Buying Freedom
I’ve written about the “sorrow songs” of American slavery before, (read my blog post here) but today I reflect on the writings of Jon Cruz, the sociologist from UCSB and his 1999 book, “Culture on the Margins.” Cruz tells about a broad range of influence the music of black people had. The complex effect of its deep suffering and harrowing storytelling on the public during its performative period and shortly after is incredible. Historical figures like W.E.B. Dubois, Fredrick Douglass, and Harlem Renaissance era critic Alain Locke all have volumes of analysis on more than just the function and purpose of the sorrow songs, but also how they developed multifaceted interactions between racial groups, including the motivations of abolitionism in the Northern States. One of the more compelling arguments Cruz writes about is the white peoples’ appropriations of these songs, their reactions to its message, and their actions by way of using this message to drive a movement to strengthen the cause of abolitionism. Much of the topic of appropriation involves a cyclical pattern. The commercialism of black music into its popular iterations past the period of recorded sound makes its way back into the medium, both borrowing from its creations and getting spit back out again as a new amalgamation of the conditions that create its genesis. Tracing paths of authenticity can be complicated, but from the cultural roots of West African griot, where as Barbara Hoffman states, “Americans who, historically, spent much energy in trying to understand their many different cultures as a single one, often have a difficult time seeing emphasis on cultural differences as positive.” (from “Griots at War”, 2000), to the forced immigration of these melodic transfers where Cruz notes, “It is a well established fact that music was one of the primary means by which slaves cultivated collective knowledge and solidarity.”, the miscegenation of this important craft would build a song that still molds and morphs in the popular expression today.
The cultural status of the Negro spiritual is one of the first questions that Cruz raises. He writes, “From gospel to blues to soul and to rap and hip-hop (and certainly more forms will follow), black music making remains part of an enormously important as well as sprawling black cultural sphere.” The power of the sorrow songs was felt and responded to in striking ways by its observers, participants, and performers. Frances Kemble is a key figure in the examples Cruz sets forth. She describes the transformation of black folk culture into marketed entertainment and the cornerstone of future American popular music. Kemble documents descriptions in her published journals, the singing she observed while living on a plantation from 1838 to 39, “With very little skillful adaptation and instrumentation, I think one or two barbaric chants and choruses might be evoked from them that would make the fortune of an opera.” This separation of the hardship from which these songs derive to the mass appeal that would become their manipulation creates an odd duality of problems. On the one hand, by creating a means of public entertainment there is a distance established from the problem they expose. Focusing on the emotive power, captivating tragedy, and the harsh reality of this music’s content, audiences are built upon the power of its authenticity. There is often no greater success then the tale built on the journey of the real. The commodification of this injustice perpetuates a barrier by which those in power to affect change are now insulated from doing so. They can claim their support is through their awareness of the problem and immerse themselves in the distance afforded by the product of the music disassociated from those who suffered creating it. Second, there is an important awareness that is driven by this appropriation. By commodifying and performing the gospel songs of the marginalized, there is an immediate result of bringing a subject to a group that might otherwise be blind to its activity.
This transference would emerge in a variety of ways during the 1800s. Minstrelsy was already a commodified use of black American musical themes. By the 1840s, this racialized humor and example of the encoded epistemology of race relations in the culture. “Blackface” and the depictions of blacks as childlike, docile, and happy, were often central to the way whites justified their treatment and oppression of black people. In contrast, performative groups like the Jubilee Fisk Singers brought faithful reproductions of the sorrow songs into regions in the north, and in fact, toured Europe, amongst other regions separated from their origins. While hosted in London by the Earl of Shaftsbury, he exclaimed by reaction to the powerful renditions, “If I thought color was anything-if it brought with it their truth, piety, talent, I would willingly exchange my complexion tomorrow.” This sentiment of empathy would connect the margins of white and black people through expressive identity and perpetuate the broad expanse of life experience that continues to this day.
Popular culture often rewards and idolizes the songs of the marginalized. While individuals succeed and the public is notified of the trauma, this acknowledgment is somehow used as a pseudo reparation for the atrocities cited by the songs themselves. We see this trend in the use of the sorrow songs and we will see this trend later in its evolutions into blues, rock, and jazz. We see it today in the showing of petty wealth on those who seek to expose hardship, as their music elevates the artist to a level where they can no longer identify with the oppressive culture from which they originated, and the content of their music is diluted by the “American dream.” If the sorrow songs give us any real point of knowledge and reflection, let it be in the struggle that they still reflect today. We can still hear it echo in the music that rings out in the streets of the marginalized, and our best way to pay homage is to fight for its performers, rather than package and monetize its product.
Today’s musical example is Marian Anderson singing the spiritual song “My Way’s Cloudy”, a sample of the sorrow songs recorded in Nov. 1923. Read more about Marian here, in Susan Stamberg’s 2014 NPR article, “Denied a Stage, She Sang for a Nation.”
Read more stories about history, music, and it’s intersections with our modern world at https://hughbass.com, and thanks for reading!
