african studies(1page for each question)

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I n African American literature, .the vernacular refers to the church songs, blues, ballads, sermons, stories, m~ and, .in our own era, hip-hop songs that are part of the oral, not primarily the literate (or written-down) tradition of black expr~ssion. What dis.tinguishes this body of wo.rk is its in-group and, at times, secretive, defe_nsive,. and aggressive ·character: it is not, generally speaking,. produced for. circulation beyond .the black group · itself -(though it sometimes is bought · and sold by those outside its circle). This highly charged mate- rial. has been extraordinar,ily influential for writers of poetry, fiction, drama, and so on. What would the ·work of. Langston Hughes, Sterling A. Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, -and Toni Morrison be like_ without its black verIJ.acular ingredients? What, for that- matter, would the ~riting of Mark Twa.in or William Faulkner be without these same elements? Still, this vernacular

, ·material also has its own shapes, its own integrity, its own place. in the black literary canon: the literature of the vernacular ..

Defining the vernacular and delineating it as a cat- egory of African American literary studies have been difficult and controversial projects. Some critics note

Avenue Steppets Marching Club, 1982·. Black New Orleans features parades at Mardi Gras and throughout the year-for other holjdays, fun~rals, an~ ~any occasioi;is. The styli;zed music and dan~e steps characteristic of the parades have helped cJefine New Orleans' culture and bind its community. Th~se stre~~ forms offer a continuing source of inspiration for artists across the categor'ies·: liter~ry,' vi~u-;.l, and otherwis~. Photography by Michael P. Smith© The Historic New Orleans Collection.

Throughout this section, titles followed by• are available on the StudySpace website ·

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4 TH E VE RN AC U LA R T RA D I TI O N , PA RT 2

th vernacular's typical demarcation as a category of things that e d h . . are attached only to lower-class groups, ~n ot erw1se simplistically ex r ll1ale, of a vast and complexly layered and dispersed group of people. 0th P essive both against the sentimentalization of a stereotyped "folk" and the:S.,warll

d against the impulse to define black people and their literature I Iore'' an . f . b h . so el . terms of the product10n o unconsc10us ut some ow definitive Wo k }' II) the bottom of the social ~ierarchy. ~ith these critiques often corn: /;011i ings against forming too easy an idea about the shape and direction f rtt.

· h" M h · · h O Afr can American literary 1story. ost emp atic 1s t e argument ag . , ,.

"modernist" view that would posit an almost sacred set of found:tst a vernacular texts by "black and unknown bards" (to borrow James W~~:al Johnson's ringing phrase) leading to ever more complex works by higher ' ll higher artists marching into the future. Is contemporary music really rn and

. " " 1 " h h k f B · S · h R b ore "progressive or comp ex t an t e wor o ess1e m1t , q ert Johnson or Louis Armstrong? ,,

And yet even after these questions and criticisms have been raised somehow such distinctive forms as church songs, blues, talI tales, work songs, games, jokes, dbzens, and rap songs-along with myriad other such forms, past and present-· persist among African Americans, as .they have for decades. They are, as a Langston Hughes· poem announces, still here. Indeed, the vernacular is not a body of quaint, folksy items. It is not an exclusive male province. Nor is it associated with a particular level of.society or with a particular historical era. It is neither long ago, far away; nor fading. Instead, the vernacular- encompasses vigorous, dynamic processes of expres- sion, past and present. It ma'kes up a rich storehouse of materials wherein the values, styles, and character, types of black American life are reflectea in language that is highly energized and often marvelously eloquent.

Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison ·have argued that vernacular art accounts, to a large degree, for the black American's legacy of self-awareness and endurance. For black performers and :listeners (as well as readers) it has often served the classic function of teaching as it delights. Refusing to sub- scribe wholly io the white American's ethos andworldview, African Amer· icans expressed in these vernacular forms their own ways of seeing the world, its history, and its meanings. The vernacular comprises, Ellison said, nothing less than another instance of humanity's "triumph over chaos." In it experiences of the past are remembered ·and evaluated; through it African Americans attempt to humanize aff often harsh world, and to do so with honesty, with toughness, and often with humor.

VERNACULAR IN THE MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY PERIODS: A BRIEF HISTORY

From the first stirrings of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1940s through the first decade of the twenty-first century the lived experience of black A · · ' f of mencans creatmg freshly innovated art has continued to be a act ~mfrican cu!tural l~fe '. In particul~r, . black Americans have produced tidal wave of mnovative black v~I_"nacula_i- expression: new forms sacred an,

5 secular, ~cross the categories of art. Perhaps the philosopher Cornel West

formu~atwn best expl~ins this phenomenon of spurting black creativity: h: has said that as black creative output is adopted bought , and sold by th

broader community, the blacks themselves have ' been forced to come up

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Jazz singer Billie Holiday often performed the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit " at New York's Cafe Society, one of the country's first major interracial night clubs . This poem set to music was part of a continuum of black protest songs-"What Did I Do (to Be So Black and Blue) " and "Miss Otis Regrets" among them-that became popular with American audiences.

with another-and then yet another-something new of their own. Perhaps the zealousness of the search for identity, direction, and freedom in a still- hostile native land explains something about the black American's energies for ever-dawning new directions in personal/communal ·expression.

Whatever black Americans' motives for creativity have been, their imag- ery, sounds, and products have traveled very well. In 2013, the French anthropologist Alexandre Pierrepont reported that year after year in his large freshman music history classes in Paris, more than 80 percent of the students when asked what music they listened to at home routinely selected a black American music (or one directly shaped by it) as their favorite. It is not an exaggeration to say that by the end of the twentieth century, black American culture had become the most popular youth culture in the world.

At mid-twentieth century, rhythm-and-blues (much of it gospel-based) was circling the globe, and new forms of jazz were emerging. By the 1980s, jazz had become a widely accepted concert music , studied and taught- sometimes in interdisciplinary courses in jazz studies-all over the United States as well as overseas. Jazz dances (and their various blends) were filling the concert theaters and public dance halls (as well as private party spaces) of the world. Brewing in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and con- tinuing to claim new listeners on a worldwide scale have been hip-hop

6 THE VERNACULAR TRADITION. PART 2

music and culture, whose Bronx-born rhythms may now be heard in Hon Kong, Stockholm, Johannesburg, Berlin, and Lima. As the America! economy, and indeed most of the world's economies, faltered in the early twenty-first century-and then as these economies attempted a gradual crawl back to stability in the 2010s-markets at home and abroad contin- ued to use blues, jazz; and hip-hop to sell their wares.

Of course sheer quality accounts for much of this story of success-the mysteriously persistent allure of the beautiful U.S. black vernacular. But who can doubt that the black American's placement in the hydra-headed economy of the United States, where the hunger for new products is pri- mary and where the capacity to market, package, and deliver them on a worldwide scale has increased with the decades, has also played its eager part? Some of this is a matter of hardware and software. The rising array of new technologies has rendered black creative productions of all sorts, in music and word art as well as in dance and the visual arts, more widely and quickly available than ever before-far beyond black communi- ties themselves. The perfection of the microphone, of speakers large and small, and of ever-more-precise recording devices, audio and video; the rise of the LP and then the CD and then of other digital chips and delivery systems; the prevalence of mini-computer and of social media technologies- all these have made it possible for art created by individuals or small

James Brown in 1962, photograph by Charles Stewart. By many reports, Brown reigns as the single most influential and widely "sampled" musician in the world.

· groups to be potentially avail- able to a worldwide audience, and available in an instanta- neous zip.

· With all this said, on the level of the black community itself, the engines of black vernacular • creativity in the modern and postmodern eras have been amazingly robust. Through the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movement and post-Black Arts Movement years, black churches (Chris- tian and Muslim) have con- tinued to serve as fertile training grounds for young musicians, singers, and key- boardists · in . particular, though with horn players and percussionists also frequently in the mix. As early as the late 1940s, the influence of blues and jazz on , church music was evident. In turn, by the 1950s the influence of gospel on jazz was creating new dimensions of "soul jazz"-sometimes with musi- cal strw::tures and modes of

INTRODUCTION 7

presentation springing, straight. out of church. The hard bop. jazz group The Jazz) Messenger: was. ?ne ~f many , outstanding groups playing jazz from a gospel foundat10n. L1kew1se, the mid-twentieth century's rising tide of rhythm~and-blues could thank gospel for much of its ' sustained appeal. James Brown began his career as a church singer in Toccoa, :Georgia. Even Motown, with its . push to reach audiences beyond the black community, typically hired y:oung singers first kno~n to church congregations in Detroit or the Deep South . .Ironically, all ,the singers .in the hit Motown group The Temptations began ~s church vocalists. Sacred spaces, .with their long t:r:a- dition of vivid projections of The .Word, have also nurtured ,.secular black styles of spoken-word presentation-right up to our ·own hip-hop .era . . Worldwide jazz festivals during this , period frequently featur:ed promi- nent -gospel stages ; where wjde arrays of ,church-born projects w,ere to ,be heard. In 2003, one highly significant ja7:z singer, Dianne Reeves, reported she. spent. her entire time at the New Orleans Jazz Fest under the :gospel tent. "That's-wher.e,you hear• the most, innovative vocal music," she said. In the l 990s:one .began to :see more and more churches experimenting with new technological equipment-,-with recorded music sometimes filling in for instrumental and vocal backgrounds and with large screens showing congregations words of songs and close:ups of presenters. And just as hip- hop rhyme virtuosos were influenced .by word artists in the church pulpits of. the United States, '. preachers a:nd , choirs in turn · were increasingly: experimenting with · hip-hop ·staccato rhyme.s; rhythms, , arid ·flow. Indeed, the .rapid and ·vigorous cycling of influences, _sacred and· secular, "folk" and "not folk," ac'ross, the decades and ey·en the centm:ies, may be the most crucial.aspect of the U.S. black vernacular·story . . ,· .

Qf course jazz festivals, the first of which .appeared .in the early 1950s, also featur~d -jazz. By the 1960s and /7.0s, these,cfestivals ,had become an important circµit for jazz musicians in ther United ,States and especially ,in Europe,. where in some ·cities· the ,festivals occurred throughout the year. ~uring this era, many forms of ,musk have. been presented under the "jazz'.' banner; Ln NewYork and,other.major.cities, on a givefl night one might hear a virtual history of the form: re 7.creations of the earliest work of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton,· big ba'nd music (withs charts .. . sometimes borrowed from the Smithsonian or the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutge rs Un.iv,er-. sity), :small· bands playing :bebop or modal jazz in ,,:t he 'tradition .of ,Miles Davis -and John Coltrane,· replays of the avant-gardists of the late 1950s, '6.0s, and .'70s, fusiqns of many kinds-'imrolying rock, flamenco, ,opera arid other European art musics, gospe'l; and hip-hop. In the twenty-first century, some of these mixes left jazz afficionados doubtful that the word ''. jazz" still applied to music marketed arid .eveQ sincerely played under its name. These musical experiments Jeft otlier observers. hopeful that whether called jazz or· not, the new mixes would iriclude ingredients from which the forms of things yet unknown would crystallize. ' , ' This period saw the .rise of blues: as a ,. worldwide music , and .of. rhythm

and blues-very often, as ;noted, .involving singers who got ,their , start in church-as a local urban youth phenomenon that captured the, world's attention. By the mjd-1960s ,. a new hard-driving blues line called funk Was giving new. energy to · the generally softer sway of Motown and most other (blues and gospel-based) forms of R&B. James Brown, Sly Sto11e, the Funkadelics , and their many imitators, along with those who were extend-

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8 THE VERNACULAR TRADITION, PART 2

ing the, idiom on their own, were holding center stage on the secular bi music scene. Many -of the new Afro-Pop world music productions a:ck from these highly danceable roots i Several experts report the bass d aw

b . h . I ' rulll and horn lines of James Brown as emg t e smg e most sampled sourc . ' the realm of hip-hop, where sampling is a definitive mode. e 111

The story of the forms and meanings of hip-hop is still unfolding. Mo . histories mark its starting place in uptown New York City, particularly t the Bronx, while also crediting important background activities in an~ around Kingston, Jamaica. What's clear now is that beginning sometime in the early 1970s, a form of spoken-word a:rt was emerging that was driven by new technologies, by the will to sample, remix, and improvise rhythmical commentary over existing recorded materials of many kinds; and by the flow of the human voice in spirited and often defiant recitation. Some of the performances and recordings involved . virtuosic improvisation. Buf at least as many hip-hop artists were careful "loose-leaf" poets who tight- ened their words on paper and then memorized ·them for public presenta- tions that · could seem improvised on the spot. (Sometimes the rapper's rhythms were improvised when the lyrics were not.)

In the quarter century since hip-hop first hit the national airwaves and party-spaces of America, the music has changed its course and, like jazz and gospel, has fused with other forms-in search, always, of fresh effe~ts and directions. It' is ·a street party music, dance-club music: music of ·court- ship and playful (as well as sometimes competitive and even hostile) social interaction. It is a form of poetry·or "spoken-word" art where the subject frequently has been the grittine·ss -of urban black life-and where, increas- ingly, many other subjects . (including-romance, political activism, and the difficulty of creating art) also are raised .· Hip-hop's advocates speak of the characteristically hardcore diction and . subject matter of hip-hop · as new forms of black urban realism and protest, harsh but true reports from the bottom of the American social hierarchy. They also smile at over-the-top parodic aspects of the music that insiders know not to take too· seriously. At its best, this is a music of broad aesthetic' pleasures: of intricate Afro- rhythms and rhymes to challenge and ·delight the mind, the foot, and the eardrum-a music that raises contemporary black questions in an idiom no one can ignore.

As much as any black vernacular form in the last hundred years, hip-hop music and culture represent a generational preference, with those coming of age before roughly 1980 typic'ally expressing strong ·dislike of hip-hop culture in its various manifestations. Hip-hop's most outspoken critics emphasize the music's casual uses of explicitly , sexual language and the association of certain rappers with gangs, violence, misogyny, loveless sex, and bragging about personal wealth. But as ,hip-hop -is gradually institu- tionalized, not just as a commercial product but as an art form . to be researched and studied as well as aesthetically enjoyed (and blended.with other forms of expression on a worldwide scale), it is emerging as a might- ily persistent force. In many contemporary schools, hip-hop is employed as a tool for teaching. As with other forms of black vernacular expression- blues and jazz in particular-hip-hop is becoming a global music. And as it develops new accents and vocabularies in Asia Africa Europe and throughout the Americas, new hip-hop forms, buil; on a bl~ck U.S. 'base, are emerging fast.

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INTRODUCTION 9

DEFINING THE VERNACULAR

What •is the vernacular':i Accordin w; b · · ,' ' ·· comes from the Latin-'; z g to ster s secon.d edition, the term

vernacu us: Born m one' h . f a slave born in his master's house a . t· ,, s ouse, native, rom verna; ings the following· (1) "b l . ' nda ive -and counts among its mean-

. e ongmg to, eveloped in . and sp· oke d b the people of a particular place regi . , _ _ _ or use y ( ) h . . ' on, or countr:y· native · md1genou 2 c aractenst1c ·of a -locality· local 'I I th ' f ' s. · · · vernacular may be defined a ' · _n e context O American art, the . t t· b t h s express10n that springs from · the creative m erllac. wn e w<;,en t e_ received or learned traditions and that which is loca y mvented, made m America ,, Th. d fi . . d . can cultural historia J h A K . is e mt10n, enved from Ameri- h , k n ° n · ouwenhoven and Ralph Ellison sees Man- t:ttan s s y~crapershas_ well as Appalachian quilts as vernacuiar because /Y) u~e mo :r~ tehc_ mques and forms (machines, factory-made materials -

e c.d a onghwit _ w at Ellison calls the play-it-by-ear methods and locai pro ucts t at give American for th - d' . . Wh h . . ms eir · 1stmct1ve resonances and power:

atd t en, 'IS the- Afncan American vernacular? It consists of forms sacre -songs, prayers, ~nd sermons-and: secular-work songs, secular rhymes and songs, blues, Jazz, and stories of many kinds. It also consists of dances, wordless musical performances, stage shows, and visual art forms- of many sorts.

As Houston A. Baker Jr. noted, the word vernacular as a cultural term has ?een used most frequently to describe developments in the world of ~rch1t~ct1;1re. In contrast to the exalted , refined, or learned styles of design- m~ bmldmgs, the .vernacular in architecture ,refers both to local styles by ~udders un~ware of or unconcerned with developments beyond their par- ticular provmce and to works by inspired, cosmopolitan architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, a careful student of architecture ·as a worldwide enter- prise and of the latest technologies but also one who wanted ·his buildings custom-made for their surroundings.

This example from architecture is relevant insofar as the makers of black vernacular art used the American language and everything at their disposal to make art that paid a minimum of attention ·to the Thou-shalt-nots of the academy or -the arbiters of high style. Coming from the bottom ·of the American social 'ladder, blacks have been relatively free from. scrutiny by the official cultural monitors. As a group they tended to care little about such opinions; wh~t the black social dance called the Black Bottom looked like to the proctors at the local ballet class ,(be they white or black) was of little interest to them. Thus it is no surprise that the black inventors of this rich array of definitively.American forms have had such a potent ,impact on America's cultural life and history.

The forms included here are varied and resist aesthetic ,generalizations. One is drawn nonetheless to parts of Zora Neale Hurston's wonderful cata- log of the "Characteristics of Negro Expression": "angularity," "asymmetry," a tendency toward "mimicry" and the "will to adorn." In addition, the,forms share traits that reflect their African background: call-response patterns· of many kinds; group creation; and a poly-rhyt_hmically percussive,_ dance-beat orientation not only in musical forms but m the rhythm of a hne, tale, or rhyme. It is not surprising that improvisation is a highly prized a~pect of vernacular performance. Here too one finds European, Euro-American, and American Indian forms reshaped to African American purposes and

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sensibilities. For example, like black folktales,tales from Europe oft 1 clear delineations of sacred and profane, good and evil, righteous pu e~ hack and righteously punished. Similarly, the blues offer few such consol:~~ ers solutions, or even scapegoats. At times what seems revealed is the starkons, of a life that is real, that is tough, and that must be confronted without~s convenience of formulaic dodges or wishful escapes. Even the spirit t t admit that "I've been 'buked and I've been scorned, I've · been talked ab ua s I Sure as you're born." And the church songs involve-along with the ye:~: ing for heaven's peace-confrontation with real troubles of the world and the will to do something about them. ·

rOne of the most compelling efforts at generalization about African American aesthetics is drawn by Henry Louis Gates Jr. from the vernacular itself. Drawing on linguistic research by Geneva Smitherman and others Gates has defined signifying-the often competitively figurative, subver'. sively parodying speech of tales and of less formalized talk as well as of various forms of music-as an impulse that operates not only between con- testing tale tellers but between writers (and painters, and dancers, etc.) as well. According to this view, Toni Morrison signifies on writers who pre- cede her by revising, their conceptions of character and scene, for example, or perhaps she even signifies on aspects of the novelistic tradition itself. In Gates's complex formulations about how African Americans create, the vernacular meets not only formal art but the world of scholarly. criticism as well.

This leaves us with a battery of concerns from postmodern cultural criti- cism: Is the idea of the .vernacular "essentialist," that is, dependent on defi- nitions of racial essences that are not knowable outside the black circle? What is black about the black vernacular? When is "American" culture not black and vernacular? What stake do cultural observers have in this termi- nology, or, for that matter, in its rejection?

This leads us further to inquire: How were this section's entries selected? Whence came these particular texts? Pouring over dozens of anthologies and collections, hymnals, songbooks, recordings, and literary works yielded texts that are not only historically representative but also distinctive and resonant with aesthetic power. One abiding problem with capturing such works is that they were not originally constructed for the ·printed page but for performance within complicated social and often highly ritualized set- tings. Nonstandard pronunciations in texts transcribed from records ~re generally represented with a minimum of invented spellings-the "eye dia- lect" so often used by American writers to designate declasse or politically disempowered groups. This effort was informed- by those of writers who captured black speech by getting the rhythms right, the pauses, the special emphases and colors. But contractions and new spellings were allowed when they seemed called for.

What determines the order of the vernacular -selections, genre hr genre? Whenever possible, works are presented in chronological order and are clustered according to authorship. But because authorship and chronology are often unknown or ambiguous (for example, who first told the tale of the rabbit and the tar-baby?), we simply have done our best to ascertain credits and dates when they are available. In the folktales section, works are cred- ited and dated in footnotes, but-recognizing that in this instance the

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"authors" are the recorders (brilliantly artistic ones though they may be) of works created incrementally by many, many voices over many; many years- they are listed not by date or writer but by subject: the aniinal tales · precede the ones with h,uman characters and follow a general chronological arc. Such broad thematjc and timelin~ concerns govern all of the' vernacular section's orderings-even when spedfic dates and authors are given. For even in the case of a Duke Ellington song or a \\tlarrin Luther King ,sermon/ speech, for which date and author seem, so specific, what we reproduce here is one particular text or version of a performance given over and over, according to changing settings and moments. And both Ellington and King draw on rich vernacular traditions (on black and unknown bards) to fashion and project their works. (ln Ellington's case, the best text may be the recorded "text," with its performance by the sixteen members of his band, each of whom adds much more to the creative process than is the: case with European "classical" music.) More than any other form of black literature, the vernacular resists being captured on a page or in a hi~torical f~ame: by definition, it is about gradual, group creation; it is about change.

,Clearly, the selections here and on t\"ie .StudySpace playlist are not meant to be definitive but to invite further explorations and findings. Black ver- nacular forms are works in progress, experiments in a still new country. They have not survived because they are perfect, polished jewels but because they are vigorous fountains of expression. Not only are they influ- ential · for writers but they are wonderful creations on their own. In the black tradition, no forms are more quick or overflowing with black power and black meaning.

GOSPEL

I n a sense, the distinction between spirituals and gospel is so 'slight that it seems contrived. Both are black sacred songs, church songs that are constructed in a variety of forms within the African American musical tradition. Both are born and nurtured in the context of ritualized Christian worship, and yet both com- ment widely on the trying circumstances of black life in white America. To· com- plicate the picture ,rven more, traditional Negro spirituals are frequently rendered in a "gospel manner." Sometimes, indeed, songs from eighteenth- and nineteenth- c,entury English hymnals-most notably the songs of Isaac Watts-may be rendered in so convincing a gospel version that listeners have thought them generated as the spirituals were generated: within the richly dramatic space of the black church ser- vice itself. ·

What is the gospel manner? And what is its history? Briefly, gospel music emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century as blues and early jazz styles of singing and playing instruments began to exert a ,powerful impact on the·way church musi- cians conceived their task. Especially in holinds churches, Churches of God in Christ-those farthest from the genteel European models of churchly decorum-a highly percussive, polyrhythmically syncopated, and bfuesy music began to appear. These singers, s13ys poet and critic Sterling A. Brown, ·

,,, fight the devil by using what have been considered the devil's weapons . Tambo- rines , cymbals, trumpets and even trombones and bass fiddles are now accepted in some churches. The devil has no right to all that fine rhythm, so a joyful noise is made unto the Lord with bounce and swing.