In May 1911 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 score to opera himself and began to offer it for sale shortly before receiving copyright. (1) Joplin wrote both 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 opera that not only outlines in detail backgrounds of main characters and setting of work, but also describes his use of a recurring leitmotiv to represent the happiness of people when they feel free from conjurors and their spells of superstition (Joplin [1911] 1971,3). The opera centers on efforts of a young, educated, African-American woman (Treemonisha) to enlighten her rural community, highlighting Treemonisha's conflicts with 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 end of opera, but instead is chosen to lead her community--deserves serious scholarly consideration. Scholars have increasingly come to recognize significance of Treemonisha within American operatic canon, and research such as that of Berlin (1991/1994), de Lerma (1990), and Sears (2012) has substantially broadened our understanding of opera and its reception. (2) Still, little attention has been paid to actual musical content of this profoundly important work (with 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 complicated relationship between Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha and prevailing discourses about black womanhood at turn of twentieth century. These issues are particularly pertinent for developing a nuanced understanding of complex ways in which both and gender are constructed in Treemonisha; recent work such as Andre, Bryan, and Saylor (2012) has emphasized 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 character of Treemonisha intersects with contemporaneous ideologies of African-American womanhood, arguing that Joplin's depiction of Treemonisha illustrates some of core fractures, debates, and contradictions surrounding racial uplift and gender during this era. After a preliminary discussion of some of differences of opinion regarding gender and uplift at turn of century, next section of this article focuses on how Treemonisha is characterized in plot and libretto; final portion of this article expands on these ideas by also considering two specific musical issues: diminished seventh chords and flat submediant. Ideologies of Racial Uplift and Gender The period during which Joplin composed Treemonisha has often been characterized as an age of Washington and Du Bois, a time in which black male intellectuals proposed and debated racial uplift, an ideology that sought improvement of race through education, self-help, service, and moral and material progress of African Americans. Disputes among black male leaders often eclipsed contributions of African-American women, yet as scholars such as Hazel Carby (1987), Paula Giddings (2006), and Patricia Hill Collins (2009) have noted, black women were far from silent in this era. …

Indigenous and frameworks are increasingly gaining discursive currency in studies and its cognate fields. While Indilinga: Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems has exclusively been devoted to African indigenous 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 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 in Ewe musical practices. With a strong conviction about the importance of the preceding direction for 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 music cultures we study. They are an integral facet of indigenous 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 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 within the larger academic community is far from satisfactory. Admittedly, most of today's ethnomusicologists and other ethnographers have, to some extent, acknowledged the richness and power of local knowledge (Geertz 1983) as idiosyncratic of every single cultural group in the world. Feld (1982), Seeger (1987), and Blum (1999) have provided texts that exemplify the specificities of in diverse musical practices. However, one is inclined to suggest that we Africanist music researchers have not consistently and fully explored the question of models and processes through which our informants really interpret their worlds and lives. This practice and subjugation of an aspect of indigenous in the academy can be attributed to (1) the imprints of colonial legacies that linger in discourses on Africa (Mudimbe 1988; Appiah 1992; Yankah 1996; Agawu 2003; Mazama 2003; Asante 2007); (2) researchers' conscious or inadvertent extreme subjective reflexivity that pushes their researched subjects to the mire; and/or (3) lack of consciousness of and appreciation for the richness of a body of traditional systems and their custodians whom we study and whose voices need foregrounding in our research reports. …

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 of accommodating itself to 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 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 variety of rhetorical strategies including indirection, irony, and verbal disjunction. Tomming, 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 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 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 seminal characteristic of jazz since its inception, gradually achieved greater expression and became 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 Margaret Rose, a statement of an ambiguous character, which includes containing at least two messages, one of which is the concealed message of the ironist to an 'initiated' audience, and the other the more readily perceived but 'ironically meant' message of the code (1993, 87). Thus, there are several key elements that must be in place for ironic communication to take place: (1) the social context in which the irony occurs; (2) the decoders or interpreters whose comprehension of the ironic message is often based on community of understanding they share with the encoder that excludes those who don't grasp the ironic meaning; (3) the encoders or ironists who perceive ironic incongruity and fashion message reflecting that insight; and (4) the message itself, which can be transmitted in performance by various means. Irony, moreover, is foundational to both satire, which aims at correcting social or extramural ills, and parody, which focuses on the form of discourse or the intramural. …

In the sociohistorically important Reconcavo region of Bahia, in Brazil's northeast, the local majority African descendent population regularly celebrates its patron saints not only with masses and processions but also with samba song and dance. As such, samba is found at pilgrimages, ritual cleansings (lavagens), and, most prominently, saints' feasts. The last of these is perhaps most famously exemplified in the large three-day Festival of Our Lady of Good Death, held annually in the city of Cachoeira, which culminates in hours of celebratory samba dancing (see A. Castro 2006; Marques 2008). Less publicly, samba caps off rollicking patron saint house parties known as rezas, each moment of which is marked by ritual music. Standing in front of the home altar, attendees first intone a series of hymns before gathering in a ring to dance and responsorially sing their saint-saluting sambas (Fig. 1). On occasion, this samba can even prompt saints (and other entities) to possess the host and other guests for a divine dancing and singing distinct from the types of possession rituals characteristic of Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomble and Umbanda (Iyanaga 2013, 313-359). People typically see this samba for saints as an expression of their faith. In fact, with its church-inspired contexts and choreographies (e.g., the Sign of the Cross, bowing before the altar, etc.), saint-extolling texts, and capacity to instigate possession by Christian martyrs, this type of samba might best be described (in analytical, etic terms) as a Catholic But why is samba--by which I mean a local Afro-Brazilian dance, song, and rhythm--a fundamental facet of both public and private patron saint celebrations in Bahia? After many years of fieldwork in the Bahian Reconcavo (2008-2014), I can offer a fairly straightforward, ethnographic answer: People believe their saints adore samba. In the enthusiastic words of one Bahian woman I met in 2011, What Saint Anthony likes is parties ... He likes samba! (1) And Saint Anthony is no oddball. In fact, Saint Roch, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saints Crispin and Crispinian, Saint Barbara, and Our Lady of the Conception--all of whom can be counted among the region's most popular saints--are believed to share Saint Anthony's predilection for the Afro-Brazilian art form. Yet this local, native perspective only provides a partial response to the question; an investigation of macrohistorical processes reveals another explanation for why saints love samba. In the present article, I insist on asking why, in a diachronic sense, people perform samba for their saints. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] By interpreting more than three centuries of devotional black musical practices in Bahia, this article posits that saints enjoy samba because Africans and their descendants effectively reinvented and transformed their saints, converting, so to speak, the Christian martyrs into samba-loving gods. And while my argument that samba is historically linked to Catholicism revises the secular frame through which scholars have traditionally studied samba, my focus here is less on samba itself than on saints and Catholicism in this Afro-diasporic Brazilian context. Indeed, my overarching goal is to reframe practices as integral to the African diaspora in Bahia as well as, by implication, in the Americas more generally. After all, scholars interested in African-American religious practices have, over the past century or so, turned primarily to religions in which (West) African gods figure prominently (such as Candomble, Regla-de-Ocha, Vodou, etc.), while relegating Afro-Catholic practices to the margins, either by treating them as a form of passive assimilation (e.g., Karasch 1987, 254) or by dismissing them as a creative sham that allowed Africans to resist colonization by veiling their beliefs and rituals in Catholicism (e.g., Bastide 1971, 183; Pollak-Eltz 1977, 243). …

The Igbo musical aesthetic concept, as is typical in African musical aesthetic practice, is concerned with the capability of musical sounds to appeal to and, more importantly, to fulfill expected aesthetic functions in the culture. African music is a treasure trove of indigenous resources that can be harnessed for human development. Unfortunately, this wealth has not been adequately approached, recognized, and utilized. Since insufficient attention is paid to indigenous African music and its practices in contemporary society, many of its various forms have disappeared. One such genre, Akwunechenyi, stands the risk of possible extinction, in addition to others. The disappearance of indigenous music brings about irretrievable loss of indigenous developmental resources enshrined within it. (2) Using the descriptive and analytical method, this research examines the aesthetics, or philosophy of beauty, enshrined in the Akwunechenyi music of Ukpo, the capital of Dunukofia Local Government Area of the Anambra State of Nigeria, as a tool for human development. Human development, which is not only a physical reality but also a state of mind, is a multifaceted process that entails an indefinite enhancement of the socioeconomic structures and general attitude of the populace (Todaro and Smith 2009, 25). This study, therefore, highlights the perception of musical aesthetics enshrined in Akwunechenyi music as practiced in Ukpo in the 1980s that promoted sustainable human development. This will be examined at two levels: (1) through the description of the structural features of the music and (2) through the aesthetic functions of the structural features at the time the music existed in Ukpo society. Akwunechenyi music is performed by the Akwunechenyi dance ensemble in a few Igbo-speaking communities. The Igbo ethnic group, with an estimated population of more than sixteen million (NPC, 2006), is one of more than three hundred ethnic groups indigenous to Nigeria. The Igbo people are found in southeastern Nigeria, occupying an area of about 40,000 square kilometers. The Igbo engage in trading, craftsmanship, subsistence farming, and civil service. They are highly enterprising; consequently, many live outside Igboland and Nigeria, engaged in various ventures. Prior to contact with the Western world in the fifteenth century, the Igbo had no identity as one people. A politically fragmented independent people lacking centralized allegiance, the Igbo have slight variations in culture, dialects, and social organization, with various subgroups being organized along the line of clan, village affiliation, and lineage. The traditional Igbo practiced a quasi-democratic and republican system of government founded on a patrilineal system of descent known as umunna. Umunna, which is made up of groups of related and extended families who trace their relationships to a commonly known ancestor, is headed by the eldest male member. It is the most powerful societal pillar and maintains law and order (Ndukaihe 2006,206). Villages (ogbe) are formed by a collection of umunna. As a result of the transatlantic slave trade and later migration, the Igbo and their descendants are found in other African countries, Europe, America, and, in fact, all over the world. The majority of Igbo are Christians, while a few are confessed adherents of traditional religion. Traditional religious beliefs and practices still thrive, albeit clandestinely, among many Christians. These practices include reverence to one Supreme Being, Ana/Ala (the earth goddess), ancestral spirits, and numerous male and female deities and spirits as well as observance of rituals and practices related to them in pursuit of the welfare of individuals and the society as a whole (Elechi 2006,32). According to the national population census report, the population of the Dunukofia Local Government Area is 96,517 (NPC 2006). A few residents are employed as civil servants in the schools and local government. …

Oh! how shall 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) wish knew how it would feel to be free wish could break all the chains holdin' me wish could say all the things that should say Say 'em loud say 'em clear for the whole wide world to hear. --Nina Simone, I Wish 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 a prelude to the city hosting the Democratic National Convention at which the Democratic Party would announce its presidential nominee. Wavering, 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 Marie to sing the national anthem. After an introduction by City Council President Michael Hancock in which he mistakenly identified her Rene Martin, Marie approached the microphone. As she sang the B flat note to announce Star Spangled Banner, her text deviated, 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 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 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 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 gendered structures of intellectual and political thought and feeling (1998,12). Patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny are reproduced and informed by these structures of gendered difference that are installed and exposed in quotidian scenes of intellectual and art making well more spectacular displays by the state. Marie's composition negotiates these gendered structures and highlights the complicated roles that black women play in popular culture and the (black) public sphere, two locations of impact that find intersection within the bodies of black performing artists. While am concerned here with the music of and performances by the African descended in the United States, resist the impulse to critique or evaluate the technical success of Marie's performance; musical taste and preference is not of concern so much the vision and impact of the music produced that day. The importance of her performance is first recognizable by its ability to create a public debate that unearthed the tensions that underlie national symbols. …

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 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 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, Gillespie, and Thelonious 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 Git Hit in Your Soul (1959) and Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting (1959). Mingus used these two approaches to advance not only musical expression but also political and spiritual ideas. In his music and testimony, after the moldy fig/modernist debate (Gendron 2002, 121-123; one between early jazz and bebop proponents arguing the merits of these subgenres) within the 1940s Dixieland revival, Mingus made New Orleans jazz a part of his larger embrace of group expression in the 1950s. His use went beyond bebop's small group format of head-solo-head (or soloist-versus-rhythm) or big band's similar arrangements. While Mingus's music orbited the same sphere of soul music (influenced by gospel) that Ray Charles and others mined during this era, his inclusion of idioms from African-American church tradition developed in musical form the confined uses of a roots stylistic approach, which can be seen in Charles's contemporary recordings or Nat and Cannonball Adderley's work songs. …