Midnight's Broken Toe

Disclaimer: Please do not take this as a scholarly examination of, say, "mainstream music among marginalized people". I began writing this as I was studying for my final exam in African American Philosophy; it is a very casual essay written merely as a reaction to and attempt to understand the last two lectures of the semester for that class. (Dr. Scott, by the way, is the name of my professor). Some of what I state here is taken directly from my notes and has no specific source except in the wisdom and experience of Dr. Scott.

I've been considering this a lot lately, mostly because the heart of the lectures that inspire these thoughts is that music is a cosmic connection for all humans, possibly even all living things. Music has always been incredibly important to me. So many activities and moments in my life are backed by a soundtrack that never really ends. I grew up with certain kinds of music (classical and bluegrass in particular) that I know have had and continue to have a strong influence in my life. And I find that my taste in music has gained such a wide, multi dimensional range that it's hard for me to legitimately say that I dislike a certain genre of music because that genre undoubtedly has noticable influence on a genre that I do like. (For example, I've always held the theory that the best Rock 'n Roll has its roots in other kinds of music. Think about it). So it's no wonder that when Dr. Scott starts talking about music in his lectures, I get chills. Read on...

My dad hates rap music...

My sister loves it...

...both understandably. My dad hates the commercialized hip-hop that's supposedly about "keeping it real", as Dr. Scott would say, by reclaiming the N-word and refering to women as bitches and hos. "I did not raise my sons to be niggas, and I most certainly did not raise my daughters to be bitches. What reality is being presented in the lyrics of hip hop that anyone would want to embrace, besides change?"

My sister thankfully prefers a "brand" of hip hop and rap that is more thoughtful. The rap music of Tupac, for example, does strive to keep it real, but does so in such a way as to, for example, draw attention to the gross realities of substandard inner city living conditions and the problems that are associated by the rest of society with it: gangs, drugs, theft, prostitution...Rather than bragging about money and women, the lyrics present life the way it is, perhaps as a way to question why life is the way it is for so many black people. This is where rap presents a fatalistic reaction to racism (Marginalist, specifically of the four reactions to racism that Cornell West describes in Prophecy Deliverance!) The lyrics present the problem, perhaps even question why the problem exists, does very little beyond that to solve the problem, but still succeeds in creating a kind of social activism.

The beginning of the rap genre is credited to Gill Scott Heron and his 1970 poem/song, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution Heron speaks of, while not explicitly a revolution of racial equality, came just two years after the Civil Rights Movement lost its revolutionary leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The lyrics of what is generally considered the first rap song describe a desire to transcend the mundanities of life (television, for example) to learn to think and act for oneself and achieve a revolution in the way black people and white people alike think of race.

Those who are oppressed into silence will often get away with a song.

 Thomas Jefferson invented the Dumb Waiter so that food would arrive from the kitchen without his guests having to see his slaves at work. However, Jefferson strongly encouraged the slaves in the kitchen and cellars to sing or hum at their work, so that guests would hear beautiful music coming from the kitchen.

Consider the evolution of typically African American music. Slave spirituals from Pre-Civil War through the Reconstruction give way to Blues between 1900 and 1920, during the heyday of Jim Crow. In the 1920's, with the onset of the Harlem Renaissance, Blues gave way to Jazz. Jazz, through the 1950's and 60's saw a permutation in bebop, which was begun in an attempt to make a genre of music that white people would find impossible to learn. (Incidentally, this didn't work; Red Rodney was a white, red haired Jewish New Yorker and jazz trumpeter, particularly adept at playing bebop, who toured with Charlie Parker. While on tour, Parker managed to pass off Red Rodney as a red-haired albino black man, billing him as Albino Red). Soul was a genre that came out of Blues, and Motown was itself an evolution of Soul; most of these musical genres had their beginnings in cities that were primary destinations for black people in both of the major northern migrations following reconstruction (Harlem, New York being the supposed birth place of Jazz and Detroit being the mother city of Motown, for example).

Jellie Roll Morton was a famed blues and jazz pianist. His nick name comes from a nickname for a member of the male anatomy. Blues delights in double entendre and in eros. Jazz likewise is a sensual genre. Music is after all very experiential; it is an experience that at the same time speaks on the experience. Negro spirituals, while at their core very sad songs, delight in an ascencion that is also present in Jazz. Cornell West, in Prophecy Deliverance! analyzes four common reactions to racial oppression. According to him, the fourth reaction is what he calls the Humanist tradition of response, and it involves the business of proving oneself to white people, but most especially, it accepts that all human beings have gifts, but that all of us are without exception inclined to be base. It has nothing to do with the color of skin and everything to do with the "content of character". To Cornell West, the people who most embody the humanist response are Jazz musicians, and he cites in particular saxophonist John Coltrane.

Jazz music is celebratory of life as a human being. It is earthy, essentially profane (as opposed to sacred) in that it describes the human desire to transcend flesh and blood. Jazz music is humanist because it recognizes that we are creatures not only of flesh and blood but creatures of spirit. We can't help ourselves. Jazz and Blues, in their earthiness, provide a bridge between the sacred and the profane and thus the transcendence that humans seek in music.

Keep in mind the fact that African American music has never been marginal in America; it has always been part of the mainstream. Whether or not we like and accept him, Eminem exists as a force in rap music because of the black musicians and poets who carved out a niche for rap. Thanks to guitarists and lyricisists like Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King, we have Eric Clapton to rock the Charlottesville arena. Without black blues musicians influencing Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, the Beatles would never have had a musical basis to imitate and eventually permutate into their own style.

Duke Ellington to John Coltrane to Wynton Marsalis, Ma Rainey to Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday to Nina Simone, B.B. King to Jimi Hendrix to Bob Marley to Gill Scott Heron to The Supremes, Run DMC, Michael Jackson, Tupac, Talib Kweli...When the monetary gains of the music industry are put aside, we understand why rock stars claim that "it's all about the music"...Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap...all of which are influential in rock and roll...are kinds of music that strive to transcend profane, earthy humanity by celebrating humanity's sacredness.

Posted in Wax on, wax off byMidnightsBrokenToe at 11:19 PM Posted by: MidnightsBrokenToe at 11:19 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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