penciled annotations by its original owner, which inspires confidence that the advertised program was played. The anticipated program opened, as at Brighton, with Will Marion Cook's \"Swing Along\" by Orchestra and Chorus, followed by \"Cuckoo Waltz\" by the Orchestra. Next came solos by Fred Archer (\"Roll Jordan\"), Bert Marshall (\"Jessamine,\" with chorus), and James Ansley, a new name (\"I Got a Robe\"), after which the Orchestra played \"Peter Gink.\" William Taylor performed \"Jericho\" followed by J. H. Boucher's violin solo, Frantisek Alois Drdla's \"Souvenir.\" The attendee has noted that Boucher played \"Little Grey Home in the West\" as an encore. This was followed by \"Russian Rag\" by the Orchestra, Mrs. H. King Reavis performing \"Deep River\" by H. T. Burleigh with \"Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose\" as a medley, Harry Wellmon's \"Jazz in the Harem\" by the Orchestra, and another medley, \"Li'l Gal\" and \"I Wish I Was a Child Again\" by Farley B. Graden. The first half closed with \"Southland Melodies\" by Mrs. H. King Reavis and Chorus. The second half opened with \"Whispering\" and \"Camp Meeting Blues\" by the Orchestra, separated by \"Old Black Joe\" sung by Charles Chivers. Frank G. Cook, the other new name, then performed a \"Violincello Solo,\" Squire's \"Meditation in C.\" Like Boucher's classical instrumental in the first half, this was encored, again with a lighter piece, \"I'll Sing the Songs of Araby.\" Bert Marshall and William Taylor performed \"Bright Eyes,\" followed by \"Bonnie Lassie\" by the Orchestra, and \"Selections from Traditional Repertoire\" by Quartette. The performance climaxed with William Taylor's bones solo on \"Dear Old Virginia\" and the Orchestra playing \"My Mammy.\" Lieutenant E. E. Thompson conducted. No other performers are mentioned. The lack of relationship to the program quoted in reviews of the opening performance (Rye 2009, 216) is striking and perhaps suggests that this is the second week's program. This was the orchestra's last engagement in Britain and the last under the original billing. Some of the changes are noteworthy. \"Old Black Joe,\" reported as a solo for Herbert Parker, has now been given to Charles Chivers. At Brighton it had been performed by Elmer Certain. On openi","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128885935","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}

{"title":"On Ownership and Value: Response","authors":"J. Jackson","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0371","url":null,"abstract":"In his fresh and insightful paper, Ronald Radano conveys the cultural work African-American music performs for the nation. The paper calls to mind reflections James Baldwin made about the subject a half-century ago. \"It is only in his music,\" Baldwin wrote, \"that the Negro has been able to tell his story\" (Baldwin 1985, 65). According to Baldwin, music supplied this vehicle because it commanded the attention of white Americans. Yet he carefully pointed out that black music also hindered their ability to fully understand the sonic stories. Both Baldwin and Radano agree that black music has had a powerful hold on Americans. To account for the influence, Baldwin pointed out that black music inspired a \"productive sentimentality among white audiences,\" preventing them from comprehending its deeper messages (65). Building on Baldwin, Radano concentrates on how African-American music functions in American life. Looking beyond style to consider its broad contours, Radano argues that black music assists in the construction of race. Placing race within a broader historical context lends added salience to Radano's intriguing assertion. Since the eighteenth century, race has provided the basis of a social hierarchy, with whites situated at the top and blacks occupying the bottom. Despite the destruction of slavery, and even Jim Crow, ideas about white supremacy and black inferiority have persisted. Radano traces how discourses about African-American music cultivated a sense of black superiority providing a crucial counter narrative to notions of black inferiority. As early as the 1850s Americans--black and white--began regarding African-American music as decidedly more authentic than nonblack forms. These twin discourses have proved decisive, in some cases tragic, for black singers and musicians who gained stature as national celebrities. As it garnered national and international attention, African-American music emerged as a vehicle for gaining upward mobility. Over the course of the twentieth century a host of black singers and musicians such as Nat King Cole, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong became household names. Their lives on and off the stage, however, could not have been more different. The notoriety and acclaim they could command did not transform the prevailing prejudice and discrimination that imposed constraints offstage. These men and women warrant discussion because, unlike the listeners on whom Radano focuses, they call attention to the limitations of black music. Of course the music operated much differently for audiences. In a nation that championed democracy, slavery and discrimination threatened to undermine this cherished ideal. …","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122729221","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}

{"title":"Elmer Keeton and His Bay Area Negro Chorus: Creating an Artistic Identity in Depression-Era San Francisco","authors":"Leta E. Miller","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0303","url":null,"abstract":"On June 25, 1939, a vibrant show, the Swing Mikado, opened at the Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco's Treasure Island. Featuring an all-black cast, the production was a \"brashly irreverent\" adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado (Hobart 1939b) with the locale changed from Japan to an unidentified \"coral island\" in the South Seas. The Swing Mikado preserved Sullivan's music intact--albeit with minor changes in lyrics to omit racist references and adapt to the changed geographical setting. Added to the score, however, were a half dozen swing arrangements and \"specialty dances\" that were greeted with immense ovation and that accounted for the sellout, standing-room-only crowds. The Swing Mikado--which had originated in Chicago a year earlier--represented one of the most successful endeavors of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), one of four arts programs collectively called \"Federal One\" that were sponsored by the Works Progress Adminsitration (WPA), the federal government's massive employment effort of the Depression era. San Francisco's version of the show featured fifteen soloists, a \"singing chorus\" of about fifty, and a \"dancing chorus\" of about twenty. John Hobart, in the San Francisco Chronicle, characterized the singing group as \"really magnificent.... After the anemic voices that usually make up the ensemble in G. and S. revivals,\" he wrote, \"it is wondrous to hear this huge crowd of singers, with full-bodied voices, pitching into the music\" (Hobart 1939b). This \"singing chorus\" was well-known to locals: under the inspired direction of Elmer Keeton, it had become one of the most prominent ensembles in northern California's Federal Music Project (FMP)--another Federal One unit. (The FTP and the FMP often collaborated on musical theater productions. The other two components of Federal One were the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers' Project.) Keeton's Bay Area Negro Chorus had been attracting large crowds and exceptional reviews for the previous three years. Critics predicted that the Swing Mikado was in for a long run. Two weeks after its opening, however, Congress shut down the FTP, bending to conservative opposition to the WPA in general and to rumors of Communist influence within the Theatre Project in particular. \"4100 Lopped Off Rolls; 'Mikado' Show Closed,\" lamented the Chronicle in a page 1 story the day after the closing (\"4100 Lopped\" 1939). The Music Project, which felt invested in the production because of Keeton's chorus, tried to convince WPA authorities to take it over from the defunct FTP, but to no avail (Ness 1939; \"Music Project\" 1939). A month later the Swing Mikado reopened under private sponsorship in the city and then went on tour. Thereafter, the chorus continued to perform concerts under Keeton's leadership, and was even featured in several nationwide broadcasts. The story of Elmer Keeton and his \"Negro chorus\"--pieced together here from programs, reviews, WPA documents, and recordings","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130846593","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}

{"title":"DJ Spooky and the Politics of Afro-Postmodernism","authors":"Jesse Stewart","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0337","url":null,"abstract":"In 2006, the Savoy record label opened its back catalogue of classic recordings from the bebop era to selected hip hop DJs, turntablists, producers, and remix artists. The result was Re-Bop: The Savoy Remixes, another addition to the growing body of jazz remix records that includes, among others, Bird Up, the Verve Remixed series, and Madlib's \"invasion\" of Blue Note records titled Shades of Blue. Among the thirteen tracks on Re-Bop are pieces by Duke Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, and Red Norvo, reworked by the likes of DJ Jazzy Jeff, King Britt, and DJ Logic. Charlie Parker's \"KoKo\" is also included on the disc, remixed by Paul D. Miller, better known as DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Recorded in November 1945, Parker's \"KoKo\" is based on the chord changes of \"Cherokee,\" a jazz standard written by Ray Noble in 1938 and made famous by Charlie Barnet's 1939 hit recording of the tune. \"KoKo\" can be thought of as an abstracted version of \"Cherokee\" in which the sixty-four bar harmonic form of the original is transformed through chord augmentations and an intricate melody played by Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie at an extremely fast tempo. With \"DJ Spooky's Ali Baba & 50 Thieves Mix\" of \"Koko,\" Miller continues the process of sonic abstraction, combining looped fragments of Parker's recording with hip hopinspired drum beats and sampled voiceovers from various sources. It is significant that Miller chose to remix this particular recording. One of Parker's earliest recorded masterpieces, \"Koko\" is a landmark work in the history and development of Afro-modernism. The concept of Afro-modernism differentiates between Afrological modes of cultural production in the \"modern world\" and Eurocentric conceptions of modernism/ modernity that reinforce social and aesthetic binaries associated with \"high\" and \"low\" cultures. I use the term \"Afrological\" in the sense outlined by musician and theorist George Lewis, who compares \"Afrological\" models of musical improvisation with \"Eurological\" trends. \"These terms,\" he writes, \"refer metaphorically to musical belief systems and behavior which ... exemplify particular kinds of musical 'logic.' At the same time, these terms are intended to historicize the particularity of perspective characteristic of two systems that have evolved in such divergent cultural environments\" (1996, 93). Like Lewis, I use the term \"Afrological\" to refer to \"historically emergent rather than ethnically essential\" systems of musical logic that have developed in African diasporic communities historically (93). By extension, the concept of Afro-modernsim provides a theoretical framework for examining the complex relationships between Afrological modes of discourse and modernism/modernity. Guthrie Ramsey Jr. explains that for African Americans, Afro-modernism \"consisted of the creation and, certainly, the reception (the political and pleasurable uses) of musical expressions that articulated attitudes about their place in the modern world. Thus, ","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121832362","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}

{"title":"On Ownership and Value: Response","authors":"Ingrid T. Monson","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0375","url":null,"abstract":"Ronald Radano has written an elegant and intellectually ambitious meditation on racial authenticity and the history of black music. As always, his erudite prose frames a classic theme in the study of African-American music in an arresting manner that forces us to think deeply about the question. In this brief response, I would like to present the most intriguing aspects of Radano's argument as well as offer a critique that suggests another avenue for thinking through the same issue. I have known the author for many years now and am pleased that he asked me to write this response, especially since he knows that my way of looking at things is quite different. I am intrigued by the way that Radano frames the problem of authenticity and black music by suggesting that it is an outcome of a paradoxical relationship between sound and property in the history of African-American music. He points out that although the musical talents of the enslaved were among the things that the slavemaster owned and could earn money with, the power of black music was such that it could not be contained by the property system, and indeed exposed the limits of white supremacy, by \"giving material form to what lay beyond their grasp\" (that is white people's grasp). Central to Radano's argument is a critique of African-American musical and moral authenticity in defining what is such a huge part of the \"sound of the nation.\" This sense of cultural pride, forged in response to the structural conditions of slavery and later a racially hierarchic musical marketplace, as he also points out, has paradoxically become a point of conflicted unity and deep desire in American society. If, as Radano has argued, the power of black music has always exceeded the containment of the property system, it is also true that African-American artists have never been paid in proportion to their influence on American popular music. This is due in part to the racially hierarchic nature of the music industry that throughout the twentieth century seemed to require well-positioned and often well-intentioned non-African Americans to advocate for African-American artists (all the while taking their cuts), and in part the condition of being a minority. I often point out to my students that although the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. population has ranged between 10 and 13 percent, their contribution to mainstream popular musical aesthetics has been substantially greater, one could argue in the range of 60 to 75 percent. If the economic system were fair, in other words, African-American musicians should have been paid in proportion to their aesthetic contribution. In the legendarily exploitive economic contexts of the early and mid-twentieth centuries, this was never true. I am not as troubled as Radano by the discourse of racial authenticity which frequently emerges in our debates over the sound of the nation, because (as I have argued more fully in Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jaz","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"36 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131210381","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}

{"title":"The Tambú of Curaçao: Historical Projections and the Ritual Map of Experience","authors":"N. D. Jong","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.2.0197","url":null,"abstract":"Tuma boka i hende Tambu [\"Tambu takes the mouth of the people\"] Afro-Curacaoan parable Tambu is an African-inspired music and dance ritual that developed during slavery on the island of Curacao (largest of the Netherlands Antilles). (1) As a defined space for Afro-Curacaoan activity, Tambu has interconnected different cultural and ethnic groups, establishing varying senses of individual and collective belonging. Yet Tambu is not a melting pot of assorted traditions; the diverse cultural influences have not melded into one another. Rather, the varied cultural elements from Curacao's slave past have been integrated by layers within Tambu. To peel away those layers is to shake apart an intricate jigsaw puzzle into its individual pieces, each a separate, though interlocking, fraction of Afro-Curacao's complex colonial past. Yet, however fascinating these individual pieces may appear on their own, their true form and meaning become apparent only when considered within the context of the whole, namely Tambu itself. Carved out of the constraints of a dominant colonial history, Tambu changed to accommodate Curacao's shifting social and cultural realities; yet, in its continued transformation, Tambu has served as a source of further change. From this perspective, the ritual upsets--in form and content--the linearity of the island's dominant history, in the end become a worthwhile tool for examining some of the complexities and social implications of Curacao's colonial past and present. The ritual seems to dodge description. It intertwines the sacred and the secular, it follows both private and public cultural pathways, and it comprises a multifaceted repertoire of traditions, collectively evoking both Africa and the New World, able to recall imagined pasts while articulating perceived realities. As a result, Tambu permits divergent readings, placing it alongside other, often misunderstood, Black Atlantic performance traditions, including Rara from Haiti and Jankunu from Jamaica and the Bahamas. Like these cultural complexes, Tambu has appeared to dominant powers as a secular celebration, but, in fact, has served as a religious ceremony as well, using an African-inspired approach to performance. An analysis of Tambu provides a powerful opportunity to examine some of the ways Afro-Caribbean rituals may emerge between the sacred and secular, enabling participants with multiple and even overlapping senses of New World belonging. This essay extends current research (de Jong 2007, 2008) by connecting contemporary Tambu to an analysis of Curacao's history. Central to this research has been a collection of interviews (taped and/or transcribed) stored in Curacao's Centraal Historisch Archief. This diverse interview collection comprises the work of several dedicated individuals, notably Elis Juliana, a writer and visual artist, Paul Brenneker, a Catholic priest, and Rene Rosalia, an anthropologist, currently serving as Curacao's Minister of Culture. With many of th","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132689049","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}

{"title":"Edmund Jenkins of South Carolina","authors":"J. Green","doi":"10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/BLACMUSIRESEJ.30.1.0183","url":null,"abstract":"Edmund Thornton Jenkins was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1894, one of the eight children of Lena James Jenkins and her husband, the Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins. They had established the Orphan Aid Society in 1891, better known as the Jenkins Orphanage. As well as their own children, they took responsibility for over five hundred waifs and strays. Most were placed in a farm-reformatory in Ladson, near the city, where they grew vegetables and obtained a basic education. Others were lodged in the Old Marine Hospital on Franklin Street, Charleston, and there were taught to read and write, and in practical skills which, while destined to support them when independent adults, provided the orphanage with revenue. These included bread making, jobbing printing and a weekly newspaper (the Charleston Messenger), shoe repairs, laundry, and music making. Choirs, up to five bands, jubilee singers, and girl duos and trios brought attention to the orphanage through public performances, traveling to Florida, as well as to New York and elsewhere in the North. They gathered alms and practical support, and collected one quarter of the funds required to keep the institution solvent. The city eventually provided some money, reaching $1,000 a year in the 1910s--for the orphans were black, and city, county, and state were white-run and almost blind to the needs of the African Americans who made up half of the state's population at that time. Skillfully negotiating between Charleston's powerful white elite and the extreme poverty of so many of his people, the Reverend Jenkins was an exemplary figure to the youngsters. Black-led churches had leading roles in Southern life, as did charitable Northerners who founded, funded, and taught at many of the region's black colleges and schools. The elite among the African Americans of Charleston attended Avery Institute, and had lessons in the Eurocentric tradition. Edmund Jenkins went to Avery, then to the Atlanta Baptist College in Georgia (later Morehouse College). Already able to play violin, piano, and trumpet, Jenkins came under the influence of music tutor Kemper Harreld and future author Benjamin Brawley when in Atlanta. Harreld, whose wife Claudia taught German, classics, and piano in Atlanta, was fully conversant with European art music. Born in 1885 in Muncie, Indiana, he had moved to Atlanta in 1911 to head the music department. Edmund Jenkins was his favorite pupil. Historians have investigated African-American music with an emphasis on jazz and blues and as a consequence the contributions and values of musical people like the Harrelds have been overlooked. In their house were violins, cellos, a viola, and a piano as well as much sheet music. The college had many instruments, and its president John Hope had two sons who played the clarinet and the trombone. Harreld and other residents of black Atlanta gave music lessons privately. Claudia's brother Lucien White was the music critic of the well-respec","PeriodicalId":354930,"journal":{"name":"Black Music Research Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129195935","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}