African American Song Research Articles

Bookshelf

Abstract: Debra Greschner reviews three recent publications. Singing Down the Barriers: A Guide to Centering African American Song for Concert Performers by Emery Stephens and Caroline Helton covers the history of African American song, cultural appropriation and other contextual considerations, and suggestions for encouraging performance of this repertoire. Stella Guo Chen and Carlo Alberto Petruzzi offer Word-by-Word Explanation of Italian Opera Librettos in Chinese in seven volumes, covering eight classic operas. Franco Corelli and A Revolution in Singing: Fifty-four Tenors Spanning 200 Years , Volumes II and II by Stefan Zucker are the concluding volumes in a trilogy devoted to the tenor voice.

Mary’s Slave Song: The Tensions and Turnarounds of Faithfully Reading Doulē in the Magnificat

This article traces the enduring legacy of slavery in the United States and its biblical foundations that create interpretive tension around the Greek words doulos/doulē for readers and translators. Following Clarice Martin’s lead, I advocate for a faithful reading of doulē as “slave” in Luke 1:38, 48 and draw parallels between African-American slave songs and Mary’s Magnificat. I then explicate the tensions inherent in reading Mary as “the slave of the Lord” and “his [God’s] slave” against the socio-historical backdrop of U.S. slavery and explore how Mary’s slave song and narrative depiction by Luke “turns around” Mary’s slave language by reversing Orlando Patterson’s three constituent elements of slavery. When using this model, Luke transforms Mary’s slave language into a homeopathic practice and Mary into the embodiment of an African- American woman’s slave song.

African Children’s Songs: A Legendary Teaching Tool

This paper presents a multicultural perspective of the historical and legendary analysis of African American children’s songs highlighting the important interpersonal familial relationships that have been noted teaching tools for African American children. The data includes multiple songs that have been used for generations to teach children values, history and cultural experiences with life enhancing strength and determination.These diverse experiences are characterized by historical practices that called for African American families to find multimodal means of teaching their children when it was against the law for African Americans to learn to read or to become educated.This research reveals that at various stages in the lives of African American children, parents and extended family members found ways to culturally educate their children. This was done through use of historical and generational African American songs and games. They have been instrumental in providing hope of a better life for those who were oppressed and often denied some of life’s inalienable rights.Teachers at all grade levels including ESL and Special Education could enhance children’s learning through use of multimodal thinking and learning activities.

Black Music On Radio During the Jazz Age

The first full decade of radio broadcasting in the United States coincided with the fabled or Roaring Twenties, a period of significant cultural upheaval on both sides of the color line. In America, middle-class flappers and flaming youth were in open revolt against the old-fashioned Victorian moral codes that were the foundation of their parents' puritanical culture. In their efforts to break with the past, these young rebels turned to African American culture - particularly music, dance, language, and humor. Ragtime, blues, jazz, the Charleston, the black bottom, the slow drag, black slang, and jokes all became fashionable within this subgroup of white Negroes, and symbolic of their generational revolt against the established social order. This sort of selective expropriation of African American culture by certain sectors of society was nothing new - it had been going on since slavery; and, more often than not, the outcome was contradictory. On the one hand, American popular culture was periodically infused with the latest black innovations in music, dance, and comedy, and these infusions both enriched the cultural mix and encouraged the cultural rebellion of disaffected segments of the population - most noticeably bohemian fringe elements in the 19th century and middle-class young adults after 1920. Yet the end result of this cultural transaction was often a misguided and condescending dilution of the original art forms. Once they entered the mainstream, African American song, dance, and humor were vulnerable to commercial exploitation; entrepreneurs, entertainers, and tunesmiths routinely appropriated black cultural innovations, then tailored them to appeal to a audience. Moreover, the African Americans who created these art forms and styles in the first place were not only victimized by the theft of their material, but were often forced to compromise their art, and even their integrity, in order to gain entrance into the entertainment industry, which was white-controlled and racially segregated. These cultural contradictions reached an important watershed in the 1920s, during which time they played a decisive role in determining the form and the context of black participation in the entertainment industry - which now included a new medium called radio broadcasting. A major source of radio programming during the Jazz Age was live and recorded music. Initially, the use of phonograph records was widespread among broadcasters due to records' utility and cost; they provided a cheap, ready-made solution to the problem of what to offer listeners via the airways. But in 1922, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) began to demand that radio stations pay an annual fee in return for the use of recorded music copyrighted by ASCAP members. The owners responded by forming their own trade organization, the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB), which then took the lead in opposing the fee demands. While a number of the better financed stations eventually cut a deal with ASCAP, especially after a federal court upheld the legality of the music organization's position, the NAB remained steadfast in its opposition to the yearly licensing fee. Toward that end, many NAB members refused to include ASCAP songs in their programming. This impasse led, in part, to an upsurge in live music broadcasts within the fledgling radio industry. There were two major categories of live music broadcast on radio in the 1920s: concert music performed by amateurs, and popular big-band dance music performed by professionals. Potted palm was an industry term for classical and semi-classical concert music played by amateur musicians, who volunteered their services to the stations free of charge. It was a popular trend in radio programming during the early 1920s, providing broadcasters with an inexpensive alternative to ASCAP-controlled music. But as the radio industry moved toward network and commercial broadcasting, the novelty wore off; by the end of the decade, potted palm music was fast becoming a relic. …

Nowhere in the Middle Ages by Karma Lochrie

Reviewed by: Nowhere in the Middle Ages by Karma Lochrie Kate M. Craig Nowhere in the Middle Ages By Karma Lochrie. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. <http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15510.html> In Nowhere in the Middle Ages, Karma Lochrie proposes a provocative question: was there such a thing as utopianism before Utopia, the eponymous island created by Thomas More in 1516? For Lochrie, More's work has long been viewed incorrectly as an ex nihilo creation linked tightly to the nascent concerns of the early modern world; thus, identifications of "utopian" literature have been based on their similarity to More's idealized and isolated island commonwealth, involving "…travel to an unknown place, encounter with alternative social, political, economic, and religious structures, and an implicit comparison and/or critique of contemporary society" (16). Moving away from this narrow, Utopia-based definition of a utopia, Lochrie argues, opens the discussion to a wealth of medieval texts that contain aspects of "utopian imagination" and gives a more nuanced past both to the concept and to More's text itself. She stresses that the crux of this book lies in the fact that she ends, rather than begins, by discussing More, thus "productively scrambling the inaugural narrative currently telling utopia's story…" (7). This stylistic choice frames Utopia as one of many possible outcomes of the medieval utopian traditions she identifies in the previous chapters, taking up some narrative threads and breaking with others. In examining medieval utopianism, then, Lochrie is not searching for the "roots" of More's work, but exploring the different forms of utopias that existed in the Middle Ages with the goal of expanding not only our understanding of the period's imaginative life, but also the characteristics by which we define utopian thought. She achieves this "scrambling" by discussing four pairings of core medieval texts with later, mostly early modern texts. While not necessarily related to one another textually (though some are), she uses these pairings to demonstrate four different flavors of "utopian optics." Lochrie makes it clear that her purpose is not to show consistency or even connection between these models of medieval utopianism, but rather to map out a range of utopian possibilities and hint at their [End Page 330] afterlives. This choice privileges thematic cohesion over chronological progression, which might be disorienting for historically-minded readers seeking a more linear narrative. Lochrie's four pairings are: first, Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (early fifth century) with Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1634); second, the English and French Cokaygne traditions (thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) with Protestant satires and twentieth-century hobo and African-American songs; third, Mandeville's Travels with Richard Brome's The Antipodes (1636); and finally, William Langland's Piers Plowman (fourteenth century) with William Morris' A Dream of John Ball (1886-7). The Macrobius-Kepler pairing demonstrates what Lochrie terms a "cosmological utopianism"; that is, texts that use imaginary extraterrestrial travel to provoke reflection. The Dream of Scipio, included in Cicero's De republica and transmitted through Macrobius's Commentary, imagines Scipio Africanus's reaction as he is taken by his grandfather in a dream-vision to the heavens, prompting a realization of the cosmic triviality of the Roman Empire and indeed Earth itself: a "global vision of reduced significance" (31). This framing calls up a host of modern parallels in the reader's mind (Carl Sagan's pale blue dot, or the overview effect experienced by astronauts), but Lochrie productively compares it with Kepler's slightly bizarre dream-within-a-dream text relating how his mother, depicted as a sorceress (a portrayal which got her arrested), calls up a demon who has visited "Levania" (the moon). According to Lochrie, the lunar-centered perspective of Kepler's text is what makes it utopian, despite the lack of explicit political or social critique: it invites readers to see the earth (called "Volva" by the moon's inhabitants) as the alternative "other." If we consider "seeing the world with different eyes" the defining trait of utopianism, Lochrie argues, no there-but-unreachable place of "Utopia" is needed; our world, seen from the moon, can be its own mirror. In the Cokaygne traditions...

Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition

Book Review| December 01 2015 Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. Honey, Michael K.. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013xi + 210 pp., $100.00 (cloth); $28.00 (paper) Mark Allan Jackson Mark Allan Jackson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 136–138. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155273 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mark Allan Jackson; Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. Labor 1 December 2015; 12 (4): 136–138. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155273 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsLabor Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 by Labor and Working-Class History Association2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition

Journal Article Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition Get access Michael K. Honey. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. xx, 210 pp. Paper, $95.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 4, March 2015, Pages 1311–1312, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav152 Published: 01 March 2015

Sharecropper's troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American song tradition

Foreword by Pete Seeger Introduction: Music, Memory, and History 1. Freedom After 'While: Life and Labor in the Jim Crow South 2. Raggedy, Raggedy Are We: Sharecropping and Survival 3. The Planter and the Sharecropper: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union 4. There Is Mean Things Happening in This Land: Terror in Arkansas 5. Join the Union Tonight: Interracial Organizing in Missouri 6. Getting Gone to the Promised Land: California 7. I'm So Glad to be Here Again: The Return of John Handcox

“Hell Exploded”

This article examines the role of prisoner self-expression in destabilizing the harshest penal regime in American history, convict leasing, which developed more extensively in Texas than in any other state. In particular, it analyzes African American work songs and turn-of-the-century convict autobiographies written mainly by Whites. It argues that prisoner criticisms influenced free-world leasing opponents and that convict resentment thereafter complicated postleasing reform efforts. In the tradition of anti-institutional prison sociologists, the article suggests that reform-oriented prisons often have difficulty maintaining order because their newly expectant inmates desire release over rehabilitation.

African American Song (review)

African American Song. Published by Alexander Street Press. http://aamu.classical.com (accessed November 2006-March 2007). [Requires an audio-enabled computer with an Internet connection. Microsoft Windows users need Windows 98 or later; Internet Explorer 6 or higher, Netscape 8 or higher, Firefox 1.0 or higher, or Mozilla Suite 1.7.11 or higher; Macromedia Flash Player 7 or higher; and Windows Media Player 10. Macintosh users need Apple OS10 or higher; Safari 2.0 or higher or Netscape 7.2; and Macromedia Flash Player 7 or higher. Library subscriptions begin at $995 annually for three simultaneous users.] African American Song was introduced in January 2006 by Alexander Street Press (ASP) as an addition to its online music databases Classical Music Library (reviewed in Notes, 60, no. 4 [June 2004]: 1009-1012 and 61, no. 4 [June 2005]: 1057-1059) and Smithsonian Global Sound (reviewed in Notes, 62, no. 3 [March 2006]: 776-780). Many college and university interdisciplinary programs in music, folklore, American studies, and African American studies have pressing and immediate needs for audio resources, yet they often lack the money to purchase them, or to catalog them after acquisition. To consider the suitability of this resource for such programs, this review will explore depth and breadth of repertoire, quality of performance, usability, sound quality, and value. During the course of this review, I will try to identify some basic characteristics of African American song, especially in contrast to classical music, which may be more familiar to many Notes readers. I will address the content scope in its own right, and then appraise the service's ability to provide the music. Projected to contain 50,000 tracks, the site currently has approximately 17,400 tracks, that is, distinct performances of individual songs. Through the end of March 2007, the content has come from two labels, Document Records (16,222 tracks) and Rounder Records (1,215 tracks). Document was founded as a blues reissue label in the mid-1980s in Vienna by Johnny Parth. In 1990, Parth established his CD catalog with the aim of issuing the Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order of every pre-1943 (Prewar) blues and black sacred recording act, except those like Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith whose music was already reissued by Sony/Columbia and other major labels. The audio quality of Document compact discs varied from track to track, depending on the transfer qualities on the tape copies sent by contributing collectors. The CD booklet notes drew their discographical data from the third edition of Robert M. W. Dixon and John Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1943 (Chigwell: Storyville, 1982); the fourth edition with the contributions of Howard Rye published by Oxford University Press did not appear until 1997. By the end of 1998, the label had largely achieved its goal, having issued over 600 compact discs, and citing in its printed catalog the issues from other labels that would gather the rest of prewar blues and black sacred recordings listed in Dixon, Godrich, and Rye. In 2000, Gary Atkinson acquired Document and moved it to Scotland, adding new issues, and refurbishing the sound of older and more popular Document recordings with new transfers. African American Song appears to have all or nearly all of the blues and black sacred series, since 16,222 tracks would fill about 650 CDs of twenty-five tracks each, and the Document Web site (http://www.document-records.com/) lists approximately 750 discs in its catalog (sixty-four of which are devoted to early white country music, and hence not included in African American Song). Therefore African American Song will have nearly all of prewar blues and black sacred music as originally recorded and issued by eighteen recording firms. The remainder of the current content comes from Rounder Records (http://www.rounder.com/), which has been active since 1970, releasing new albums by elder musicians and new talent alike, with the occasional reissue. …

Developing an Outreach Program Based on Freedom Songs

SUMMARY The Flint Public Library developed the grant funded program, “The Power of Song: Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round,” to provide young people with in-depth exposure to the creative and purposeful aspects of the protest traditions of African-American freedom songs. The project used the resources of the Library to promote individual student and community research.

African American song

African American song

Toni Morrison and "Sis Joe": The Musical Heritage of Paul D

One way that Toni Morrison confronts slavery in Beloved is by drawing on music that has recorded an experience ignored in written history. The railroad holler "Sis Joe," whose lyrics are sung by Paul D, offers insight into her revisionary project. Originally performed by African-American song leader Henry Truvillion and immortalized in a ballet by Aaron Copland, "Sis Joe" provides Morrison with the opportunity to recover the black contribution to U.S. culture and history, and to illustrate the interdependence between blackness and whiteness in American identity.

Their eyes were watching God: African-American topical songs on the 1928 Florida hurricanes and floods

This study focuses on the five known African-American topical songs dealing with the two hurricanes and ensuing floods that took place in Florida in the summer of 1928. The first is a commercially recorded blues song and the others are unreleased Library of Congress sacred recordings, which are transcribed and analysed here for the first time.

African American Art Song: An Opportunity for Better Understanding

African American Art Song: An Opportunity for Better Understanding

The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (review)

What does it mean to have a sense of place? Is it to walk the land, to recognize the particular pungency of a marsh? Is it to know the plants and fish and birds that are native to a place? Surely such personal experience and knowledge are part of what shapes a sense of place. But there is more to a sense of place than a catalogue of facts or a litany of personal memories: There is a sense of the limits imposed on human activity by the roll of the seasons; there is a knowledge of the rituals that mark the passage of time. The stories and songs and legends of every region tell of human freedom, but they also remind us of the restrictions on human livelihood imposed by necessity or by custom and cruel habit. Understanding a particular landscape requires looking beyond geographic characteristics and biology, recognizing that human imagination and experience have played with the surfaces of the earth and created structures of meaning. By uncovering and interpreting deep structures of meaning inlayed in the African American experience of North Carolina's maritime past David Cecelski has enriched immeasurably our sense of coastal North Carolina. His history is environmental in the fullest sense possible: not only does Cecelski know the ecology of rivers, estuaries, and sounds--he also hears in African American songs and stories the deep strains of a collective past.

The African-American Art Song: A Musical Means for Special Teaching and Learning

Upon initial consideration, the might seem almost antithetical to genuine African-American experiences. Many would perceive this form as an extremely impractical device for teaching or sharing any but the most remote lessons of upper-class, European-originated cultural experiences. When compared with the songs to which most AfricanAmericans have been accustomed since birth, the European-originated would appear foreign in subject matter, text, and musical style. This paper, however, will discuss the existence of an African-American song. It will demonstrate that, in this variant of the form, we possess what is not only an aesthetically beautiful and entertaining indigenous form but one that is also a teaching tool of unique potential for instilling the lessons of our history. The form is also an effective means of preserving and dispensing information about many of our most treasured and valuable cultural personalities and customs. The most immediate problem in dealing with the musical genre art song occurs in the lack of a broad and consistent understanding of the term. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music offers the following definition: A intended for the concert repertory, as distinct from a folk or popular song. An traditionally is a setting of a text of high literary quality and, unlike most folk and popular songs, includes an accompaniment that is specified by the composer rather than improvised or arranged by or for the performer (Randel 1986, 56). The general concept WILLIS PATTERSON is professor of voice and Associate Dean of the School of Music at the University of Michigan. He has concertized as a bass soloist and has taught master classes on the at various colleges and universities. He is the editor of Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers (Marks, 1977) and of a second anthology soon to be released.

Tryin' to Get Home: A History of African American Song

Tryin' to Get Home: A History of African American Song

Learned It in Back Days and Kept It: A Portrait of Lucreaty

Portrait of Lucreaty Clark (1903 - 1986), an African American oak basket maker from rural Florida. Clark embraced a wide repertoire of traditional African American songs, games and folk knowledge essential to rural life. She was a remarkable representative of an era that seems very far away today.