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Main Menu Home About Us Contact Us MHS eNewsletter Composers Conductors Instrumentalists Vocalists Featured Artists & Groups Reviews Donors Search Site for... Links Newsflash Fun Stuff Hot Topic! Predicting the Future of Orchestras Classical Music & Today's Youths Ghana @ 50: Journals of Rodger French Solos for Treble Instruments--Sheet Music Education and the Diversity Dilemma, Pt. 2 Education & the Diversity Dilemma, Pt. 1 Walker Sonata No. 1 for Solo Piano Hope Briggs & SFO Black Orchestras Pt. 10 Black Orchestras Pt. 9 A Message from Sinfo-Nia Black Orchestras Pt. 8 Black Orchestras Pt. 7 Black Orchestras Pt. 6 Black Orchestras Pt. 5 Black Orchestras Pt. 4 New Research on Arts Audience Attitudes and Behavior Support Fisk University Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Black Orchestras Pt. 3 Wendell Weaver--Music Ed (1) Black in Canada want Black-focused school Wendell Weaver--Music Ed (2) December eNewsletter correction Wendell Weaver--Music Ed (3) On Black Men & Boys Wendell Weaver--Music Ed (4) The Power of Words Wendell Weaver--Music Ed (5) Hope Briggs returns Celebrating Dr. King Part 2 Institutionalized Racism Musings on Mentors and Mentees Black Orchestras Pt. 2 Beethoven was BLACK! Black Orchestras Pt. 1 Call for Diversity in Orchestras Relevancy of CMOC Children at Concerts Talking to Audiences Concert Hall Etiquette Defining Black Music US Black Classical Instrument Discrimination Love for Sale? Bibliography Events Myrtle on the Web Guestbook Finding the truth is not enough. What we also have to find is justice.                                ~Rigoberta Menchu What is Black Music? Monday, 19 March 2007 Black Music, when the term is used today, means “folk” and “popular” musics of Black people (i.e. jazz, gospel, blues, and spirituals). But the question here is why isn’t classical or concert (art) music included under the same heading? I’m not brazen enough to even pretend to answer a question that has for decades been the source of debate amongst seasoned musicologists, sociologists, etc. All I really want to do is bring you into the conversation and see what you have to say. I happen to think that it’s a matter of syncretism. What’s syncretism? It’s a noun: 1.         the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion. 2.         Grammar--the merging, as by historical change in a language, of two or more categories in a specified environment into one, as, in nonstandard English, the use of was with both singular and plural subjects, while in standard English was is used with singular subjects (except for you in the second person singular) and were with plural subjects. (Dictionary.com ) For some reason, it’s not good enough to generalize about “Black music” and say that it’s just a catch-all for everything composed/produced by musicians of color, although varying by style--that would be too easy. Academicians like to complexify everything (and yes, complexify is a word--see what I mean?). But really, what is the need to compartmentalize music, discriminate against one particular style or genre because maybe it’s not “Black enough” to be part of what we think is Black music. I believe it has to do with origins. William Grant Still Classical music as we know it in America today “originated” in Europe and is therefore considered to be “white” music. Often, my students would say to me, "I don't wanna learn Bach. That's white people's music." And then, of course, I'd try to convince them that they need to develop certain technical skills and that this particular piece makes lyrical and fun the requisite skills that need to be learned. My student's face still frowning, I'd continue--when I want to teach them about, say,  syncopation as a skill to be learned, I will pick something, composed by whoever Black or white, that represents that rhythmic exercise. Ultimately, I tried to get them to see that music had nothing to do with race and that Black or white, if they are to become musicians, they have to learn how to play any and everyone's music. But it made me wonder, if I just TOLD them that the piece was composed by someone Black, would they have been more accepting of the overall skills that were being conveyed? Older children are aware of the racial divide in their country. Printing companies have written into all of our children’s text books the place where classical music began--lily white and mostly male--and now we believe it as gospel and reify it today. Thank God for the last decade when William Grant Still (right) (1895-1978) was finally added to the lone picture of Scott Joplin (1868-1917) as the only two composers of color! (Excuse my sarcasm and check out the composers link for hundreds of names.) As I stated in last week’s Hot Topic!, Americans need physical documentation before they believe anything (and backup copies of other texts written by “authorities,” mostly white observers of Blacks). Simply stating that Africans brought with them instruments and their musical prowess, and that they took European ideas and made something new and decidedly better, isn’t good enough for many people. Saying something like that may cause your (probably white) debater to say, “Well, as colonialized as Africa is/was, who knows if they weren’t already influenced by European musical ideas on the continent before they were persuaded to board the ship for their Transatlantic journey to the glorious land of milk and honey.” Now, upon hearing this side of the argument, please refrain from raising your hand to slap that person. Just realize that the debate is ongoing and will forever oscillate since most of the documentation of African enslavement was lost, burned, altogether unrecorded, etc. So, can anyone really prove anything? Meh. One side needs the written texts while the other side relies on the innateness of spirit. (Read about it! The Power of Black Music by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. vs. Lying Up a Nation by Ronald Radano.) I like the definition provided by Grove Music Online: African American musics consist of individual and group, and oral and written forms of expression. The various genres that comprise this tradition are associated with specific historical periods, social contexts and functions. They also share a common core of aesthetic qualities of African origin that positions black American music within an African cultural continuum. Black Americans resisted cultural imperialism of the larger society by maintaining fundamental ideals from the past. During the era of slavery, they adapted to and survived their oppressive existence by preserving existing and creating new musical forms from African traditions, and they brought relevance to European musical traditions by reshaping them to conform to African aesthetic ideals. After emancipation, they transformed oral forms into written traditions, folk idioms into concert and urban styles, and secular and sacred traditions into hybrid forms of expression. (Click HERE for the citation.) So vague. So p.c. So non-descript. Duke Ellington And just what are these “core aesthetic qualities of African origin,” you might rightly ask? Well, they’re essentially calls, cries, and hollers; call-and-response devices; additive rhythms and polyrhythms; heterophony, pendular thirds, blue notes, bent notes, and elisions; hums, moans, grunts, vocables, and other rhythmic-oral declamations, interjections, and punctuations; off-beat melodic phrasings and parallel intervals and chords; constant repetition of rhythmic and melodic figures and phrases (from which riffs and vamps would be derived); timbral distortions of various kinds; musical individuality within collectivity; game rivalry; hand clapping, foot patting, and approximations thereof; apart-playing; and the metronomic pulse that underlies most African-American music. (I say "most" because I'm heard some atonal, unrhythmic stuff composed by people of color.) Can these African tropes be found in classical and concert music? Most certainly, although it's oftentimes well-disguised in other rules that make classical music, well, classical music. And then, when presented, does anyone besides Blacks understand what’s happening? They certainly didn’t when they first heard Duke Ellington’s (left) symphony Black, Brown and Beige… But perhaps today with jazz influences as prominent in mainstream as it is? Most likely.  Musicologist D. Antoinette Handy (Handy, D. Antoinette, Black music: opinions & reviews; intro. by Edgar A. Toppin. Ettrick, Va.: Distributor BM & M, c1974.) argued that there was no difference between "folk" and "popular" musics. Furthermore, “A common point of view is that ‘folk’ music goes out as ‘art’ music comes in. Those who hold to this opinion fail to realize that art music is nothing more than ‘intentional process’ of brain power embracing heart and soul power. The process does not involve the termination of one music and the commencement of another. Such an opinion is at the root of ‘class’ conflicts that exist within the field of music, creating and supporting a musical apartheid… It is the prevalence of this attitude that has caused the masses to believe that a ‘concert’ implies one type of audience, to the exclusion of them, whereas a ‘show’ implies their type of audience, to the exclusion of all others.” But, she contends, it’s this thinking that distances composer and performer, creating disharmonies amongst the same people, pushing one closer or further away from “white” and all perceptions of. There’s that battle of syncretism again. Handy brought in the whole economics debate, the thought that class is connected to musical style… We’ll discuss that another week. But for now, I’m left thinking, why denigrate yourself or others by believing that the Black accomplishments in classical music are somehow less indigenous to the Black experience than any other style or genre of “Black music?” WHAT DO YOU THINK?  [Learn more! Check out Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s book The Signifying Monkey: A theory of African American Literary Criticism and Sterling Stuckey’s book Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America.]   Join us next week when we discuss (something a little lighter): Concert Hall intimidation: its perceived elitism, its stifling rules, the aghast looks I get while I’m there and what to wear.   < Prev   Next > [ Back ]       © 2012 myrtlehart.org Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.

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