The Transformation of Black Mus - Sam Floyd

The Transformation of Black Music
The Transformation
of Black Music
THE R HY T HMS, T HE SONGS , AND TH E SH I P S
OF T HE AF RI C AN D I AS PO RA
S A M U E L A . F L O Y D J R . with M E L A N I E L . Z E C K
and
G U T H R I E P. R A M S E Y J R .
1
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by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford UniversityPress

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Oxford University Press2017
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You must not circulate this work in any otherform

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CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 9780195307245
987654321
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

To the legacy of Mrs. JohnnieV.Lee

pillar of the Florida A&M University music
community, teacher, and lover of allmusic
(mentor to three generations of the Floyd family)
Encomium:Samuel A.FloydJr.
"Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence
for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as
an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate
democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action
without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos."
John Dewey, "Democracy in Education"1903
Sam, thank you for leading by example.

Contents
List of Maps ix
Foreword, by Melanie Zeck xi
Preface, by Samuel A.Floyd Jr. and Melanie Zeck xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Contributors xix
Introduction xxi
Recommended Recordings xxxv
PART I: BLACK MUSIC AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
1. Out of Africa:Setting Sail from the Motherland 3
2. The Making of the African Diaspora:Ships on the Oceans 31
3. The Diasporas Concert Worlds:Europe and the Americas 49
4. Isles of Rhythm:The Cinquillo-Tresillo Complex in the

Circum-Caribbean 69
5. Ties That Bind:Myth and Ritual in the Circum-Caribbean

and Beyond 87
PART II: CASE STUDIES
6. Pips Tambourine:Black Music and Sterling Stuckeys Revelations

of Herman Melvilles Hidden Sources 111
vii

viiiC o ntent s
7. Git on Board, Lil Chillun:Children and Music in the Diaspora

(by Melanie Zeck) 127
8. The Movement:Black Identities and the Paths Forward 141
9. Afro-modernism and Music:On Science, Community, and Magic

in the Black Avant-Garde (by Guthrie Ramsey Jr.) 155
10. Africa and the Trope of the Return 173
Epilogue 187
Appendix A: Excerpt from Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies,
and Black Music Inquiry 199
Appendix B: Figures and Institutions from the First Black Renaissance 201
Notes 203
Bibliography 221
Index 235
Index of Performers and Composers of Classical/Art Music 239

List ofMaps
Chapter1 (Out of Africa: Setting Sail from

the Motherland)
ap 1.1a Outline of Africa with major lakes and rivers 4
M
Map 1.1b Political map of Africa:modern nation states 5
Map 1.2Outline of Africa with historical empires/kingdoms
depicted:Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Ethiopia, Yorubaland, Kanem 7
Map 1.2a Kingdom of Ghana, eleventh centuryad 8
Map 1.2b Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth centuryad 9
Map 1.2c Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth century ad to 1591 10
Map 1.2d Kingdom of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) 11
Map 1.2e Outline of Africa with Kingdom of Kanem and Kanem-Bornu
Empire 12
Map 1.2f Outline of Africa with Yorubaland 13
Map 1.3Outline of southern Africa with modern nation states; historical
names of places referenced in text 22
Chapter 2 (The Making of the African Diaspora)

ap 2.1
M Moorish influence of Spain 33
Map 2.2 Colonies in the circum-Caribbean by ruling country 37
Map 2.3 Regions/cities in Mexico with black settlements 39
ix

xLi s t o fM a p s
Chapter4 (Isles of Rhythm)

ap 4.1
M The Islands of the circum-Caribbean 70
Map 4.2 Detailed map of Virgin Islands (U.S.and British) 71
Chapter8 (The Movement)

Map 8.1 NewYork City, with the Harlem area highlighted 142

Foreword
MELANIEZECK
The Transformation of Black Music situates black musics in the broader framework
of cultural, political, and social histories, all the while maintaining a focus on
the dynamic musical practices emerging, morphing, and influencing each other
both in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. Afull spectrum of black
musics from four continents, spanning the previous millennium, is addressed,
thereby revealing what black musics are and how they have blossomed, perme-
ated extant traditions, and created new practices.
The Transformation of Black Music employs a unique critical lens coined by
Samuel A.Floyd Jr.:Call/Response, which is, in a way, borrowed from the call-
and-response character of various Diasporic musics but used here to understand
the dissemination of African musics and the return of Diasporic musics to Africa
over a wide swath of time. Call/Response accounts for both the flexibility and the
ability of black musics to survive and thrive in new places as well as the reflex-
ive movements of black musics over time. Thus, in this book black musics are
first viewed and interpreted against the backdrop of the Diasporas formation
and then considered as integral components to expressive gestures and practices
made by people of the Diaspora, especially since the nineteenth century.
Grappling with subjects frequently omitted from traditional musicological
texts, the purpose and ultimate success of this book are guided by much more
than the ideals of inclusivity and representation. This work pays homage to
and builds on the contributions of esteemed predecessors in the field of black
music research, primarily and most notably Eileen Southern, Dominique-Ren
de Lerma, and Dena Epstein. But The Transformation of Black Music does much
more by taking its readers on a journey, one that has never been attempted in a
stand-alone monograph before. Referencing the findings and contributions of
ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, Americanists, Africanists, anthropolo-
gists, and others, as well as their own ethnographic and musical accounts, the
authors cull and weave salient features of the African Diasporas soundscape
into a narrative that (1)reflects the musical phenomena generated, in part, by
xi

xiiFo rewo rd
forced migration and collective memory, and (2)considers the kinds of stories
that these musics were meant totell.
The Transformation of Black Music covers topics, such as classical musicians of
African descent, that have been, and in some cases still are, considered taboo.
It includes important figures such as Vicente Lusitano, the Chevalier de Saint-
Georges, and George Polgreen Bridgetower, none of whom, despite available
documentation attesting to each mans musical virtuosity and prowess, is regu-
larly included in conventional music history and theory textbooks. Moreover,
the book contains information gathered from seemingly disparate sources that,
when synthesized, highlights musical practices formerly associated with specific
eras and regions. For example, a detailed description of trans-Atlantic musi-
cal movement reveals the shared characteristics between nineteenth-century
American jubilee singers and twentieth-century isicathamiya singing groups
from South Africa. Even the most delicate and controversial subjects are pre-
sented in a straightforward and factual manner; in so doing, readers can feasibly
connect musical practices separated by both time and space.
In short, this monograph is a treasure trove of information. Even so, the
authors are keenly aware that there has been an explosion of new research in
recent years on black musics and related topics, and it would have been impos-
sible to achieve truly comprehensive coverage in a single volume. Certain read-
ers will, no doubt, notice significant lacunae and a bias toward older literature,
which reflect the genesis of this project in the 1990s and subsequent shifts in
the intellectual climate. As a complement to this work, readers may wish to con-
sult the unparalleled recent bibliographic series by John Gray, The Black Music
Reference Series (African Diaspora Press).
The Transformation of Black Music promises to provide a deeper understand-
ing of the interrelationships among black musical genres, traditions, styles, and
practices and their significance to the history of the African Diaspora. It will
impart to its readers not only the value of black musics but also the relevance of
black music research to all musical endeavors.

Preface
SAMUEL A. FLOYD JR. AND MELANIE ZECK
The purpose of this book is to explore the history, movement, and transforma-
tion of black musicsfrom Africa to various locales within the Diaspora and
backover the course of a millennium. The Africans and their descendants who
traveled and made musics in their homelands and throughout the Diaspora ulti-
mately created what Carol Lems-Dworkin calls a marvelous, gigantic, interna-
tional call-and-response that has been going on for centuries.
The term African Diaspora refers to the dispersal of African peoples world-
wide and denotes relationships among geographical locations in which people of
African descent affiliate by race and/or ethnicity. The terms Diaspora and dias-
pora function as symbols of racial unification, or reunification as the case may
be, and as tools for the discussion and exploration of cultural, racial, and musi-
cal relatedness. The lowercase version denotes an enclave of Afro-descendent
peoples within the Diaspora at-large, such as, for example, the Caribbean dias-
pora. The primary adjectives that derive from each of these usagesnamely,
Diasporic and diasporicdenote, in the first case, process, and in the second,
scattered unity within the Diaspora.
Printed resources refer to the musics performed and/or created by musicians
of African descent variously, depending on the date of publication. Here is a list
of the guidelines established by the Center for Black Music Research to clarify
and provide consistency among its own discussions of and publications about
black music. The dates should be taken as guidelinesonly.
African music (from the end of the seventeenth century to the 1860s as related
to persons of African descent)
Afro-American music (from the end of the seventeenth century to the 1860s
and again in the mid-to later twentieth century)
Negro or Colored music (from the 1860s to the late1960s)
black music (from the late 1960s to 1989; employed here as the all-encompassing
term for music created and/or performed by musicians of African descent)
xiii

xivP ref a ce
African-American music (from 1989 to the present), referring to musics of the

United States, but the term can be applied more broadly to the Americas as
awhole
The musicological discipline of black music research uses the term black
music interchangeably with musico-geographical designations such as African-
American music. The black aspect of the term denotes race (or ethnicity), but
not necessarily the character or the derivation of themusic.
Note on Word Choice, Spellings, and Usage

of Orthography and Diacritical Markings
The Transformation of Black Music was originally conceived as a vehicle through
which the voices of multiple experts could be heardsometimes by themselves,
sometimes in tension with one anotherbut always as part of the larger con-
versation on musics of the African Diaspora. Throughout this investigation, we
were determined to preserve the authorial integrity of every resource consulted.
But, in the process of crafting the overarching narrative, we were faced with
some complicated, and in some cases politically charged, questions with respect
to word choice, spelling, and the use of orthography and diacritical markings.
In a way, these questions reinforced the challenges inherent in the concept of
transformation within the Diaspora-at-large. Many terms in this book have
origins outside of the English speaking world, and their usage often transcends
the boundaries of time and space. Thus, we wish to acknowledge that the pro-
cess of musical transformation is embedded in the language(s) we use to discuss
themusic.
Nevertheless, The Transformation of Black Music is a book written in English,
and the authors want to make it accessible to readers at all stages in their musi-
cal studies, formal or informal. We have opted to describe some of the choices
here so as to clarify our rationale for readers and, in turn, enhance the readabil-
ity of thistext.
WORDCHOICE
We attempted to employ the names of geographical entities that were used at
the time/era reflected in that particular section of the book. For example, the
term Dahomey is employed for discussions about the region known since 1975
as the Republic of Benin. The term Haiti is used post-1804 to describe the west-
ern half of the island known as Hispaniola; the term Haitian is also used to
name the revolutionary episodes that prompted the eventual name change of

P re f a ce xv
this land from Saint-Domingue to Haiti when Haiti gained its independence
from France.
SPELLING
Spelling choices could raise questions for some readers. For instance, readers
interested in Haitian music will no doubt notice that we employed the spelling
loa throughout our narrative, as opposed to the Haitian Creole (Kreyl Ayisyen)
spelling lwa. We recognized that nearly all of the resources consulted for this
book on lwa/loa were written in English, and they used the spelling loa, as well.
Rather than add a different spelling to the narrativeone that is not found in
the citations we presentedwe decided to apply the spelling loa throughout.
In another example, we opted to retain the word Vodou, traditionally used by
writers to represent Haitis indigenous religion, even though cognates (e.g., voo-
doo) appear in the resources we consulted in the text. Moreover, we retained the
word vodun when referencing the Fon word for spirit or divinity, from which the
Haitian term is derived. The word Fon itself presents a case in which English-
language texts (following French conventions) spell it F-O-N, even though the
word does not end with a consonant but, rather, with a nasalized o vowel. The
phonetic spelling of this language, in contrast, is [f] or [f]. We chose to retain
Fon in the narrative for the sake of simplicity although we are fully aware of the
reasons for alternative renderings.
CAPITALIZATION
In general, we applied capitalization when providing ethnonyms (name of peo-
ple of a particular ethnicity) and demonyms (name of people of a particular
place). For example, we capitalize Yoruba, which is major ethnic group living
in present-day Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Following certain local writers, we also
capitalize Islanders when referring specifically to the people who live in the
Virgin Islands.
ITALICIZATION
We applied our system of italicization liberally, especially to words in four broad
categories: organology (words having to do with musical instruments, e.g., bat
drum); genres (including music-and-dance constructs; e.g., capoeira); intellectual
movements, e.g., Noirisme; and social or religious organizations, e.g., Abaku.
Our use of italics may strike some readers as a bit heavy-handed, but we
wanted to draw attention to those words whose origins fall outside of the
English speaking world and/or have not yet been integrated into mainstream
English. In some cases, especially with the music-and-dance constructs, our

xviP ref a ce
narrative discusses the origins of certain constructs that may differ from what
is seen, heard, and danced today. Hence, we italicized them to signal such differ-
ence, in spite of perceived familiarity.
ORTHOGRAPHY AND DIACRITICAL MARKINGS

Tonal languages, such as Yoruba, pose a challenge for those of us who are not
speakers or students of the language. We consulted written materials on music
of the Yoruba people and noted that even experts use the tonal markings incon-
sistently. Consequently, we opted to use tonal markings sparingly. For words
that appear most frequently with consistently rendered diacritics in the schol-
arly literature, such as If, we retained this particular rendering. But, in other
cases, we chose to employ renderings with no diacritical markings at all. For
example, the Yoruba-derived word orisha appears in many languages and with
different spellings; in Yoruba, it is rendered as r. In order to render the text
more readable, especially for those unfamiliar with Yoruba, we retained orisha,
the spelling most commonly used in English-language texts. We used the Yoruba
rendering when quoting other authors or specifically referencing the Yoruba
language.

Acknowledgments
The Transformation of Black Music would not have come about without the sup-
port of several key institutions and individuals, for it has been a long time in
the making. The delay of the manuscript was due to outside opportunities,
changes in intellectual climates, and finally, matters of health. The first of such
events came in 1996 when the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR), for
which Iwas then serving as director, was commissioned to produce and edit the
two-volume International Dictionary of Black Composers (1999), which took much
more time than Ithought it would. On the heels of the dictionarys completion,
Iwas called on to serve as interim provost and vice president for academic affairs
of my institution, Columbia College Chicago, with the specific assignment of
restructuring the academic side of the college, a task that fully occupied the
years 1999 to 2001. During this period, which was consumed by the diction-
ary and various administrative tasks, it was all Icould do to keep up with the
seemingly unending list of writings in my field (and other fields of interest and
relevance) by making notes for futureuse.
However, I was provided unparalleled residential research opportunities
at the Bellagio Center in Italy as well as the National Humanities Center in
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where I was the John Hope Franklin
Senior Fellow. At the CBMR, I was very fortunate in that several colleagues
were able to lend assistance to my project in a variety of ways over this wide
swath of time. Marsha Heizer (Reisser), who had served as the CBMRs associate
director, provided editorial support in the early stages. Kenneth Bilby, who was
appointed to the position of director of research, encouraged me to continue
writing, even after Iretired. As the intellectual climate shifted and my innate
fervor for writing began to wane, Ken said to me, You cannot quit. What you are
writing is too important to let it go. (I hope it is.) Meanwhile, Melanie Zeck, a
music librarian who worked for the CBMR as a research assistant, offered to help
me bring the project (finally) to full fruition. After a few days, Isuccumbed, but
xvii

xviiiAck nowled gments
with the idea of the book being smaller:together, she and Ibegan to revise the
text, merging some chapters, altering the content of others, and letting still oth-
ers go completelyonly to get new ideas leading to a longer book that required
us to draft other chapters from scratch.
Melanies research, writing, and editing work allowed the project to move
along faster. It was at this point in the project that Ireconceived my approach
to the twentieth century. Thus, Iasked her to contribute a chapter on her own
area of interest (Chapter7), which chronicles important musical advancements
during the beginning of the century, and Guthrie Ramsey to submit a chapter on
the midcentury era of Afro-modernism (Chapter9).
With the early collaborative work and dedication of Heizer, the encourage-
ment and backing of Bilby, and the support, reassurance, and assistance of
Zeck, Istayed the course; and, without the push and reinforcement of my wife,
Barbara, this book would not have been brought about, especially after twenty
years had come and gone. But there were others also, including Gerhard Kubik,
Moya Malamusi, Robin Moore, and Tom Riis, who read various chapters and
provided invaluable advice. Thanks also are extended to Richard Crawford,
Monica Hairston-OConnell, and Morris Phibbs, whose ever-stalwart support
was essential to this project. Iwish to acknowledge my appreciation and admira-
tion for the myriad scholars whose work Iturned into citation and paraphrase.
I shall always be indebted to the inimitable late Sheldon Meyer of Oxford
University Press, whose friendship and keen editorial eye helped to shape my
writing about black music all those years ago. But it has been the patient and
understanding Suzanne Ryan, also of Oxford University Press, who guided this
book to publication. Thankyou.

Contributors
Samuel A. FloydJr. (19372016) was founder of the Center for Black Music
Research, which he established in 1983 at Columbia College Chicago. Prior
to coming to Columbia College, Floyd was a member of the Fisk University
faculty, where he launched the Black Music Research Journal (BMRJ) in 1980.
He served as the editor of the BMRJ until his retirement. During his tenure
at the CBMR, he coauthored two books (with Marsha Reisser [Heizer]): Black
Music in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography (1983) and Black Music
Biography: An Annotated Bibliography (1987). Floyd also edited Black Music in
the Harlem Renaissance:ACollection of Essays (1990), which received the Irving
Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music; and the International
Dictionary of Black Composers (1999), which was named one of the Twenty
Best Reference Books for the year 1999 from the NewYork Public Library, and
received an Outstanding Reference Source award from the American Library
Association in 2000 in addition to a Choice Award as an Outstanding Academic
Title. In 1995, he published his monograph The Power of Black Music (OUP) and
launched Lenox Avenue, a Journal of Interarts Inquiry, for which he served as
editor. His articles appeared in a variety of publications, including 19th-Century
Music, American Music, Black Music Research Journal, The Black Perspective in
Music, Chronicle of Higher Education, and College Music Symposium. He received
a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Music and was
named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society.
Guthrie RamseyJr. is the Edmund J.and Louise W.Kahn Term Professor of

Musicology at the University of Pennsylvania. For the purpose of this book,
he becomes Dr. Guy of MusiQology, as he focuses on African-American
Music, Afro-modernism, and the black Avant-Garde. Other writings of his, in
conjunction with the CBMR, are the books Race Music:Black Cultures from Bebop
to Hip-Hop (2003) and The Amazing Bud Powell:Black Genius, Jazz History, and the
Challenge of Bebop (2013).
xix

xxC o nt r i b uto r s
Melanie Zeck is managing editor of the Black Music Research Journal, the peer-
reviewed journal of the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR). Trained as
a music librarian and historian, she joined the CBMR in 2005 to provide fact-
finding and fact-checking services for the centers staff and constituents. In
this capacity, she has collaborated with and provided intensive informational
support for researchers worldwide. She has also been consulted by American
and European conductors, instrumentalists and vocalists in the discovery and
programming of pieces by composers of African descent for public concerts
and recitals. She has spoken extensively on black music historiography before
audiences of musical professionals, enthusiasts, and students and, in 2016,
gave an interactive presentation on the legacy of composer Florence B. Price
to the League of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her own research has been
published in Information Literacy in Music: an Instructors Companion, Encyclopedia
of African American Music, and CBMR Digest, and on the Oxford University Press
OUPblog.

Introduction
In mapping the making of the African Diaspora with respect to its musical
content, Icoin and employ a metaphor of the sailing ship, which Iderive from
three converging images put forth by Robert Hayden, D.W. Meinig, and Jeffrey
Bolster. In his epic poem Middle Passage (1945, 1962, 1966),1 Hayden gives
artistic form to contemporaneous accounts of events surrounding the slave ship
Amistad and of the liberation of its human cargo on the high seas.2 As Ihave
discussed in the essay Toward a Theory of Diaspora Aesthetics, Hayden makes
use of information from the ships logs and diaries and the transcript of the trial
of the Africans who commandeered it and made their way to freedom (Floyd
1998, 3031). Middle Passage reveals the truth of inhumane imprisonment
aboard ship and the escapement of the captives, and it describes the bravery
and actions of the leader and hero of the incident. The poem also refers to the
numerous lands and locations in Africa and the Americas that would become
parts of the African Diaspora.
One of these lands is covered at great length by D.W. Meinig in his multi-
volume series The Shaping of America:AGeographical Perspective on 500 Years of
History. In the first two books of the series (Volume 1:Atlantic America, 1492
1800 [1986] and Volume 2: Continental America, 18001867 [1993]), Meinig
provides valuable geographical information about the historical aspects of the
making of the black diaspora of the United States. He discusses the three phases
of the European encroachment on the American seaboardseafaring, con-
quering, and plantingand in so doing, his work aptly positions America in its
historical relationships with other regions whence its peoples hailed (1986,7).
Seafaring is a topic that features prominently in W. Jeffrey Bolsters Black
Jacks:African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997). Bolster uncovers and
unlocks a forgotten and ignored aspect of American history and puts before read-
ers a seafaring world in which black men played important roles as seamen, buc-
caneers, and watermen, beginning as early as the birth of the Atlantic system
xxi

xxiiInt ro d uct i o n
(1997, 9). During the eighteenth century, a number of blacks were being pressed
into service aboard ships while others were electing seafaring as an alternative
to forced labor. Notwithstanding why and how they became sailors, these men
sailed the world as crewmembers and as captains, communicating with other
jacks and making it possible for black thought and cultural exchange to spread
around theworld.
I therefore employ the sailing ship as a symbol of Diasporic, cultural, and
musical dynamics. However, my use of the sailing ship is not simply meta-
phoric. As the story of the musical aspect of the African Diaspora unfolds, real
sailing ships and genuine black mariners are referenced as contributors to an
emerging multidimensional racial identity, according to Bolster, that would
make it possible for some black Americans in the late seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries to consider themselves as African. Others would sail back to
Africa. Nonetheless, ships would still carry slaves from the West Indies to other
Caribbean islands and to North America, with free blacks seeking and finding
adventure and liberation as they traveled to ancient and later ports ofcall.
Historically, the ship metaphor is a flexible one, representing in one case
Christian symbolism. In the New Testament of the Bible, for example, the
concept of a shipin the form of an ark and boatfigures importantly in
the stories of Noah (1 Pet. 3:2021) and Peter (Mark 4:3541), respectively.
In The Transformation of Black Music, the Church emerges as a symbol of cer-
tain acts that contributed positively to the making of the African Diaspora.
This has been particularly true in its nurture of a black composer who lived
in sixteenth-century Portugal and Italy, and in its provision of musical and
intellectual sustenance to more than 250 black musicians operating in eigh-
teenth-and nineteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil. For these developments
to take place, both the ship and the Church were ascendant and necessary.
In this book, historical and diasporic landscapes are dotted with examples
of musical transactionsvariable time frames in which instances of prevailing
musical practices and structures drive and react to cultural, social, and politi-
cal transformations. Such transactions range in size and duration from small to
large and from short to long, and they interact with, overlap, and/or influence
one another. When effective and influential musico-cultural transactions take
place among musical agents, musical objects, and ideas about cultural locations,
these transactions create broad ranges of particular activity that we might call
moments. Musical agents, such as composers and performers, are indispens-
able in the creation of moments because they initiate the emergence of the
transaction, in three ways:
1. The musical agent manipulates the musical object, which in turn yields to the
agents use of its content.

I n tro du ctio n xxiii
2. Ideas of cultural location are brought to the fore through legacy and new
musical material, serving as musico-cultural brands.
3. The agent-object-culture transactional process grows and creates new genres.
In black musics past, African time lines and melodic calls were transformed
by way of European and Europe-derived transactive influencesinto African-
American motives, ostinatos, and other musical devices. Such transformations
have taken place with the making of the Diaspora, and as people settled in
various diasporic locations that they would eventually adopt as their own, they
developed new musical forms and practices based on the musical elements they
had carried with them. The search for the modes and methods of transforma-
tion of black musics in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres continues. Gaps
abound, and questions beg answers, as this book shall demonstrate.
After African music reached the New World, the former did not disappear;
nor was it completely suppressed. But it did become disaggregated; its bits and
pieces of sound, pitches, and rhythms were retained as and were sometimes
transformed into new musical units and New World genres. In performance,
these judiciously and prudently distributed traits were sometimes protean,
mutable, transferable, and potentially transformable. They were also easily dis-
guised, due to their encounters with European strains of music. Ipropose, there-
fore, that the objects of black music are transient in several waysmusically,
socially, and intellectuallyand can be readily demonstrated by comparing
certain pieces from Slave Songs of the United States ([1867] 1995)with examples
from late nineteenth-and twentieth-century spirituals, and with blues songs
and gestures with the singing practices of certain contemporaneous African peo-
ple (Floyd and Radano 2009, 6).3 Such practices exemplify the idea espoused
by Martha Buskirk in her 2003 book The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art.
Of course, my use of the term transient differs from her employment of contin-
gent because of our divergent modes of inquiry. Moreover, within the context
that Iadvocate, black music objects are saturated, more or less, with sonic mean-
ings that reside in the cultural and social circumstances of the societies of which
they are, and have been, representative.
Nevertheless, Iborrow two concepts from Buskirks book and apply them to
black music:the readymade is one of them, and the other is that although the
object of art is made possible by the artist, its meaning is considered and recon-
sidered within new frameworks over time and space. Iapply the former primar-
ily to certain forms of the music and the latter to musical transformation, taking
into account the fact that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Both are
related intimately to the concept of mutability and the practice and execution of
analysis. In my lexicon, readymade implies a further becoming of an existing
object, as, for example, when a repeating blues vamp becomes singing or a song,
or when humming is added to either. In such cases, one object is transformed

xxivInt ro d uct i o n
into another, the first having been transient, or to borrow Buskirks term con-
tingent, and an object in its own right. Such practices are sometimes regarded as
synonymous with found art or objects. Black music objects can be small or large,
short or long, motives transformed into riffs, and short phrase motives trans-
formed into melodies. But, the object is always a piece of music that represents
the traditional usage of theterm.
The traits of African musics descendants throughout the entire Diaspora
have been noted by a number of scholars, two of whom have compiled and sys-
tematized these traits as follows. Olly Wilsons codification, which he describes
in his 1992 essay The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in African-American Music,
is a sonic system of contrasting and competing sounds that morph between
and among voices, instruments, and bodies, all in more or less complex musico-
aesthetic manifestations. His is a multifaceted approach to music making in
which time lines, cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, and call-and-response devices
singly and togethergrace performance practice in ways nonpareil.
I have named my own codification Call/Response (the capitalization of the
term distinguishing it from the musical trait and practice call and response).
The Call refers, historically, to African musics (and musical traits) on the conti-
nent, while the Response refers to the Diasporas transformation of these musics
and musical traits into new entities. Even in the Diaspora-at-large, which, for
the purposes of this book, encompasses the smaller, region-specific diaspo-
ras, the Response(s) can vary according to context and circumstance, on which
I will elaborate shortly. I propose that in the musical manifestations of Call/
Response, multifarious African and Africa-derived traits are embraced, includ-
ing 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, interjec-
tions, 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); timbre distortions of various kinds;
musical individuality within collectivity; game rivalry; hand clapping, foot pat-
ting, and approximations thereof; apart playing; and the metronomic pulse that
underlies African and Africa-derived music (Floyd 1991, 26768; 1995b,6).
Call/Response, like the metaphor of the sailing ship, can be employed in a
quasi-literal sense to reflect the sonic phenomena that make up black music as
listed above and at the metacognitive level to describe my own approach to the
study of black music. In many of my previous writings Ihave sought to explore
and legitimize what black music is and what it does,by:
Examining the integral aspects and features of African retentions in Diasporic

music and practices, especially the ringshout;
Presenting positivistic research on important but neglected musicians;and

I n tro du ctio n xxv
Evaluating the interrelationship of black music and aesthetics, most notably

through the lens of the American pragmatist JohnDewey.
In a sense, the field of black music research put forth its own Call, representing
a collective enterprise to which brilliant scholars, such as Dominique-Ren de
Lerma, Robert Stevenson, Eileen Southern, Josephine Wright, Dena Epstein,
and Marsha Heizer (Reisser), made invaluable contributions beginning in the
late 1960s. In fact, I can recall a time when I had read every extant book on
black music, but Icertainly could not say the same today. With the rapid growth
of ethnomusicology, jazz studies, and other vital disciplinesnot to mention
how knowledge within these disciplines has been disseminated more expedi-
ently through advancements in telecommunicationsthe field of black music
research continues to evolve daily. Thus, in my view, the present work could,
in a sense, be considered a Responsemy Responseto that original Call, a
Response made possible only by the hindsight garnered over the course of a
fifty-year career.
My statements here might be better articulated by referencing Deweys
Theory of Valuation, a provocative theory with which Ibegan to grapple nearly
half a century ago. To paraphrase, his theory posits that something can be val-
ued immediately (prized) in the here-and-now as well as over time (appraised)
with respect to how that something was attained and/or its implications for
future interactions. Perhaps then, in the following chapters, Iam relishing the
opportunity to appraise black musics after so many of us have taken such efforts
to rightly prize them. If so, Ihereby offer an account of black musics that took a
lifetime to construct, and it is my hope that its contents will be valuable to read-
ers, both now and in the future.
Call/Response would appear to represent an overall movement from Africa
to locales in the Diaspora. Granted, much of this book explores the dispersal of
African peoples in Europe and the Americaslike a set of vectors, all of whom
leave the African continent, traveling, often by force, up and across the Atlantic
Ocean. But, we would be remiss if we did not include those aspects of Diasporic
music making that take our narrative back to Africa.
The return to Africa of black music from the Americas is a phenomenon
that began in the early nineteenth century and continues today. There is doc-
umented evidence of Jamaican Maroons taking their gumbe drum with them
to Sierra Leone in the early 1800s.4 Toward the end of the nineteenth century,
Jubilee singers (including the Orpheus McAdoo Singers) toured in Europe and
South Africa, and their music ultimately influenced and gave rise to isicathamiya
groups, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo. By the 1970s, young boys in south-
ern Africa were influenced by American Lester Young and his tenor saxophone
music. Young, who was known for cocking his head to one side while playing,
prompted physical imitation by these youngsters on the pennywhistle; through

xxviInt ro d uct i o n
the reembodiment of Youngs pose and dress, along with a variety of musical
borrowings characteristic of black musics in America, the genre of kwela was
born. Finally, we note that several black American pop stars have made a name
for themselves in Africa, including Michael Jackson, whose presence is kept alive
by African impersonators.
Yet, musicwhether it is part of the Call or part of the Response (or both)is
only one of the black expressive arts, and these arts are, many times, intertwined.
Periodically, Iexplore works of visual, poetic, and nonmusical movement as
revealing the power of black music within various contemporaneous contexts.
Our knowledge of those domains reinforces musical, cultural, and social analy-
sis and demonstrates the aesthetic relationships that exist between and among
music and the other expressivearts.
This books journey sets sail from the land where it all began:Africa. Chapter1
presents an overview to the Call, the music-making practices that constitute
both singly and togetherthe body of sonic ideals to which the Diaspora would
Respond. This Call/Response formulation is an ongoing, ever-morphing pro-
cess, and it requires attention to precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial practices.
Attention is focused, first and foremost, on early trade routesthe process by
which goods were bought and soldand the implications of monetary successes
on the development and flourishing of various African empires, especially those
of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. The interactions between these empires and their
Muslim neighbors to the north is important, as the Muslims brought with them
to Africa a number of advancements in what might be considered today to be
intellectual endeavors. Other areas of Africa, such as Yorubaland, are considered
with respect to the festivals and rituals that characterize the Yoruba culture,
whose tangible remnants and intangible essences have emerged in other prac-
tices in the Diaspora, as we will see in a later chapter. The spiritual and phil-
osophical realms of these festivals and rituals are considered, as well as how
music-making practices fit within these significant cultural frames.
A small, but important, portion of the chapter explores African organol-
ogy, which is referenced in later parts of the book; from here, I take the lib-
erty of expanding on the usage of membranophones in African musics to create
rhythms, which again, feature prominently throughout a number of discussions
that follow. Rhythms, it should be noted, are not solely situated within the con-
fines of drums; rather, the timbral mosaic of the musical palette comprises
vocal effects that often seem to infuse music with a percussive effect. Yet it is
these rhythms that contribute mightilyboth literally and metaphoricallyto
the musical and historical discourse that follows as the ship leaves the African
mainland.
In Chapter2, The Making of the African Diaspora, Iintroduce two literary
snapshots of Diasporic history, whose subjects are separated by several centu-
ries but linked by the metaphor of the sailing ship. The first, which was captured

I n tro du ctio n xxvii
in Haydens Middle Passage, explores the trauma endured by enslaved Africans

as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. The second is an excerpt
from Ivan Van Sertimas book They Came Before Columbus, which, as just one part
of Van Sertimas oeuvre, sheds light on the extent to which Africans were found
in locations beyond the borders of their continent prior to the advent of trans-
Atlantic European exploration and exploitation.
In other words, the influence of Africans on non-Africans and their cultures
was felt throughout places that could be reached by ship. In fact, evidence sug-
gests that Africans contributed productively, and in some cases artistically, to
their new environs in this precolonial age. This evidence helps to shape and
nuance our knowledge of Africans impact on non-African cultures during this
time, and it provides us with the opportunity to consider lesser-known aspects
of musical activity in the Diaspora.
As we consider these lesser-known aspects of musical activity in the Diaspora,
one particular facet of black music making stands out in my mind historically
as having been virtually ignored in mainstream musicology and disregarded as
not legitimately black by many blacks themselves:music performed in the con-
cert halls of Europe. In Chapter3, Ipresent contributions of black musicians in
Europe, beginning 450years ago, and note that many of the figures discussed
in that chapter were contemporaries of some of the most prominent white fig-
ures of the dayPalestrina, Mozart, and Beethoven, among others. Those black
composers are remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which is that,
collectively, their works form an important body of music that remains, to date,
underused and underperformed.
I hesitated to restrict my discussion in this chapter to the European conti-
nent, however, since, as the reader shall see, black composers performed their
own masses, motets, and other examples of sacred music in the wealthy churches
of Minas Gerais and other Brazilian municipalities during this time. Moreover,
by the nineteenth century black musicians in the United States were participat-
ing in ensembles (using instruments of European construction) and singing art
songs of European composers in the United States, and in some cases abroad.
Thus, this chapter responds proactively to Robert Stevensons 1968 admon-
ishment to the profession-at-large, whichread:
Encyclopedias found today in public libraries still tend to restrict

Negro music to that produced in the United States. Nor do they give
even that music full historical coverage. As if all that preceded 1900
were inconsequential, the more popular encyclopedias usually limit
Negermusik in the United States to events of our own country.
At the time of Stevensons writing, black music was virtually ignored by the
academy. Nearly fifty years later, however, black music has been acknowledged

xxviiiInt ro d uct i on
as a subject worthy of study, and large strides have been made toward correcting
the omission of black music from the historical record. But if reasonable parity
is to be accomplished, there is much to bedone.
I regard classical/art music by black composers as the last frontier of black
music scholarship because these composers and their music continue to be
ignored and upstaged by the classical music mainstream. Historically, black
music was not considered relevant or appropriate for inclusion in undergraduate
textbooks, a personal assessment confirmed by a textbook and music curricu-
lum survey conducted by Mary Dupree in 1990. Of the 266 respondents (all of
whom taught at institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools
of Music) to her survey, 85 percent of them employed the History of Western
Music (alone or with supplements) by Donald Grout and Claude Palisca in their
courses. Dupree noted that the then-current edition (fourth) of the History of
Western Music devote[d]8% of its pages to twentieth-century music, less than
2% to the past fifty years, and 2% to all American music. It does not cover jazz,
popular music, or any music by women composers. In other words, most music
students in the United States were learning about canonical music of Europe.
By the time Ibegan writing this book, the fifth edition of Grout was issued,
and some two decades later, the ninth edition is now in circulation. What has
changed over the course of these editions, and how has black music been a part
of this change?
Two additional surveys of undergraduate music history and theory textbooks
have been conducted, and their results were deposited at the Center for Black
Music Research, where they are now accessible through a database. These two
new surveys indicated that between 1990 and 2015, substantial efforts were
made to address the needs highlighted in Duprees articlenamely, that extant
textbooks had lacked content on American music, twentieth-century music, and
music by women. In spite of this progress, the overwhelming majority of each
books content focused on classical/art music of Europe or European extraction;
in other words, the textbooks continued to support a canon-based education.
Altogether, the textbooks did add African-American musicians and musicians
of African or Afro-European descent as practitioners of genres such as spiritu-
als, ragtime, stride piano, the blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rap, hip hop,
and isicathamiya. However, very few black composers or performers of classical/
art music were mentioned. What was particularly shocking was this: the only
African American musician common to these texts on classical/art music was
the ragtime pioneer Scott Joplin. Thus, the purpose of Chapter3 is to fill those
gaping holes in music historiography by discussing the classical/art music by
black composers, so that a more comprehensive and accurate account of classi-
cal/art music may beknown.
In a way, Chapter 3 may seem like an anomaly from a musical perspective, but in
actuality its contents, and those of the other chapters whose musicians Respond

I n tro du ctio n xxix
in their own ways to the Call, are inextricably linked by what I call Toussaints
Beat. This references the spirit that its namesake, Toussaint Louverture, dem-
onstrated during his childhood by changing his physical attributes from weak-
ness to strength, by educating himself to a remarkable degree given his status,
and eventually by assuming the role of leader of the blacks following Dutty
Boukmans slave revolt, which had instigated the Haitian Revolution in 1791.
That spirit also refers to the courage and intellect Louverture displayed, to the
strategy and tactics he employed in defeating Napoleons incomparable military
forces, to the myths and rituals of African-Haitian Vodou in achieving that end,
and to the pose he must have struck, as well as gestures he must have made, as
he sat astride his horse in battle and in ceremonyall of which characterize this
beat.
Toussaint Louverture was one of the most prominent figures of the Haitian
Revolution, the monumentally historic rebellion that took place between the
slaves in the French colony of Saint Domingue and their French rulers, culmi-
nating in successful establishment of the Republic of Haiti, on January 1, 1804.
Iam inspired by Toussaint Louverture, and Iam moved by the musical portrayal
of the Haitian Revolution in William Grant Stills 1949 opera Troubled Island.
During the many years Ispent writing this book, Itried to imagine not only
what Toussaint Louverture must have heard during his dayranging from
the drums of war to the exquisite pieces of Jean-Baptiste Lully, his favorite
composerbut also the fervor with which he led people to freedom. I hear
Toussaints Beat even as I imagine the minuets, string quartets, and sonatas
he listened to in the evenings, with distant drums of celebration in the back-
ground playing African time lines wrought with cinquillo and tresillo patterns, as
he enjoyed the pleasures of mixed musical cultures.
By homing in on Toussaint Louverture here, I present a context for what
would later be considered a pivotal time in the history of the Diaspora and its
peoples. I employ the phrase Toussaints Beat to encompass the seemingly
ever-present cinquillo-tresillo complex that has come to define many Diasporic
musics of the circum-Caribbean and the Americas. But Toussaints Beat can be
more than that, as for example when it is employed to represent, in a general
way, the kind of music so beloved by Toussaint himselfnamely, the musics of
the concert hall. And finally, Toussaints Beat serves as a useful metaphor, espe-
cially in conjunction with the present discussion of musics in the Diasporathe
extension of the homeland that was created and held together by the meta-
phor of the sailing ship and whose people ultimately crafted their idiosyncratic
Responses to those original Calls.
Like the term Toussaints Beat, the operational definition of black music for
this book has been expanded due to its wide purview, which, as we will see, tran-
scends both cultural and geophysical boundaries, as well as time. Black music,
therefore, denotes music created and/or performed by a person of African

xxxInt ro d uct i o n
descent, and Toussaints Beat represents the character and spirit embodied by
these creators and performers, encompassing a range of qualitiestriumph,
perseverance, and integrityin the face of marginalization and persecution.
Thus, Toussaints Beat serves effectively as a conceptual and metaphorical
framework, through which we consider black musics in the Diaspora, espe-
cially on the isles of rhythmnamely, the islands of the circum-Caribbean
featured in Chapter4. With this framework in place, the materials presented in
Chapters4 and 5 can be read a together as a cohesiveunit.
In Chapter 4, I investigate the near ubiquity of the cinquillo-tresillo complex
in its varied manifestations. This complex lays a foundation, so to speak, for
both music and dance. To quote S. Frederick Starrs easy-to-remember onomato-
poeic interpretation, the cinquillo is the de-dum-de-dum-dum cadence that
vitalizes and transforms any four-beat melody under which it is placed (1995,
189).5 From an etymological standpoint, we note that the cinquillo comprises
five units, while the tresillo contains three: dum-dum-de. Although I extrapo-
late from Starrs interpretation here to describe the tresillo using syllables, the
examples in Chapter 4 are all rendered using standard notation. I believe, and
have argued in the past, that the cinquillo and tresillo motives are more than
just basic rhythms; they are the central symbols of Diasporic musical unity. By
way of sailing ships, the cinquillo and tresillo transcended the boundaries of the
Diasporas geocultural units, thereby linking locales together and to Africa. Black
seamen played a significant role in this rhythmic dispersal, for between 1790
and 1830, according to Bolster (1997, 145), thousands of black seamen voyaged
to St. Domingue and Haiti, to either participate in the fighting or deliver goods.
I extend my discussion of the music in this chapter to encapsulate the music-
and-dance forms so prevalent on these isles of rhythm. From my initial inquiry
here, Imove on to Chapter5, where Ihave provided a brief overview to a range
of musical practices in the Diaspora, many of which are linked to dance and/
or ritual. Essentially, this chapter introduces relevant Diasporic genres, and for
those who are relatively new to the subject of black music, Ihave culled salient
features of these genres in order to link them together as practices that reflect
the African rings intense legacy, especially in the Americas, in both sacred and
secular contexts.6
This information in Chapters4 and 5 helps to situate genres at the diasporic
(microscopic) levelthat is, with respect to the intersection of the genres spe-
cific social and geographical contextsas well as at the Diasporic (macroscopic)
level, whereby overarching ideas and interrelationships can be considered. Many
of the musics featured here play integral roles in masking rituals and carnival
activities of the Diaspora, and together they speak to ideals of hybridity and
cultural fusion on the one hand, and Africa-derived aesthetics on theother.
In the first half of the book, then, Iprovide a sense of black musics transfor-
mation throughout the Diaspora and within certain diasporas, and, in so doing,

I n tro du ctio n xxxi
the historical narrative spans thousands of years, from 5000 bc to the current
day. The second half of the book offers a series of case studies and examples in
which the philosophical and musical concepts described earlierthe metaphor
of the sailing ship, Call/Response, and Toussaints Beatcan be considered
more closely. Thus, whereas Chapters1 through 5 are divided along geographi-
cal and/or diasporic lines, the material in Chapters6 through 10 is presented in
roughly chronologicalorder.
Chapter 6, which covers the midnineteenth century, demonstrates what is
possible through and what can emerge from interartistic inquirynamely, and
in the first half of the chapter, the interrelationship of literature and music
and its surprising results. Once again, the metaphor of the sailing ship returns
to my narrative; this time, the ship has a name, the Pequod. Featured in Herman
Melvilles Moby-Dick, it became the site of fascinating analysis by Sterling
Stuckey. I reference Stuckeys work (as well as other pieces by Melville) to under-
stand what literature can reveal about musicin this case, spirituals, the blues,
and jazzand, more importantly their developmental trajectories. First, how-
ever, we get a glimpse of what Melville might have seen and heard during his
visits to Catherine Market and Five Points in New York, as well as the kinds
of musics that were performed during his lifetime. Discussion of vernacular
musics and various dances are informed by brief explorations into the instru-
ments and rhythmic patterns that undergird them. I then employ a second
mode of interartistic inquirynamely, and in the second half of the chapter, the
interrelationship of dance and musicand its need for a more formalized ana-
lytical tool. Musical characteristics found in both African and African-American
musics do more than provide a sonic thread between and among diasporic loca-
tions. In fact, some of these characteristics are covered in some detail; yet these
details prompt new questions, which may pique readers interest in interartistic
inquiry.
Chapter6 takes place during the midnineteenth century in the era immedi-
ately prior to the advent of recorded sound; consequently, we are fortunate to
have such an array of primary resource materials at our disposal to further our
understanding of early African-American music making. The earliest cylinders
and records, which appeared during the last decade of the nineteenth century,
completely transformed our ways of hearing, thinking about, consuming, and
responding to black music, and our knowledge about music making during this
time is enhanced significantly by consulting the early-twentieth-century text-
books designed to complement (and advertise) the recordings made between
1890 and World War II. But we must depend on the iconographical representa-
tions (drawings, paintings, photographs) of black music making that date from
the century prior to the advent of recorded sound in order to get a sense of
how the sounds were created and who was responsible for them. Chapter7 takes
advantage of all of these resources, and in so doing it promotes a different kind

xxxiiInt ro d uct i on
of interartistic inquiry that ultimately highlights a group of musicians and con-

sumers who have not yet been addressed in this book:children.
In Chapter7, Melanie Zeck first acknowledges the importance of advance-
ments in transportation technology, for without the improvements in the
American railway systemnot to mention the sailing ships that would take
black musical groups across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on international
toursblack musics of the United States would have been confined to their
specific diasporic locales. But she quickly notes that technology was to change
the lives and professional potential of music makers once again with the inven-
tion and exploitation of recorded sound. Indeed, the work of black musicians
was suddenly able to reach an exponentially larger audience in previously inac-
cessible areas, as talking machinese.g., phonographs, gramophones, etc.
completely transformed how music could be consumed. Through the efforts
of one business, the Victor Talking Machine Company (VTMC), thousands of
school children were exposed to music through recorded sound and were sub-
sequently recognized as important consumers of music. But Chapter 7 also
shows that children had become increasingly relevant as professional perform-
ers themselves. The black juvenile bands, for example, which were also known
as pickaninny bands, were made up of teenagers, and in some cases younger
children. These bands not only provided entertainment for both black and white
audiences, they also endowed their members with a life-changing musical educa-
tion and international touring experiences.
The VTMCs educational project, which spanned from 1911 to 1943, over-
lapped with the pickaninny craze and the emergence of the latest technologi-
cal wonder, the radio, which appeared in the 1920s. The radio did not supersede
the phonograph entirely; rather, both continued to bring music into the home
for private enjoyment. Meanwhile, cities in the United States and Europe, such
as NewYork, Chicago, London, and Paris, were becoming centralized locations
for live performances during the interwar period.
Harlems role in the development and spread of black music, art, litera-
ture, and intellectual inquiry around the world is well known, with its resul-
tant expressive products referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem
Renaissance, however, is but one flowering of the greater Negro Renaissance, a
movement and phenomenon that transcended geographical, social, and political
boundaries. Thus, in addition to dealing with the Harlem Renaissance, Chapter
8 also presents ideological and aesthetic issues associated with other move-
ments found in the Diaspora, such as Noirisme, Negritude, and Afrocubanismo.
Each of these movements gave rise to idiosyncratic music; but of perhaps last-
ing interest is the process by which the different black expressive arts became
relevant to each other. Moreover, we begin to see that, during these movements,
black expressive artists referenced their heritage in a way that was undeniable
and, given the time and circumstances, unavoidable. Finally, these artists not

I n tro du ctio n xxxiii
only transformed their own artistic impulse into something noteworthy, but
their expressions proved to be pivotal gestures that demanded, and continue to
warrant, our attention.
In Chapter 9, Guthrie Ramsey Jr. capitalizes on the energy produced dur-
ing these movements and introduces us to the frenetic midtwentieth-century
period of Afro-modernism and its avant-garde practitioners. By focusing his
narrative on the parameters (or lack thereof) associated with Afro-modernism,
he explores the kinds of musical possibilities that were inconceivable to previous
generations. Figures such as George Russell, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman,
and others have been accused of threatening traditionalists in the realm of jazz,
for example, and Ramsey introduces them accordingly as progressive, albeit
polarizing, musicians. Yet, such avant-gardism as described by Ramsey remains
a necessary agent in and of change, even though some changes are, in actuality,
rooted in traditions of thepast.
Through these changes, however, came a needa tangible and urgent need
to create a space in which black Afro-modernists could come to terms intellec-
tually with their limitless creativity. Academia presented a viable response to
this need, and composers, musicians, historians, and musicologists turned to
teaching and writing as a process through which they could address contem-
porary black aesthetics as a reflection of the past, all the while enticing new
generations to create their own histories. Collectively, the efforts of these aca-
demicians gave rise to the field of black music research, which allows us to go
beyond the constraints alluded to in Chapter3 so that the sonic phenomena of
the Diaspora can be considered in appropriate contexts, and so that the histories
of all black musical genres become foundational to our understanding of our
current soundscapes.
In the final chapter, it seems fitting to end the journey of this narrative by
traveling back to Africa. Hence, in Chapter10, we return to the land where we
started by way of the sailing ships. We see how musical objects, once trans-
formed, transform again and affect African music making, beginning in the
nineteenth century. By surveying and exploring resultant genres, such as isi-
cathamiya and kwela, we get a sense of how Africans have been able to negoti-
ate with sonic arrivals and massage them into something new. We also consider
how music is perceived and used in the postcolonial age, where traditions reign
supreme in some areas while the remnants of the colonial grip have left their
residue in others.

Recommended Recordings
Throughout The Transformation of Black Music, a number of recordings and web-

sites are referenced. Although the authors have sought to make this book acces-
sible to readers who are not familiar with musical notation, we do recommend
listening to black musics whenever possible. Over the last twenty years, we have
witnessed several transitions in the technology associated with musical record-
ings: compact discs, which were popular in the 1990s, were eventually super-
seded by MP3s and online resources, such as YouTube. Nevertheless, we would
like to list five sound recordings in particular that will help our readers experi-
ence the kinds of black musical genres that we discuss in the book.
Africa En America Msica De 19 Pases=Africa in America :Music from 19 Countries:
Corason,1992.
Black Composers Series. NewYork:CBS,1975.
Kalinda Kaliente! Bennington, VT:Ocean Records,1997.
Mestres do Barroco Mineiro, Sculo XVIII. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,1967.
Nueva Espaa:Germany:Erato,1993.
xxxv

The Transformation of Black Music

PartI
BLACK MUSIC AND

THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

1
Out of Africa
Setting Sail from the Motherland
The seductively agreeable belief so dear to nineteenth-century

Europe that all in Africa was savage chaos before the coming
of the Europeans may linger here and there, but not among
historians concerned with Africa.
Basil Davidson:Africa in History:Themes and Outlines
From the first century after Christ until the Portuguese
entered Africa in the 1500s as explorers, traders and
enslavers, Black kingdoms grew and prospered in Western
Sudan and in the region of the Niger. Their civilizations
flourished as magnificently as any in Europe. Their
governments showed remarkable political and administrative
sophistication, especially with trade and development.
Mark Hyman, Blacks Before America
The Early Stone Age of Africa dates back approximately 2.5million years ago
and is characterized by the use of pebble tools, i.e., tools constructed by chip-
ping the edges of river pebbles to create sharp-edged instruments. The Early
Stone Age, which appears to have its roots in eastern Africa, ultimately gave
way to the Middle Stone Age, which materialized in the savanna regions of
Africa, at around the same time modern man emerged, 100,000 years ago.
The Middle Stone Age, in turn, was superseded by the Late Stone Age approxi-
mately 20,000years ago. According to J.E. G.Sutton (1981), humans of the
Late Stone Age witnessed a number of environmental changes and migrated
in pursuance of water resources, between 9000 bc and 3000 bc. Around 5000
bc, however, rivers and lakes that had once been prominent in what is now
known as the Sahara Desert began to dry up, thereby gradually separating the
northern and southern sections of the African continent. References to the
region prior to its desiccation employ the term Green Sahara, which, given its
natural resources, supplied the region with numerous edible crops, especially
cereals.
Map 1.1a Outline of Africa with major lakes and rivers

Map 1.1b Political map of Africa:modern nation states

6The Transformation of Black Music
The Negroid peoples, who began to populate parts of Africa from around
5000 bc, may perhaps be the remote ancestors of contemporary African peoples
such as the Bushmen and the Pygmies. The blacks south of the Sahara began to
multiply, explore, and settle in the abundant savannas and forests to till the soil,
build irrigation systems, and develop more complex societies. Prior to 3000 bc,
black Africans were painting men and women with a beautiful and sensitive
realism and, according to one observer, were among the first to render lifelike
human portraiture (Davidson 1987, 58). Discoveries of pottery heads and fig-
ures of the Nok people (in current-day Nigeria) whose culture dates prior to two
thousand years ago, together with their known use of iron, suggest that their
society was a transitional culture between stone and metals (5859).1 Iron,
which was recognized for its superior strength and durability, trumped other
resources, including stone, bone, wood, and other metals, and it was used in
weapons and tools (8183). The Iron Age in Africa, which began after 500 bc,
made possible the rapid spread of black people throughout the continent, as iron
was an incredibly powerful social force and economic resource (Shillington 1993
[1989] 38). Over time, the process of iron smelting was introduced to central
Africa, and by approximately ad 300 the Iron Age had been brought as far south
as the areas surrounding the Zambezi River, along the southeastern coast of
Africa. Knowledge of Africas iron spread beyond the continental borders, as, by
the eighth century, trade had been established between eastern Africa and India,
with Africa selling iron and ivory to India (Laude 1971, 256).
Cheikh Anta Diop has shown that precolonial black Africa was, indeed, eco-
nomically and materially abundant. Commerce, currency, import-export opera-
tions, and merchant classes in the empires of Ghana,2 Mali, and Songhay3
thrived, and the cities of Gao, Timbuktu, and Djenn, which were founded along
the Niger River, were flourishing centers for trade. Moreover, these kingdoms,
in general, and these cities, in particular, were the sites for intermingling of
Arabs and numerous African tribes.4
In ad 1076, the Almoravids invaded Ghana, and during the fourth quarter
of the eleventh century many of Ghanas traditional Soninke people converted
to Islam. In the twelfth century, many West Africans were influenced by the
Muslims who had come to the continent from the north and had brought with
them their achievements in literacy, science, and mathematics (Shillington 1993
[1989], 9293).
Ghana, whose capital was Kumbi-Saleh, was known primarily for its gold
trade, and much is known about its history because the literate Muslim invad-
ers wrote about their experiences in Arabic. Unlike the cities mentioned above,
Kumbi-Saleh was not located along the Niger River; rather, its presumed
site (which has been subject of dispute) lay to the southwest of Timbuktu
and northwest of Djenn in what is now Mauritania. Unfortunately, toward
the end of the twelfth century, Ghana eventually lost control over the West

Ou t o f A fr ica 7
Mediterranean Sea
Ni l e
R
iver
Red
Lake
Nasser
eaS
Kumbi-Saleh Timbuktu
Sene Gao
g Djenn
Blu
Lake
(Jenn-Jeno)
e Ni
al
iv e Chad Lake
R
r
Nig
it e N il e
Tana
le
er
Niani
Riv
Volt a
er
Wh
R er
Riv
iver
B e nue
ver
i
oR
ng
Co
Lake
Victoria
ATLANTIC Lake INDIAN

OCEAN Tanganika OCEAN
Lake
Nyasa
Kingdom of Ghana (Wagadu), eleventh
century AD
ez
Zamb i River
Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth
century AD
Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth
century AD to 1591 popo Rive
Lim r
Kingdom of Ethiopia, ca. early
sixteenth century
Kingdom of Kanem and Kanem-Bornu Orange River
Empire, sixteenth century to
nineteenth century 1000 MILES
Yorubaland, nineteenth century
1000 KILOMETERS
Map 1.2 Outline of Africa with historical empires/kingdoms depicted:Ghana,

Mali, Songhay, Ethiopia, Yorubaland,Kanem
African gold trade. Southwest of Kumbi-Saleh, the gold field in the region of
Bure became a source of much contention. A subgroup of the Soninke, the
Sosso, attempted to dominate the area and established an independent state.
In the 1220s, they subsequently conquered both their northern Soninke
neighbors and their neighbors to the south, the Malinke. Yet by 1235, the
Malinke defeated the Sosso, giving rise to the empire of Mali (Shillington
1993 [1989] 9496).
Timbuktu was Malis center of learning, with its great university, Sankor,
attracting students from many parts of Africa. Early in the fourteenth cen-
tury Sudanese scholars who had been educated at the Moroccan university
of Fes established their own learning centers for Koranic study at Timbuktu

ATLANT I C
OCEAN
Timbuktu
Seneg Kumb i-Saleh Gao
a Djenn
Lake
lR
(Jenn-Jeno)
iv e
r Chad
Ni g
e
Niani
rR
i ve
r
Vo l t
a
r
ive
Rive r
B e n ue R
er
iv
oR
ng
1000 MILES
Co
1000 KILOMETERS
Kingdom of Ghana, eleventh century AD
Map 1.2a Kingdom of Ghana, eleventh centuryad
(Shillington 1993 [1989], 99)where, according to Diop (1987, 17778), between

150 and 180 schools began training and producing dialecticians, rhetoricians,
jurists, etc. Works of scholarship were being produced, and students were study-
ing the Western-based trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). The scholars there, Diop tells us,
were of the same intellectual quality as their Arab colleagues; at times, they
were even better (181). Timbuktu was also known for its book trade, as north-
ern and western Africans converged there to sell and buy manuscripts (Davidson
1991, 73). In 1468 Timbuktu was plundered and ruined by the Songhay army
of Sonni Ali the Great, only to rise again as it became subsumed in the Songhay
empire (Shillington 1993 [1989], 101). The Songhay empire, which had devel-
oped in the ninth century from a loose confederation of villages near and along

Ou t o f A fr ica 9
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Timbuktu
Seneg Kumbi-Saleh Gao
a Djenn
Lake
lR
(Jenn-Jeno)
Chad
iv e
r
Nig
er
Niani
Riv
er
Vo l t
a
r
ive
Rive r
B e n ue R
iv er
oR
ng
1000 MILES
Co
1000 KILOMETERS
Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth century AD
Map 1.2b Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth centuryad
the Niger River, eventually superseded the Mali empire. The capital of Songhay,
Gao, had long served as an important place for commerce and trade. Indeed, the
empire assumed a prominent position in trading until 1591, when it was con-
quered by Moroccan invaders.
While trading between West Africa and North Africa was supported by the
Sahara, the Indian Ocean provided overseas trade routes for the black African
kingdoms of the eastern part of the continent.5 At the height of the African
trade with the east, the Portuguese came and anchored in the Madagascan chan-
nel.6 According to Davidson (1987, 19596), they went ashore and saw cities
as fine as all but a few they could have known in Europe perhaps wealthier,
than anything that Europe knew.7 So impressed were the Portuguese that they
took control of Indian Ocean ports.

ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Kumbi-Saleh Timbuktu
Seneg Gao
a Djenn
Lake
lR
(Jenn-Jeno)
Chad
iv e
r
Nig
er
Niani
Riv
er
Vo l t
a
r
ive
Rive r
B e n ue R
er
iv
oR
ng
1000 MILES
Co
1000 KILOMETERS
Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth century AD to 1591
Map 1.2c Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth century ad to1591
To the northeast, according to Davidson (1987, 219 20), the Amharic

civilizationthe culture of the ancestors of the people of todays Ethiopiahad
begun to introduce hillside terracing, the building of hilltop forts, and phallic
symbolism, as well as dry-stone building after ad 300. The practice of terrac-
ing, he says, still plays an important role in parts of Ethiopia, and there is
monumental evidence of ancient settlement8 (227). As the empires of Ghana,
Mali, and Songhay were becoming Muslim centers of learning, Ethiopia was
an isolated outpost of Christianity in which missionaries set up by monas-
teries became important centers of learning and Ethiopian Christian culture
(Shillington 1993 [1989], 107). Surrounded by non-Christians and believing
themselves to be the true descendants of ancient Israel (108), the Ethiopians
made pilgrimages to ancient Christian biblical sites, built numerous churches,

Ou t o f A fr ica 11
Mediterranean Sea
N ile
Riv
er
Red
Lake
Nasser
Sea
Bl
ue
Lake
Nile
Chad Lake
Muza
Tana (Mocha)
N ile
Nig
er
it e
Riv
er
Wh
r
ive
B e n ue R
er
iv
oR
ng
1000 MILES
Co
Lake
1000 KILOMETERS Victoria
Kingdom of Ethiopia, ca. early sixteenth century
Map 1.2d Kingdom of Ethiopia (Abyssinia)
established leaders who claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of
Sheba, and provided the Muslim world, through trade, with frankincense and
myrrh (110, 107). Beginning in the early sixteenth century, both Muslims and
Christians sought to dominate Ethiopian territory, while other groups, includ-
ing the Oromo, a pastoral yet progressive people, rose to a position of promi-
nence in the area.9 Trade with the port of Muza resulted in intermarriage so
significant that a new language developed:Swahili, an Arabized, Bantu-based,
African language that went hand in hand with the new Swahili culturean
authentic African synthesis of non-African ideas that nonetheless remained
basically and predominantly African (Davidson, 1987, 178, 206). It was a cul-
ture that borrowed from many sources but made a distinctive whole
clearly African (206). Swahili culture was rich, literate, and artistic, with poets

here composing mashairi, or lyric songs, by medieval times; and later wrote
them down in the Swahili language. They continued to write mashairi and
tendi, epic poems, during the centuries that followed; and they are still writing
them today (209).10
Between 1498 on the East Coast and 1652 in the far south, amid destruction
and conquest by Moroccan and European invaders, Africa was irrevocably dam-
aged. This ruin and devastation led to societal insecurities, power conflicts,
isolation, and a resulting economic, technological, and political dependency on
the outside world (Davidson, 1991, 22627). Over the course of the sixteenth
century, as the Portuguese, well-armed and ruthless, took over the Indian
Ocean ports, they cut savagely across those many complex strands of com-
merce which centuries had woven between these myriad ports and peoples of
Kingdom of Kanem and Kanem-Bornu Empire,

tenth century to nineteenth century
Kingdom of Kanem 10th 13th century
Kanem-Bornu Empire 14th 16th century
Mediterranean Sea
Kanem-Bornu Empire 16th 19th century
N ile
Riv
er
Red
Lake
Nasser
Sea
Bl
ue
Nile
Lake
Lake Tana
N ile
Nig
Chad
rRe
it e
ive
Wh
r
r
ive
B e n ue R
er
iv
oR
ng
Co
Lake
1000 MILES Victoria
1000 KILOMETERS
Map 1.2e Outline of Africa with Kingdom of Kanem and Kanem-Bornu Empire

the east; and they wrecked the whole fabric of that trade, leaving behind them,
when their force was spent, little but ruin and disruption (Davidson 1987,
198). Ruin of the Indian trade and eclipse of its African terminals, overseas
slaving, colonial conquest and many things besides, would obscure and hide the
African past (202).11
Much has been written about Africas various coastal regions in terms of com-
merce, progress, and subsequent exploitation, but there were regions of import
in the continents interior as well. In an interior region of Africa southwest of
Lake Chad, the Kingdom of Kanem arose around ad 900 and became power-
ful and wealthy through the trans-Saharan slave trade as well as through the
exportation of ivory and ostrich feathers. By the thirteenth century, Kanem had
established a tributary state in Bornu, northeast of the lake, and the empire of
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Timbuktu
Seneg Gao
a Djenn
Lake
lR
(Jenn-Jeno)
Chad
iv e
r
Nig
er
Riv
er
Vo l t
a
r
ive
Rive r
B e n ue R
er
iv
oR
ng
1000 MILES
Co
1000 KILOMETERS
Yorubaland, nineteenth century
Map 1.2f Outline of Africa with Yorubaland

Kanem-Bornu garnered substantial economic and political clout, although nei-

ther it nor any of the other latter-day city-states reached the heights of splen-
dor and power of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Meanwhile, between the tenth
and twelfth centuries, the people of Yorubaland (which comprised modern-day
Western Nigeria, Benin, and Togo) experienced a Golden Age of cultural pro-
duction in their self-sufficient city-states characterized by artistic and poetic
richness (Thompson 1984, 5).12 Later, in the region of Benin, hieroglyphic and
syllabic scripts were developed, enabling higher learning and technical compe-
tence to flourish (Diop 1987, 17681, 18190).
The Yorubas large and orderly empire (Davidson 1991, 234) generated a
sophisticated philosophical system, the philosophy of If.13 Reflecting an inte-
gration of the basic practices of a complex commercial culture, If philosophy
gave structure and system to ways of dealing with the vicissitudes of life and
with questions of universal concern.14 Supported by a system that includes
a belief in a high God (Olodumare, also spelled Eledumare), a pantheon of
lesser gods, the living-dead, and ordinary spirits, this complex of imaginative
beliefs, narrations, and symbols exercised authority and power (Floyd 1995b,
2223).15
Although the Yoruba are said to have created their deities, similar religious
systems existed in various other African societies. Named according to the lan-
guage of the people to whom they administered, these gods were called variously
r (Yoruba), abosom (Ashanti), vodun (Fon), alusi/alushi (Igbo).16 The Fon of
Dahomey (which became the Republic of Benin in 1975), like their neighbors
the Yoruba, have a high God and a set of lesser gods. The high God is known
as Nana Buluku; on the lower level are Mawu and Lisa, Bulukus offspring; and
below these two are others who are collectively called vodu. Gerhard Kubik
(1990, 22)points out that among the Fon, vodusi undergo an initiation process
that lasts up to three months and takes place in the so-called huxoe (or house
of the vodusi) where they stay in seclusion. Of the Yoruba religion, Kubik points
out that in structurally comparable and partly identical form its concepts are
found among the western neighbours of the Yoruba in Dahomey and Togo under
the designation vodu (20). Of the music of the Fon, the songs performed dur-
ing vodu ceremonies are full of metaphors, proverbs and symbolic phrases of all
kinds which are descriptive of these beings. This poetry is analogous to the ork
among the Yoruba. He also notes that Legba is always considered to be a posi-
tive force among members of the vodu religion(25).
Among the Yoruba and their neighbors the Fon, from the Gulf of Benin
area of West Africa that now includes Nigeria and Benin, devotees undergo
initiation ceremonies in which they learn the ways of their r, including the
signals that attract these deities into the bodies of their devotees. In a spe-
cific instance, for example, the drum beckons the deity and salutes it, and the
deity eventually demands entrance into, or on the back of, its horse. When

the deity rides, or inhabits, the devotee, the two entities become one, thereby
abolishing the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. In so
doing, the singular entity transcends and, with the help and collective ven-
eration of the participating community, redefines reality. In this ritual, the
interdependencies and reciprocities between the human and spiritual worlds
are symbolized through acts of communication, sacrifice, and spiritual pos-
session. In the Yoruba pantheon, Esu-Elegba is the one who opens the way,
the gate, to possession.
If philosophy and its attendant myths and rituals are central to the under-
standing of Yoruba aesthetics and may also have implications for our under-
standing of the aesthetics of other African cultures. According to Babatunde
Lawal, in Yoruba culture and thought, ew is the manifestation of the well-
made or the well-done, while things poorly wrought are burbador ko
dra, not good. The extremely ugly is often despised, [and] the extremely
beautiful is often held suspect (Lawal 1974, 239). The source of all beauty is
the deity Olrun, who is known as the Creator (Eleda). As such, Olrun is
central to aesthetic issues, but never worshipped directly (242).
According to Lawal, beauty can be defined with respect to color, shape, and
size, among other attributes. For example, the color indigo blue is prized, and
certain reds are also favored. The color black is portentous, as it suggests the
evil that lurks in the dark. It is [also] the sacred colour of Esu, who delights
in mischief (246). In architecture, beauty is determined by appropriate size,
strength, quality, and decoration of materials (246), and in this regard, the
Yoruba speak of the delicacy of a line, or the roundness of mass (Thompson
1989 [1973], 30). Ornaments are used to enhance beauty.
In artistic performance among the Yoruba, music, dance, and song must
complement one another, and in group performances individuals are seldom
singled out for praise (Lawal 1974, 247). Performing artistry, he goeson,
is judged by the quality of presentation. A good singer or poet is

judged not only by the quality of his voice but also by the quality of
his composition. Adancer is assessed by the quality of his body move-
ments and steps, as well as by how well he can anticipate the beat of
the drums. Youths dance rather vigorously, while elders dance with
restraint to emphasize the dignity of old age. An elder who dances
like a youth (for no justifiable reason) is called shameless [a]
gambolling gentleman while the youth who dances like an old
man is taken for a weakling. Short people are often regarded as the
best dancers; hence, the appellation akruyej (short to match the
dance). When a fat or plump woman throws all of herself into a
dance every movement is echoed by the fleshiness of her form, espe-
cially the buttocks, which play a prominent part in the dance of the

women. Asimilar attempt by the skinny woman often results in gyra-

tion which is not regarded asideal.
Artistry in music is recognized in the individuals ability to talk
with the drum and in the over-all rhythm or melody of an orchestral
performance.(247)
Rhythmically, writes Thompson,
the dancer picks up each rhythm of the polymetric whole with differ-
ent parts of his body; when he does so, he directly mirrors the met-
ric mosaic . In many instances West Africans find it convenient
to dance to only one rhythm, or to shift from two basic pulsations
in their footwork to three , or to follow three mental pulsations
while the gong player actually strikes four. In other words, there are
minimum instances of multimetric dancing to oppose against the full
expression. (Thompson 1966,91)
In another place, he says that, in Nigeria, an excellent dancer hears the

drum and makes the whole body dance [making] every rhythmic subtlety
of the music visible. It is percussive dancing, based on mnemonic retention,
with the dance and the music sharing the dominance of a percussive concept
of performance; multiple meter; apart playing and dancing; call-and-response;
and the songs and dances of derision (Thompson 1966, 8789). In the end,
aesthetic judgment is consensual, shared throughout the community, and it is
also ethical, since it is based on a balance between the good and the bad, the hot
and the cold, the living and the dead, to safeguard mans existence (Thompson
1989 [1973],59).
Yoruba festivalsannual or anniversary commemorations of deities, spir-
its, ancestors, kings, or historical eventsare cultural, humanistic, and artistic
occasions of spiritual importance and high entertainment value. These festivals
vary in their length and degree of elaboration; they are rife with symbolism,
and music is vital to their unfolding. In the Olojo festival, for example, music
plays a prominent role. The purpose of this festival is to honor Ogun, the god
of iron and war, and the presence of iron hoes and gong-bells represent Oguns
importance in Yoruba culture. Within the three-day ceremony, two iron hoes are
used to symbolize industry, and the iron gong-bells represent art and craft.
In another festival, called the If, which occurs in Ede, a ritual takes place that
feeds the drums with the blood from a slaughtered animal. This ritual serves to
augment the drums resonance and enables them to be used for sacred purposes
(Vidal 1989, 11116).17 Some of these festivals require masking. Throughout
many African cultures, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic masks are extant,
representing mythical ancestors and animals, respectively (Sivin 1986, 16).

Others have geometric shapes, and some are ornamented with shells and fibers.
Some are said to house spirits or forces that take over the dancer who wears it,
transforming him or her into the spirit of the mask (17).
Masking, costuming, and drama are all part of such festivals, and music
infuses the festivals with dramatic tension, making announcements and sig-
nals, supporting processions, and accompanying dancing; and it provides his-
torical affirmation through songs, historical allusion and descriptive eulogy
(Vidal 1989, 122). In song and in speech, important persons, towns, groups,
institutions, and activities are praised and critiqued, and also derided, sati-
rized and condemned (124). Thus, festival presentations may be seen as col-
lages of eventsthat is, of music, procession, dance, costume, entertainment,
and dramatic moments. In some festivals, secret societies parade. For example,
outsiders (including Portuguese travelers) noticed early the Poro society, which
is considered to be older than European trade and is still prominent in Sierra
Leone. This society is believed to have been founded in what is known now as
Liberia and to have spread from among its original founders to a variety of ethnic
groups. In cooperation with or in the absence of village chiefs, the Poro presided
over discussions and decisions that affected public life, war and peace, social and
community justice, commerce, and ceremony. The womens counterpart to the
Poro is known as Sande, and it is dedicated to the preparation of young girls for
adult life and to the advancement of womens rights. Both the womens and the
mens societies address supernatural issues with ritual taboos designed to pro-
mote the moral order by identifying and enforcing behaviors acceptable to the
community (Creel 2005, 16162).18
The African secret societies are also known to care for their sick and bury
their dead. In some parts of Africa, however, death and sickness are sometimes
said to result from witchcraft and sorcery.19 In parts of traditional Africa, vic-
tims seek out diviners who may indicate that misfortune is due to some trans-
gression of the victim or to the directed malice of an enemy.20 The victim may be
told that continued misfortune will accrue if amends are not made to indignant
ancestors, or because of some other failure (Davidson 1969, 138).21
When you walk along a bush path and are bitten by a snake or twist
your ankle on a root, you will not fail to know the immediate reason for
your pain. Disbelieving in coincidence, however, you will want to know
more than this. Why was it in your path that the snake or root hap-
pened to be lying? Why this particular conjunction of cause and effect?
These are the questions that may worry you, for they clearly point
to the witchcraft that interrupts the ideal flow of daily life. You will
proceed for advice to a diviner:prudently, since if someones witch-
craft has caused you to be bitten by a snake today, what still more
dangerous hurt may not await you tomorrow? Consulting his oracle,

the diviner will explain that you are the victim of witchcraft either
because you have sinned gone against the rules or because,
though innocent yourself, you have attracted the malice of someone
else who has sinned. In either case he will tell you what to do, so as to
avert a worse misfortune in the future.
If worse misfortune still befalls you, it will not follow that the
diviner was wrong in his prescriptions or advice. He may have been
wrong. Everyone knows that some diviners are better than oth-
ers. Maybe you will think it well to consult two or more of them
provided, of course, that you can raise the necessary fees. But the
reason for continued misfortune may also be that you have yourself
continued to offend, failed to make adequate amends to indignant
ancestors, or broken some other rule that you had overlooked or set
aside as unimportant. The system, in short, is a total one. It protects
itself against predictive failure. (Davidson 1969, 13738)
In other cases and in medically appropriate circumstances, medicines might be

given. According to Jahn (1961, 12930), from the perspective of African philos-
ophy, the medications of African traditional healers are placebos, and traditional
healers who attribute causes of illness to supernatural events are psychothera-
pists:only in connection with Nommo are medicines effective, for Nommo, the
word, is indispensable in the healing process.22
No medicines, talismans, magic horns, no, not even poisons are

effective without the word. Only the intelligence of the word frees
these forces and makes them effective. All substances, minerals, juices
are only vessels of the word, of the Nommo. (Jahn 1961, 12627)
Thus far in this midsection of my narrative about the Yoruba, I have moved
quickly from philosophy through religion, aesthetics, festivals, secret societies,
and healing, all of which are in some way related to music; and this is appropri-
ate, for, among the Yoruba, musical prowess was granted by thegods.
In the Yoruba legend of Odu-ifa, Ogundosee became Irunmole, the

one who possesses musical genius. Ogundosee is therefore the one
who imparts musical ability and style. Furthermore, the Yoruba Odu-
ifa, Owonrin Meji, has a verse thatgoes:
Orun me gb
Orun mi gb
My essence emanates from loudsound
My essence emanates from thunderous sound. (Asante 1998,80)

Akin Euba, in his Essays on Music in Africa, discusses the notions of divine
kingship, kingship music, and the royal palace as the focal point of musical
activity in African societies (Euba 1988, 3133). The palace is a place where
talking drums play praise poetry for kings, contests are held for drum ensem-
bles, separate and combined ensemble performances are produced, and other
musical events dating back to the fifteenth century are held. He points outthat
it is customary for kings to have personal musicians attached to their

courts and, in many cases, there are instruments, ensembles or types
of music which are identified with kingship and may not be used by
commoners. Throughout Africa, trumpets and ivory horns are gener-
ally regarded as symbols of royalty. Among the Tutsi of Rwanda,
however, drums belong to the king and are played only for him. With
the exception of the drums owned by the queen mother, Tutsi cus-
tom does not allow the use of drums in any other context. (Euba
1988,35)
Among the other instruments that were employed by court musicians are
flutes, lutes, lyres, trumpets, sets of tuned xylophones, and one-string fiddles.
Professional musicians, and in some cases members of the royal family, perform
for the court (Euba 1988, 41, 84). Today, however, in locations where kingship
has become less functional, such traditions are disappearing or have already
been lost. But in places where they continue, court rituals may vary. In Oyo and
Ede, for example, in Nigeria,
drummers play praise poetry for the kings, beginning from about six
in the morning. Among the Tutsi, the royal drum ensemble, accompa-
nied by a praise singer, similarly performs dawn music for the Mwami.
In Zaria, the chief trumpeter of the Emir uses his solo instrument to
speak words of praise to His Highness and, by waking up the king,
also helps to awaken the community as awhole.
After the dawn music, court musicians continue to play intermit-
tently throughout the day to signify various occurrences taking place
around the palace. In Yorubaland, court musicians use talking drums
to warn the king about visitors approaching the palace and, vice versa,
the kings daily movements are notified to the populace through the
same medium.
Musical instruments are also used to communicate various kinds
of information from the king to his subjects. These include official
announcements and warnings and directives in times of emergency.
Whenever it is necessary to summon urgent meetings of the council
of chiefs, this too is often done throughmusic.

In the past, court musicians had a major role as the upholders

of history and traditional beliefs and much of their repertoire con-
sisted of texts pertinent to these activities. (Euba 1988,40)
In several African kingdoms, the royalty, as patrons of the arts, placed artists
on retainers and displayed their works in their royal residences. This court art
sometimes differed in style from that of the ordinary people (Bascom 1973, 10).
According to Reynolds, Among groups like the Hausa of Nigeria and the Wolof
of Senegambia it was correlated to class status; people of low rank performed
while those of higher status were content to be entertained (1985, 20). Most of
this artwhich included ceremonial crowns, stools, scepters, and other items,
as well as numerous everyday objects such as musical instruments, combs,
drinking cups, game boardsand particularly the sculpture was associated with
religion, with each of its deities having its own dance, rhythm, song, and instru-
ments (Bascom 1973, 1011, 86). The Bakongo, notes Thompson, lack a com-
plex pantheon of deities, but they have, instead, a complex system of minkisi
(sacred medicines), which they believe were given to mankind by God (1984,
1067). The Kongo region, inhabited by various Pygmy and Negrito people, was
vital with ceremonies and rituals in which polyrhythms and counterpoint played
significant roles and in which song was yodelized and erotic. In the dances of
the Bakongo peoples, opposing groups or individuals, or individuals opposing
a group, perform periodic movements that are like questions and responses
(Van Wing, quoted in Thompson 1984, 95)kinetic realizations of the visual
master-and-entourage metaphor.
Among the Mande, who resided in the western Sudan in what is now occu-
pied by Cte dIvoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, one of their most important
artistic traditions was the making of multistrip textiles in vibrant colors,
designs in which the main accents of one strip are staggered in relation to those
on either side of it. This design format, which dates back more than seven cen-
turies (Thompson 1984, 209), has been compared to the rhythmic character
of West African music. Theorizing that their designs might be scanned metri-
cally, Thompson says that Mande and Mande-influenced narrow-strip textile
is in visual resonance with the famed off-beat phrasing of melodic accents in
African and Afro-American music and concludes that, as multiple meter dis-
tinguishes the traditional music of black Africa, emphatic multistrip composi-
tion distinguishes the cloth of West Africa and culturally related Afro-American
sites (2078).
Much has been written about relationships between West African visual
and oral-literary arts and West African music; and even more, much more,
has been written about relationships between West African music and Africa-
derived music in the Americas. But very little has been written about relation-
ships between the music of East Africa and African-American music. The reason

usually given for this lack of attention is that most of the Africans that were
enslaved in the Americas came from West Africa. On this view, since there were
very few East Africans brought to this country, the preponderance of the musi-
cal influences must therefore have been West African. Thus scholars have sought
time and again to prove this assumption.
I happen to disagree strongly with the logic of this position. Some scholars
have looked carefully at the musics of East and Central Africa, and from them
we know a great deal more than is generally supposed about the musics of these
regions. From the African musicologist J.H. Kwabena Nketia, for example, we
know of the call-and-response xylophone music of the Bantu-speaking Chopi
people in what is now known as Mozambique, and of the banana stem xylo-
phones in the central and eastern African regions known now as the countries
of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and
Kenya; of the large mbiras, the hour-glass shaped ntimbo drums, metal-pipe
flutes, and bowed one-, two-, and four-string fiddles and lutes of Tanzania;
of the octave polarity of the Central African Republic, Tanzania, and Kenya,
where also call-and-response part singing, one-string fiddles, bow harps, and
light oil drums (Nketia 1974, 85)are part of the musical landscape; of the
parallel thirds of south-central Africa in what is now known as Zambia; and of
the pentatonicism among some of the Tanzanian peoples.23 We know that by
the 1580s, eighteen-key marimbas [were] being played at the Zimbabwe
court, instruments that spread into Angola and the Congo, from which
regions it reached the New World no later than 1680 (Stevenson 1968a, 482).
We know also that these regions were sources of slaves for the Americas well
into the nineteenth century, with Zanzibar being the largest of the East Coast
slaving ports (Davidson 1991, 25859). Then there are the kinds of musical
exchanges that have taken place constantly between African ethnic groups,
including, for example, the Bantus adoption of the !Kungs techniques in the
playing of musical bows (Kubik 1988, 42).24 Certainly, such exchanges as this
took part in other ways and over wider distances than we generally have been
aware of in thepast.
In the music of the mouth-bow-playing Bantu in Central Africa, the produc-
tion of double fundamentalsexplained by Gerhard Kubik as two fundamen-
tal tones roughly a whole tone apart sounded simultaneouslyis the norm.
According to Kubik, with his left hand the bow player holds the string-bearer
and a short stick with which he stops the string from time to time. The stop-
ping point divides the string to give two fundamentals approximately a whole
tone apart (Kubik 1994, 188). Mouth-bow players use this phenomenon musi-
cally by structuring melodies around it. Kubik (188) notes that it also occurs in
blues music in the United States, citing its use in the music of Bo Diddley, and
the blues scholar David Evans (1999) has noted its use in the music of Robert
Johnson.25

TANGANYIKA (19611964)
Joined with Zanzibar and Pemba in 1964 PEMBA
Lake UNITED REPUBLIC ZANZIBAR
Tanganyika
OF TANZANIA (1964)
ANGOLA Lake
Nyasa
NORTHERN RHODESIA NYASALAND (19071963)

(19111953) MALAWI (1964)
ZAMBIA (1964)
SOUTHERN
NAMIBIA RHODESIA (18981963)
RHODESIA (19641979)
BOTSWANA ZIMBABWE (1980)
MOZAMBIQUE
SWAZILAND
SOUTH LESOTHO
250 MILES AFRICA
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
19531963
250 KILOMETERS
Map 1.3 Outline of southern Africa with modern nation states; historical names of
places referenced intext
According to Andrew Tracey (1971, 73), in southern Africa reed pipe dances
are popular among the Hottentots, Bushmen, Tswana, Venda, N. Sotho, and
Ndebele in Mozambique and in Rhodesia (current-day Zimbabwe), among
other ethnic groups. The music created for these performances is played on pan-
pipes that have been constructed by tying together two or more bamboo tubes
of different lengths to make single instruments, of differing sizes, that will cover
a range of three or more octaves. The blowing of the panpipes is accompanied by
leg rattles that have been attached on the legs of the players of the middle-to-
high-range pipe, and, less prominently, by drumming. All but the bass-pipe per-
formers dance. The players, all men, make use of both blown and voiced notes,
and the chord sequences are closely related to the mbira music of southern
Africa (79). The dancing is done by the players, and it is all done in unison while
the pipers also play on their instruments. Furthermore, the audible part of the
dancing, Tracey writes, is performed with, for example,
a stamp on the ground with the right leg, the one carrying the rattle.
There is more to it than this thoughmovements such as the shifting
the weight [sic] onto the other foot, swinging the stamping leg back
and forth, turning in and out of the circle and so on. The position

is slightly crouched; the more enthusiastic, the lower. During the

lead singers phrase the dancers usually walk around the circle anti-
clockwise, in the rhythm of the waiting step, sometimes with one
hand on the shoulder of the man in front. When the dancing starts
again, turn in and put right foot forward. Or else they step on the spot
with the right foot in this rhythm. (Tracey 1971,81)
Women stand in a group just outside the circle of panpipe players and sing
fixed parts in unison and in solo voice call-and-response (Tracey 1971, 8081).
I will try to relate some of the practices described by Nketia and Tracey to
African-American music in order to demonstrate probable and possible connec-
tions between East African and African-American music. Meanwhile, Ibelieve
that it is already evident that, throughout the continent, African music is
fraught with a variety of vocal effects that enrich the timbral mosaic of the
musical palette. In the vocal music of the Bushmen and Hottentots of southern
Africa (who speak the Khosian family of languages), and even in those of their
geographical neighbors, the Bantu, clicks are characteristic; in other languages,
consonants are followed by glides (w and y sounds) and nasals are hummed, fol-
lowed by oral consonants (m, nd, ng, mp, nt, nk, etc.). The music of the Kongo
peoples and that of the Yoruba were joined with that of the Islamic invaders,
which embraced monophonic and heterophonic melodic structures supported
by single-note and harmonic drones and rhythms that were derived from the
words of thetexts.
East, Central, or West African music makes use of what has been termed
African hemiola style, which is based on what westerners refer to as additive
rhythm, the alternation and varying of 2:3 or 3:2 contrasts, constructed from
what westerners refer to as recurring eighth notes, such as those that occur in
Gerhard Kubiks time-line patterns (see Examples 1.1 and 1.2).
Example 1.1 Example of time-line pattern
Example 1.2: Example of time-line pattern

Westerners might refer to the examples as being in the time signature of 12/8,
and that is mentioned here since it will allow us to more effectively make per-
tinent extrapolation in later chapters.26 Realized vertically as well as horizon-
tally, this hemiola style, Western-named, is responsible for the cross-rhythmic
and polyrhythmic structures of much African music. Then there are African
ostinato, hocket, and polyphony, and the vocal timbres that can be tense in
character, hoarse or nasal in texture, breathy in timbre, syllabic in style, and
without vibrato or ornament, that round out, although not completely, African
expressivestyle.
All of this is part of that timbral mosaic of the heterogeneous fusion of
contrasting and competing sounds that is unequivocally African (and not only
West African). The variety of sonic contrasts between and among one and many
voices and instruments does assuredly exist in greater or lesser degrees of com-
plexity in almost all African ensemble music, confirms Olly Wilson (1992,331).
Andrew Tracey, in his essay entitled African Values in Music (1994, 271),
contributes to our understanding of African aesthetics by treating ideas that
are absorbed, rather than learned, very early in life by Africans. In describ-
ing the African conception of what music is and how that conception of music
differs from Western conceptions in approach, he provides an anecdote about
the reaction and actions of African and Western musicians who visit his music
studio:
The response is almost predictable:an African musician starts to play

something, even on a strange instrument, involving a rhythmic phys-
ical movement; a second musician, if there is one, plays something,
on whatever instrument he is trying, which fits or relates to what
the first musician is doing. That is what music is! It goes without say-
ing that a Western musician in the same situation is concerned with
being told what to do, finding where the notes are, how to play a scale
and so on, not with cooperating with his friend who is also finding his
way. The sound of musical groups warming up continues this com-
parison: that of a symphony orchestra, where no player plays with
any other, is unthinkable in an African group, where warming up is
already part of the performance. (Tracey 1994,273)
These distinctions are revealing, meaningful, powerfully apropos, and instruc-

tive with regard to our understanding of African and African diasporic musics.
Traceys example of the African musician cooperating with his friend, for
example, relates to African musicians aesthetic and social need to cooperate
and share musical energy with each other (Tracey 1994, 273). And this notion
of sharing musical energy is related directly and intimately to the notion of giv-
ing, in which the African orchestra, for example, is bound to feed power to the

row of dancers facing them, to force them to want to dance. And in turn their
energy, their creativity, feeds back to the players (275). And although giving
implies power, which is an extremely important and unavoidable requirement
for African musicians, playing powerfully does not mean dominating; players
are always aware of what their neighbours are doing, they try to play in a con-
trasting rhythm, and they never -dala over someone else, unless he happens
to be so far down the line, perhaps three or four players away, that it makes no
difference (275). It is a matter of giving energy, or power as the Chopi put
it, in order that you may get energy back (276). As far as the coordination
of parts is concerned, a player [in an African ensemble] is taught the exact
entry point of his part, how it coordinates with the other parts, to play it accu-
rately and for long periods and directly on the pulse system (276). Rhythm
accuracy is paramount. And rhythmic accuracy relates directly to accuracy of
movement, for
Learning African music is not just learning to make sound; the

body movement must also be correct. It is usually true to say that
the sound cannot be correct if the movement is wrong. Whether or
not the body movement makes a sound directly, e.g., hands drum-
ming or ankles shaking rattles, the overall movement pattern is an
essential component of the whole; i.e., it has to be there in order to
sound, look and feel right to an African observer. The moments of
sounding, or the inaudible corner-points of a movement in a
clapping pattern from Togo, are only a part of a larger movement
pattern, often involving the whole body. Thus patterns apparently
created from sound only are usually housed in a larger matrix of
movement; composition may proceed as much from movement
as fromsound.
Examples can be found everywhere. A few at random: Kubiks
description of the silent movements of bark cloth beaters in
Angola ; his insistence that African guitar be played with
thumb and forefinger, not the Classical four fingers ; the non-
sounding footsteps which give timing to the nyanga panpipe groups
in Mozambique ; the typical way that Bhaca singers in Transkei,
standing in a tight bunch during the indlamu dance, clap over their
heads, the movement appearing to start from their feet upwards,
the jumping toyitoyi dance-songs which are part of activist politics
in South Africa, whose rhythm sounds different the moment you
can see the movement, and so on. (Tracey 1994,277)
Tracey goes on to say that in African music, African musical perception is fine
tuned to make good musical sense of the kind of sounds and conflicts that arise

from movement music (1994, 278). Which notion brings us to Traceys exami-
nation of such conflict, which he presents with special insight.
When playing triple music with only two hands a conflict of patterns
is inevitable, and African musicians, far from pretending this conflict
does not exist, make the most of it. For instance drummers, especially
if playing fast, often play all the pulses with constantly alternating
hands, so both hands share equally in beating the key sounds of the
rhythm pattern. Other patterns suggested by each hands own move-
ment can also surface easily. Among conga drummers in modern
popular music this way of playing is sometimes called African style,
as against Latin style where the hands do not alternate so much.
(Tracey 1994,279)
This particular difference brings us also to Traceys broader discussion of dif-

ference, as it applies to the whole of his observations. He says that difference
between parts is one of the elements which add meaning. Apart can only realise
its full potential meaning in relation to the other parts, and this means that it
must be significantly different from them (1994, 279). Moreover, difference,
in the form of conflict, is one element that seems to resist acculturation in any
modern popular African music; even in the simplest forms of mbaqanga from
Johannesburg, juju from Nigeria or reggae from Jamaica the heart of the com-
position often remains a structural opposition of two elements at least(280).
Such structural oppositionthis differenceis exploited by musicians for
various purposes, such as, for example, reinforcing the playing of a fellow musi-
cian: if a player wants to do this, says Tracey, you play something different
against him, for instance something that fills in some of his empty pulses, that
stays out of his space, yet complements him. This throws his part into relief,
puts it on display, shows respect for his individuality; lets him be strong in him-
self (1994, 281). This is because, for Africans, two parts playing the same thing
together is not music; there is nothing to measure yourself against, no duality,
thus no conflict (281). To reinforce the idea of difference, African performers
employ
buzzers or rattles built into or attached to an instrument, such as the

membranes on a Sena valimba xylophones resonators, on a Zambian
kalimba or a Luba ditumba da ndanya drum, the lizard skin buzzing
rings on a Ganda ennanga harp or the metal rings, shells or bottle tops
on the mbiras of Zimbabwe and Mozambique.(282)
In his section about The State of Music, Tracey stresses that the basic
duality of cooperation vs. conflict is a factor in the creative tension which

powers African music and that reflects a dynamic [social] balance between
the individual and the group, between dependence and independence, that
is not always there in society (Tracey 1994, 28283). Thus African music,
as with other musics around the world, is a symbolic system designed to be
patching up the societal rift, a whole-making process that is of significant
aesthetic import. In this musical whole making, African performers are swim-
ming around the edge of a whirlpool a precarious whirl of relationships,
where paradoxically you can be completely free of the others, relying on your
own character, skill and power, yet completely dependent on them (283). This
whole-making process is based on the repetition of a cyclical form without
which it would be quite impossible to grasp all the relationships of the parts
to the whole, even to hear all the notes, if they were only offered once or twice
(284). Alistener must work with his ears, says Tracey, to respond physically,
to participate in order to find new things to hear, new and deeper levels of
appreciation(285).
The acquisition of the new and deeper levels of appreciation of which Tracey
writes lives on in southern Africa despite the conditions they have encoun-
tered and undergone over the centuries. The road that has taken Africans from
nomadic traveling, herding, and farming to flourishing kingdoms of wealth and
beauty through the destruction of these kingdoms during the slave trade, to col-
onization, and to postcolonial striving has been long and difficulta road that,
in closing this chapter, Iwould like to summarize briefly in a kind of reprise that
also introduces additional information and glosses the perspective that Ipre-
sented at the head of this chapter, and that will also lead us from Africa to the
Americas.
During the precolonial period in Africa, regional and interregional trade was
conducted through camel caravans that were organized as a kingdom on the
move (Oliver 1991, 149). 27 By the onset of the nineteenth century, the Hausa
had expanded their trading empire through much of West Africa, including the
areas along the current-day Gold Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon. On the African
coasts, and in and around the Niger Delta, trading was conducted by way of large
dugout canoes manned by up to sixty paddlers, with goods and livestock from
the Igbo interior being exchanged up and down the Atlantic coast for salt, fish,
and seashells (157, 160, 131, 137, 14041). In the 1700s the empire of Benin
became a fierce slave-trade rival of neighboring Oyo, which occasionally invaded,
unsuccessfully, Dahomey. By the 1830s Dahomey had begun to tyrannize Oyo,
and the resulting wars stained and ruined much of the fabric of African society
while permitting nothing better to replace it (Davidson 1987, 132). Although
limited European colonization of the African coasts and offshore islands had
begun as early as the sixteenth century and some trade had taken place by that
time between Africa and Europe, not until the nineteenth century did intercon-
tinental trade lead to the penetration of the interior by coast-based European

trading expeditions. This infiltration eventually led to the conquest of Africa by

European military expeditions aided by African allies. Colonial administrations
set up and imposed external controls that subjected peoples in significant parts
of colonized areas to a lifetime of menial and brutal labor (Oliver 1991, 15960,
199200).
Between 1880 and 1900, Western capitalism and European imperialist ideol-
ogy cohered and solidified, and in 188485, at the Berlin colonial conference, the
expansion rights of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium Italy, Portugal, and
Spain (Davidson 1991, 284)in Africa were defined and agreed on. The invaders
conquered new lands and established firm footholds. During 19001920, colo-
nial rule was fixed in its final form, and was further developed between 1920
and 1945, in the process destroying traditional political and governing struc-
tures, dehumanizing and destroying African peoples, enclosing previously free
land, and undermining and destroying traditional economic systems, handicraft
industries, and village life in general (288, 302,304).
Whereas Europeans came to Africa to explore its riches and exploit its
peoples, evidence suggests that Africans had begun to explore the New World
as early as the fourteenth century. According to Van Sertimas theory on pre-
Columbian expeditions of the AtlanticOcean,
The court tradition of Mali and documents in Cairo tell of an African

king, Abubakari the Second, setting out on the Atlantic in 1311. He
commandeered a fleet of large boats, well stocked with food and
water, and embarked from the Senegambia coast, the western bor-
ders of this West African empire, entering the Canaries current, a
river in the middle of the sea as the captain of a preceding fleet
(of which only one boat returned) described it. Neither of the two
Mandingo fleets came back to Mali to tell their story, but around this
same time evidence of contact between West Africans and Mexicans
appears in strata in America in an overwhelming combination of arti-
facts and cultural parallels. A black-haired, black-bearded figure in
white robes, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, modeled on a
dark-skinned outsider appears in paintings in the valley of Mexico
while the Aztecs begin to worship a Negroid figure mistaken for their
Tezcatlipoca because he had the right ceremonial color. Negroid skele-
tons are found in this time stratum in the Caribbean. Figures, like
the one described above, return to prominence in American clay.
Negroid terra cottas are scattered over several periods and bear wit-
ness, in conjunction with other evidence, that this was just one of
several contacts between the two continents, joined throughout pre-
Columbian history by a long but easily accessible and mobile water-
way. (Van Sertima 1976,26)28

The voyages made by these ships may have been isolated events, but Africans
would soon come to the Americas in massive numbers, albeit almost entirely
under sordid circumstances. Although in the Americas distinctions among cul-
tures may have been brutally suppressed, enslaved Africans still found ways to
continue the practice of some of their arts. Yet distinctions did prevail, even
if not so evidently and sharply defined. African dancers pantomimed the
poetry of African song, with every gesture a symbol, and Africans danced to
the rhythms of the drums, which, in some cases, were speech; in places where
the drum had been taken away from them, they danced to bodily rhythms and
to those of other instruments. It was all based on rhythmsin design and
meaningfor, in African artistic forms, a rhythm that matters, that means
something and emphasizes meaning, permeates every African work of art
as much in poetry and prose as in sculpture and painting (Jahn 1961, 169). In
every concrete expression of this culture meaning and rhythm are inseparably
interwoven(164).
Rhythm is central to musics of the Afro-Caribbean, although their meanings
are no longer so specifically and effectively communicative. Yet the circum-
Caribbean region remains central to our understanding of the black Diaspora,
and I consider this region to be a hub for the dispersal of diasporic music and
musicians. In the process, the legend of the Mandingo fleets that were in 1311
sent to America by African kings will not be forgotten, for, possibly, they brought
developments that would lead to the establishment in Mexico of communities
of Africans, some of whose descendants continue even today to celebrate their
African heritage. They had been brought by sailing ships.

2
The Making of the African Diaspora
Ships on the Oceans
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, sharks following the

moans the fever and the dying; horror the corposant and
compassrose.
Robert Hayden, The Middle Passage
A head from the post-Classic period stares at us across
five centuries with a lifelike power and directness. This
is clearly the type of African who came here in 1310 in
the expeditionary fleet of Abubakari the Second of Mali.
These men made a tremendous visual impression upon the
Mixtecs, last of the great pre-Columbian potters, for this is
one of their finest clay sculptures. It was found in Oaxaca
in Mexico. Its realism is striking. No detail is vague, crudely
wrought or uncertain. No stylistic accident can account for
the undisputed Negro-ness of the features. From the full,
vivid lips, the darkened grain of the skin, the prognathic bone
formation of the cheeks, the wide nostrils, the generously
fleshed nose, down to the ceremonial earring and the cotton
cap Cadamosto noted on warrior boatmen on the Gambia, the
American artist has deftly caught the face of this African.
Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus
In the seventh century, the Indian Ocean slave trade dispersed African peoples
around the globeto places as disparate as the Mediterranean, the Middle
East, and South Asiawhere, to varying degrees, they became integrated
into the local society (Hunwick 1993, 289).1 According to ethnomusicologist
Andr Schaeffner, documentary evidence places enslaved Negro musicians in
Sumatra as early as ad 724 (Schaeffner, quoted in Stevenson 1968a, 47576).
In Persia and India, Africans built settlements and towns and served as mili-
tary leaders, and as late as the midsixteenth century, they built mosques in
Gujarat (M. S.Commissariat, quoted in Harris, 1993a,334).
The presence of blacks outside of Africa, however, was not always a result
of slaverya phenomenon to which we shall return shortly. In fact, the year
31

ad 711 marked Africas expansion into Europe, with the Moors invading Spain
and establishing a civilization there that would dominate the Iberian Peninsula
for more than seven hundred years (Van Sertima 1992, 1). During this period
of time, the Moors established universal education; introduced numerous crops,
including cotton in the ninth century and rice in the tenth (10); and helped build
to magnificence the cities of Crdoba, Toledo, Seville, and Granada (Jackson
1992, 86). In these cities, the Moors constructed libraries and stocked them
with historical, scientific, philosophical, and aesthetic treatises (Carew 1992,
248). In 1086, the Third Moorish Dynasty2 was established, after the black
African Yusef Ibn Tashifin3 and his army of fifteen thousand (including six
thousand Senegalese cavalrymen) drove the Christians out of southern Spain
(Jackson 1992, 87; Chandler 1992, 17375), establishing an Almoravid Empire
that prospered greatly until 1142, when the Africans were overthrown. Before
their downfall, however, they played a central role in the building of Moorish
culture. According to Carew (1992, 253), black Africans managedto
impregnate Moorish literature, art, music and philosophy with new

rhythms of life and a heightened sense of being. Their musicians, sto-
rytellers, griots and catechists popularized their religious and cultural
message with a fervor that the original Moorish conquerors had lost.
And they did this by reaching into the reservoir of African oral tradi-
tions which were so ancient, that seers and griots had declared that
these primordial traditions had first come to them from the breath
ofGod.
In 1145 a fourth African dynasty arose, the Almohade empire, named after the
conquerors from the western fringes of Africa, having defeated the Almoravids
and rebuilt and maintained the previous glory and splendor of Moorish Spain,
fusing the so-called Moorish peoples into one single culture (Burckhardt 1972,
140).4 The seat of Moorish music was Seville, but Crdoba was also important
for its libraries and collections (Carew 1992, 255). The distinguished black Arab
Abu-l-Hasan,5 who was known as Ziryab (the Blackbird), had come to the court
of Crdoba from the court of the Caliph of Baghdad, bringing with him the
musical practices of Persia that would become a part of flamenco. He eventually
invented the five-string lute (Burckhardt 1972, 72), and founded a conserva-
tory of music in Cordova (Carew 1992, 266), the first of its kind (Ali 1992,
311).6 There was also the proverbial Mabed, the most popular singer of all of
Andalusia, whose father was a negro (Ribera 1970, 38). It is said thatMabed
composed with great skill, sang dexterously, with a manly, power-

ful voice, which aroused the ardor of his hearers. Above all he must
have been a good teacher, as many famous singers were trained in his

The Makin g o f t h e A fr ica n Dia s po ra 33
Map 2.1 Moorish influence inSpain
school. Many slaves learned from him and spread his fame over all the
Moslem realm. One significant detail of his manner of composition
is still extant. Ishak Al-Mosuli speaks of having asked Mabed:How
dost thou prepare thyself to compose thy songs? I climb into my
saddle, beat time with my stick on the pommel and sing softly, fitting
the verse to the rhythm until Isucceed in adjusting the melody. It is
said that the songs of Mabed clearly showed this method of compos-
ing in the result. (Ribera 1970,38)
Also popular was the enslaved female singer Oraib, the sale of whose individual
songs are said to have brought as much as a hundred thousand silver coins on
several occasions and five thousand gold on others. It has been reported that
Oraibs extremely popular songs, which numbered not less than a thousand,
were collected and published in books and leaflets after her death at ninety-
six years of age (Al-Jahiz, quoted in Ribera 1970, 59). Oraib, Ziryab, Mabed, and
other black Moors had brought with them to Andalusia, and left in their wake,
some of the vocal and instrumental styles of black Africa. Sung in their new land
in a new language but on black themes and with African accents (de Lerma
1990, 119), these musical practices came to be known in Spain and in Latin

America as negritos, negros, and guineos. Since it was recognized in Andalusia

that one of the famous negro qualities is the possession of a fine voice (Al-
Jahiz, quoted in Ribera 1970, 59 n. 20), it is clear that the character of the music
of Andalusia was to some degree influenced, through Oraib and others, by that
of Africa. During this period of Moorish culture in Spain, the complexion of the
ruling class had been primarily a mixture of Berber brown and sub-Saharan
black (Drake 1990, 116).
InSpain,
Spanish playwrights created many portraits of these new Blacks,

especially portrayals of scholars, soldiers, saints, and nobles. Some
Blacks organized themselves into cofradas, which, by unifying them,
enabled them to be supportive of each others physical and spiritual
welfare. [Moreover,] the majority of Blacks were assimilationists,
but their music, dance, and instruments influenced Spanish culture.
(Dathorne 1994,173)
In 1492 the Moors were defeated and expulsion from Spain began (Drake 1990,
125). Their voluminous libraries were burned by priests of the Holy Inquisition
(Brunson and Rashidi 1992, 66; Carew 1992, 24849). But before this expulsion
took place, the blacks among these Moors had organized an abundant number of
cofradas, the first of which had been established in 1403 at Seville. Two later ones,
in the sixteenth century, in Cdiz and at Jan, and many others had been estab-
lished in the decades of the intervening centuries. Of these cofradas, Stevenson
reports that these Andalusian black cofradas frequently sponsored floats, dances,
pageants, and other festival entertainments [and] regularly budgeted funds
to pay both singers and instrumentalists, citing as the source of such informa-
tion a 1957 article, by Rafael Ortega Sagrista, in which such payments are docu-
mented (Stevenson 1968a, 485). The form and function of these cofradas would
be brought to the Americas and, in attenuated practice, serve similar purposes.
They would be fundamental to the preservation of Negro identity in Spanish
America (484), moreover, other brotherhoods and fraternal associations of black
men would contribute to the emergence of a European Minas school of composi-
tion, beginning in seventeenth century Brazil, as Ishall explain in Chapter3.
In the years before the defeat of the Moors, the Portuguese had begun to
explore and had conquered the West Coast of Africa, including Senegal (1435),
Sierra Leone (1446), Guinea (1455), the Congo (1481), and other regions
(Williams 1984, 13). In the midst of this Portuguese expansion, by 1474,
Christopher Columbus had begun to plan the voyage that would bring him to
the West Indies, driven not only by the explorer's impulse but also by a desire
to recruit native New World inhabitants into the Catholic faith, and by profits

to be made from the exploitation of the regions natural resources, including

gold (14, 20,23).
Meanwhile, Prince Henry the Navigator helped to usher in a new era,
that of Englands slave trade with Africa (Dathorne 1994, 172). Henry was one
among many others who brought to England, between 1441 and 1505, around
140,000170,000 captive Africans. The first African slave trade was justified in
their minds because these so-called Moors were considered prisoners of war
(172). During the stay of these Africans in England, they were often employed
in the households of famous or titled Europeans. They were status symbols
and, of course, regarded as oddities (172). But these same Africans integrated
themselves into European society, and some, like the sixteenth-century poet
Juan Latino (ca. 1516ca. 1594), became leading intellectuals in Europe(173).
The institution of slavery had a powerful impact on the lives it claimed; yet
Africans were not the only victims. As Europeans began to engage in trans-
Atlantic movement, they were eager to exploit the natives found on the islands
in the circum-Caribbean. Indians were initially used as laborers in the gold
mines and sugar mills, but deaths from overwork and slaughter by the European
invaders depleted their population. In Hispaniola (the island that comprises
modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), for example, their number was
reduced from approximately 250,000 in 1492 to fewer than 500 in 1548. By
1501, this decimation of the Indian population led to the importation of African
slave labor, first from Spain and then directly from Africa. By 1552, two thou-
sand African slaves were being sent to Hispaniola every year,and
by the middle of the sixteenth century the ethnological change that

had taken place in the Caribbean in a mere fifty years was so strik-
ing that the Spanish historian, [Antonio de] Herrera, in his History of
the Indies, was able to write of Hispaniola:There are so many Negroes
in this island, as a result of the sugar factories, that the land seems an
effigy or an image of Ethiopia itself. (Williams 1984,45)
Eventually, England, France, and Holland set up colonies in the West Indies. The
English settled in St. Christopher, Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, and
Jamaica, where slavery took hold between 1640 and 1660 (Reynolds 1985, 65
66). The French took control of Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts), Guadeloupe,
Martinique, and Saint-Domingue.7 In March 1685, France established a Code
Noir for its American colonies; it was designed to govern or deny the slaves bap-
tism, personal work days, sexual partners, assembly, property ownership, and
the sale of produce of any kind. The French declared off-limits to both blacks
and mulattoes the professions of medicine, law, and public service. In addi-
tion to such strictures, whites maintained political and social superiority over
blacks and mulattoes (Williams 1984, 18389). Such restrictions were forced on

transplanted African peoples who had already been brutally torn from thriving
cultures and separated from their previous goals and aspirations. But they found
mental and spiritual sustenance in their religions, which they continued to prac-
tice surreptitiously, although in restricted and modified form, keeping alive the
memories and some of the cultural practices of their homeland in transformed
and newly wrought myths and rituals.
The religious practices of Yoruba and other African ethnic groups thrived
in some locales. In Dutch Guiana (Suriname), for example, African deities and
divinities flourished among both the Creole population along the northern coast
and the Maroons in the interior. Moreover, in the Catholic colonies (Spanish and
French), the orisha were conflated with the Roman Catholic saints, which the
enslaved Yoruba, Fon, Ashanti, and Igbo peoples ingeniously merged with their
owngods.
In the Spanish colonies, enslaved Africans generally were malcontents and
kept things in a state of permanent revolution (Williams 1984, 65). Slave revolts
or conspiracies took place, or were planned, for example, in Hispaniola (1522),
Puerto Rico (1527), Havana (1538), New Spain (1612), Saint Christopher (Saint
Kitts; 1639), Guadeloupe (1656), Saint- Domingue (1679), Jamaica (1690),
and Cuba (1728). Whether these revolts succeeded or not, numerous enslaved
Africans escaped their plantations and joined or founded runaway communi-
ties.8 The populations of these maroon societies, as they came to be known,
ranged in number from a few runaways in some cases to thousands of escap-
ees and their descendants in others. They challenged white authority, resisted
capture, attacked plantations, protected territorial boundaries, and established
survival systems that included hunting and fishing, planting, bartering, and
exchange with other maroon communities and with some white societies that
had come to grips with their existence.
Beginning as nomadic groups, some of which settled in more permanent
enclaves, these societies were established in remote and environmentally hos-
tile locations that gave them military advantage over the colonial and viceroyal
soldiers who were sent to track them down. Their skilled guerrillas used natu-
ral surroundings to lay false trails and booby traps, and to disguise natural pit-
falls, such as quicksand, in order to foil, capture, or destroy their attackers and
pursuers. The Maroons built their cultures on African models and passed down
African traditions to their offspring. In spite of the fact that the Maroons were
hunted and persecuted and their societies marked for destruction, maroonage
persisted and flourished for centuries in the Spanish and French Caribbean, in
Portuguese Brazil, and in Jamaica, the Guianas, and North America.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the most famous of these soci-
eties, which were large and well organized, were located in Brazil where they
were known as quilombos. In 1661, enslaved Yoruba escaped and established a
maroon society in the northeastern part of the country. Founded probably by

Map 2.2 Colonies in the circum-Caribbean by ruling country

an Angolan ethnic group known as Jagas, this quilombo, known as Palmares,

was essentially an independent republic (Nuez 1980, 244, 370). It survived
numerous armed attacks by the official government of Brazil until 1694, when
it was finally overtaken and destroyed (370). In Brazils Minas Gerais region,
the quilombos had a combined population of twenty thousand. But the classic
setting for maroon communities were the Guianas, particularly Suriname, of
which those that survive today have developed into the most highly developed
independent societies and cultures in the history of Afro-America (Price 1979,
293). Although the Maroons of the Guianas signed peace treaties with the Dutch
government, as along ago as the eighteenth century, they have remained sepa-
rate, independent, and relatively isolated, according to Richard Price, nourishing
their own unusually skillful artists, performers, and orators(296).
In Mexico, cimarrones (Maroons) lived on the mountain Coyula in the
Orizaba region of Vera Cruz and other areas, replicating African kingdoms
on the soil of the Americas (Palmer 1993, 131). These sanctuaries, like the
quilombos of Brazil, served as bases of resistance and rebellion for runaways.
Like their enslaved counterparts in other parts of the Americas and like their
African ancestors, the Afro- Mexicans carried charms and made and used
potions to correct past and present wrongs and to control future events. The
first Africans to arrive after Mexicos conquest by the Spanish (15191521),
according to historian Colin Palmer (1993, 126), had already been acculturated,
to some degree, to Spanish customs. Blacks were brought to work in domestic
service, agriculture, cattle ranching, and silver mining, as well as other manual
labor and artisan work. Afro-Mexican slaves were numerous in the rural areas of
Colima, Huatulco, Acapulco, and Oaxaca, and in the cities of Veracruz, Puebla de
los Angeles, Guadalajara, and especially Mexico City (Palmer 1976, 4445). As
early as 1612, for example, it was estimated that Mexico Citys more than fifty
thousand blacks and mulattoes outnumbered the Spaniards more than three to
one (Palmer 1993,127).
Regarding the presence of blacks in Mexico, Robert Farris Thompson (1984,
200)has written that in western Mexico, redondos, or rondavels (round habita-
tions with conical thatched roofs), appeared and are still being built by Afro-
Mexicans and their Native American neighbors. Aconsideration of the building
techniques of the African round-house maker, as they have been studied, sharp-
ens our appreciation of the Afro-Mexican rondavels.
The Gulf Coast region, according to Luz Mara Martnez Montiel (1993,
28)especially the port of Veracruzwas a crossroads where Mexicos indig-
enous culture blended with myriad influences from Africa, Europe, South
America, and especially the Caribbean. In this variegated mixture, it is some-
times difficult to isolate the African presence. But along the Small Coast (Costa
Chica)9 a significant portion of the population there is of black ancestry or Afro-
Mestizo, the highest concentration being in the communities of San Nicols and

Map 2.3 Regions/cities in Mexico with black settlements
Cuajinicuilapa. Since the colonial and viceroyal era, the mixed-raced residents
(of African descent) of these Small Coast enclaves have been classified variously
as mulatto, pardo, and moreno. Initially these communities, located near the
Pacific Ocean and running southeast from the state of Guerrero to the state of
Oaxaca, were probably built along general lines of African societies and forti-
fied for defense. Pueblos negros (black towns) still exist today. Even though the
African roots of the music of these people are not strongly evident, there are
those who carry on the tradition, including Salvador Negro Ojeda, David Haro,
and Toa la Negra. And there exists in Veracruz a major festival that celebrates
annually the founding by fugitive black slaves of the first free black township in
America (Cruz-Carretero 2005, 76). This carnival, known as Yanga, is so called
after a person of the same name, the leader of the fugitive Mexican slaves who
liberated the town formerly known as San Lorenzo de los Negros. Says Sagrario
Cruz-Carretero,
The elements that are distinctive from Mexicos Hispanic-Indigenous

tradition come back to life in this carnival. For example:to revive the
black skin that no longer exists in many parts of the town of Yanga,
the actors paint their skin and put on masks. Yanga the black slave,

the man who headed the first historically significant anti-colonial

rebellion in the Americas and the founder of the town, appears as the
main character. Symbolically they represent the black hero although
their knowledge of him is somewhat diffused. As a result, the impor-
tance of Yanga seems to reside in his being a symbol of the black man
who was the catalyst for liberty in the Americas. (Cruz-Carretero
2005,76)
Ted Vincents research on blacks in Mexico, some of which appeared in a type-

script he prepared for a presentation at the Mexican Fine Arts Center in Chicago,
indicates that half the mestizos had African heritage and that this half was
much more active than the other (1997, 1); that blacks in Mexico lost their
African heritage through intermarriage with Malaysian and various groups from
the Pacific islands; and that the Spanish census of 1793 labeled 91% of the
population pardo, which was the bureaucratic term for Black and Indian mix.
To the Empire:African, Filipino, whatever, you were just another Black Indian
(Vincent 1997, 3). Despite this intermixing, however, in the Cuautla valley[,]
which was 60% Afro-Mexican in 1812, and which is nationally known for its
distinctly Afromestizo folk music[,] a sizeable number of Cuautlans still [are]
African enough in heritage to have genuinely Afro hair(7).
In the sixteenth century, many blacks in Mexico wore traditional Indian
clothes as a matter of course, often to disguise themselves (Palmer 1993, 128).
The familiar scenario of Africans escaping slavery to be sheltered by Indians
dates back to April 1502, when Hispaniolas new governor landed on that island.
The Africans accompanying the governor escaped and went to live among the
Indians, who, they soon learned, had a cultural ethos similar to their own (Katz
1986, 2829). This scenario was duplicated countless times for nearly four cen-
turies, especially in North America, where racial mixing and the resulting genetic
blending, together with the Africans acculturation into the Indian way of life,
produced communities of Black Indians whose maroon settlements made use of
African agricultural and cultural models. In addition, many blacks remained in
the Indian nations and became a part of Native American life, with the red and
black races blending to the extent that, by the middle of the eighteenth century,
some Indian nations had become predominantly African.
Of course, not all locations in the Americas had maroon communities. Costa
Rica, for example, had a significant enclave of blacks in the Province of Limon.
The beginning of this enclave of English-speaking blacks, which constituted one-
third of Limons population, dates back to 1870, when Jamaican ex-slaves and
a few blacks from other nearby islands were imported to work on railroads and
banana plantations. By 1940, the economy of Limon began to falter when the
banana and railroad operations were abandoned by their owners and the black
workers deserted; those who remained were left to become half-or full-time

The Mak in g o f t h e A fr ica n Dia s po ra 41
peasants, and blacks from outside the country were prevented from entering
it (Bryce-Laporte 1993, 147). As Jamaicans earlier had flocked to Costa Rica,
so had they also to Panama, drawn again by opportunity to work on the rail-
roads. Colombia, which was surpassed only by Brazil and the United States in
the massiveness of its black population during the Atlantic trade (Thompson
1984, 206), had a black population so large by 1821 that the country was called
Provincia Negra (Black Province) by Colombians (Nuez 1980, 77). In Venezuela,
according to Nuez (278), Los Ranchos, a settlement of free blacks near the
Coro region had its own chiefs, police, and fields to grow food and keep ani-
mals, and included a patron saint and a cemetery (278). Black communities
existed all over the Americas. The ones mentioned here were either the most
famous, or the most neglected, or had some degree of notoriety, which allowed
them to stand in the Americas as examples of communities whose African deri-
vation was clear. To move now to the music and musical culture of some of these
and other diasporic locations, Iwill begin with Mexico.
If we recall Van Sertimas statement about the fleets that the African king
sent out across the Atlantic in 1310 and 1311 and his itemization of evidence of
subsequent black presence in Mexico, and add to that knowledge the informa-
tion in the following statement, we begin to get an idea that the black presence
in Mexico was substantial and that this presence could not have avoided mak-
ing an impact on African society, or at least some aspects of it. Not much else
seems to be known about a black presence there before the sixteenth century,
aside from the fact that by 1570 there were in Mexico nearly four thousand more
black slaves than Spaniards. But Robert Stevenson (1968a, 500501) tells of
early black musical activity in Mexico.
In Mexico, Negroes as early as 1572 made a habit of gathering around

the famous Aztec calendar stone to play, dance, sing, and divert
themselves every Sunday afternoon. By the end of the century (1598)
Negro drums were so much better known in Mexico than the pre-
conquest tlalpanhuehuetl that even an Indian historian, Alvarado
Tezozomoc, felt obliged to explain the dread Aztec death drum of his
ancestors by likening it to un atambor de los negros que hoy bailan en las
plazas (a drum of the Negroes who nowadays dance in the plazas).
In 1624 a Negro named Lucas Olola led a cult in the province of
Pnuco (north of Veracruz), the ritual of which freely mixed Aztec
teponaztlis with African bambalos. Two Mexican tablatures, one
dated ca. 1650, the other ca. 1720, contain Negro dances and dance-
songs, the first tablature including a portorrico de los Negros, the sec-
ond a zarambeque and a cumbees subtitled songs in Guinea dialect.
Joseph Chamorro, a guitar teacher at Oaxaca in 1682, boasted African
descent.

It is also known that in 1669 at Puebla and again in 1684 in the Cuernavaca
area, Negroes and mulattoes were cited for directing oratorios, although these
had been forbidden by a printed edict issued at Mexico City on December 5,
1643 (Stevenson 1968b, 233). Moreover,
Negro or mulatto directors of the pole dance can still be documented

at the close of the colonial period. On August 23, 1809, a mulatto
maestro from Quezaltenango (Guatemala) arrived with a company of
pole dancers in the town of San Antonio de Cuidad Real in Chiapas.
They were promptly driven out when they added to the music of drum
and fife a pantomime of a robber paying a confessor 1 peso for for-
giveness ofcrime.
Negroes in cities taught music and dancing, directed oratorios,
and ran what would now be called musical comedy theaters. For
example:Joseph Chamorro, a free man of color, taught dancing and
guitar playing at Oaxaca in 1682. His name is preserved because he
was convicted in that year of bigamy.
In time, entertainments given by Negro troupes gained such popu-
larity among the richest classes that complaints of irreverence and
misuse of sacred symbols were conveniently overlooked. In 1746, a
complainant from Guadalajara denounced Los combentticulos, y
Prozesiones, Que los Mulattos, i Negros de la Ciudad de Guadalaxara
han introduzido. At three in the afternoon, small bands of Negroes
playing trumpet and drum would start making the rounds of the local
wine shops to advertise the nighttime Musicas, bailes, &. in their
small homemade musical-comedy houses where (says the complain-
ant) grandissimo disorden always prevailed. To this bill of particu-
lars the Mexico City authorities replied that if prominent townspeople
looked on it all as mere theater, then who were the capital inquisi-
tors to start interfering with local entertainment given by Negroes?
(23334)
In the beginning, Africans featured prominently in the musical life of Mexico, as

they were known to sing, play the guitar and harp, and perform as mimers and
entertainers. In Mexico the black presence manifested itself in the seventeenth
century in the negro or negrilla, a type of polyphonic villancico, the musical traits
of which are a vivid rhythm in 6/8 meter with constant hemiola shifts to 3/4,
F or C major as the almost exclusive keys, and the responsorial practice of solo-
ist versus chorus (Bhague 1979, 26). Apparently, the black traits in such
pieces follow the form known as el canario, a name reflecting the importance
of the Canary Islands in the slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries(26).

Today, according to Martnez Montiel (1993, 24), writing in Mexicos Third

Root, Afro-Mexicans in Costa Chica sing corridos, songs of romance, tragedy,
comedy, and social protest, all inspired by local events and characters. They
reflect oral traditions inherited from Africa; the words are improvised and
the lyrics are also rich in symbols (24). Such contributions to Mexican culture,
according to Martnez Montiel, are completely ignored by Mexicos official ideol-
ogy of el mestizaje, which defines Mexicos culture as a blend of European and
indigenous influences(26).
The evidence presented here demonstrates that musicians of African descent
contributed to Mexicos cultural life; but Stevenson also provides documenta-
tion to show the extent to which black musicians were active in other locales,
such as Peru. Henotes:
Negroes from Africa began playing a vital role no later than 1551.
Within a decade after [Spanish conquistador] Francisco Pizarros
death [in 1541], the Lima [Peru] cabildo [administrative council]
hired Negro drummers to welcome Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza [who
ruled Peru until his death in1552]. Adozen years later Nicols
de Ribera el mozo.(291)
Further still, writes Stevenson (3034),
The Negroes imported from the coasts of Guinea and Senegal and
from the Congo were already very numerous in Lima as early as 1628.
By 1748 they numbered some ten thousand. Describing the music
of those who still spoke only their native tongues in 1791, Rossi y
Rubwrote:
Their principal instrument is the drum, the skin of which they
stretch over a hollow cylindrical log or over a clay frame. They play
it not with mallets but with their hands. They also favor small nose
flutes. They make dried horses or asses jawbones into a clattering
instrument, with the teeth knocking against each other. They also
make a sort of music with striated wooden blocks rubbed against each
other. Their most melodious instrument is the marimba, fashioned of
wooden slabs which serve as keys of different sizes. Beneath the slabs
they adjust dried hollow gourds, also of different sizes, to serve as
resonators. Slabs and resonators are together mounted on an arched
wooden frame. They play the marimba with two small sticks, like
Bohemian psalteries. The diameter of the gourds is graduated with
the ascending scale; and the sound that is emitted at times pleases
the most fastidious ear. On the whole, however, we must confess that
Negro song and dance, like many other manifestations of their talent

and taste, lag as far behind the Indian as does the Indian behind the
European.
Stevenson writes that, in Peru, Negroes continued throughout the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries as leading entertainers in all districts of the viceroy-
alty (1968b, 304). As late as the end of the eighteenth century, for example,
says a publication of a century later, there roamed through the streets of Lima
a Negro named Galindo who, although able neither to read nor to write, made
up verses to sing with the accompaniment of his bandurria (Stevenson, 305,
quoting Ancdota histrica printed in the Correo Peruano of Nov. 6, 1835, p.3,
col.3).
But the new musics that were emerging in the Americas, whether made by
slaves, free people, or Maroons, were made as Africans embraced and trans-
formed European music into what Kenneth Bilby has referred to as a broad
spectrum of musical forms (1985, 4).10 The musical styles and genres used
in this transformation process were the dance musics of the various African
traditions, which were found primarily in the ring shouts, in work and play,
in festival celebrations of the African slaves, and in the social dance music
of Europe, that is, of the Spanish, French, and British. The use and trans-
formation of the European forms and styles by way of modified African
performance practices resulted in creation of the dance forms of the circum-
Caribbeanmerengue/mringue in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other
locations, danzn in Cuba, mento in Jamaica, calypso in Trinidad, and bigu-
ine in Martinique.11 In other locations rumba, bomba, habanera, and tango
emerged, with the Black musical influence [shining] through in the frequent
call-and-response structure, the sturdiness of the beat, the fascinating rhyth-
mic zest, the sense of ecstasy and possession, and the cumulative power of
the repetitions.12
Musicologist Gerard Bhague (1979), in his discussion of the rise of nation-
alism in Latin America, discusses the nationalist composers in Mexico, Cuba,
Venezuela, Colombia, and other countries, including black composers who
resided in Brazil in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and whom
Iwill discuss later in this book. All of these composers had been influenced by
the European musical tradition, but some may have also borrowed practices
from the negros, negrillos, guineos, negritos, and other traditional and not-so-
traditional genres of Africa and the new world as they built extended works in
the Western European musical tradition.
Over the course of the approximately thirteen centuries that I have embraced
and treated necessarily superficially in this chapter, black composers were
active, at one time or another, in all parts of the world. Were any of the compos-
ers who were contemporaries in touch with each other? Did they keep abreast

of changes and developments in, of, and related to this music? To what extent
were they aware of and encourage the remarkable continuity that has devel-
oped and been maintained throughout the African diaspora? Perhaps, answers
to some of these questions might lie, in part, in the black seafaring tradition,
which has been detailed by the historian Jeffrey Bolster. Our knowledge of the
use in Africa of large watercraft dates back to 1506, according to one Fernandez,
as quoted by Bolster (1997, 47), when huge canoes carrying 120 warriors
[were seen] on the Sierra Leone River. Moreover, mobile, adaptable, and skilled
African mariners mediated between mercantile Africans and Europeans and
served as linguists, pilots, and surfmen from Senegambia to Calabar. In the
Senegambia and Sierra Leone region known as Upper Guinea, African boat-
men called grumetes became clients of European traders. In the Niger Delta,
Africans were involved in maritime trade. In the New World Atlantic island col-
onies and viceroyalties, where enslaved Africans had constant access to the sea,
black West Indian marinersmany of whom were multilingualmixed with
runaways, giving them access to black and white worlds beyond their shores
(18). Also in the Caribbean all-black crews crisscrossed the Atlantic, voyaging
to world centers of commerce; the enslaved among them not only frequently
liberated themselves but connected island communities to a wider world (19).
Such activity was part of an emerging black seafaring tradition, we learn from
Bolster, which effectively contributed to the evolution of diasporic conscious-
ness and blacks cultural hybridity, and to the spread of blacks newssubver-
sive and otherwise (21).
In eighteenth-century England, Royal Navy press gangs regularly impressed
blacks into service at sea, where the latter served primarily as cooks, officers
servants, or musicians and were protected from man-stealers and slavemas-
ters (3032). The musicians were placed in the limelight, however, with drum-
mers beating quarters and the fifers and drummers parading in ports of call;
violinists, French hornists, trumpeters, and flutists played for dances, general
amusement, and display. In North America, black seafaring dates back before
the eighteenth century, and it increased significantly in the nineteenth when
free middle-class blacks sent their sons to sea and coastal marining became
the job of choice for black mariners with dependents (160, 171). Through such
activity there began to emerge a sense of a unified identity among people of
color, something to which black seamen contributed as the century wore on
(35). For in their travels, Seamen of color became part of the process by which
black people forged a complex, though not homogeneous, racial identitya
process that spoke to the constantly changing cultural distinctiveness of black
Americans(35).
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, cotton had become king of
commerce, with approximately twenty-five hundred black seamen carrying it

and other raw material between southern American ports and NewYork state
andHaiti.
An all-black crew with white officers aboard the brig C. Perry, for
instance, sailed from Philadelphia to Savannah, then to St. Thomas
in the Danish Virgin Islands, to Cape Haitian, and back to Savannah.
Sailors on St. Thomas formed lasting impressions of merchants and
artisans of color, roles traditionally closed to American free blacks.
African American sailors swaggered along the French colonial boule-
vards of Cape Haitian, on which Henri Cristophes black legions had
routed European armies, and chatted with slaves in Savannah .
Seamen circulated freely ashore, with as much liberty as black
men ever had in slave societies to discuss whatever they wished with
whomever they wished. (Bolster 1997,192)
But following the failed Denmark Vesey rebellion, which was to have taken
place in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 14, 1822, a systematic and legal
oppression of black seamen (194) was instituted in South Carolina, resulting in
incarcerations, and by midcentury opportunities for black seamen had become
few. The decline in job opportunities continued through Emancipation and
Reconstruction (21516). But maritime culture, says Bolster(215),
increasingly displayed the legacy of African Americans in the age of

sail, notably in the shanteys with which sailors paced their work and
expressed their sardonic worldview. Black sailors had remade Atlantic
maritime culture, and in the process formed their identities through
it. They had contributed substantially to the formation of black
America by earning a living at sea and by spreading news to black
communities.
Further, on music, according to Bolster (21718):
White sailors listened to the singing of female slaves and black ste-
vedores, but they also listened to black sailors. As had been the case
at Dartmoor Prison in 1814, black sailors sang and played in string
orchestras and military bands, fusing and reformulating many musi-
cal traditions. Clearly, the chanter-response performance type that
characterizes the shantey is more common to African singing style
than to European.
By the nineteenth century, white sailors spent a significant amount
of time singing in what had once been a characteristically black style.
All of this work, wrote a seasoned tar about sailors loading cotton in

Gulf ports, was accompanied by a song, often improvised, and sung

by the chantie man, the chorus being taken up by the rest of the
gang. When hauling taut the weather main-brace, noted another
observer, they sing a perversion of the old negro melody, Hey, Jim
along, Jim along, Josey! but the sailors put it, `Way, haul awayhaul
away, JoseyWay, haul awayhaul away Joe!
The prospect of black seamen plying the oceans and waterways of the Atlantic
world is provocative and, for research purposes, fraught with possibilities. For
in their travels these seamen contributed to and spread throughout the world
knowledge of the complicated black musical Diaspora that is the subject of this
book. Although knowledge of such activity does not answer the questions I
raised just a few pages ago, it does provide insight into the larger world of sailing
blacks and about the communication among Africa-derived people throughout
the world. It also gives some indication of a future direction in the search for
answers. For, as we have seen, sailing ships took the first Africans to Southeast
Asia, Europe, and the Americas; took enslaved and free Africans from Europe
to the Americas; and in the Caribbean moved enslaved Africans between and
among islands, from the Caribbean to North America, and even back to Africa,
as we shall see later. On some sailing ships Africans continued to practice their
rituals.
From the records of and carried by sailing ships and also from the personal
and official letters and diaries that were carried by them, we have been able to
learn not only about blacks in large plantation societies but also about small
enclaves of blacks in Costa Rica, and about the existence of black societies in
Mexico and Peru as well as the important roles they played in the musical life
of those viceroyalties where, in the case of Mexico at least, blacks have been
absorbed into the mestizo and Mexican population to the extent that they rep-
resent only a miniscule portion of the population once existing there. From the
paper cargo of sailing ships, we have been able to learn also about nationalist
composers who resided in various parts of the circum-Caribbean; and finally,
from writings about sailing ships, that there is much to be learned about the
transmission of African-Diasporic musical practices by means of sailing ships.
As this book progresses, we shall learn more and more about the contribution
of sailing ships to the spread of such practices and their role in preserving the
traditions in which they were nurtured.

3
The Diasporas Concert Worlds
Europe and the Americas
A Negro who was tutor to Viennas richest and most eminent

aristocrat; who enjoyed the confidence of Emperor Joseph II;
who frequented Viennas most exclusive Masonic Lodge arm
in arm with mankinds greatest musical genius, Mozart; who
married the widow of one of Napoleon Bonapartes generals
and in turn became the grandfather of one of Viennas most
eminent aristocratssuch a personality should certainly
prove one of the most fascinating phenomena of Negro
culture.
Paul Nettl, Angelo SolimanFriend of Mozart
Black composers have lived and worked in many parts of the world, as early as
the twelfth century in Spain, the sixteenth century in Italy and Portugal, and
the eighteenth century in countries such as France, England, Brazil, and the
United States. Although most of these composers lived in differing European
and Europe-derived cultural contexts and under various social and political
musical conditions, they were linked by common origins, or certain cultural
experiences, or both. Over the centuries, these individuals have been con-
nected across time and space, by events and phenomena such as slave trade
across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the Crusades, and Europe as a place of
relatively free artistic expression for an oppressed race. In Spain, for exam-
ple, blacks among the Moors were making an impact on the music there until
1492, when the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella defeated and expelled them
from Spain. We know of particular musicians among the Moors, such as Oraib,
who was a popular singer and composer; her songs numbered more than a
thousand.1 We also know that she was not alone, with the distinguished black
Ziryab (the Blackbird), having brought to the court of Crdoba performance
practices from Persia; and Mabed, who was considered to be a popular singer
and composer of Andalusia.
49

This chapters epigraph refers to Angelo Soliman (17211796), a Viennese

intellectual born in Africa to a tribal chief (Nettl 1946, 41). At the age of seven,
his parents were murdered during a bloody invasion of their village by another
tribe, and the young boy was sold into slavery. He ultimately landed in Sicily,
where he lived in the home of a marquise and was raised by a Negro servant
Angela, after whom Angelo eventually declared his Christian name. The mar-
quise gave Angelo to Prince Johann Georg Lobkowitz, under whose care Angelo
received an education, developed a flair for languages, and excelled in horse-
manship. Upon Lobkowitzs death, Angelo was then sent to serve Prince Wenzel
Liechtenstein in the position of major domo. After being dismissed from
this position, either because he became married or because of his choice of a
European bride, Soliman dedicated his time and energies to reading about phi-
losophy, literature, and history, and to mastering the game of chess, of which he
became one of Viennas greatest practitioners(44).
Sociologically and intellectually, Soliman was a Mason, a member of Viennas
most exclusive and aristocratic Masonic Lodge, True Concord. Its member-
ship included Viennas most prominent authors, artists and scholars, such as
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was a friend of Solimans (4445).2 Nettl found
traces of the spirit of Soliman in characters of two of Mozarts operas: in the
person of the noble Sarastro, High Priest of Isis in the Masonic opera, the
Magic Flute, and in the character of the magnanimous Sultan Bassa Selim
in The Abduction From the Seraglio (45).3 At the end of a long life, Soliman is
said to have been overcome with emotion when singing the songs of his home-
land (Karoline von Pichler, quoted in Nettl, 45). He died in 1796, a pauper who
had given away to the poor most of the considerable fortune he is said to have
amassed over his lifetime. Solimans story is one of several about Africans who
were involved in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century European life and culture.
The period between 1500 and 1800 embraced, among other musical develop-
ments and events, the flowering of Italian and English madrigals, the harmonic
innovations of Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 15611613), the rise of Florentine opera,
the revolutionary successes of Claudio Monteverdi (15671643), the preemi-
nence of the harpsichord and the rise of the fortepiano, the development of the
solo sonata and the string quartet, the establishment of Franz Joseph Haydn as
court composer, and the appearance on the musical scene of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart. During the earliest years of this three-hundred-year period, the first
published black composer would arise:Vicente Lusitano, a mulatto Portuguese
musician who was probably born in Olivena, Portugal, in 1522 just before the
ascendance of Clement VII, who reigned as pope from 1523 to 1534 (Stevenson
1982, 80, 81).4 Although he was among a number of other blacks who resided
in Portugal at the time,5 Lusitano lived and worked in Rome early in his career.
Clement VII was succeeded by Paul III (15341549), who was responsible
for convening the Council of Trent and steering the Catholic Church during

The Dia s po ras C o n ce r t Wo r l ds 51
the Counterreformation. During his reign, Paul III also issued a papal bull that
recognized the recently founded Society of Jesus, whose members, the Jesuits,
took steps to establish educational institutions throughout Europe and to pros-
elytize abroad. Ignatius of Loyola, a cofounder of the society, also strove to bring
order and discipline to the Church, lay the groundwork for the enforcement of
Catholic doctrine, and strengthen the popes authority, all while the Protestant
Reformation was maintaining its momentum in Europe.
Lusitano was born into this climate, his date of birth situated propitiously
between the year in which the Flemish composer Josquin des Prez (ca. 1440
1521) died and before the birth year of the Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi
Palestrina (ca. 15251594). Before Clement VIIs ascent to the papacy, Josquin
had served in Milan as a singer in the cathedral and as choirmaster of the cha-
pel, and in Cond as provost of the collegiate church of Notre Dame. Palestrina
worked as an organist, singer, and music teacher at the cathedrals in the city
of Palestrina, and in Rome, where he was director of the Julian Chapel Choir,
beginning in 1551. He also served briefly at the Sistine Chapel in 1555. He per-
fected the prevailing compositional techniques of his period in masses, magnifi-
cats, motets, madrigals, and otherworks.
During his own lifetime, Lusitano also composed motets and a madrigal,
as well as chansons, making use of and further developing the antiphonal and
imitative procedures of Renaissance music. Lusitano probably started his
musical studies as a chorister in his Portugal hometown cathedral, according
to Stevenson (1962, 73)and it seems he finished his training as a priest and
as a musician in 1551 (Borgerding 1999, 752). In 1552 he published his first
work, a madrigal for three voices, Allhor chignuda, which was followed in
1553 by his theory textbook Introduttione facilissima, et novissima di canto fermo
(which went through additional printings in 1558 and 1561), and in 1555 by
his Liber Primus Epigramatum, a collection of motets. Furthermore, accord-
ing to Stevenson (1982, 80), it is presumed that Lusitano used Introduttione
facilissima as a textbook when teaching his own students. Lusitanos Heu me
Domine and the madrigal Allhor chignuda can be heard on the compact
disc recording Canes, Vilancicos e Motetes Portugueses, Sculos XVIXVII and
the LP recording La Portingaloise:Msica do Tempo dos Descobrimentos (Music
of the Time of the Discoveries), respectively. Stevenson concludes his article
The First Black Published Composer by writing that only with the publica-
tion of Lusitanos complete oeuvre will his creative genius begin redounding,
as it should, to the glory of Black music history (103). Adding to this recogni-
tion, the importance of Lusitano to general music history should also not be
ignored, particularly since, as Stevenson wrote elsewhere (1962, 73), both
Lusitanos madrigal and motet publications take priority as historic firsts
no other prior publications of their kind having been attempted by Portuguese
composers.

During his career, the Protestant Reformation was a powerful force, and
indeed, sometime before 1556 Lusitano left Italy, moved to Germany, and con-
verted to Lutheranism. In Germany, he ultimately settled in Wrttemberg,
where he composed for Duke Christoph of Wrttemberg what may have been
his final work, a psalm motet entitled Beati omnes qui timent Dominium
(Borgerding 1999, 753). Lusitano is said to have remained in Germany for the
remainder of hislife.
Lusitanos lifespan was contemporaneous with the making of the African dia-
sporas of Europe and the Americas. The Portuguese, who had entered the slave
trade as early as 1440, discovered Brazil in 1500 and by 1532 had begun its colo-
nization. By the 1590s the Dutch had become involved, and by 1621 they had
emerged as dominant players in the Atlantic trade (Meinig 1986, 10, 41). Then
came the Spanish, the English, the French, and others, moving their human
cargo between and among Africa and Europe, Africa and the Americas, Latin
America and the West Indies, the circum-Caribbean and North America, and the
Americas and Europe in a cruel economic enterprise. But free blacks were also
traveling the seas, sometimes freely between the Americas and Europe. We learn
from Bolster (1997, 20) that by 1766 a Jamaican named Charles, as compleat
a seaman as any Negro can be, had made two voyages to England. For most of
the last war a french-horn man, Charles was sure to have found company and
musical camaraderie among Londons blacks.6
Writing of Englands darling blacks in his Black Britannia, historian Edward
Scobie discusses Ignatius Sancho (17291780), a man of culture and learning,
who was born near Guinea, West Africa, in 1729 (Scobie 1972, 95).7 At age two,
he was taken to England and ultimately lived in Greenwich with three sisters
who treated him poorly and prevented him from learning to read and write (95).
Sancho, so named by the sisters after Cervantess Don Quixote character, even-
tually left them and was taken into the home of the English Montagues, where he
served as butler and learned to read and write (9596; Wright 1979, 13435). By
the year 1751, the duchess had died and a succession of Montagues had passed,
leaving Sancho an annuity that allowed him to move to London and become part
of society there. Frequenting the theater and losing all of his money, he returned
to the Montagues, married, and had six children(142).
In this domestic period, Sancho read voraciously and immersed himself in
his musical studies. By 1770 he had composed and published two collections
of dances, which Scobie has described as far superior to much of the musical
trivia which minor composers foisted on the long-suffering eighteenth-century
public (1972, 9798). Many of the dances were minuets or country dances and
in binary form, and their instrumentationviolin, mandolin, German flute
(transverse flute), and harpsichordwas occasionally augmented by French
horns. Sanchos contemporaneous A Collection of New Songs Composed by an
African (ca. 1769)features texts by Shakespeare and his (Sanchos) friend, actor,

and stage producer, David Garrick. As implied by his choice of texts, Sancho
was fond of theater, literature, and poetry; but his copious letters and personal
writings attest to the fact that he was well versed in other arts besides music
(Sancho, Edwards etal. 1994 [1782]).
We are able to learn about Sanchos life from his letters, but we are not so
lucky when it comes to some of his contemporaries. Sanchos life overlapped
with another darling black, Julius Soubise (17541798), who was sent
to England from his native Saint Kitts at the age of ten (Scobie 1972, 89).
Under the patronage of Catherine, Duchess of Queensberry, Soubise became
an accomplished horseman and fencer at one of Londons most fashionable
academies (90). He was sketched, painted, and sculpted by famous artists
and dilettantes, he played upon the violin with considerable taste, and
he composed several musical pieces (91). Soubise frequented the opera
and the theatre and cut a figure with his well-formed legs and well-
proportioned body (92, 93, 90). As he was having a way with women
and living a life of excess, the duchess became concerned and discussed
her charge with Sancho, whose advice to Soubise that he reform was not
followed (93, 94). On being sent to India to mend his wild ways, Soubise
taught fencing there and in 1798 died in Calcutta of a head injury after fall-
ing from a horse(94).
Another of Britains darling blacks was George Polgreen Bridgetower (ca.
17791860), a child prodigy who was born of an African adventurer and a
Polish woman (Scobie 1972, 110).8 By age ten, Bridgetower was being described
as a fine violin player; had studied or was soon to study with some of the
ablest tutors in Europe, including Haydn; and had already made a name for
himself in France (110). Bridgetowers skills and musicianship were so formi-
dable that he was described as having taste and execution on the violin
equal, perhaps superior, to the best professor of the present or any former day
(Bath Morning Post, Dec. 8, 1799, quoted in Scobie, 111). After his brutal and
debauching father was expelled from England by the Prince of Wales, the latter
became Bridgetowers patron and parent, which allowed the prodigy to associ-
ate musically and daily with such masters as Giardini, Cramer, Salomon, and
especially Viotti, from whom he learned much and whose style appeared to suit
him (112). At age fifteen Bridgetower became the first violinist of the princes
private orchestra (112).
Then, on a trip to Vienna in 1803, Bridgetower was introduced to Ludwig
van Beethoven, and the two musicians subsequently became friends. Beethoven
deemed Bridgetower a thorough master of his instrument and composed the
Sonata for Violin and Piano, No. 9 in AMajor, Op.47, for the young violinista
piece that later became known as the Kreutzer Sonata.
According to Wright (1980, 65), Beethovens sonata originally bore the
inscription Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer. The pair

premiered the piece on May 24, 1803. Scobie quotes a statement by Bridgetower,
to explain the change in dedication (1972,113):
When the sonata was written Beethoven and I were constant com-
panions, and on the first copy was this dedication: To my friend
Bridgetower. But, ere it was published, we had some silly quarrel
about a girl, and in consequence Beethoven scratched out my name
and inserted that of Kreutzera man whom he had neverseen.
By 1811 Bridgetower had earned a degree from Cambridge University and was
a composer in his own right, on June 30 performing for the installation of the
Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor of the University what was apparently his
thesis compositiona work that was, according to the London Times, elab-
orate and rich; and highly accredited to the talents of the Graduate (Scobie
1972, 113). After a long and impressive career in which he performed exten-
sively and wrote numerous concertos for violin as well as other instrumental
pieces, Bridgetower died on February 29, 1860 (114). Unfortunately, very few
of his compositions are extant, among these a study manual entitled Diatonica
Armonica for the Piano Forte and a ballad called Henry, described by Scobie
as one of the most charming songs in Regency England and dedicated by
Bridgetower to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales(114).
Bolsters Jamaican seaman, Charles, might also have found in England Joseph
Emidy (17751835), who resided and composed in Cornwall. Of him as a com-
poser, little is known since none of his works has survived. But we do know from
McGrady (1991, 145)that, as a slave in Lisbon, Emidy developed a remarkable
talent and spent part of his early career in Lisbon, where he played the violin
in an opera orchestra. We know also that he composed chamber and orchestral
works and performed one of his concertos for violin at his first Falmouth con-
cert in 1802 (145).9 In 1808 Emidy performed another of his violin concerti,
which he had written for the birthday of the King of England, and in 1810 the
Cornwall Gazette gave Emidy a favorable review for his Concerto and Rondeau.
He was the leader of the Cornwall Philharmonic Society and a violin professor
(146) and also wrote at least one work for the pianoforte. Several decades after
his death, Emidys family scattered, with one branch emigrating to America,
and his manuscripts and other possessions went lost. In England, Emidy was
probably part of a community of blacks that was created when, following the
American War for Independence, a significant number of freed blacks settled in
London (Harris 1987,99).10
In France around the time of Emidys birth and Sanchos death, Joseph
Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (17451799), a colonel in the French
Army who was also a champion fencer and boxer, composed ten concertos, twelve
string quartets, six symphonic works, twelve arias and duos with orchestra,

four sonatas, and 118 songs (de Lerma 1976, 1819; Southern 1982, 330). His
quartets were among the earliest to be published in France, and he was widely
respected as a composer. Born in Guadeloupe in the West Indies to a French
plantation owner and an African slave, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was taken
to France by his father in 1755, when he was ten years old. After attending
boarding school, he emerged as a brilliant scholar and an accomplished fencer.
Saint-Georges was also a talented horseman, swimmer, and dancer, and was
popular in French society (Banat 1990, 182). By 1764, at the age of nineteen, he
must have become a noted musician of merit, for in that year the composer and
violinist Antonio Lolli dedicated works to him (Banat 1990, 185; 2006, 58). In
1766, the Belgian-French composer Franois Joseph Gossec paid him the same
honor. Saint-Georges studied composition with Gossec and played in his orches-
tra, the Concert des Amateurs (1990, 185; 2006, 117). He succeeded Gossec as
conductor of the Amateurs11 and went on to develop the ensemble into the best
orchestra for the Symphonies there is in Paris, and perhaps, Europe, said the
Almanach Musical in 1775 (quoted in Banat 1990, 186). As a composer, Saint-
Georges wrote violin concertos with verve and charm; the first two of these
were written two years before Mozart wrote his violin concertos in Salzburg
(190). Although his work in this form was conventional and ordinary, his con-
certos and symphonies concertantes played a significant role as a bridge, con-
necting the violin technique of the violinist-composers of the late baroque (such
as Tartini and Locatelli) to the technique of the nineteenth-century romantics
(190). As a skilled violinist, he was adept at performing the symphonie con-
certante, a then-new form in which two or more violinists compete with one
another, or with the orchestra, for ascendance.
Banat (2006, 169170) notes that Saint-Georges was one of the first three
composers to write a symphonie concertante; altogether, he composed eight
works in the form.12 It is in this way, says Banat (1990, 190)that Saint-Georgess
particular virtuoso idiom leads directly to Beethoven and beyond, by-passing
the violinistically more restrained style of the Mannheim school and the great
Austrian masters of classicism. Followers, such as Kreutzer, Viotti, and Rode,
carried on the virtuosity audiences admired in Saint-Georges to successive gen-
erations. In 1781, reports Banat, Saint-Georges began to direct the orchestra of
the Loge Olympique, an entity of the Parisian Masonic lodge, Socit Olympique,
of which he was a member (Banat 1990, 197; Banat 2006, 261). His relationship
with the organization came to an end, however, in 1785 in the face of political
turmoil (Banat 1999, 986).13 By 1792 he had become a colonel in the National
Guard, where he came to be in charge of the Rgiment des Hussards Amricains
et du Midi (Banat 1990,203).
In 1795 Saint-Georges departed for Saint-Domingue, where, during his stay,
there was fighting between that islands blacks and mulattoes; he remained
there until 1797. On his return to France, he again entered musical circles as

the conductor of the orchestra of the Cercle de lHarmonie, whose concerts

left nothing to be desired for the choice of pieces and superiority of execution
(Mercure de France, quoted in Banat 1990, 209). Although, according to Banat
(208), Saint-Georgess stay in Saint-Domingue is a mystery to us, it is inter-
esting that he arrived on the island three years after Toussaint Louverture had
assumed full control of his army of four thousand infantry and eight hundred
dragoons (Ros 1994, 64) in 1793, and that, perhaps coincidentally, the uni-
forms of Toussaints army had come from France. Can it be that there is a con-
nection between these events?14
These matters take the narrative back to the Americas and, conveniently,
create the opportunity for our transition to South America and Brazil, where
the earliest of the extant works by black composers was written during the eigh-
teenth century.15 Documented organized musical activity involving blacks in
Brazil dates from 1610, when a plantation owner organized a band of the blacks
he enslaved to play classical music. Trained and directed by a Frenchman, this
band apparently began a trend in which plantation owners vied for supremacy
in the ownership of the best slave bands.16 This practice probably continued
until 1695, when Portuguese government-sponsored expeditions for silver,
emeralds, and gold began to prove successful.17 In Minas Gerais, the goldmin-
ers wealth financed the building of churches in a location where a sizable pro-
portion of the population was composed of slaves or free persons of color. The
abundant prosperity there supported architecture, sculpture, literature, and
music.18
Knowledge of the music was lost until 1944, when the German-Uruguayan
musicologist Francisco Curt Lange discovered a large quantity of it that had
been composed for use in the churches of Minas. Not only did he find the music,
he also discovered that all of it had been composed (and presumably performed)
by free mulattos and Negroes (Prez 1963, 2; Lange 1987). Prez (1963, 3)
explainsthat
In Ouro Prto alone he collected the names of some two hundred

and fifty professional musicians who have filled a hitherto unknown
chapter of the universal history of music. Of the composers whose
music has in part been saved, the foremost is Jos Joaquim Emerico
Lobo de Mesquita, a true genius, who was probably born somewhere
near the Arraial do Tejuco (now Diamantina), where he was organ-
ist in three churches between 1782 and 1798. His works represent a
disconcerting variety of styles. His Grand Mass, his Mass No. 2, his
Te Deum, and his now famous Antiphony are all entirely different in style
and bespeak an exceptional creative power. In the remote Arraial do
Tejuco there were nine conductors, which presupposes the existence of
no fewer than one hundred and fifty professional musicians. Lange had

already restored works by Francisco Gomes da Rocha, Ignacio Parreiras

Neves, and Marcos Coelho Netto (both father and son).19
In Minas Gerais, the new churches were built by brotherhoods and fraternal
associations (Prez 1963, 3)such as, for example, the Irmandade de So Jos
dos Homens Pardo (Saint Jos Brotherhood of Black Men), in which most of the
members were Negroes, both slave and free, and mulattoes (3). As far as the
performers of this music are concerned,
the groups never numbered more than twenty-eight players even in

exceptional cases, when two, three, and perhaps four mixed vocal quar-
tets sang together, with instrumental accompaniment, in extremely
fluid counterpoint or strict polyphonic arrangements. At the usual
festivities there were no more than fourteen or sixteen counting both
singers and musicians. Since women were not allowed to sing, the
feminine parts were masterfully interpreted by male falsetto voices
for the contralto parts, and by boys, usually little Negro slaves, for the
soprano roles. There were no castrati in Minas Gerais.(4)
Langes research and restoration of the music resulted in a recording enti-

tled Mestres do Barroco Mineiro (Sculo XVIII) (Masters of the Minas Baroque
[Eighteenth Century]),20 containing works by Francisco Gomes da Rocha, Marcos
Coelho Neto, Igncio Parreiras Neves, and Jos Joaquim Emrico Lobo de
Mesquita, who, with their near contemporaries, constituted the Escola Mineira,
the Minas School of composition, which was referenced in the Introduction and
Chapter2.21
Mesquita served as the organist, beginning in 1788, for the Confraria de
Nossa Senhora das Mercs dos Homens Crioulos (Brotherhood of Our Lady of
Mercy of Creole Men)22 and the Ordem Terceira de Nossa Senhora do Carmo
(Brotherhood of the Third Order of Our Lady of Carmel), both of which were
located in Arraial do Tejuco (modern-day Diamantina in Minas Gerais, Brazil),
and later for the Ordem Terceira do Carmo in Rio de Janeiro from 1801 to 1805,
among others over the course of his life. He also composed a number of works,
many of which remain as unpublished manuscripts. Among Mesquitas surviv-
ing works, says Curt Lange (quoted in Krueger 1976),are
three masses, three credos, one magnificat, one Te Deum, two

Officium Defunctorum and several litanies. His versatility shows him
as a magnificent stylist, multifaceted, who undoubtedly devoted him-
self to the study of masters of his time. More than once he is ahead
of his Old-World contemporaries, employing disconcertingly modern
phrases, with highly evolved contrapuntal work, and utilizing the

seventh of a dominant at the beginning of a sectionwhat Beethoven

would do for the first time in 1800 in his First Symphony. It is strik-
ing to see the liberty with which he uses horns in Mass in E Minor.
Mesquitas work can appear with dignity alongside the great European
composers.23
Another important composer of Minas was Jos Maurcio Nunes Garcia

(17671829), who as a child played the piano and sang to earn money, and later
moved through the Brotherhood of Saint Cecilia [and] the Brotherhood
of Saint Peter to a full priesthood in 1792 (de Lerma 1986, 94). In that
year, Garcia was appointed court composer to King Joo of Portugal, and on
the death of the Queen Mother was given the task of composing a requiem,
which turned out to be, according to musicologist Dominique-Ren de Lerma
(95), his finest extant composition, a work of distinctly major importance.
In 1798 Garcia became chapel master to the bishopric, taking charge of all
music for the diocese.24 Robert Stevenson (1999, 484) has called Garcias
Thursday Sequence, Corpus Christi, 1809 (Lauda Sion Saluatorem, Sequencia da
5.a fr.a do Corpo de Deis em 1809), a classically perfect work [that] not only
demonstrates Garcias consummate mastery of the idiom spoken by Haydn
and Mozart, but it also rebukes the narrow-mindedness of critics who deny
any composers of African descent the right to dominate European musical
modes.25
The musical output of both Mesquita and Garcia has been compared favorably
to that of their white European contemporaries by the tenacious pioneers in this
particular realm of black music research. And, it is hoped that future research on
other Brazilian composers will reveal the aesthetic value of the art music from
this region on its own terms, as well as continue to situate it within the greater
musical histories of the Diaspora-at-large and of the traditions inherent in art
music. Although neither composer seems to have yet been incorporated fully
into mainstream musicological discourse, their stories remain indispensable to
our narrative about black music.
All of the composers mentioned thus far widen our purview of the kinds of
musics created by persons of African descent between the sixteenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. The evidence from both Europe and Minas Gerais, Brazil, pro-
vides a novel perspective on black music research from a historical standpoint
and reveals, in part, the kinds of musical activities expected in areas influenced
by the Catholic Church. Although the number of art music composers of African
descent practicing in Europe was small, we learn new information about canoni-
cal genressuch as motets and madrigals in Portugal, masses in Brazil, and
symphonies concertantes in Franceby taking into account the achievements
of Afro-descendent composers. Moreover, as we continue to explore music
making in the nineteenth century, we will notice the spread of art music to the

United States and an increase of women who explore the vocational potential
inherent in composition.
Of all early Afro-descendent composers of art music, Samuel Coleridge-
Taylor (1875 1912) has consistently appeared in the literature since his
untimely death before World War I, and he was one of the very first to have
his music recorded, as Chapter7 will illustrate in more detail. His legacy lives
on, too, through The Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a biography written
by his daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor (19031998). The younger Coleridge-
Taylor was a musician in her own right, composing instrumental and vocal solos
(sometimes using the pseudonym Peter Riley) as well as works for orchestra.
During her long life, she spearheaded a number of musical ventures, including
establishment of the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra (19461951), and
she also served as the musical director of T.C. Fairbairns dramatized produc-
tion of her fathers famous Song of Hiawatha.26 This massive work, which Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor composed between 1898 and 1900, was based on the epic poem
The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and comprised three
cantatas: Hiawathas Wedding Feast, The Death of Minnehaha, and Hiawathas
Departure. By 1904, Coleridge-Taylors work had been performed more than two
hundred times in England alone (Green 1990, 243), but it was also being show-
cased in the United States with the composer at the podium.
England was home to the elder Coleridge-Taylor; as the son of a black physi-
cian from Sierra Leone and a British mother, he was born there and later stud-
ied at the Royal College of Music. He emerged as a well-rounded musician and
sought employment through teaching and conducting opportunities. Soon,
however, his compositional prowess became well known and he was deemed the
foremost musician of his race.27 Coleridge-Taylor became a recognised master
of his art in 1898 through a performance of his Ballade in AMinor for orches-
tra, which had been commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester on
the recommendation of Sir Edward Elgar (Sayers 1915, 55, as quoted in Green
1990, 237; Thompson 1999, 284). Although his best-known and most-beloved
work is Hiawathas Wedding Feast (the first segment of the trilogy), an important
corner of his oeuvre is his incidental music, an example of which is his music to
Shakespeares Othello, composed in 1911, the year before his death. Recorded by
Sir Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London in 1923, this
concert suite in five movements is a lyrical and sensitive interpretation of some
of the plays events.
Included among Coleridge-Taylors output are works on African and African-
American themes, notably Four African Dances, Negro Love Song for violin and
piano, Twenty Four Negro Melodies, Two African Idylls for Piano, Variation on an
African Air for Orchestra, African Romance, African Suite, Four African Dances,
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors, The Bamboula for Orchestra, and the symphonic
tone poem Toussaint Louverture. The last-named was written to interpret and

illustrate the character and tragedy of one of the most striking personalities that
the Negro race has given to the world (Elson and Paderewski 1918,473).
Coleridge-Taylor, like the Chevalier de Saint-Georges and George Bridgetower,
performed on the violin. But even though their ability as performers has not
been the focus of the discussion here, it does raise the question:What of black
performers? We know from Chapter 2 that black performers were active in
Europe from the time of the Moors, but what specifics are known about black
performers of art music in more recent times, both in Europe and in other parts
of the Diaspora?
Among the most cosmopolitan black performing musicians of his day,
Afro-Cuban Jos White (18351918) earned the First Grand Prize at the Paris
Conservatory in 1856, was a founding member of three major chamber ensem-
bles in Paris, and was featured twice with the NewYork Philharmonic (Wright
1990, 215, 224, 213). But like his predecessors Saint-Georges and Bridgetower,
White composed as well. His thirty-odd pieces, mostly for solo violin, place him
in the unique company of a small group of composers in France who published
literature for solo violin and stringed instruments in the late nineteenth cen-
tury (223). Included in this literature are his well-known and difficult violin
concerto, his La Jota Aragonesa, and a set of etudes about which Wright (223
24) states:
Collectively, these tudes are striking for their melodic content as

well as for their technical difficulty, and they give insight into the
virtuosic skills of their creator. They include rapid scale-like passages
covering the entire range of the fingerboard; octave leaps executed
at fast tempos with legato bowings; chromatic arpeggiated chords
that challenge intonation and accuracy; extensive use of double stops
to accompany slow, legato melodies; and brilliant allegro passages
designed to exploit various positions on the fingerboard.
Within the last twenty years, Whites compositional artistry has been cel-
ebrated by some of the worlds premier violinists. La Jota Aragonesa, op. 5,
for example, is one of fifteen pieces featured on a 2011 recording titled
Violinesque: A la Memoria del Eminente Violinista Cubano Jos White. With
Fernando Muoz del Collado on the violin and accompanist Ana Gabriela
Fernndez de Velazco, Violinesque boasts world premiere recordings of all the
selected pieces.
That same year, the renowned Rachel Barton Pine included Etude No. 6 on
her album, Capricho Latino. No stranger to the works of black composers, she
had recorded Whites Concerto in F-sharp Minor with the Encore Chamber
Orchestra in 1997. This recording, Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the
18th and 19th Centuries, is apropos here, for Barton Pines album also includes

the Chevalier de Saint-Georges Concerto in AMajor, Op.5, No. 2, and Samuel

Coleridge-Taylors Romance in G Major.28
Another Cuban-born violinist, Claudio Brindis de Salas (18001872) formed
the Orchestra La Concha de Oro, a Cuban dance orchestra of repute (Moore
1997, 1819). His son, Claudio Jose Domingo Brindis de Salas (18521911)
excelled on the violin, as well, and was known as the Black Paganini.29 Out of
another musical family came Das Negertrio Jimenez, which included the violin-
ist Jos Julian Jimenez (1833ca. 1890), a Cuban, and his two sons, violoncel-
list Nicasio (d. 1891), who settled in Tours, France, in the late 1870s and taught
music there; and pianist Jos Manuel Jimenez-Berroa (18551917), who served
as a piano professor at the Hamburg Conservatory of Music. Das Negertrio
Jimenez toured Leipzig and other European centers, including Paris, perform-
ing contemporary music (Wright 1981,168).
In the 1830s, during the lifetimes of Bridgetower, White, Claudio Brindis
de Salas, and Jos Julian Jimenez in the United States, a group of African-
American musicians banded together to form the Negro Philharmonic Society in
New Orleans (Southern 1997, 13334). This one-hundred-piece orchestra was
a scholarly body of musicians and counted among its conductors Constantin
Deberque and Richard Lambert (Trotter 1878, 35152).30 Deberque was known
further not only as a conductor but as a music teacher. His well-known student,
Edmond Dd, also made an impression in the music circles of New Orleans,
and we will attend to him shortly. Dd had also studied with Lambert, the
reigning patriarch of a large musical family, whose members excelled at instru-
mental performance and composition. Despite their successes, some of the
family members ultimately left New Orleans and moved to locations abroad
where there existed better opportunities for professional advancement, as
would Dd. Richards son, Charles Lucien Lambert (b. 1828), became a well-
known concert pianist and settled in Brazil as chief musician in the Court of
Dom Pedro (Wyatt 1990, 128). He also manufactured pianos and wrote at least
forty compositions, including LAmricaine: Grande valse brillante (1866),
La Brsilienne: Polka brillante (1864), and La Parisienne: Polka brillante
(1856). Charles Lucien Lamberts own son, Lucien-Lon-Guillaume Lambert,
followed in his fathers footsteps, becoming a well-known concert pianist, and
he composed pieces such as Caprice Mazurka (1891) for piano and Lgende rou-
maine daprs des motifs populaires (1893) for orchestra. Richards other son and
Charles Luciens brother, Sydney (b. ca. 1838), wrote at least thirty-eight works,
including LAfricaine (1872), Les Clochettes:Fantaisie mazurka (1872), and
Murmures du Soir:Caprice (1876); he served as a pianist in the royal court
of Portugal, and later taught in Paris (Sullivan 1988, 60). According to Trotter
(1878, 333, 33840), additional members of this prominent family included Mr.
E.[Lambert] (a bandleader), John (a cornet player), and the two Misses (both
of whom were pianists).

Although New Orleans did lose some of its musicians of African descent to
other locales, this Paris of America and its colored citizens continued to
flourish (333). Among the composers whose works can still be examined for
study are Victor-Eugne Macarty (18211881),31 Franois-Michel-Samuel Snar
(ca. 1832after 1880), Basile Bars (18451902), Frances Gotay, ne Sister
Marie Seraphine (18651932), Laurent (Lawrence) Dubuclet (18661909), and
Thomas J. Martin (n.d.). Victor-Eugne Macarty, the self-proclaimed Pianist
of the fashionable Soires of New Orleans (Sullivan 1988, 77), composed
social dance music, of which two pieces, LAlza:Polka Mazurka:Souvenir de
Charles VI and La Caprifolia:Polka de Salon, are held by New Orleans librar-
ies (7778). Franois-Michel-Samuel Snar, whose family had emigrated from
Saint-Domingue and who was of mixed African, French, and German ancestry
(63), composed among other works Rappelle-toi:Romance pour voix de bary-
ton (1865) for tenor and piano, Le Chant du Dport:Melodie pour voix de
baryton (1865) for vocal trio, and Sous sa fentre (Come to Me, Love, ca.
1851, pub. 1866)for voice and piano (79). Among Snars unpublished works
are liturgical compositions, including at least two masses. Basile Bars, a former
slave who rose to become a conductor and one of the most popular pianists
and composers of dance music of post-bellum New Orleans (66) wrote at least
twenty-five works, including several polkas, waltzes, gallops, and a quadrille.32
Frances Gotay had emigrated from Puerto Rico to New Orleans and joined
the Sisters of the Holy Family of Catholic nuns. At a Roman Catholic school of
music in New Orleans, she learned to perform on several instruments (Sullivan
1988, 73)and wrote a good deal of music, of which only one published piece, La
Puertorriquea: Reverie (1896), survives (77). Laurent (Lawrence) Dubuclet,
a pianist and saxophonist, composed at least five works for piano (some of
which originally may have been written for band or orchestra):Bettina Waltz
(1886), Les yeux deux (1886), Worlds Fair March (1893), The Belle of the
Carnival (1897), and National Defense March (1899). Ten works by Thomas
J.Martin survive, including The Creole Waltz (1848) for piano, Free Masons
Grand March (1854), and The Song of Returning Spring (1859) for voice and
piano(78).
The collective efforts of these composers helped to make New Orleans a
place in whichat least periodicallyart music created by musicians of African
descent could thrive. Constantin Deberques and Richard Lamberts pupil
Edmond Dd (18271901) did leave the United States for Europe, but regard-
less of Dds places of residence, his musical achievements are of significance
to our narrative. As a composer of perhaps more than three hundred works,
Dd is easily the most prolific of the New Orleansbred composers, local and
expatriate alike.33
Born in 1827 to free Creoles of color from the French West Indies who had
come to New Orleans somewhere around 1809, the young Dd studied music

with his father, Deberque, and Lambert. Following the Mexican War, Dd, like
many of his fellow Creoles of color, left New Orleans for Mexico, possibly due to
a shift in race relations in their home town (Sullivan and Sears 1999, 362). He
returned to New Orleans in 1851 but left again, this time for Europe, in 1857.
Settling in France, he studied with teachers affiliated with the Paris Conservatory,
including Jacques-Franois Fromental Halvy and Jean-DelphinAlard.
Around 1860 he moved to Bordeaux, where he took a position as an orches-
tra conductor at the Grand Thtre and later at the Thtre de lAlcazar, and he
remained there for much of the rest of his career.34 He returned to New Orleans
only once, in 1893, for a stay of several months. Among his works are Le Palmier
ouverture and Chicago:Grand valse lamericaine; the latter, according to Wyatt,
is representative of his mature style (1990, 127). At the time of this writing,
only five of Dds works have been recorded. In 1977, Gunther Schuller led
the Columbia Chamber Ensemble in a performance of his own orchestration of
Mphisto masqu, which was written for the euphonium (or ophicleide). Then, in
2000, the Hot Springs Music Festival made another recording of Mphisto mas-
qu under the direction of Richard Rosenberg. Four other works by Dd, Mon
pauvre Coeur, Franoise et Tortillard, Battez aux champs, and Chicago, are featured
on this recording aswell.
Given his repertoire and his place of longest domicile, Edmond Dd belongs
more to France than to New Orleans and the United States, but we take the
liberty of giving him here to New Orleans, the place of his birth and most of his
musical training, since he did not leave for Europe until he was fully grown. And,
the same goes for the Lamberts, father and sons. By the same token, another
New Orleansborn instrumentalist, composer, and singer, Camille Nickerson
(1887/81982), spent much of her adult life away from her birthplace, but
her musical interests betrayed a sense of loyalty to Louisiana.35 Hailing from
a musical family in New Orleans, Nickerson left the city to pursue an educa-
tion at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, but returned on graduation to teach
at her fathers Nickerson School of Music in New Orleans until 1926. She left
again to commence her lengthy tenure at Howard University in Washington,
D.C. (until1962).
Nickerson garnered a following during the 1930s when, using the moniker
the Louisiana Lady, she gave recitals of Creole folksongs she had collected
under the auspices of the Rosenwald Foundation. Some of her most popular
arrangements of Creole folksongs included Chere, mo lemm toi (Dear, ILove
You So), Lizette, to quitt la Plain (Lizette, My Dearest One), Danse, Conni,
Conne (Dance, Baby, Dance), Fais Do Do (Go to Sleep), and Michieu
Banjo (Mister Banjo).36 Like Macarty, Bars, Gotay, and Dubuclet, Nickerson
was known for her compositional talent, as well as for her ability to perform; and
all of these musicians were recognized primarily for performing as soloists (with
and without accompaniment).

Yet during the nineteenth century, several African- American musical

ensemblesinstrumental and vocalwere established in an attempt to fol-
low the conventions set forth in Europe and the United States. Two noteworthy
instrumental bands, for example, hailed from the state of Ohio:the Scioto Valley
Brass Band and the Roberts Band. The Scioto Valley Brass Band was established
in 1855 by Richard Chancellor and John Jones. It joined forces with the Roberts
Band in 1859, which was founded by Thomas Harris and William Davis in 1857.
The amalgamated ensemble was known as the Union-Valley Brass Band, and it
was recognized by historian James Monroe Trotter as one of the finest in the
State [of Ohio]. Moreover, he claimed that some of the instrumentalists pos-
sess such great musical abilities that would render them prominent among the
best musicians of any section of the country (Trotter 1878, 31314).37
Following the successes of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who were established in
1871 and about whom we will read in future chapters, the Colored American
Opera Company, for example, was formed in Washington, D.C., where it per-
formed The Doctor of Alcantara, by Julius Eichberg on February 3 and 4, 1873
(Trotter 1878, 245). Later that month, on February 21, 22, and 23, the opera was
performed again in Philadelphia. Critics in both cities wrote reviews, with one,
from Washington, praising the natural gifts of the singers and another, from
Philadelphia, noting the companys recent successes in Washington. As reported
by Trotter:It must be remembered that this troupe is composed entirely of ama-
teurs, and is the first colored opera-troupe in existence. We have had the Colored
Mario [Thomas J. Bowers], the Black Swan [Miss Greenfield], &c; but never
until now have we had a complete organization trained for ensembles (247).38
Many ensembles and their members experienced humble beginnings before
receiving accolades in the press. For example, the first black bandmaster of the U.S.
Navy, Alton Augustus Adams Sr. (18891987), organized a band of young instru-
mentalists when he was only fourteen years old. Yet, just a few years later, in 1917,
Adamss St. Thomas (Virgin Islands) Juvenile Band was asked to join the navy, and
Adams was named chief musician. Like many of the multitalented musicians of
the nineteenth century, he excelled as a conductor, performer, and composer.39
It is critical that we mention Adams here, amid other composers and per-
formers of classical/art music, for several reasons. First, he and his comrades
were affected deeply by what was happening musically in the United States and
Europe, despite their relatively remote locale. Second, it was through their musi-
cal performances that these Islanders were invited to leave their homeland and
contribute to the elevated culture of the country in which their Islands were now
in possession.
I have written elsewhere thatAdams
clearly a product of his time, reveals, in his desire to measure up to

external standards for the good of the race, his sensitivity to the

perceptions of the Caucasian observers and participants in his native

culture. He ascribes the positive traits of the Islands cultural envi-
ronment to the musical culture of St. Thomas, commenting on the
native music and, especially, the music continuously imported from
the United States and Europe during the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, revealing those influences to be instrumental in his
own artistic development. (Floyd 2008, xixiv)
I recall fondly the first time I went to visit Adams at his home in St. Thomas. At
the time, he was nearly ninety years old, and, as we had not yet met, he greeted
me from his veranda with a crisp military salute. With that image of him in my
mind, I believe Adamss compositions mirror his pride and his stature, as with his
The Governors Own (1921, written for concert band and arranged for small
orchestra, full orchestra, and piano), The Spirit of the United States Navy (1924,
for concert band), and Virgin Islands March (1917, for wind band), as well as
with his Caribbean Echoes: Valse Tropical (unpublished concert band piece that
was arranged for piano) and a song, Sweet Virgin Isles. Unfortunately, the great
bulk of his music was destroyed in a fire in 1932, when he was stationed in Cuba
(Clague 1999, 12). But several other unpublished manuscripts do survive at the
Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. According to Jarvis (1944, 163), the
black population on the Islands had the same kind of dignity as Adams, for they
developed no spirituals and work songs because they mingled freely

with their masters and other sophisticated folk, they always had
educated white pastors in their conventional churches; they never
learned to sublimate their sufferings into religious fervor; they had
neither mysterious swamps nor deep rivers to draw inspiration from;
the ever moving populous ocean was always in sight; and last, but
very important, there were no group meetings on winter evenings.
The very weather was against the general sentiment of doleful songs,
blues, and so-called typical music.40
These ensembles made an indelible mark, both historically and musically. But
they also force contemporary readers to come to grips with the kinds of music
making that were possible during the nineteenth century. Moreover, the brief
mentions here of the Ohio-based bands, the Colored American Opera Company,
and the St. Thomas Juvenile Band represent but the tip of the iceberg. In a way,
only encyclopedic volumes would be able to profile in detail the surprising num-
ber of active ensembles that were first described by Trotter in his compilation.
But little by little, black musicians from the nineteenth century are slowly find-
ing their way into mainstream discourse, thereby demonstrating a belief that
black music in the concert hall is the last frontier of black music research.41

Let us recall the comparison made earlier between the Colored American
Opera Company and the two musicians who had previously graced the public
stage as independent performers. Thomas J.Bowers (ca. 18261885), a tenor,
and Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (ca. 18241876) had entertained their audi-
ences in separate concerts to rave reviews, but they also had the opportunity
to perform together in 1854. Though they did not necessarily constitute an
ensemble per se, Bowers and Greenfield were dynamic forces in the history of
black musicespecially with respect to art music. As such, they helped to clear
the way for generations of black vocalists to come, who, in their own ways, have
challenged the status quo. Thus, let us turn our attention, briefly, to these next
generations.42
Like Deberque, Lambert, Nickerson, and Coleridge-Taylor, many twentieth-
century musicians made a living by teaching their craft. Indeed, the same held
true for several prominent vocalists. However, most reached stardom on the
stage first, either by winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
(MONCA), which were first awarded in 1954, or by appearing with leading opera
companies (including the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera,
among others). Not all of the earliest stars had immediate access to canoni-
cal European operatic productions, but they were able to perform in musicals
and operas with African-American characters (such as Oscar Hammerstein and
Jerome Kerns Showboat [1927] and George Gershwins Porgy and Bess [1935])
and on stage with a repertoire of spirituals. Bass baritone Paul Robeson (1898
1976), for example, was known for his appearance in Showboat, and enjoyed an
international career in spite of blatant domestic racism and governmental per-
secution.43 Contralto Marian Anderson (18971993) faced discrimination in the
United States as well, when the Daughters of the American Revolution famously
refused to let her sing before a mixed audience in 1939, only to be vindicated by
President Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, who asked Anderson to sing at the
Lincoln Memorial later that year before a live and radio audience. Like Robeson,
Anderson had traveled and sung abroad to great acclaim outside the strictures
of racism. By 1955, however, she became the first African American to sing at
the Metropolitan Opera.
Another early singer, baritone Todd Duncan (19031998), starred as George
Gershwins personal choice for Porgy in the acclaimed Porgy and Bess, before
launching his teaching career at Howard University. William Warfield (1920
2002) was featured in later productions of both Showboat and Porgy and Bess
but was equally well known for his performances of spirituals. He became a
voice professor at the University of Illinois and later at Northwestern University
and was committed to cultivating young vocal talent. Appearing alongside
Warfield in Porgy and Bess was Leontyne Price (1927), and together they per-
formed Gershwins opera throughout Europe under the auspices of the U.S.
State Department. Although they were married at the time, their marriage

was short-lived, and she pursued an operatic career for which she was richly
rewarded. Debuting at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961, Price ultimately won
numerous mainstream awards, including multiple Grammy Awards, honorary
degrees, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 (the year following
Marian Andersons 1963 award of thesame).
The midtwentieth century was an exciting and historic time for black sing-
ers. Following Andersons appearance at the Metropolitan Opera, baritone
Robert McFerrin (19212006) made his debut in 1955 as well. Three years later,
Grace Bumbry (1937) won the MONCA as a mezzo-soprano, and by 1961 both
tenor George Shirley (1934), whose recording of Camille Nickersons songs is
noted in that discussion in this chapter, and Shirley Verrett (19312010) were
bestowed the same honor. Like Duncan and Warfield, Shirley and Verrett taught
collegiate students, and they became professors at the University of Michigan.
So too did soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs (19252015) and bass baritone Simon
Estes (1938). Dobbs and Estes appeared with the Metropolitan Opera (Dobbs
in 1956 and Estes in 1982) but had impressive singing careers abroad before
delving into the academic realm of vocal teaching in the United States. Dobbs
secured a position at the University of Texas, and Estes became a faculty mem-
ber at Wartburg College in Iowa. As we will see, especially in Chapter 9, Duncan,
Warfield, Shirley, Verrett, Dobbs, and Estes were all honing their own skills and
cultivating new talent at a pivotal time in American history. They joined the
ranks of other professionalsinstrumentalists, composers, musicologists
who broke down racial barriers in the name of music and, over the course of the
lives, chose to bring their experiences to educational institutions where their
knowledge could be employed to further the aims of future generations. We will
also see, however, that the musical lessons of African Americans were not always
codified entitiesthat is, not everyone discussed here taught at an institution
of higher education. Rather, in Chapter 7, Robeson will return as part of the dis-
cussion on the musical education of youth through recorded sound. He, like the
members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Tuskegee Institute Singers, were some
of the preeminent black singers to be recorded professionally during the first
part of the twentieth century. Even though technological advancements enabled
the music of black composers and singers to reach new audiences, Chapter 8 will
include two composersFlorence Price and Margaret Bondswho benefited
from personal interactions with other musicians at home-based salons.
There is much more to be learned about these nineteenth-and twentieth-
century composers and performers as well as the other black composers and
performers working in Europe in past centuries who were discussed earlier in
the chapter, including relationships they might have had with other black and
white composers of their times. The vignette about Angelo Soliman, which
Iquoted at the outset of this chapter, is only one of several about Africans who
were intimately involved in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century European life

and culture. The musicians mentioned in the present chapter, together with
European blacks in other artistic fields of endeavorincluding the Russian
novelist Alexandre Dumas pre, the poet Alexander Pushkin, actor Ira Aldridge,
painter Henry O.Tanner, and dramatist Victor Sjourwere only some among
those who contributed artistically and intellectually to European high culture.
From Vicente Lusitano in the sixteenth century to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
in the nineteenth, and from the productive group of New Orleans musicians to
the singers who have appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, black composers and
musicians from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and North America have
contributed to the continuing formation of the black Diaspora by establishing
themselves as a collective and formidable presenceno matter how tenuous or
unknownin European musical culture.

4
Isles of Rhythm
The Cinquillo-Tresillo Complex in the Circum-C aribbean
If you can walk, you can dance; and if you can talk, you
cansing.
Zimbabwean Proverb
Soft-shell crab, the meat and milk of the coconut, curry, hot
peppers, and the ground green leaf of the tropical dasheen
plant combine to make Callaloo, a soup that has become the
national dish of Trinidad and Tobago.
Nunley, Bettelheim, and Bridges
In the chapter title, the word isles refers to the various land masses of the
African Diaspora; the term rhythm refers to the rhythmic pattern known
as cinquillo and tresillo and to the instruments that most frequently play
them: giro, maracas, bat drum, agog, and others of African and African-
circum-Caribbean derivation. 1 These rhythmswhich are usually manifest
in a rhythmic callaloo where they blend with each other and with other dia-
sporic and nondiasporic rhythms together with the presence of other
African performance practices throughout the Americas, constitute a dynamic
musical cohesion that defines and distinguishes the aesthetic character of a
large portion of the African Diaspora.2 Derived from the time-line patterns
of African music, the cinquillo (Example 4.1) and tresillo (Example 4.2) have
been historically central to the music of the African Diaspora, appearing in con-
tradanza, danzn, habanera, tango, merengue, calypso, and Puerto Rican danza;
these rhythms often serve as an ostinato for numerous circum-Caribbean
genres. Essentially dance rhythms, they and their variations are the primary
ingredients of a rhythmic complex that informs and takes many forms of the
various musical genres of the West Indies and Latin America. Their origins lie
in the ring dances that were once central to cultural expression, throughout
the African Diaspora, including, for example, Jamaica, where the music and
69

Map 4.1 The Islands of the circum-Caribbean

Map 4.2 Detailed map of Virgin Islands (U.S.and British)

texts of twenty-eight ring dances were notated and collected by Walter Jekyll
(1907), who described and discussed them in his Jamaican Song and Story.3
These rhythms also appear in black music in the United States, but more
subtly and in differing configurations. Music theorist Jay Rahn, in his article
Turning the Analysis Around: Africa-Derived Rhythms and Europe-Derived
Theory (1996), has given an account of Africa-derived syncopation that might
serve as an alternative to European and Europe-derived accounts of a large num-
ber of syncopated rhythms (Rahn 1996, 71). He treats tresillo as a basic 3+3+2
rhythm (see Example 4.2), noting how, in black music of the United States, it is
sometimes accompanied by a walking bass line in swing and later styles, a stride
bass in piano rags and other march-related forms, or steady strumming in quar-
ters by banjo or guitar in New Orleans, Chicago, and other early jazz idioms
(74). He treats cinquillo as a five-tone, eight-pulse African and Africa-derived
time line (see Example 4.1) able to underlie and even form explicit components
of African-American and African-Hispanic traditions of the Western hemi-
sphere (77). Usually, however, within the context of U.S. black music, except
in cases such as those cited by Rahn, the tresillo and cinquillo rhythms do not
appear as foreground but are used at a subtextual level that supports, informs,
and enhances surface-level foreground material.
Example 4.1: Example of cinquillo rhythm
Example 4.2: Example of tresillo rhythm
So pervasive in the Diaspora are these rhythms that each diasporic land mass
can be characterized as an isle of rhythm. Played in varying meters or reversed
in their different incarnations, they remind us of Esu and the red-hat, black-
hat parablethis time at the crossroads of duple-triple rhythm, all the while
defining the dance music of the circum-Caribbean.4 For they are the dance, as
demonstrated, for example, in the recorded examples of the Africa in America
compilation of songs from nineteen countries. Canto a Chango, from Brazil,
for instance, has a solo-chorus call-and-response figure laid over rhythms played
by three drums and clapperless bells, all governed by a time-line pattern. The
song Canto Winti, from Suriname, features solo-group call-and-responses
between womens and mens voices, singing in harmonic intervals of thirds over
drum rhythms characterized by cinquillo elements. The Salve, of the Dominican

I s l e s o f R hyt h m 73
Republic, consists of a time line over which a clave rhythm is played and impro-
vised on by drums, while the scraper plays straight eighth notes over which male
and female voices sing in call-and-response fashion. The Cuban Columbia is
also based on a time line played by a drum, over which other drums and a metal-
lophone, and a solo-chorus call-and-response structure, arelaid.
Another recording, Nueva Espaa, contains songs that illustrate effectively
the influence of African rhythms and linguistic patterns on New World Spanish
music. Dame albriia, Tarara qui yo soy Anton, and Cumba suffice as exam-
ples of the pervasiveness of the cinquillo-tresillo complex in circum-Caribbean
isles of rhythm. In spite of the musical, cultural, and political divergences
between the various cultures in which it resides, this rhythmic continuum of
variations contains mutable, protean elements that range, for example, from
the straight and bold x xx xx of the cinquillo proper in the Cuban danzn to the
subtle, reverse cinquillo (xx xx x) of the North American Negro spiritual (i.e.,
Nobody knows , Sometimes I feel . , etc.). Prominent also in blues
and rhythm-and-blues, tresillo is pervasive throughout the African Diaspora.
Cinquillo and tresillo tend to morph, as they move smoothly into and out of
each other and in and out of rhythms derived from and related, or not, to them,
thereby giving the cinquillo-tresillo complex its chameleonic character.
Obviously not all African-American music is based on or contains cinquillo and
tresillo elements, but the examples in which they do occur give some indication
of the near ubiquity of their presence in music throughout the African Diaspora.
On the Africa in America recordings, dense rhythmic configurations are evident
in Vud, from Haiti; chants in Canto Dugu from Honduras; and variations
of clave rhythms in the Brazilian Candombl; in the Congo of Dominican
Republic, tresillo is foregrounded. Culo puya, from Venezuela, foregrounds
the rhythm x x x x on the walls of puya drums while faster, complementary, and
contrasting rhythms are played on the membranes.
Joining these rhythms throughout the circum- Caribbean are call- and-
response singing in which various configurations occur: additive and poly-
rhythmic devices; unflagging, off-beat melodic phrasings, hand clapping, and
apart playing; and a metronomic pulse. One of the most rhythmically complex
of the examples is Tamborito, from Panama, which also appears on Africa in
America. In it, call-and-response singing takes place over the contrasting timbres
of three differently tuned drums, each playing its own rhythm while the hands
of the singers clap other and additional rhythms. Call-and-response singing is
the norm, and the meters are mostly duple. Exceptions are few; the bl song
Man Pa Te La Man Rive from Martinique is in triple meter (see Example 4.3),
and the Canto Dugu from Honduras is in compound duple meter.
As we can see, the rhythmic figures mentioned above do indeed link black
musics throughout the Diaspora. Another trait found among pieces from dispa-
rate parts of the Diaspora is the nomenclature used in titles, namely, the names

of nations and the types of instruments that characterize the pieces. Examples
of both kinds of titular nomenclature are describedbelow.
It seems that many of the nation dances were part of a complex of African
and Africa-derived practices in the Caribbean that were embraced by the more
general terms. Robert Stevenson (1968) tells, for example,
how jealously the Negroes at Buenos Aires guarded their regional

identities, each nacin banding itself together in a cofrada, herman-
dad, or sociedad. On October 31, 1795, two chiefs of the Nacin Conga,
for instance, petitioned the incoming Viceroy Pedro de Portugal y
Villena for permission to celebrate his formal entry with dances pre-
serving the pure regional styles of Africa, such dances to continue
thereafter every Sunday and feast day afternoon. This petition
stresses the desire not only of the Congo Nation (Nacin Conga) at the
viceroyal capital but of other African nationalities as well to preserve
stylistic authenticity and regional purity of their dances and dance
music. (477; see also Molas1957)
Nation dances were also prevalent in the West Indies, where, for example, in
Grenada both nation dances and Creole dances are embraced by Big Drum cer-
emonies. In Granada, according to ethnomusicologist Lorna McDaniel (1986,
197)the nation songs there (Ashanti, for instance), which have a preponder-
ance of African-type formal structural entities, as opposed to the Creole songs,
are performed by single dancers and feature call-and-response elements, paral-
lel thirds and also the short repeated phrase-answer configurations that com-
bine the chorus and leader at the final statement(198).
With respect to genres and forms named after instrumentation, we turn to
the Brazilian batuque. According to Lewis (1992, 33), batuque is an early Brazilian
vernacular form that is characterized as a musical jam session. He says that it
was namedafter
the Bantu batchuque, a type of drum and its accompanying dance.

The music and dances which developed out of these batuques are argu-
ably the most important and characteristic of the Afro-Brazilian per-
formance artforms.
Descriptions of slave batuques from the colonial era frequently
emphasized their erotic nature, since this was shocking and titillat-
ing to the European travelers who witnessed them, but certain other
features were sometimes noted as well. The music was repetitious
or monotonous to European ears and was always accompanied by
dancing. There was enthusiastic interplay between the dancers and
the musicians, involving the whole audience in clapping hands and

singing responses. The sessions were usually held in a circle, with one
or two dancers at a time in the center. Many of these same elements
are found in modern capoeira, in many types of traditional samba
(especially rural and informal varieties), and even in some types of
religious cult activities. During the batuques there were probably both
erotic and spiritual moments, and in some cases perhaps both com-
bined, but there was also a time for the men to take over the circle in
competitions of strength and dexterity (physical and verbal). (3334)
According to Schreiner (1993, 40, 41), the word batuque is a synonym for a large
number of African dances in Brazil; it is a general term for communal singing,
dancing and music-making that contain variants such as coco, semba, samba,
and other Brazilian dances.
Whereas batuque seems to have been an all-embracing name for music-and-
dance forms in Latin America, or at least in Brazil, the term calinda may have
played a similar role in the West Indies. Even within the context of the various
name forms of calindakalenda, kalinda, and calendathe descriptions of these
dances sometimes match and sometimes do not. But the name, whatever its
form, appeared early in Caribbean colonial history and in Trinidad during that
island nations French period.
According to anthropologist Robert Witmer (1995,46),
Before the 20th century, calinda was an important avenue for the
expression of inter-group rivalries and the attainment of intra-group
prestige. Stick-fighters were also renowned as composers of taunt-
ing songs used during the battles, and as leaders of roving bands of
sometimes unruly adherents. The musical and competitive aspects
of calinda influenced the development of calypso and some of its
associated Carnival practices in Trinidad.
To date, Martinique is an overseas region of France. One of its most popular

genres, bl, is a term that is West Indian Creole but derived from the French
bel air, which means pretty tune. Anthropologist Julian Gerstin, who spent
twenty-two months in Martinique observing, interviewing, performing, and
studying with performers, dancers, and other culture bearers, reports that this
Creole song-and-dance form took its present basic form during the first half
of the nineteenth century (1998, 125)although it now takes various regional
forms. For example, Gerstin cites the bl of Sainte-Marie (a town on Martiniques
Atlantic coast) as having been danced by four couples who, after forming a ring,
broke off into two separate quadrilles, each danced by two couples. Although
quadrilles were originally danced by the French aristocracy, they became popular
in locales throughout the circum-Caribbean, as we will see shortly.

Gerstin describes the bl ensemble as an African percussion ensemble stripped

down to its essence:call-and-response singing, one drummer, and one supporting
percussion player (but sometimes, and infrequently, two) who combine the roles
of lead and support drums found in larger Caribbean and African ensembles, play-
ing both repeating patterns and, at appropriate moments, energizing variations
and transitional figures (12526). Sometimes this instrumentation is augmented
with a metal shaker. The bl recorded on the Africa in America collection, which
uses two drums and an idiophone constructed of bamboo that is played with two
sticks called tibwa, is based on the rhythm transcribed in Example4.3.5
Example 4.3: Example of rhythm in Man Pa Te La Man Rive
(a)
(b)
To some degree and in some fashion, these early music-and-dance forms and all
their derivatives had their origins in the African dance ring, continued to exist out-
side Africa in the sacred circumstance of the ring shout, and are still extant among
certain black church denominations. Sociologist Katrina Hazzard-Donald points to
the survival of the ring in the ships that brought enslaved Africans to the Americas
and on a Virginia plantation where in a death bed ritual the counterclockwise
circle was invoked among slaves (Hazzard-Donald 1996, 29). Apparently, accord-
ing to Hazzard-Donald, circle dancing was unknown to Europeans, but line for-
mations, which were also ever-present in African societies, were known by them
and, in the Americas, supported [the] European-African assimilation that was
essential to the formation of American identity (30). Line formationsamong
which were quadrille, cotillion, the jig, the longways dances, and othersoften
reflect some other aspect of the society such as organization of labor, movement
performed while working, the distribution of power and status or the organiza-
tion of mating patterns (31). Line dancing among African Americans reflected
the line forms of communal labor (such as barge pulling, ditch digging, the picking
lines of harvest time), while the Europe-derived line dances conveyed a sense of
social rank, with the lineups based on a variety of criteria(31).
Of the European social dances that African bondsmen encountered,

the type most frequently performed is believed to be the longways

dances. These dances go on to be renamed country-dance or contra-

dance. These dances involve the use of two lines facing each other as
in the Virginia Reel. For Whites in the United States, these dances
virtually eclipse all others in popularity. When one examines a popu-
lar dance instruction book of the 1700s one finds 918 dances. Some
904 of them are longways dances. The various line and square for-
mations were familiar to both Europeans and Africans, but equally
importantly were the other elective affinities in the line dances from
the very different African and European cultures.(32)
Regarding line dancing, Hazzard-Donald writes:
In many West African dances a change in the movement is indi-

cated, signaled or called by the lead drum. This technique can be
observed throughout West African dance, in the dances of Senegal
such as Mandian[i], and in the sacred Yoruba dances for the Orisha
performed in the Caribbean. Sometime[s] the change is signaled by
a high pitched, stac[c]ato sque[a]ling sound from one of the female
dancers; or change is signa[l]ed by the use of a whistle. The role of
the African drummer/caller who signals changes in the movement is
similar to the role of the square dance caller out who verbally and
musically signals changes in the dance step. The use of this technique
strengthened the existence of the line formation among African
Americans; and one can observe the use of the traditional caller to
organize movement in the African American line dance known as the
Madison popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s.(32)
Pointing out that black callers called the figures and steps for black and white
dances, Hazzard-Donald suggests an African provenance for calling, since it did
not [then] exist in the European dance forms, and since Africans frequently acted
as fiddlers for White dances, and since African bondsmen were familiar with
calling and improvisation from a variety of African cultures (32). Moreover,
with their own line dance tradition in their cultural memory, Africans took
up and transformed European reels and Quadrilles into what would eventu-
ally become the African-American line dance tradition since, according to
Hazzard-Donald, unlike the sacred circle, the line, common and familiar to
both Whites and Blacks[,]could be taken up by Africans and developed without
either violating any existing sacred norms or raising the white folks curiosity
and suspicion(34).
Szwed and Marks (1988) discuss African Americans transformation of
European country dances into their own versions, treating the quadrille, cotil-
lion, contradance, and other forms from the seventeenth century onward
that had been transplanted to the Americas. They speak of quadrille songs

becoming part of the mechanism for possession, of the ritual occasion

becoming masked, of dance suites and set dances becoming associated
with the spirits of ancestors, and of the quadrille, in St. Croix, Virgin Islands,
being danced in the streets instead of indoors (29). Lamenting the uneven
documentation of the Afro-American dances from this period, Szwed and
Marks (29) hypothesize that it may be possible for dance scholars to recover
some of the dance from the music and musical descriptions alone (29) since,
in this tradition, the dance is embedded within the music. The European set
dances as performed by African Americans throughout the Caribbean consist
of four or more figures, the last or concluding dance in a set, according to
Szwed and Marks, is usually a local form, perhaps turning European per-
formances into Afro-American ones as they progress (30). Whether or not
this procedure indicates the chronological order of the appearance of each
dance in the culture, or whether it is best considered as a kind of turning
into process, it is remarkably like, and probably related to, the European-to-
African-American progression of the two-part rituals of the Caribbean, which
Ishall describe in the chapter following, and like the dirge-to-jazz progression
of New Orleans brass-band funeral processions. Among these European-to-
African-American dances are the Jamaican quadrille (pronounced katreel
or kachrilla linguistic creolization also suggesting scotch reel), a set of
which contains five or six dances, including the waltz, polka, schottische,
vaspian, mazurka, jig, chass, balanc, and promenade, and whose finish is
often reserved for a Jamaican form such as shay-shay or mento. The mento is
a looser, hotter form, with certain parallels to Trinidadian calypso (30). The
Virgin Islands dances include Seven Step, which is accompanied by a scratch
band of fife, banjo, maracas, and a rhythm that gets freer as it proceeds
(30). In Belize, bruckdown prevails; its sets are sometimes threaded together
by percussion interludes with rhythms suggestive of Martiniquais cadence
drumming(30).
Around the turn of the eighteenth century, as the contradanza was trans-
formed into the danza, and in 1879, as the danza was transformed into the dan-
zn, both the cinquillo and tresillo rhythmic complexes were present.6 As John
Santos notes, the clave rhythm is essential in the contradanza, the danza, and the
danzn; moreover, it is still the foundation of present day Latin music (Santos
1982, 1). The similarities between the cinquillo and clave rhythms will be evident
in the example of the clave rhythm (Example4.4).
Example 4.4: Example of clave rhythm

In the creation of the danzn, the Cuban danza apparently merged with the
son afrocubano (hence, the danzn), which soon after 1879 became celebrated as
the National Dance of Cuba (Santos 1982, 2).7 In its early form, the son was a
flexible structure consisting of two sections:the introduction, made up of four
eight-syllable stanzas, and the montuno, in which some of the instrumentalists
improvise.8 In the montuno section, the bass becomes more syncopated, and the
rhythm is more flexible.
Later and more developed danznes, which had three sections, were per-
formed by bands called orquestas tpicas. Although danznes may have been part
of the Cuban musical landscape as early as the 1850s, the first to be published
Las Alturas de Simpson (Simpson Heights, a neighborhood in Matanzas,
Cuba), which was composed by the black composer and cornetist Miguel Falde
Prez (18521921)appeared in 1879 and was more recently reprinted in Helio
Orovios Diccionario de la msica Cubana (1992, 140).9 The three sections of Las
Alturas de Simpson are Introduction, Clarinet Trio, and Metal Trio, and its
structure suggests the ensembles instrumentation and gives some indication of
how it enhanced the form of the son (Santos 1982,2).
In his orquesta tpica, Falde Prez had these instruments at his disposal:a
cornet, a valve trombone, a figle (ophicleide, in English), two clarinets in C,
two violins, a contrabass, timbales, and a giro (Sublette 2004, 247). In mod-
ern performances, however, listeners will not be surprised by instrumental
substitutionsanother low instrument to take the place of the ophicleide or
a trumpet instead of the cornet, for example. Iencourage readers to listen to
the recording of Las Alturas de Simpson, as performed by Orquesta Tpica
de Enrique Pea and produced by Andrew Schloss on the album: The Cuban
Danzn:Its Ancestors and Descendants (Ethnic Folkways Records, FE4066).
About two decades ago, I wrote about this danzn in an article on Diaspora
aesthetics, an excerpt from which I revisit below (Floyd 1998).
The fundamental structure of the piece is of three primary linear

musical sections defined by key, melody, harmony, rhythm, and tone
color. Each of these sixteen-bar-long sections features in its turn the
timbres of the Introduction, the Clarinet Trio, and the Metal Trio, the
Asection (Introduction), which is repeated as indicated in the sche-
matic, presenting the combined sounds of the full ensemble, the B
section based on the characteristic sound of the clarinets, and the C
strain projecting the equally characteristic sounds of the brass. The
form is rendered as follows:
A [8 bars] full ensemble
A (repeated)
B [16 bars] clarinettrio
A full ensemble

A (repeated)
B clarinettrio
A
A
C metal (brass)trio
A
A
C
As the performers move through the A, B, and C sections they define the charac-
ter of each, not only through the timbres of the clarinet trio, metal trio, and full
ensemble presentations but also by varying the overall range, rhythmic activity,
and density of each sectionboth as instructed by the composer and through
their own embellishments and improvisations. Variations in tone color are noted
in the opening of the piece, with a single cornet sounding three staccato notes as
the pickup to the full ensembles statement of the A theme, the mingled timbre
of which contrasts boldly with the single color of the cornets notes. The cinquillo
rhythm appears first in the third full measure, and then again in measures 5, 6,
and 7. The spaces of the sections that follow contrast the ensembles conglomer-
ate sound with the more specific and softly penetrating color of the clarinet trio
in B and the equally specific, brassy, and martial sound of the brass in the tresillo-
based C section. Also contrasted is the relatively rapid rhythmic activity of A with
the longer-notes of B; C strikes a balance, vis--vis degree of rhythmic activity,
between A and B. The changes in tone color between the sections are not abrupt
but gradual in two senses: the clarinet trio, already playing in the full ensemble
when its turn comes, simply emerges naturally, as featured instruments from the
mix; the metal trios entries are foreshadowed by the emergence at the end of each
appearance of the A section in bar 7, of a single solo cornet as a pickup to bar 8.
Soaring over the mix, it is joined by its compatriots as the C section begins. The
solo cornet performs this same gesture at the end of every B (clarinet trio) section,
introducing thereby the reformation of the full ensemble. The final statement of
the C section features an improvised statement by the cornet and a complemen-
tary clarinet obbligato. In the accompaniment, throughout, the cinquillo rhythm
is frequently sounded, sometimes quite persistently, as in the brass trio sections
(4246).
Like Cuba, Puerto Rico is an Isle of Rhythm. The Puerto Rican danza, a genre
for orchestra, for piano solo or voice, romantic or festive in nature, is said to
have originated with upper-class society in the second half of the nineteenth
century, but its pedigree is controversial. According to Bloch (1973, 37):
Toms Milin traces the danzas expressive syncopation to a dance

from the Spanish province of Extremadura, the caballerezca, and to a

Moorish dance in ancient Murcia; while Augusto Rodrguez is attach-

ing considerable importance to the upa, a dance which came to Puerto
Rico from Cuba around 1840. However, it is with Julin Andinos
La Margarita that the particular rhythm of the Puerto Rican
danza first appears, or, according to Amaury Veray, with Un Viaje a
Bayamn by Manuel G.Tavrez, in or before1870.
Manuel (1994, 253) agrees that the Puerto Rican danza has its origins in the
1840s, adding that the genre developed when the Cuban contradanza was
exported to Puerto Rico under various names, including upa, merengue, and
ultimately, danza10 (253). In the transformation, it retained (with elabora-
tion) the basic formal structure, distinctive isorhythms, choreography, and pan-
social, protean popularity of its Cuban model, although it acquired a distinctly
Puerto Rican character (253). But it was markedly distinct from the archaic
and formal Spanish contradanza (254) and from the simpler Cuban contradanza,
according to Manuel. Although the origin of the Puerto Rican danza seems some-
what obscure, what seems to be clear is that the danza reached its zenith with
the AfroPuerto Rican composer Juan Morel Campos (18571896), Puerto
Ricos greatest 19th-century composer (Bloch 1973, 38), who is said to have
composed 283 examples of the genre, some popular, some for concert perfor-
mances. Although pianist Jess Mara Sanrom recorded fifty of these danzas on
the occasion of the composers hundredth birthday, several of Morel Camposs
pieces remain unpublished.
And here also is an example of the influence of the Moors of Spain on American
music, recalling the Black Moor Ziryab, the Blackbird; Mabed, the dexterously
talented singer and composer; and Oraib, the singer and prolific composer of
song whom Imentioned in Chapters2 and 3.According to Ian Gibson (1989, 284,
291), Cuban musics Andalusian roots were recognized by several authorities on
Cuban music, including Fernando Ortiz, the leading expert on Afro-Cuban cul-
ture in the middle of the twentieth century. The writings Ive examined by Ortiz
seem to agree with Gibsons notion of an Andalusian influence on Cuban music
but not with specific confirmation. Yet the reference to Murcia in the quotation,
above, from Bloch, if its attribution is accurate, is fair evidence of such influence,
for we know that in the ninth century Murcia was taken over by the Moors and
in the eleventh became an independent Moorish kingdom.
A similar Afro-European influence on music in Haiti and the Dominican
Republic seems far less demonstrable, since there also seems to be no early record
of blacks in European nations other than Spain performing or composing music
that had been influenced by African sources. Because of a late start for Afro-
European music in Haiti, compared to black music making in Spain, not until
centuries after Ziryab, Mabed, and Oraib do we begin to learn about the devel-
opment of music in these two nations that share an island. At various points

in the histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Dominican merengue
and the Haitian mringue emerged as highly popular national dances, in folk
and stylized versions alike (Roberts 1998; Manuel 1988, 4246). Although the
merengue is considered to be the national dance of the Dominican Republic, its
pedigree is uncertain
and its evolutionary relationship with the Haitian mringue and with
Puerto Rican, Colombian, and Venezuelan namesakes is ambiguous.
The genre appears to have become popular in the Dominican Republic
in the early-nineteenth century, and by the mid-nineteenth century
it had assumed its classic form as a dance song in fast quadratic meter
with an accompanying ensemble of tambora (a double-headed drum),
giro (or gira), and a guitar or cuatro.(43)
Apparently, the Haitian mringue derived from the contredanse, as did also twen-
tieth-century popular musics such as compas; and the Cuban danzn strongly
influenced the mambo, cha cha ch, and song; and 19th-century salon and
rural Dominican merengue evolved into 20th-century pop merengue (Austerlitz
1993, 71). In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where a negrophobic ideology
has led many to refer to themselves euphemistically as indios or indios oscuros
(dark-skinned Indians), (Manuel, Bilby, and Largey 2006, 5), the mereng is
based on a five-note rhythm, or quintuplet, known in French as a quintolet and
in Spanish as cinquillo . While the concert mereng tended to use the synco-
pated version, Haitian piano soloists, like Ludovic Lamothe, tended to play the
quintolet more like five even pulses, giving the mereng a smoother, subtler feel
(158). On the island of Trinidad, calypso and carnival dominate the scene, and
bongo dancing is also populara dance in which participants take turns danc-
ing in the center of a ring while others sing or play drums (as in Puerto Rican
bomba and Cuban rumba) (218). In the Virgin Islands, there is quelbe, reput-
edly and colloquially a fusion of bamboula rhythms and chants, cariso songs,
European military fife and drum music, and the various quadrille, minuet, and
jig dances (Copemann 2004).11 Originated by self-taught musicians, who
usually played with home-made instruments, there eventually evolved quelbe
bands, the earliest of which included flute and bass drum. Next, the pipe (a
shaped, cylindrical tube that was blown) was added, then the triangle, and then
guitar(s) and banjo. More recently the saxophone joined the mix, and in the
seventies came the electric bass, which replaced the pipe, and finally the conga
drum (Copemann 1991, 4950).
Rituals of African derivation have in large part governed or heavily influ-
enced the overall formal aspect of the music of the black diaspora of the circum-
Caribbean, and African song style has determined the nature of its vocal delivery.
Vocally nontense, textually repetitious, lacking in melodic embellishment,

noncomplex, relaxed, cohesive, multileveled, and leader-oriented, it is dis-

tinctly African (Lomax 1975, 46)within a framework in which more general
African characteristics have been retained, writes Peter Manuel, including
an emphasis on rhythm and percussion; overlapping call-and-response vocal
format; linear, open-ended forms as opposed to closed, sectional song format;
repetition of short melodic and/or harmonic units; frequent association of
music and dance; and the use of certain African-derived instruments like conga
drums (1988, 25). All of this music exists within the timbral mosaic of the
heterogeneous sound ideal named and described by Olly Wilson, the sonic stew
of contrasting and competing sounds that morph between and among voices,
instruments, and body sounds, all in more or less complex musico-aesthetic
manifestations.
The religious practices were rife with song-and-dance forms. In Jamaica, for
example, in the midnineteenth century, blacks performed a variety of ceremo-
nies including, for example, Kumina, inwhich
three drummers were seated on their instruments, which were turned

on their sides. Two of them played rock steadily, keeping to a single,
unvarying heartbeat pattern. On top of this, the lead drummer cre-
ated excitement with skillful improvisations. All of the drummers
used their heels against the skins to vary thepitch.
Next to them was a center pole, through which certain spir-
its, summoned by the drums, could travel on their way to the bod-
ies of the dancers they chose to possess. Around this center, a ring
of dancers slowly rotated with a gentle counterclockwise motion.
Throughout the night, this circle continued to revolve in time, con-
tracting or expanding as dancers left and were replaced by others.
The combination of sound and motion was subtle and beautiful. Even
when the drumming became especially hot, lifting the excitement
to a new peak, the dancing remained cool, graceful, and disciplined,
with only an occasional disruption whenever one of the dancers bod-
ies, suddenly seized by a visiting spirit, was thrown temporarily into
convulsions.
As daybreak neared, the goat made its final appearance, borne on
the shoulders of one of the drummers. Moving into the ring, the
man danced the goat several revolutions around the center pole, wav-
ing a machete in his hand. The air was filled with one of the African
country songs of Kumina. (Manuel etal. 2006,182)
In another ceremony, a contemporary observer, saw traditional African sac-

rificial and libation rites in which dirges were sung in solo-chorus call-and-
response, and bands of African and European instruments resounded as

participants made merry with feasting and debauchery12 (Stewart [1808]

1971, 251). This dancing was based on what musicologist Robin Moore has
described as independent and multi-part body movement, large gestures, vir-
tuosic display, improvisation, and allowance for the development of individual
style (Moore 1989, 185). These traits alone would have caused Europeans to
consider them lascivious and lewd, even in the absence of gestures sexually
offensive, since those who danced them were much more demonstrative than
the dancers of quadrilles, cotillions, and contradances that had been brought to
the Americas by Europeans. They appeared as lewd to the whites who danced
primarily with their feet and legs and not also with their torsos and shoulders,
as did the Africans. The dancing of the Africans would naturally be accompanied
by the grunts, moans, hums, vocables, and other paralinguistic gestures of the
ring; and these, too, were described in negative terms. These paralinguistic ones
offended the Europeans, some of whom described the sounds as savage and of
the jungle. The ignorance of the Europeans was understandable, for they had
come to believe that they were truly superior to those whose skin color, dress,
and languages were different from their own.
In Jamaican oral literature, tricksters are plentiful, the Anansi stories being
the most popular.13 This spider character, imported to the Americas by the Akan-
Asante,14 Hausa, and other peoples, has some of the behaviors of Brer Rabbit
and the Signifying Monkey of North American trickster lore, both of whom are
able to overcome their stronger foes through cunning and guile. The Jamaican
tale Anansi Cycle 1 is similar to the tale of the Signifying Monkey; in it, Anansi
avoids becoming a meal for Bredda Tiger by tricking him into a compromising
position. Audiences laugh at Anansi as much as with him, as he sometimes gets
the short end of the stick, such as in the tale Pa John Tricks Anansi. Haitis
principle tricksters are the characters Uncle Bouki and Ti Malice, the last-named
known as one whose pitiless teasing is generally considered as clever
and even a bit slick (Jean Price-Mars, quoted in Cobb 1979, 17). Representing
the rhetorical strategies by which the musical genres of the West Indies might
be read, Anansi, Uncle Bouki, Ti Malice, and similar Caribbean tricksters poten-
tially provide effective keys to the interpretation of black vernacular culture in
their respective societies, if not also throughout in the West Indies.
In The Power of Black Music (Floyd 1995b), I adopted Sterling Stuckeys
hypothesis of the ring shout and Henry Louis Gatess theory of Signifyin(g) and
converted and adapted them into a theory of black music, which Ilabel Call/
Response. In the present work, because of the various changes in the location
of the issues under discussion, Esus name is now variously Eleggua, or Exu, or
Eshu-Ellegbara, depending on the location in which he resides. The Signifying
Monkey is there as Anansi the spider:same ring, same muse, different rhetori-
cal strategist and idiom. Anansi dances to something of another beat than his
North-American counterpart, on account of the ubiquity and dominance in

Latin America of the drum and the chronological proximity of its foundation in
the West Indiesa drum with a different and very specialbeat.
So, it is clear, I think, that the music and culture of the isles of rhythm have
been influenced significantly by the music and cultures of African music mak-
ing, and that they mirror them to a large degree. This is also true of other dia-
sporic locations, and it is evident that Africans, slave and free, were both victims
and agents of the making of that Diaspora. The isles of rhythm whose music
Ive discussed in this chapter were populated through seafaring, and the music
flowed from one island to the next by way of sailing ships. In addition, in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries these large seaworthy ves-
sels carried black music makers from the isles of rhythm to the large land masses
of North America and Europe. Black seamen, free and enslaved, were in the thick
of it all, creating what Bolster has called a Black Atlantic maritime tradition
(1997, 62). In the process, black sailors embodied in their lore and lives beliefs
from African cultural traditions, including a belief in the living deadparticu-
larly in water spiritsand created their own water mysteries, probably African
in derivation, such as, for example, that centered around the John Canoe figure,
which was
A prominent mummer at Christmas and Easter festivals in the

Bahamas, Jamaica, and North Carolina [who] wore masks that
revealed the importance of migration and sea-voyaging (both actual
and metaphysical) in slave culture. Anthropologists have noticed
Nigerian rituals closely resembling John Canoe in which headdresses
represent ancestors who had returned to life for the occasion.(65)
Such rituals as the John Canoe celebration, together with others sacred and
secular and more and less complicated, helped to make the African Diaspora
as enslaved Africans spread African cultural traditions throughout the isles of
rhythm by way of sailingships.

5
Ties That Bind
Myth and Ritual in the Circum-C aribbean andBeyond
The Congo African did not have the same view of the natural
and supernatural as the Senegalese , and even neighboring
peoples such as the Ibos, the Yorubas, and the Mahis did not
have common religious traditions. Yet in the strange new land
that was Haiti, the common elements in their religious beliefs
were accented. In time a new composite religious system
emerged. It was called Vodoun.
Harold Courlander
Available to them, therefore, were their own time-tried
expressive forms which now permeated a new folk
ethos:music and dance, the culture of the drums, the
rhetorical and polemic, the entertaining uses of speech and
humor reinvested in new creolized languages. African oral
styles were used to bring together performer and audience,
were often associated with the earthy, the ironic, and the
ridiculous inherent in man's predicament, and at other times
functioned on a basic level to teach, to persuade and to
dissent. In the New World, old underlying forms mixed with
new folk materials, imagery, and symbols to penetrate the
complexities of human existence.
MarthaCobb
In Colonial America, there existed a compelling continuity between and among

the Africa-derived and -influenced musical genres, a continuity perpetuated
by (1)an African cosmology in which God and the lesser gods,1 spirits, and
ancestors dwelt in a nonmaterial, spirit world; and, when this cosmology was
no longer functional, (2)a memory of its myths and rituals. These remembered
practices comprised a complex of elements in which Esu2 open[ed] the way
(Drewal and Drewal 1990, 20) and participants became living gods as they
took on characteristics of the deities who possessed them. The African dra-
matic rituals symbolized interdependence and reciprocity between the human
and spiritual worlds. As Ihave described elsewhere (Floyd 1995b, 2326), this
87

cooperative spiritual exchange relied on the rhythmic stimulation of dance

and musicwith their costumes and storytellingto create states of altered
consciousness. In such rituals, the gods symbolized acts, behaviors, and states
of ontology and epistemology as they stood as metaphors for, and symbols of,
creation, wisdom, caprice, provision, and other behaviors or states of being.
In this scheme of things God stood as a metaphor for generosity and author-
ity, the spirits and the living dead for regeneration and inevitability, and the
system as a whole for the nature of being. The term spiritual is a symbol for
African mythology; rituals perpetuate mythology and religion.3
Walter Pitts has described Afro-Baptist church rituals as having two distinct
metaphoric frames that join to produce the ritual syntax, or structure (1993,
31), going on to explain that the first frame is a prayerful devotion in which
European language forms prevail, and the second is a celebratory event in which
African-American, sermonic speech forms predominate, leading, in some degree
and in some cases, to possession. Martha Ellen Davis (1987, 40) describes the
Haitian Vodou ceremony as a two-part structure that provides contexts for the
preservation of both European and African cultural elements within single
Caribbean religious musical events. Afro-Cuban author Alberto Pedro describes
caolinas as a two-part secular ritual that takes place among Haitians and Cubans
during preparations for Holy Week (1967, 5253).4 In these events the singing
of a merengue in call-and-response fashion is followed by a section consisting of
a rara dance in a faster tempo.
Another two-part ritual structure was found among enslaved Africans in
Jamaica at the turn of the eighteenth century, in which tookplace
various ceremonies; among which is the practice of pouring libations,

and sacrificing a fowl on the grave of the deceased; a tribute of respect
they afterwards occasionally repeat. During the whole of the ceremony,
many fantastic motions and wild gesticulations are practised, accompa-
nied with a suitable beat of their drums, and other rude instruments,
while a melancholy dirge is sung by a female, the chorus of which is
performed by the whole of the other females with admirable precision,
and full toned, and not unmelodious voices. This species of barbarous
music is indeed more enchanting to their ears than all the most exqui-
site notes of a Purcell or a Pleyel; and however delighted they might
appear to be with the finest melody of our bands, let them but hear at
a distance the uncouth sounds of their own native instruments, and
they would instantly fly from the one to enjoy the other. When taught
to sing in the European style, the negro girls have an expression and
melody little inferior to the finest voice of a white female.
When the deceased is interred, the plaintive notes of sympathy
and regret are no longer heard; the drums resound with a livelier beat,

T ie s Th a t Bin d 89
the song grows animated and cheerful; dancing and apparent merri-
ment commences, and the remainder of the night is spent in feasting
and riotous debauchery. (Stewart [1808] 1971, 25051)5
Such two-part structures, which probably derived from the African ring ritual,
are common throughout the Americas in a family of religions that include Vodou
(Haiti), Macumba and Candombl (Brazil), Santera and Lucum (Cuba), Cumina
(Jamaica and other locations), and Shango and Shouter rites (Trinidad).6 The
first of these, Vodou, represents a reblended Africa, according to Robert Farris
Thompson, in which the classical religions of Kongo, Dahomey, and Yorubaland
are conflated with the meanings of the saints of the Catholic Church, ultimately
creating a creole religion (1984, 164).
Davis (1987, 43)reports that the Haitian Vodunevent
opens with Catholic prayers of the rosary (the cantique), recited

or sung in French to invoke the spiritual presence and blessing of
European deities. Upon its conclusion, the ritual moves into the
next phase, sung in Creole and accompanied by drumming, in which
the same is done for both the African-derived or African-influenced
deities and the Creole deities. The drumming invokes the deities
and invites them to present and express themselves through spirit
possession.
The gods appear at particular points in the ceremony in possession of their

horse, which, according to Walker (1980),
involves the displacement by the deity of one of the constituent parts

of the individuals personality, the one responsible for the persons
will and executive functions. The individual is no longer considered
to be him or herself, but has become the god. In fact, the possessed
individual is not even considered to be present since his or her normal
personality and behavior have been replaced by that of the Orisha
or Loa. The individual does not remember the possession experience
and people talk of the presence and behavior of a particular spiritual
being at a ceremony without mentioning the person who incarnated
him or her. Thus, the identity between human and superhuman is
complete. (2829)
Relevant to our discussion here is the notable fact that every loa has its par-
ticular rhythm, that is, its specific beat, the ordering principle of this apparently
disordered ecstasy becomes visible. The drummers change the rhythm and beat
a yanvalou in order to honour Legba (Odette Rigaud, quoted in Jahn 1961,

3839). Legba is the key, as Katherine Dunham (1969, 120) learned as a Vodou
initiate, for he is
polynational, serving, among others, Yorubas, Arada-Dahomeans,

Ibos, Nagos, Congos, as gatekeeper or spirit intermediary between
humans and true gods. He seems to be as strict as Saint Peter in judg-
ing entry into the promised land, but, by reputation, he is easily bribed
or cajoled. At our ceremony a small clay mound represented Legba.
This conical mound may have been a token phallus, as Ihave heard
that Legba is noted for a remarkably outstanding generative organ. In
the Haitian hills, offerings to Legba are in close competition in popu-
larity with those to Gued:canarisearthenware jugs of wateror
food under a doorpost, or two forked posts with a cross-bar.
In Vodou,
Every loa has its vv, or coat of arms, but different symbols such as
circles, triangles, zig-zag designs and other signs, resembling those of
our freemasons, can also be combined. The outlines or symbols of the
animals one intends to sacrifice are also painted in, and so one gets a
large vv, a figured, symmetrical composition, which one might call
the programme, the artistic plan of the coming ceremony. Therefore
also, in the course of the ceremony, a libation is repeatedly made at
various points of the vv, in order to ascertain at what place in the
ceremony one is at the moment and what is to come. (Jahn 1961,35)
Vv, Dahomean in origin and European in style, have the function of summoning
the loa they symbolize. But other objects too can symbolize loa and partake of
their sacred nature. The mere attributessabre of Ogu, crutch of Legba, wrought-
iron snake of Damballah, cross of Baron-Samediare enough to convey identity
(Mtraux 1959, 166). According to Jahn (1961, 43), Damballah is the loa of fertil-
ity. He lives in springs and swamps. His sign is the snake, and whoever is ridden by
him hisses like a snake, creeps about on the ground in snake-like curves, climbs up
the rafters, and hangs, head downward, from the beams of the roof. And even the
people who do not become possessed by the Orishas or Loas participate in their
glory and power through direct and close interaction with them in the new social
dynamic that develops for the occasion (Walker 1980, 31).
In Vodou rituals and some other related ones, herbs, charms, and divina-
tions from Kongo, Angola, and Yoruba peoples joined or coexisted to provide
the spiritual needs of transplanted Africans. Kongo people lacked a complicated
pantheon but possessed a system of medicines whose healing powers were con-
trolled by the king, by medicine men, and by sorcerers. As in other societies with

similar systems, evil people or spirits were said to cause illness, and medicine
men used herbs, sacrifices, chants, and magic to exorcise it. Sorcerers used simi-
lar practices to attack the vitality of man [sic] by the casting of spells and by
poisoning but medicine men could lift these spells (Haskins 1990, 3738). Says
Thompson (1984, 107),
versions of some of the ritual authorities responsible for Kongo herb-

alistic healing and divination appeared in the Americas and served
as avatars of Kongo and Angola lore in the New World. Kongo ritual
experts in Cuba took the appropriate ancient name banganga; those
in the United States were known largely as conjurors and root-
persons; and others in Brazil were called pae de santo and mae de
santo, names apparently originating in Yoruba worshipbabalorisha
and iyalorisha, father of the saint and mother of the saint.
The basic Vodou dance is the yanvalou, an invocation for the gods to present
themselves. The drums regulate the service, polymetrically governing it, and the
houngans (the male priests), with their sacred assons (rattles), guide and super-
vise it (Jahn 1961, 39). For in the Vodou ceremony all is ordered:
the loas can only mount the dancers when one after the other is
called by the specific beat of the orchestra of drums. If an uncalled
loa, a bossal or wandering loa should mistakenly manifest itselfan
occurrence that is considered unluckythe orchestra plays a mazon,
a leave-taking rhythm, which at once makes the bossal leave his
choual again. Also if a loa stays too long and disturbs the meeting,
by letting the dancer he is riding create a disturbancean extremely
rare occurrencea mazon is played. (Jahn 1961,39)
On the night of August 14, 1791, in a very special ceremony, the loas took full
control, as practitioners of Vodou called on the loas to give them the powers of
hypnotic engagement. This event sparked the Haitian Revolution of 1791.
The Bwa Kayiman ceremony that took place the night of August
14, one week before the general slave revolt of August 21, 1791, is
generally accepted as the first tangible contribution of Vodun to the
liberation of the Haitian people (Rigaud 1953). It was the primary,
concrete response to the social conditions of colonial St. Domingue.
It was indeed a bold strike toward freedom. Vodun has always been
a religion of action in the sense that results could be seen in a tan-
gible way and often in a rather short time. In this regard, during the
colonial period the slaves organized in the mountains and struck for

freedom at the appropriate moment. But this strategic action could

not be envisaged without the memory of the Bwa Kayiman ceremony
appearing first. (Fleurant 1996,21)7
During the period of colonization and viceroyalty, when enslaved Africans

practiced Vodou most intensely, Catholicism maintained a degree of tolerance
toward it, but Protestantism was its enemy, pursuing it with tenacious hatred
and admitting none of the compromises with which the Catholic Church adapts
itself (Mtraux, quoted in Jahn 1961, 55). The hostility remains in most quar-
ters, but Sheila S. Walker (1980) gives an example that reveals similarities
between Vodou and black Pentecostalism:
The Afro-American preacher orchestrates the ceremony, raising reli-

gious feelings to a high pitch receptive to the coming of the Holy
Ghost, or cooling them down just as the African, Afro-Brazilian or
Haitian priest or priestess calls and sends away the Orisha, Vodou or
Loa. In both ceremonial situations there is a sentiment of community
support, and special people are designated to watch over those who
have received the spirit.
Both the Holy Ghost and the African gods dance in the persons of
their devotees, often giving them a physical agility that they might
be hard put to manifest under more usual circumstances. Both also
speak through their devotees, in the one case speaking in unknown
tongues, characteristic of Pentecostals, and in the other speaking
what is said to be an esoteric African language that only trained
priests and priestesses can interpret. In both cases feelings of insight,
renewal and increased well-being follow.
Although the Orisha, the Vodous and the Loa have found no dev-
otees in United States Protestantism, Afro-Americans have created
a style of Protestantism that conforms to a culturally transmitted
worldview predicated on the possibility and desirability of experienc-
ing a reality beyond that of the everyday and on the intimate nature
of the relationship between human and divine. It is these African
philosophical orientations that form the basis for Black Religion in
its various forms from Africa to America. (3536)
In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois provides another indication that the
separation between Vodou and some brands of African-American Protestantism
is not as clear as some would have it. His knowing and insightful statement
describes the voodoo mans emergence as the Negro preacher:
He early appeared on the plantation and found his function as the

healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of

the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who
rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and
resentment of a stolen and oppressed people. Thus, as bard, physician,
judge, and priest, within the narrow limits allowed by the slave sys-
tem, rose the Negro preacher, and under him the first Afro-American
institution, the Negro church. This church was not at first by any
means Christian nor definitely organized; rather, it was an adaptation
and mingling of heathen rites among the members of each plantation,
and roughly designated as Voodooism. Association with the masters,
missionary effort and motives of expediency gave these rites an early
veneer of Christianity, and after the lapse of many generations the
Negro church became Christian. (1979 [1903],196)
Also having much in common with African-American charismatic sects in the

United States are the Spiritual Baptists, or Shouters, of Trinidad, who share
traits and practices with Haitian Vodou and Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian cults
(Simpson 1966, 537). For example, in Trinidads Shango and Shouter religions,
the African gods are called powers, and they have markings that are similar to
vv. These spiritual writing symbols record on the floor or walls of the church
messages received during services by church officials (543). Possession takes
place, but the Shouters are possessed by the Holy Spirit, not by loa.
In Brazil, according to McGowan and Pessanha (1991),
West African gods, the orixs, were secretly worshiped behind Catholic
ceremonies. When slaves prayed to a statue of the Virgin Mary, they
were often actually thinking of Iemanj, the goddess of the sea; Saint
George might represent Ogun, god of iron and warriors; Saint Jerome
could stand in for Xang, god of fire, thunder, and justice; and Jesus
Christ might really signify Oxal, the god of the sky and universe.
Catholicism, with its abundance of saints, meshed well with the orix
tradition and inadvertently sheltered it. Followers of macumba and
umbanda today still use plaster-cast figures of Catholic saints to fill in
for the orixs in their ceremonies.(22)
In the Gulf of Mexico, things were different. Although in Cuba the Santera cor-
responds roughly to Voodoo the same could be said of the Voodoo of Haiti,
for Voodoo and Santera spring from different, neighbouring and friendly sects
of the same religion. The Santera honours the orisha (Cuba: orichas), who corre-
spond to the loas of Haiti (Jahn 1961, 62).8 The Santera priest, Jahn writes, is
called babalao after the babalawo, the oracle priest of the Ifa cult in Yorubaland,
from whom the Haitian high priest, the papaloa, also derives his name (1961,
62). The writer goes on to say that, as is the case with Legba in Haiti, so in Cuba
also the god of the roads, Ellgua or Ech is the first to be summoned when

the ceremony begins (63).9 His emblems are bits of iron, nails, chains and keys,
for he opens gates and doors to good as well as to evil (64). In the pantomimic
dances of Cuban Santera, the
gestures, steps, costumes and symbols are as carefully planned

as ballets. They were created by the Yoruba, an artistic people, said
to be the best choreographers in Africa and possessing a highly dra-
matic mythology, as rich in narrative and as developed as the Graeco-
Roman. Their allegorical movements are so highly stylized that the
uninitiated are unable to understand them without interpretation. In
fact, these religious dances of the Yoruba are much more than ballets,
for there is always the singing as well, and in some cases the poetry
of the songs is like a mythological parable which the faithful hear and
which they find represented in the pantomime of the dance. (Ortiz,
quoted in Jahn 1961, 6465)10
Up to this point, I have discussed various circum-Caribbean music-and-dance

forms as they relate to sacred practices. Cuban rumba, however, is a secular
event, but, as a music-and-dance form, it deserves mention as well. In her book
Rumba:Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba (1995), dancer and dance
scholar Yvonne Daniel has analyzed the development of both Rumba as an
event and rumba, the dance/music complex, with their variations and innova-
tions since 1959 (21). As a dancing and observing participant, she took part
in rumba events in various locations, and as a researcher she interviewed other
participants, documenting her observations and the views of her informants.
In the telling of the first time she saw rumba, beginning with the participants
preparation for the dance and their moving into the dance proper, she describes
activities that occurred when, part way through thedance:
The rumba music shifted subtly, becoming faster, but the same dance
movements prevailed. The two dancers watched each other, min-
iaturizing the basic movements momentarily as they sensed each
other, the calls of the drums and the singers, and the impend-
ing choreographed attack. At that moment, no one knew exactly
what was about to happen in the repetitive, undulating, intermit-
tently vibrating kinesthetic exchange. They danced close to one
another, he reached to embrace her waist lightly, and both dancers
deepened their knee bends even farther toward the ground together.
They twisted from side to side and came upward. The man reached to
hold the womans shoulders, bouncing his knees together with wide
rebounds. The woman was standing almost upright, slightly tilted
and bent forward, noticeably alert, when suddenly there was a pelvic

thrust from the man, even from his low position. The dancing diva
gracefully but speedily slapped her skirt over her pelvic area, smiled,
and spun around, leaving the man undimmed, pleased, and eager to
advanceagain.
Several other couples took turns looking for the possibilities of the
pelvic thrust, or vacunao. Sometimes it was not the pelvis or hips
but a foot, a hand, even a scarf, that made the maless [sic] symbolic
vaccination of the female. No matter what body part was used, the
dancers reveled in mounting the attack and in preparing a defense.
Some women came into the circle laughing, holding only one side of
their skirts, almost daring the men to attempt a vacunao. When the
accented gesture happened, the women adeptly covered themselves
with their hands or skirts. (Daniel 1995,45)
There was more to her description, of course, but the part of her description
quoted here appears to have been the high point of the event and will serve
as our point of departure for a discussion of rumba as ritual. The activity
described above took place at the beginning of an apparently two-part struc-
ture that began with a slow, repetitive basic rhythm (2) played as all three
rumba drums enter, lowest to highest, successively. A singer joins the musi-
cal ecology as the syllabic melisma of the diana, the introductory portion of
rumba singing develops (2). Dancers, rocking and moving to the music of
drums and voice, advance and begin their dance as the hypnotic rhythm accom-
panies their steps and body movements. The dancers sing, with the chorus
in harmony and call-and-response. The claves have entered the mix, and the
tempo begins to increase, the drums speeding it along while the participants
form a circle. A female begins to dance a solo, calling attention to herself with
deft footwork and teasing gestures, and a male dancer slowly sinks toward the
floor with a forward tilt and encircle[s]the dancing diva (3), with both smiling
and dancing apart. Soon the tempo quickens, and the second part of the dance
begins. Several dancers enter the circle, moving separately and challenging one
another; with various displays of virtuosity are offered and much laughter and
much interaction of music, movement, song, speech, and flirtation; then the
event quickly came to an end (46).
The music for rumba is made by the rumba drum trio of conga, segundo, and
quinto, claves, a shaker, and a cat, this last a cylindrical or bamboo instrument
that is played with sticks (81). These instruments accompany the three types
of rumbacolumbia, guaguanc, and yamball of which contain call-and-
response singing in two-and three-part harmony and vocalizing and changes
in timbre [that] draw attention to the songs lyrics, which are alternately songs
of homage to rumberos, patriotic fervor, love, street hollers, Yoruba and Kongo-
Angolan chants, religious and nonsense situations (8081, 85,90).

According to Daniel, rumba is at once passionate and subtle, simple and com-
plex, loose and rigid, improvised, embodying movement, spontaneity, sensu-
ality, sexuality, love, tension, opposition, and both freedom and restraint (1).
Rumba takes form as a dance for couples, as a male solo, and as a dance/music
complex involving specific drumming patterns and instrumentation, special
songs, a particular song form, three basic types of dance, and, above all, elaborate
improvisation (63). Altogether, rumba involves a number of participants, includ-
ing dancers, singers, drummers, and other percussionists.11 Emerging among free
blacks in the middle of the nineteenth century, vernacular rumba has since been
associated with African-American communities in the Americas, and it continues
to be a dance primarily of black or dark-skinned Cubans, with relatively little par-
ticipation by mainstream Cuban society (17). According to Daniel,
Rumba evolved from several dances that can be traced to western,

Central African heritage; particularly, the BaKongo, Lunda, and Luba
of Zaire have been known historically to share dances that focus on a
gradual closeness of male and female dancers and the touching of bel-
lies or thighs. Dances like makuta and yuka, rumbas antecedents
that still survive in Cuba, contain distinct characteristics:a dancing
pair that dances in a circle, independently and yet in relation to one
another; dancing to three drums and a wooden box with commenting
spectators; and particularly the touching of the belly or thighs .
These characteristics became important in the evolution of rumba
style and form, especially the emphasis on the bumping or gesturing
toward the navel. The Bantu words meaning navel or belly button,
mkumba and mukumba seem to link makuta, yuka, and rumba in Cuba
with other Caribbean dances that have similar characteristics.(64)
Less structured in the early days than later, rumba originally was spontane-
ous and inspired, made on the spot, improvised. Later, white Americans and
Europeans began to manipulate, condense, and crystallize the form and, in so
doing, cultivated special voices and technically specific instrumentation to
accompany selected interpretation of dance styles, and framed and packaged the
dance form on stages and special performance patios (65). Then, in 1934, came
George Raft, starring in the film Rumba, and the rest, as they say, is history.
We turn our attention now to yet another music-and-dance form and ritual
of the African Diaspora, samba, as described by professional dancer and journal-
ist, Alma Guillermoprieto. In her book Samba (1991, 8), she claims that samba
and Candombl are the two things slavery had not confiscated and used against
Brazilians of color, and that samba parties almost always followed Candombl
ceremonies. Candombl, together with macumba and umbanda, constitute the
three primary Afro-Brazilian religions, the first Yoruba-based, the latter two
Afro-Catholic with several other African and Amerindian influences.

Guillermoprieto identifies various types of samba as story samba (based on

themes), song samba (slower and rhythmically less emphatic), counterpoint
samba (bossa nova), and call-and-response samba (the earliest form of the
genre; 1991, 23). Apredecessor of this latter form is Jongo, she says, a call-and-
response form that, according to one of Guillermoprietos informants,
was all improvised, and youd make up songs out of any old thing.
When my mother agreed to marry my father, for example, people
made up a song, because she was this great big healthy woman, and all
the strongest, hardest-working men around here would come around
and pay court, and shed turn up her nose. So when she started paying
attention to my father someone improvised a verse like this:A horse
went over the bridge , to which everyone was supposed to answer,
And the bridge didnt even shake! And the the [sic] lead singer would
go, An ox-drawn cart went over the bridge , and everyone would
answer again, And the bridge didnt even shake! And then, because
my father was this little bit of a man, really nothing to look at, the
lead singer would go, Then a mouse went over the bridge , and
everyone would answer, And the whole bridge started to tremble, the
whole bridge started to tremble! And the drums would begin. That
was their courtship song. (4546)
Samba came into Afro-Brazils musical lexicon and oeuvres, as a single and indi-
vidual one among many other vernacular forms, or as having derived from one
or more of several others. Almost certainly, however, it originated in the dance
ring, the roda de samba in which, according to Guillermoprietos informant,
upright stilt-legged figuresstand
in a circle in the late, late night, flattened palms beating together to

underscore the chant; the lead singer improvising another verse for
the chorus to memorize until it takes on the full shape of a song; the
lone dancer spinning toward another to anoint him with the umbigada,
or navel touch, known in Angola as semba, a fertility gesture that
passes the torch of dancing from one member of the circle to another.
(1991,49)
Regarding another Brazilian music-and-dance form, Robert Farris Thompson,

in his foreword to J. Lowell Lewiss Ring of Liberation: Deceptive Discourse in
Brazilian Capoeira (1992, xiv), claims that, of all the martial arts of the Black
Atlantic world, capoeira is supreme. In capoeira, hesays,
Songs in Portuguese accompany the playing of the game, but African

words from Kongo and the ancient cities of the Yoruba are also

sometimes embedded in these songs. Capoeira women and men move

to the resonating beat of one of the oldest instruments on the planet,
the musical bow. They call it berimbau. Judging from details of mor-
phology and play, the berimbau is an elegant creole fusion of impulses
coming into colonial Brazil from Kongo and Angola.
Oblique, wheeling, down, and up, the motions of capoeira are pre-
eminently sub-Saharan in their bearing, though there are exceptions,
notably in recent (atual) or Regional styles of capoeira. But even here
things get ground down by percussive emphasis in the Afro-Atlantic
manner. (Thompson, in Lewis 1992,xi)
Thompsons nutshell description is a good introduction to this sport (game,

fight) in which two dancers and two types of instruments take center stage,
encircled by the spectators, who also participate. Capoeira is an acrobatic Afro-
Brazilian martial-arts dance that is performed to music traditionally made by
a berimbau and tambourines. Contemporary capoeira rodas, according to Lewis,
might include a double clapperless bell, a bamboo scraper, and a large conga-
type drum. Capoeiras format is combat, its object is to control the play space in
order to score a fall, and its end is metaphorical death. Today, a typical ensem-
ble might consist of three bows, two tambourines, one bell, and one atabaque
(Lewis 1992, 138). The order of entry is the lead berimbau, followed, as accom-
panying instruments, by the other musical bows, tambourines, bells, scrapers,
and drums: The supporting instruments do not play cross rhythms, but are
restricted to doubling the beat of the bows, with a few fill-ins and improvisatory
flourishes (138). In playing the berimbau,
a musician lingers on the buzz note, which acts as a drone, and from
which he can move to the high or low tones, forming patterns. In this
guise, the drone buzz can be seen as midway between the two tones, as
the link between opposing forces. Since the buzz itself has no clear
pitch, it can be seen as mediating between noise and tonality, perhaps
as the pretonal matrix from which pitches are born. The sound of the
buzzing berimbaus thus creates a diffuse field out of which the dis-
crete tones and therefore the rhythmic beats seem to emerge.(144)
Claus Schreiner (1993, 66)says in his Msica Brasileira that the berimbau, known
in Africa as uruung, was brought to Brazil by captive Bantus from Angola. His
description of the Bahian version of this instrument and its playing method is
the best Ihave seen, so Iwill quote ithere:
This instrument from the monochordal, or musical bow, family is

made from a bendable stick to whose end a wire is attached. It is

stretched in such a way that the whole construction takes the form
of a hunting bow. Ahollowed-out, half-open gourd is fastened to the
lower third of the bow with the opening turned away from the stick
and facing the player. The fastening chord is tied around both the
stick and wire. The player grasps stick and wire with his left hand,
leaving thumb and index finger, which hold a large coin hovering
above the string. The right hand, within which is found a small bas-
ket rattle (caxixi) containing dried seeds and shells, strikes the string
with a small, thin stick. While the right hand is striking the string,
the left lightly touches it with the coin in a counter movement. This
combination of striking the string together with the coins contact
(pressing, lightly touching, or held above) results in the berimbaus
typically nasal, whirring sound. The player can influence the sound by
varying the distance of the gourd from his body. (6667)
In the berimbau ensemble, each bow plays a different, complementary pattern.

This is in accord with many African drumming styles that have interlocking
parts played by different instruments. In this view of the tradition, which is
explained by Lewis, there were originally three berimbau patternstheme on
the lead bow, countertheme on the middle bow, and improvised variations on
the high bowplayed together to form one toque (Lewis 1992, 14748). Lewis
has referred to the sport as deep play (17) that is especially rich because it
combines human physical interaction, instrumental music, singing, and oral
poetry into complex expressive events (8). In addition, it involves nonverbal
signseye contact, facial expression, gesture and posturewhich comment on
the talk underway (11). Lewis goes on further to describe the process in detail,
but a more general description of his will provide additional insight into the
process in general:
Capoeira is always played in pairs and only two active contestants

are allowed in the ring at any time. The partners usually play close
together, so that the movements of one force a response in the other,
in the now familiar interchange Ihave been calling physical dialogue.
As a kind of conversation in movement, capoeira can be hotly
aggressive or coolly detached. When the conversation is polite and
respectful, the movements invite maximum accommodation, there is
an orderly alternation of turn-taking, and moves seem to flow effort-
lessly together. When the play becomes aggressive and violent, a jgo
duro (hard game), capoeira borders on actual fighting, even wres-
tling, and can turn into a real brawl at a moments notice.
A pair of prospective jogadores (players) must begin by squatting
at the foot (p) of the lead berimbau, and they will return to the same

place at the end of their bout. Sometimes players will line up wait-
ing for a chance to enter the ring. In this case they will squat behind
the two at the foot of the bow(s), forming a second curved line imme-
diately inside the ring of musicians. As the pair directly in front of the
lead berimbau move into the ring to begin play, those behind them in
line move up, so that the next two are ready when those in the ring
finish their bout. (8788)
In the interaction of movement, music, and sociopolitical meaning that is capoeira,

in which rings within rings, games within games are revealed (219) in a kind of
drama, a theater of domination and liberation (94), style and beauty seem to be
paramount (96). The sport is structured in two parts, in which the first consists
of the berimbau playing a slow and rhythmic Angola and the second consists of a
ladainha that begins as a solo and ends as a chula, in call-and-response format,
accompanied by physical gestures. In the long, improvised ladainhas, extended
phrases are often sung on a single pitch before jumping to another, and most
melodies hover around a small number of harmonically related tones. Intervals of
thirds, fifths, and octaves are overwhelmingly predominant in these solos, with
smaller steps sometimes ornamenting the passage betweenthem.
Of the two capoeira styles, Angola and Regional, the former is a more traditional
and ludic style of capoeira [and] has a special affinity with slave society, since it
was presumably being created during that period, whereas the more agonistic
styles arose in conjunction with the growth of industrialization in Brazil (203).
To begin play, Regional players always cartwheel into the ring (a)
while Angola players usually use some form of rabo de arraia (stingrays
tail), also known as meia-lua de compasso (half-moon in a compass).
Actually, true to form, the Angola-style sada can be almost anything,
including a closed cartwheel or a back flip, as long as at least one
hand is on the ground, whereas the Regional standardization requires
an open cartwheel. Frequently Angola players begin with very diffi-
cult strength moves in order to intimidate their opponents. (11718)
Lewis points out that,
the songs of capoeira are sung mostly in Portuguese, and since
Catholic saints, along with other Christian elements, are repeatedly
mentioned Capoeira has an undeniably African esthetic. In move-
ment style, musical structure, and many other areas, the sport is fun-
damentally non-European (18).
In the capoeira world, a positive value called malcia man-
ifests itself in many aspects of the game, from deceptive tactics to
deceptive discourse (29).

Similar to Signifyin(g), malcia embraces
double-dealing or cunning, a lesson learned in slavery but still valu-

able in the modern world (33), allowing a cursed, rabid individual,
perhaps a slave driven to distraction, to also be clever, smart. This
kind of ambiguity is found to some extent in all language, but is
especially typical of the polysemy in black dialects in the New World,
characterized by the positive valuation, sometimes privileged, of
words with negative connotation in general use . In capoeira
songs, this polysemy allows for either positive or negative connota-
tions to predominate in a given context, or for both to apply at once,
creating ambiguity. Therefore a singer can highlight a specific aspect
of a word, for instance, to praise or tease a player, or he may want to
insult a player and praise him at the same time, in concert with the
ambivalent feelings players frequently have about each other. (164)
It all takes place within the ring, which, according to Iria dAquino, consists of
primary and secondary audiences, the former taking their turn in the ring,
while the secondary audience are usually only interested spectators.(86)
As we see from this brief overview to Vodou, Santera, rumba, samba, and
capoeira, the performance practices embedded in the sacred and secular music-
and-dance forms and rituals of circum-Caribbean vary substantially with the
character and extent of the creolization that has taken place in each location.
Many of the differences among them can be heard on the CD recording Africa
in America. In the recording of Cubas Santera rite, for example, Canto para
Ogn is performed with three bat drums, bells, and singers, with solo male,
group female call-and-response laid over complex multimetric cross-rhythms
played by drummers and singers. Over the course of this performance, the
call-and-response figures become shorter and shorter, come closer and closer
together, and get louder and louder as the drum figures change to define the
short sections of which the performance is made. Most of the variety in the
performance is created by the largest (lowest) of the three bat drums. Also on
Africa in America is the Haitian Vodou praise song Yambal, which sports the
time line accompanied by boula and cat drums (Farquharson 1992, 1213).
These call the loa with improvisation, with various drummers dividing the
beat into sixteenths and adding spare, occasional double beats to the mix.
Then there is a Canto Dugu, from Honduras, which fosters communica-
tion with the ancestors, leading to possession; it is characterized by call-
and-response singing, changing dynamic levels, and a gradually increasing
rhythmic activity (13).
Secular rituals also include, for example, Junkanoo (aka John Connu, John
Canoe, John Kuner) celebrations, which span national boarders, taking place
in the Bahamas, Belize, Jamaica, and parts of the southeastern United States.

In Jamaica, it is held at Christmas time and on August 1, in commemora-

tion of the day in 1838 when Apprenticeship was abolished and Emancipation
from slavery finally achieved throughout the British Caribbean (Cowley 1990,
58). In the Bahamas, where serious attention to Junkanoo came late, it is now
thriving. In perhaps the first substantive scholarly article about music in the
Bahamas, Timothy Rommen has explored, documented, and theorized the
Bahamian march towards national identity (Dahl 1995, quoted in Rommen
1999, 72) as it began to appropriate, in the 1960s, symbols that might bring
that island nation the specific cultural identity that it previously lacked,
including Junkanoo, which it has embraced as a primary cultural marker. In
the Bahamas, Rommen writes, Junkanoo exists both as a festival music and
as a popular music, the latter drawing its legitimacy from the former (72).
Festival Junkanoo lives in the Bahamas as a Christmas celebration, as opposed
to a Lenten one as is the case elsewhere in the Americas. Looking culturally
inward, it is a night-time event that inscribes place, time, and people within a
dramatic experience (78), as opposed to popular Junkanoo, which looks both
inward and outside the culture. Thus, popular Junkanoo positions itself as a
diasporic activity, connecting itself with the larger world of African-American
music. Musically, using goat-skin drums, cowbells, whistles, foghorns, and
conch shells, the music references the festival while simultaneously com-
bining to create a sound unique within Caribbean musics of the mid-1960s
and 1970s (78). More recently, Junkanoo artists have begun to include
steel drums in the performances, making Trinidadian sound a part of their
Bahamian expression.12
In colonial Trinidad and other locations in the Caribbean, Canboulay was cel-
ebrated with a torchlight procession to commemorate one of the few excite-
ments of the plantation, a fire in the cane fields, which later became a symbol
of emancipation, complete with stick fights, and probably merged into the
carnival (Nuez 1980, 1078). In colonial Brazil, a slave festival called Caxamb
was held, complete with drumming, versifying, and dancing counterclockwise
in a circle, no less (118); Carnival celebrations are held in Brazil, Trinidad, and
throughout the diaspora, while the ritual of the Mardi Gras Indians holds forth
in New Orleans. Shrovetide Carnivals are held also in [Trinidad], Carriacou,
Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Tobago (Cowley 1990, 58).
Carnival in the British West Indies developed as Black Saturnalia inwhich
thousands of slaves abandoned their work and any pretense of
subservience and adopted a manner both brash and aggressive, at
which their masters took no offense but played along. In the tumult
of lively celebration and gala ceremony, it was a time for permissive-
ness; indeed, throughout the islands Christmas meant setting aside
the very premise of inequality upon which relations normally rested

and replacing it with a cordial and sportive, if at times somewhat

tense, egalitarianism. (Dirks 1987,ix)
Moreover, Roger Abrahams describes participants in various Carnival and

Festival celebrations including men-of-words, rhymers and signifiers who
engage each other in high-status teasing, taunting liars involved in the infor-
mal chantwells of Trinidad, and calypso singers. Characterizing these rituals,
to one degree or another, particularly in contests, according to Abrahams, are
close identification with the style and action of the heroes they described,
full involvement of the audience, in the enactment, use of the intrusive I,
and a highly decorated and self-consciously artificial rhetoric. (Abrahams
1983,23)
Trickster tales are sometimes part and parcel of West Indian Carnival and
Festival celebrations. With African antecedents such as Ijapa, the Yoruba tor-
toise, and Anansi, the Ashanti spider trickster, such tales serve the same func-
tion in the Americas as they served in the homelands of transplanted Africans
(Courlander 1976, 466). In Haiti, North Americas primary trickster, Brer
Rabbit, is Lapin, the rabbit, but Haitis principle tricksters are the characters
Uncle Bouki and Ti Malice, who, in many tales, appear together in roles that,
in Africa, were played by animals (Courlander 1976, 60). Although the tales are
treated dramatically by narrators and lose much of their force when only read,
their didactic character and quality still can be perceived. Here is Bouki and Ti
Malice Go Fishing.
Bouki and Ti Malice went into the fishing business together. Ti

Malice painted the name St. Jacques on the front of the boat, poured
some rum over it and christened it. Bouki took some rum and poured
it over the back end of the boat and christened it Papa Pierre. They
went out to sea and caught fish. When they came home, Ti Malice
counted the fish. There are eighteen fish, he said. How shall we
divide?
Ill take one and you take one until theyre gone, Boukisaid.
Malice said:There are so few fish it isnt worth while. You take all
the fish today and Ill take all the fish tomorrow.
Oh, no, Bouki said, Im not totally stupid. You take all today and
Ill take all tomorrow. So Malice took all thefish.
They went out again the next day, and when they came home
Malice counted again and said, There are so few, you take all today
and Ill take all tomorrow.
Oh no, Bouki said, youre trying to cheat me. You take all today
and Ill take all tomorrow. So Malice tookall.

The next day they went out again. And when they were returning
Ti Malice said, Waille, such a small catch! Im glad its your turn to
take all today.
Bouki became angry and said, Are you trying to break my head?
Im no fool. You take the catch today and Ill take it tomorrow.
Every day Ti Malice took the whole catch. Every day Bouki got
nothing. Malice got fatter and Bouki got thinner. Every day it was
this way, until one day Bouki looked at Malice and saw how fat he
was getting. It came to him suddenly that he had been cheated. He
shouted at Ti Malice and began to chase him. They ran through the
peristyle of the town hounfor [cult house] and Ti Malice said cata-
cata, imitating the sound of a drum, and called on Ogoun and
Damballa to savehim.
They ran through the church, where the priest was holding a ser-
vice. Malice crossed himself and said a quick prayer, without stopping
for a second, and ran out again. They ran, ran, ran, and Bouki was
getting closer. Ti Malice came to a limekiln with a hole in it. He tried
to crawl through, but he stuck at the hips. No matter how hard he
tried, he couldnt get through. Finally Bouki came along. He stopped
and looked in all directions. There was no Ti Malice, only the behind
facing him from the limekiln.
Bouki put on his best manners, and said, Behind, have you seen
Ti Malice?
The behind replied, Take off your hat when you addressme.
Bouki took off his hat to Ti Malices behind. He said politely, Why
are you smiling at me? Ionly asked if you saw Ti Malice?
I smile when Iplease, the behindsaid.
Have you seen Ti Malice? Boukisaid.
Push me and Ill tell you, the behindsaid.
Bouki pushed.
Harder, the behindsaid.
Bouki pushed harder.
Harder yet, the behindsaid.
Bouki gave a big push, and Ti Malice went through the hole into
the limekiln. And that was the way he made his escape. (printed in
Courlander 1976,7273)
In this tale, the names of Bouki and Ti Malice and the references to the peristyle,
the hounfor, the drum, Ogoun, and Damballa recall Vodou and thereby identify
and establish the tale as Haitian. But other such tales abound, all over the West
Indies, and also in the United States where, in times past, they were told in
the homes of African Americans and are now probably told only at storytelling
events and special cultural activities such as festivals.

In addition to trickster tales, Carnival also embraces masking. Throughout the

Americas, as in Europe, masking symbolized reincarnation, rejected conformity,
and represented transition, metamorphoses, the violation of natural boundar-
ies (Bakhtin 1984, 40). Masking also satirized European power (Cowley 1990,
59)in which regard it is related to mockery and familiar nicknames , [to] par-
odies, caricatures, grimaces, eccentric postures, and comic gestures derived
from the mask (Bakhtin 1984, 40). Masks also, as in Africa, symbolize spirits or
ancestors and can be representational as well. In the West Indies, masked figures
included sailors, important personages, Indians, and other representatives of
groups, institutions, and traditions; Jumbies also make appearances with variet-
ies of them appearing also in Trinidad (moko jumby), in Barbados, the U.S. Virgin
Islands, and the Gombey parades that take place in Bermuda.
In the West Indies, Kongo and Yoruba cultural traditions were fused in
masked processions, as participants paraded in circles, believing, as their
African ancestors had, that those in the processions bring good fortune and
spiritual rebirth to a village that they circle (Nunley, Bettelheim, and Bridges
1988, 20). In the New World, as in Africa, masks may symbolize apparitions (of
the Ancestors, for example), their effect depending on the degree to which they
do not resemble human beings. And, out of the Trinidadian masquerade grew
calypso, strongly informed by Yoruba tradition, the influence of which can be
seen in that panache, flamboyance, and love of display which find their prime
expression in Carnival (Warner-Lewis 1991,54).
Calypso in Trinidad prior to the early 1900s was sung almost exclu-
sively in French Creole, but a gradual change began around the turn
of the century and some of the earliest printed calipsos , pub-
lished in the Port of Spain Gazette during the 1900 Carnival season,
are almost wholly in English. They include panegyrics for the British
Empire in the form of boasts of military prowess. (Cowley 1990,60)
In North America, the oldest Carnival-style celebration is the Mardi Gras Indian
spectacles. In New Orleans, the Mardi Gras Indians were liberated by their
masks, which became a cover, a new identity, [an] ephemeral freedom,
and served as part of their temporary cultural vocabulary (Berry, Foose, and
Jones, 1986, 208, 210). The spectacles of the Mardi Gras Indians replicate
the aggressive festivity of carnival, the ritualistic observance of holidays, and
the celebration of a heroic lineage (Lipsitz 1988, 102). In the syncretic unity
of the Black Indians, the ritual trappings and costuming are Native American,
and the content, particularly the music, is African-American. The event takes
place every year during Mardi Gras,when
New Orleans high society celebrates its blood lines and mytholo-
gizes itself as the heir to a powerful tradition of mysticism and magic.

The elite mask themselves in expensive costumes and ride motorized

floats along the citys main thoroughfares, throwing beaded necklaces
and souvenir doubloons to crowds of spectators. The Indians subvert
this spectacle by declaring a powerful lineage of their own, one which
challenges the legitimacy of Anglo-European domination. Their cos-
tumes are made, not bought. They avoid the main thoroughfares and
walk through black neighborhoods. They define the crowds along their
route as participants, not just as spectators. Their fusion of music, cos-
tumes, speech, and dance undermines the atomized European view of
each of those activities as distinct and autonomous endeavors, while it
foregrounds an African sensibility about the interconnectedness of art
and the interconnectedness of human beings.(115)
Further, Second liners beat on bottles with sticks, shake tambourines attached
to long poles, and dance to rhythmic chants in an interactive call and response
with the singers and dancers in the tribe(106).
As in the Caribbean spectacles, the participants mask, invert power relations,
dance, and parade. Tapping literary and oral traditions of story-telling through
song lyrics, chants, word games, and names, their collective narrative goes
beyond literature and folklore (102). This narrative is energized and its com-
munication heightened through dance, as, for example, certain steps by the spy
boys and flag boys alert the rest of the tribe to the presence of hostility ahead
(113). Drawing on African performance practices, New Orleans Black Indians
invoke cultural memoryof runaways seeking and receiving protection and
respect from Native Americans, of blacks becoming part of Indian communities,
and of black leaders of Indians tribesand they signify on these phenomena
as well as on contemporary issues, events, and provocations, as in this verse, as
quoted by Lipsitz(109):
Wild Tchoupitoula, uptown ruler, blood shiff ahoona,

wont kneel, wont bow, dont knowhow.
Although there is little evidence connecting the Mardi Gras Indians to Native
American ancestry, their celebrations resonate powerfully with the real black
Indians of an earlier era, with the succor, shelter, and relative safety and protec-
tion they were given by the Native Americans during the period of slavery, and
with the transformations of Africans into real cultural Indians.
Moving beyond carnival and festivals, we can conclude that all over the African
Diaspora, at least from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, rituals and
ceremonies have taken place in secret societies, many of which are derived from
their counterparts in Africa. The Cuban Abaku secret society is one such exam-
ple. Ivor Miller (2009) traces and recounts the history of this society, which was

a recreation of the kp leopard society (found in the Cross River basin of West
Africa) in Cuba, beginning in the 1830sa result of forced trans-Atlantic migra-
tion.13 These transplanted Africans sought ways to retain various traditions and
customs in the Caribbean, and according to Miller they recreated their [kp]
homeland society, a form of government, in order to instill its values in their
Caribbean-born offspring (4). Even today, important aspects of vocabulary,
ritual, costume, singing, and drumming of the Abaku society share remarkable
correspondences with and near replications of kp traditions.
Many marching songs came out of secret societies such as this, as they did
from those in Latin America called cabildos, whichwere
founded by African slaves and their descendants in Latin American

countries as dispersed as Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba. In the
United States, Masonic lodges and halls formed by blacks as early as
the colonial New England years suggest a comparable pattern, such
as the Prince Hall lodge formed by black men in Massachusetts. In
the Catholic countries, on religious and civic occasions the cabildos
paraded to the accompaniment of drums, the tempo of marching feet,
with brilliant dress and songs whose melody, rhythms and words were
as much African as Spanish. (Cobb 1979,15)
In addition to these socioreligious clubs, so called by Manuel etal. (2006, 11),

in viceroyal Spanish America a Cofrada de Negros, a religious brotherhood of
free blacks, was active in areas of great concentration of slaves, particularly in
Lima, Uruguay (Congo Nation), and other cities (Nuez 1980, 13233). Similar
brotherhoods with different names were also active in colonial America, specifi-
cally Brazil.14
This chapter has given some indication of the legacy, persistence, intensity,
and integrity of the African ring in the Americas, and of other African rituals and
ceremonies, recognizing their presence in rituals ranging from Haitian Vodou
ceremonies, carnivals, and secret societies to Brazilian capoeira and Candombl;
from Cuban Santera and rumba to Jamaican John Canoe and Trinidadian
Shango rites. And, by this point in Transformation, we have considered music-
making practices in Africa and how those practices were taken by sailing ships
to various locales in the Diaspora: Europe, North America, Latin America, the
Circum-Caribbean, and South America. We have also learned about the musi-
cians themselves, how they operate within social and cultural groups, some of
which were European in derivation (such as Freemasonry, which was mentioned
in Chapter 3), while others were African in derivation (such as the Cofradas
mentioned in this chapter). Wherever Africans and their descendants lived, we
hear Toussaints Beat and we feel his spirit as Diasporic people constructed and
maintained their identities through music.

PartII
CASE STUDIES

6
Pips Tambourine
Black Music and Sterling Stuckeys Revelations of Herman
Melvilles Hidden Sources
We hear the blues on the Pequod, as on the plantation as

described by Douglass, and the blues in this respect, as wise
Pip clearly recognized, portend no good for the nation.
Like Douglass, Melville was a great student of slavery and
black culture in all their dimensions. With their basic blues
metaphor for the nations racial divide, it is hard to imagine
more contemporary thinkers than Douglass and Melville.
Sterling Stuckey
In this chapter, I explore the informative potential to be gained through inter-

artistic inquirynamely, and, in this instance, what literature can reveal
about black music. I take, as my point of departure, Sterling Stuckeys impres-
sive book African Culture and Melvilles Art: The Creative Process in Benito
Cereno and Moby-Dick, and I examine it to consider how literature serves as
a historical resource. Because Melvilles stories both take place on shipsthe
San Dominick in Benito Cereno and the Pequod in Moby-Dickmy metaphor
of the sailing ship is no longer simply a metaphor. In addition to consider-
ing the music-making activities that took place on the deck, such as the act of
dancing counterclockwise in a ring, I also consider the general time frame to
which Stuckeys book refers. I then introduce a number of contemporary pri-
mary sources that have been vital to our collective understanding of the black
expressive arts, especially music, from the 1840s to the late 1880s. These writ-
ten documents help to form the historical foundation of black music research,
most notably during the era prior to the advent and availability of recorded
sound. Together, their contents expose various unrecorded musical tributaries
to the subsequently emergent genres of blues and jazz; these genres, in fol-
lowing their own paths of transformation, emerged as response to the various
calls explored in this chapter. Finally, I return to the practice of dancing, which
111

was so aptly illustrated through Melvilles words, and I contemplate another

avenue for interartistic inquiry: Diasporic music and dance.
In African Culture and Melvilles Art: The Creative Process in Benito Cereno and
Moby-Dick, Sterling Stuckey reveals how black music affected Melvilles objec-
tive mind and how the latter concealed from readers his knowledge of black
music and black culture. In a painstaking study, Stuckey uncovers this fact in his
masterly reading of Melvilles novel Moby-Dick (1851) and novella Benito Cereno
(1855). Stuckeys research shows that Melvilles accomplishments in that regard
were made possible by the proximity of his home to remnants of Pinkster activ-
ity and a Negroes Burial Ground in the novelist's home town of Albany, New
York, his visits to Catherine Market and Five Points in New York City, his intel-
lectual curiosity, and a mind and consciousness that were unique among writers
of his time. Melville had absorbed correctly and deeply black artistic culture to
the extent that he could make use of it surreptitiously and in ways that only a
scholar as dedicated and committed as he was could reveal. It is interesting to note
that Melvilles Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno were published in the decade prior to
that during which Slave Songs of the United States was published1and fortunate
that two other sources germane to the present chapter, James Fenimore Coopers
Satanstoe (1845) and Charles Dickenss American Notes for General Circulation
(1842), were written in proximity to Melvilles novel and novella.
My primary focus here spans the years 1840 to 1887, treating Stuckeys
revelations within the context of the practice of black music during that forty-
seven-year period and the implications of those revelations for black music
scholarship. We already have knowledge about African-American music making
by blacks who played the roles of singing school masters, hymn singers and mak-
ers, camp meeting singers, Ethiopian minstrels, concert singers, bandmasters
and bandsmen, and even composers who constituted what was later referred
to as the Philadelphia and New England Schools of black composers.2 We know
what all of this music sounded like because the performers of the time handed
down performance practicesdecade to decade and century to century.
Still, little was known about the music made by the musically untrained until
1867, when Slave Songs of the United States was published, because the music of
that tradition had not been properly analyzed and codified. Instead, in the lit-
erature of the time, we find statements, the preponderance of which are devoid
of musical particularity, incorrect, or unwarranted. In writing the present chap-
ter, I remain mindful of the fact that the traits we seek and the proof of those
traits will reveal derivations from and transformations of African musics from
the period indicated above. Moreover, it is probable that, as Melville visited
many slave ports, he observed various styles of black music and black dance
and gained knowledge from ports such as those in the Chesapeake Bay; Mobile,
Alabama; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Norfolk, Virginia; and from ports abroad

P ips Ta m bo u r in e 113
such as those in Liverpool, England, and, in the Pacific, from metropolitan areas
such as those of Lima, Peru, and Santiago, Chile. According to Stuckey, Melville
was so enamored with black culture that some whites referred to him as a moral
Ethiopian and a Ciceronian Baboon (Stuckey 2009, 28). Nevertheless he
continued to carry his knowledge of black culture into his writings, his think-
ing, and his relationships while aboard ship, however surreptitiously, where he
found a mixture of races and cultures. Later in his life, he explored Pinkster
activities and Catherine Market in New York City and read Coopers Satanstoe
and Dickenss American Notes, both of which carried information about and
depictions of black music making.
In reading and writing about Melville, Stuckey placed his first musical focus
on three African-American musical genresspirituals and the blues, with men-
tions also of jazzand Melvilles impressions of these musics. His second musi-
cal focus is on Frederick Douglasss representation of African-American music in
his books Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and My Bondage and
My Freedom (1855). Stuckey writes, for example, of a slave spirituality from
which the blues were born (10), and goes on to say that,with
Douglasss rendering of slave music he takes us back to that sacred

moment when the spirituals and the blues appear to have been one,
to that moment, however, when the blues is actually the foundational
form. That is, qualities of the spirituals inhered in blues song as early
as Douglasss time but lacked the consolations of faith that later dis-
tinguish the spirituals. Such qualities came later, or were heard apart
from the singing of the field hand, whose song was more gloomy and
widespread, its musical shadows not frequently relieved by the light
of hope, which even then, like joy, deepened the sense of gloom and
sadness.(82)
Speaking of the influence of the blues in Douglass, Stuckey says, The manner in
which [Douglass] relates seeming opposites [in My Bondage] captures the spirit
of the blues without specific mention of slave song, which prefigures Melville
(84); further, in Douglasss Narrative, Stuckey writes that a blues undercurrent
moves the text (87) and goes on to say later that both Douglasss Narrative and
Melvilles Moby-Dick give us reason to question the thesis that the spirituals
preceded the blues, and that Melvilles use of the music described by Douglass
is so faithful to its tragic joy-sorrow quality that blues form and feeling suffuse
his writing style at critical junctures in the novel (82). (This is the blues without
the familiar AAB structure, which seems to have come later, but a blue mood, and
without embellishment).
In his writings, Melville makes references to the blues, implications of the
blues, or what would become the blues surface; these references surface in

Moby-Dick as dialectic, as if he were following Hegel, and as conflicting tones of

irony, as if following Douglass. Stuckey claims that Melvilles presentation of the
ring shout in the chapter in Moby-Dick titled Midnight, Forecastle is remark-
ably reminiscent of Douglass, of cheer and gloom. Cheer and gloom represent
social conditions pregnant with musical overtones (89). Stuckey goes on to say
that, in Moby-Dick, on the Pequod, by using gloom and jolly (cheer), Melville
elucidates the divide with the majority of crewmen on one side and a minor-
ity on the other, as the minority is cruelly reminded. Those vilifying the sacred
Ring Shout are joyous, jollies; those urged to join in the desecration are sullen,
sulkies(90). In this way, Melville is surely parasitic of Douglass:the counsel
of cheer when confronting the whaleestablishes the fundamental Douglass
connection that Melville wastes no time in making. Almost as quickly, he moves
to a performance of the Ring Shout(89).3
Melvilles references to the blues in Benito Cereno are occasioned by activities
in which, as he has Captain Delano speak (as rendered by Stuckey),
like delirious black dervishes, the six Ashantees danced on the

poop [of the San Dominick]. Their leaping, counterclockwise move-
ment was not the only instance of dance being used to encourage
resistance. The Ashantee women sang songs and dancednot gaily,
but solemnly; and therefore [in] the engagement with the boats, as
well as during the action, they sang melancholy songs to the negroes,
and this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one
would have been, and was so intended; that all this is believed because
the negroes have said it(39).4
It would not be far-fetched to describe this passage as a witness to the origins

of blues:to have witnessed such a performance might have been like watching
the Mother of the Blues (and also of jazz). It reminds me that in Benito Cereno
Melville put the gloom and jolly concept another way:he used the term sad-
dened satisfaction in describing the state of Captain Amasa Delano (commander
of the Bachelors Delight) after being rejected as a respected colleague by Don
Benito Cereno (Spanish captain of the San Dominick; Melville 1987,97).
According to Stuckey, Melville had witnessed performances like the Ashantee
singing and dancing described in Benito Cereno in Catherine Market, Five Points,
and other such venues, and in cutting sessions that prefigured jazz (2009,
18). Melville, making use of what he learned from his readings in Ashantee
music and dance, melded the latter with what he had learned about African and
Africa-derived cultural practices in Albany, Manhattan, and other ports of call.
The result was a Diasporic stew that would continue across the years. He found
again, according to Stuckey (35), that Ashantee rhythms were not noticeably
different, despite the ends to which they were directed, from those of Northern

slaves and their descendants, whose dance was used to encourage resistance.
The embrace of Douglasss conception of contrasting tones, as in Melvilles
characterization of Pips tambourine playing as gloomy-jolly has implications,
according to Stuckey, for the analysis of the origin and analysis of the blues(93).
Melville lived and wrote during a time that spans our knowledge of black
music in the nineteenth century, from the social dance music of Frank Johnson
(1804) to the onset of Joplins ragtime (1891), from the social and classical
music of Blind Tom (1851) to the first parlor and concert music of Blind Boone
(1891), from the publication of Slave Songs of the United States in 1867 to the
release of James Monroe Trotters Music and Some Highly Musical People in 1878,
and from the public notice drawn by Master Juba (aka William Henry Lane) in
the early 1840s to the show music of Spragues Georgia Minstrels from 1865 to
the 1890s. Between and among all of these opposing developments came variet-
ies of slave and urban musical devices and practices such as hambone beating
and juba dancing, secular nonblues music (e.g., string bands), plantation spiri-
tual singing, and the sacred music of the African churches in the United States
between 1878 and 1891, especially in Philadelphia, and black theater music
companies such as the Hyers Sisters and the Georgia Minstrels from 1865 to
the 1890s. Among the black music and dance concepts Stuckey found in Moby-
Dick are the ring shout, the movements and gestures of Master Juba,5 Ashantee
drumming style and counterclockwise leaping, the solemn tones of the singing
of Ashantee women, the use of the gloom and jolly concept, and shuffling
dance steps (2009, 39). The mentioning of these concepts and devices in Moby-
Dick establishes the presence of vernacular black music in the United States
before, apparently, the 1850s. These concepts and devices were not preserved in
all forms of black music, but those very traits have been gradually deduced and
codified in various ways, most lately and particularly by a number of contempo-
rary scholars.
In a forthcoming article entitled Ostinatos in Diaspora Religions: Cont
inuities, Discontinuities and Structures, music theorist Jay Rahn provides
details about an aspect of African rhythm and writes:
Characteristic of traditional music in sub-Saharan Africa and its

Atlantic diaspora, ostinatos are generally performed by a single idio-
phone:e.g., a clapperless bell, axe or hoe blades, a pair of small sticks
(claves in Latin America and the Caribbean), a rattle, a bottle struck
with metal, a pair of hands clapping, or, as Simha Arom has indicated,
by means of loudness accents within a singleline.6
Citing Amira and Cornelius, Rahn goes on to say that a particular ostinato is
considered to form the core of a complex rhythmic texture even though it is not
actually heard, being understood as implicit rather than explicit.7 Moreover,

reminiscent of Melvilles discussion of Ashantee musical practices, a compari-

son of Rahns twenty-first-century list of generally used African and African
Diasporic instruments with Melvilles nineteenth- century list of Ashantee
instruments reveals few exact matches but great similarity. The instruments in
each list are either of the percussion variety or could be used as substitutes for
one another.
But not all African rhythms are time lines. Other rhythms play other func-
tions. For example, according to African musicologist and linguist J.H. Kwabena
Nketia,
The drum language of the Ashanti and other Akan-speaking peoples

is transmitted not only in the Akan area but also in non-Akan areas
of Ghana by non-Akan speakers. The Ga, Adangme, Ewe, Dagbani,
Mamprusi and the Gonja possess and play the Akan atumpan talk-
ing drum in the Akan language. In some of these areas surrogate
languages based on the local languages also exist side by side with
the Akan type. Thus in addition to the Akan drum language played
every Friday at the palace of chiefs of Dagomba country, there are
also drum texts in Dagbani played on hourglass drums, the principal
drums of this society. The Ewe similarly have texts in Ewe transmit-
ted on drums normally played for dance music, but prefer to relay
some messages in Akan when playing on the atumpan. As surrogate
languages are generally intended for use in community life as a means
of stimulating or guiding social action or social behavior, the texts
which are transmitted include various announcements and messages.
There are texts for giving warning, raising alarm or rallying people, or
texts for expressing sympathy. (Nketia 1971,702)8
Thomas Brothers (1997, 172, 175) offers another suggestion as to rhythms

functions. For example, his four concepts (stylistic codes) of jazz are seen to
control power through (1)speechlike song, which embraces pitch bending and
blurring and grimy timbres; (2) polyrhythmic paradigm, in which poly-and
cross-rhythms, accentuation on the off beats, ostinatos, and variations of speed
create structure; (3)the concept of a piece of music, which relates to perfor-
mances that do not have endings but fade away or end abruptly though they are
open-ended performances such as those that might take place in ring shouts,
line dances, and jam sessions; and (4)harmony, meaning vertical pitch struc-
tures.9 Still, another proposed explanation of rhythms and other components of
African and Africa-derived musics, which Iintroduced back in the Introduction,
applies here as well. Olly Wilsons codification, the heterogeneous sound ideal,
is, as Idescribed earlier, a sonic system of contrasting and competing sounds
that morph between and among voices, instruments, and bodies, all in more or

less complex musico-aesthetic manifestations. His is a multifaceted approach to

music making in which time lines, cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, and call-and-
response devicessingly and togethergrace performance practice in ways
nonpareil (see Wilson 1992). Both Wilsons and my lists of traits, which also
appear in the Introduction, are accepted as viable and correct by scholars and
musicians of the Diaspora who know themusic.
But what of the blues? Stuckey claims:
Both the Narrative and Moby-Dick give us reason to question the thesis
that the spirituals preceded the blues. But much more than the ques-
tion of sequence is at stake. We have come to understand that the soul
of the nation is tied to that of black Africa, from which the nation
has tried so desperately to distance itself. Both authors grapple with
that issue. It will not be easy for us to read one without thinking of
the other when either Moby-Dick or the Narrative is the text. Indeed,
Melvilles use of the music described by Douglass is so faithful to its
tragic joy-sorrow quality that blues form and feeling suffuse his writ-
ing style at critical junctures in the novel. (2009,82)
So here we have in Moby-Dick a recognition of the blues within the context of

slavery and the slave trade, based on historical accounts, a blues unadulterated,
elaborated, and unstructured; foundational mother or father of turn-of-the-
century European-influenced versions of the genre and without which there
would be no Robert Johnson, no Howling Wolf, no Buddy Guy, etal. But Stuckey
writes later that the manner in which [Douglass] relates seeming opposites
captures the spirit of the blues without specific mention of slave song, which
prefigures Melville(84).
Many believe the blues, having various chordal progressions (the twelve-bar
being the most popular) evolved in the Delta area of the Mississippi River around
the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, in another place, Iindicated that the
blues could not have emerged until after Reconstruction, but as to the origin of
the blues, in the year 1991, Michael Coolen offered the thesis of the Senegambian
fodet as the African source of the blues (Floyd 1995b, 76). 10 The fodet shares at
least four characteristics with the blues, and in writing The Power of Black Music
Iconsidered that the model for the bluesmen may have been the Senegambian
gewels (griots), but even if that turned out not to be the case, Idetermined that
the model for the blues was certainly African(75).
Then, two years later, in 1997, Iwas persuaded by the work of Gerhard Kubik
of a different and better possibility. Kubik had been convinced by his own field
work that some of the roots of the blues lay in one of the most ancient and nonde-
veloped locations in rural Africa. In 1964 he found a woman in Central Cameroon
singing a food grinding song and compared it to an African-American song

by the singer nicknamed Mississippi Matilda, called Hard Working Woman.11

He found the two performances to be profoundly similar in tessitura, timbre,
melodic style, and real and implied harmonic progressions (IIVV chords). On
hearing the Cameroonian Tikar womans rendition, Iwas pleasantly startled by
her incremental tonal embellishment (worrying) of the final note in each rep-
etition of her melody. It was no less than virtuosic, with tonal and lyric phrasing
filled with what Ican refer to in the present context as gloomyjolly.
But the first hints of the blues in the United States, as we know it today, may
have appeared in 1867, in Slave Songs of the United States, just sixteen years fol-
lowing publication of Moby-Dick, in the form of a transcribed collected specimen
called Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton (Allen etal. 1867, 21).12 Ignoring for a
moment the pieces 2/4 meter and its lack of blue notes, let us heed the now-
familiar words of the editors of the volume in which this piece appeared:
The best we can do with pencil and types, or even with voices,
will convey but a faint resemblance of this original. The voices of the
colored people have a peculiar quality that nothing can imitate; and
the intonations and delicate variations of even one singer cannot be
reproduced on paper they seem not infrequently to strike sounds
that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in
slides from one to another, and turns and cadences not in articu-
lated notes. It is difficult to express the entire character of these
negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs. (ivvi)
So we must assume that, despite the absence of blue notes in this specimen
that is, no flatted third and no leading tone that could be flattedsome of the
other embellishments would at least prefigure the blues. But even considering
this printed specimen, Ithink we can agree that the final two measures of the
piece, where the half note appears and is followed by the fall-off at the end of the
last measureon the upbeat of beat 2carries a melancholy feeling that is sim-
ilar to that of the blues. And the twelve-bar structure of the piece might be pro-
vocative enough to claim this specimen as a possible precursor. The emotional
content of its three stanzas confirms the intention of the singer and potentially
welcomes Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton into the blues repertory as a pos-
sible antecedent. The text is even more telling:
Do, Becca Lawton, come to me yonder; Oh! Brudder cryholy!

Say, Brudder Tony, what shall Idonow?
Beat back holy, and rock salvation.
This text moves the song itself from lamentation to joy, foreshadowing the
funeral music practices that prevailed in parts of the South, most particularly

New Orleans and Mobile, and harks back to similar practices in Africa, where
lamentation accompanied the deceased to the cemetery and joy prevailed on the
return. While the editor of the song gives it three meanings, all of them could
play into the interpretation of the song, depending on the singer and her or his
use of it. At the very least, it might compromise Stuckeys contention that the
spirituals and the blues appear to have been one by having come later than
Douglasss time. It also raises questions:Is Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton
Africa-derived, African-American, or American? How long had it been in aural
circulation before the compilers of Slave Songs encountered it? How strong a
relative is it to the blues? Let us now review that past, linking centuries, locales,
and musical practices.
Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton could be an example of some of the residue
that some Africans (and African Americans) left behind as they transformed
various European forms of music into African-American genres. Such residue
and other and higher levels of itcontinue to be used in black music making,
along with full-f ledged rhythmic retentions, remnants of time lines that, in some
cases, have been transformed into additive rhythms, cross rhythms, and over-
lapping call-and-response devices forming certain characteristics of blues and
jazz. The most potent rhythms of both genres were born of African timelines.
But what about rhythmic ostinatos? Rahn has compiled 177 such figurations
and explained their diffusion both throughout and outside the Diaspora, finding
first that unlike those in other parts of the world, African ostinatos generally act
as a basis for polyrhythmic interaction; second that some ostinatos are bifur-
cated (divided precisely into two halves); and third that they are employed in
African religious traditions of the Caribbean and Latin America [and] appear to
constitute a cross section or microcosm of the main currents of ostinato practice
in African traditions, both religious and secular, on both sides of the Atlantic.
He closes his presentations and explanations by pointing out that religious
ostinatos of Latin America and the Caribbean have preserved a core of sub-
Saharan traditionseven in the case of bifurcated patterns whose structural
characteristics seem to have been developed throughout Africa and to have pro-
vided a basis for continued development in the New World (forthcoming).
Ostinatos (those rhythmic time lines) prevail in high degree in the dance
and religious music of most West African countries. Although they are not used
much or at all in some parts of the continent, they are nearly pervasive in West
Africa and the circum-Caribbean. African time lines actually govern African
rhythm, melody, and dance within a complicated framework in which musicians
play their parts against, around, and in tension with each other and against the
instrument (usually a bell or some other metal, a stick of some kind, or a single
drum) that plays the timeline.
As we synthesize this information, we note that Stuckey clearly believes that
the blues preceded the spiritual in origin, rather than the reverse, and that the

blues depended on the effects of gloom for their own effectiveness (Stuckey
2009, 82). Although he is mighty close to proving it, from the musical perspec-
tive and according to the musical definition, he needs more confirmation. For,
even though the characteristics of the blues have direct and obvious precedents
in Africa, vis--vis Kubiks work, the spirituals apparently do not, although Rain
Fall and Wet Becca Lawton points in such a direction. Questions abound:Does
Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton appear on the musical scene prior to publica-
tion of Moby-Dick? Or does it appear between that publication and Mississippi
Matildas performance of Hard Working Woman? Or did Hard Working
Woman come from a different lineage springing from the Tikar womans song?
If the blues emerged from two more lines of development, where does Stuckeys
assumption about Douglass fit into either presumptive lineage? Might the line
or lines of development be too complex to yield a definitive answer? What about
the singing of the Ashantee women in Benito Cereno, which Melville seems to
describe as more lyrical than that of the other music he depicts?
Ethnomusicologist William Dargan (2006) has referred to a Long Black
Song (borrowing Richard Wrights title of a short story) and the blacken-
ing of Dr. Watts hymns by black congregations through long meter singing.
Introducing what he calls the lining out polarity (as opposed to the ring shout
polarity of black music in which the singing is more speechlike), he points out
that the former places emphasis on formalized, even vertical relationships
between typically male celebrants and majority female congregations, [which]
signifies structure (199).13 By setting up this continuum of polarities (shades
of Melvilles Ashantee binary), thereby creating a balance with ring shout the-
ory, Dargan has created a way to facilitate the critical study of the balance of
factors governing the most general range of contextual meanings that apply to
black music (110). Scholars before Dargan have traced the lining out of blacks
to the middle of the eighteenth century, when relatively few of them had been
evangelized (10910).14 Some of these scholars tell us that still, in the early to
middle nineteenth century, Melvilles time, the number of black Baptists rose
to approximately 150,000 (111). So I am positing here a presumptive relation-
ship between the singing of Melvilles Ashantee women and that of the enslaved
and free Africans of the time. Both styles appear to employ dirge and speech-
like rhythmic and pitch inflections within metrically free and cross-rhythmic
structures. The differences between them, we can deduce or surmise, was that
the Africans and the American blacks, slave and free, had applied African perfor-
mance practices to the prevailing Dr. Watts hymns of the period and the Africans
had not. As one missionary wrote of the latter,
One good advantage in teaching them good psalms and hymns is that
they are thereby induced to lay aside the extravagant and nonsensi-
cal chants and catches and hallelujah songs of their own composing;

and when they sing, which is very often while about their business or
of an evening in their houses, they will have something profitable to
sing. (Charles Colcock Jones, quoted in Dargan 2006,111)
We can assume that music of the Ashantee women aboard the ship in Benito
Cereno was closer to Dargans long songs than to that of the African male danc-
ers, since Melville characterized the womens songs as solemn and melancholy.
That characterization could also be applied, as we have already seen, to the
singing of Kubiks Tikar womans song and also to Mississippi Matildas Hard
Working Woman, which raises the question of gender, specifically, whether
women might have been the first makers of the blues and, if so, why and how it
happened. On the other hand, the men on the Pequod danced to the rhythm of
Pips tambourine, with white men on the boat urging him on:Go it Pip! Bang it,
bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! in a fast and percussive manner
completely different from that of the women (Stuckey 2009,32).
So far in this chapter, Ihave written the word dance (or dancing or dancers)
more than a dozen times, with specific steps and gestures mentioned but with
no attempt to give dance the same kind and amount of attention that was given
to music and to literature. In Stuckeys African Culture and Melvilles Art, his
analytical and interpretive focus centers around the ring shout and the blues,
with literary conflicting tones signaling the blues. We have seen in his work
that dance has its gloomy and jolly aspects, just as music and literature do, but
those aspects have not been defined with respect to the elements of dance. Most
dance analysis has dealt primarily with judging a performers steps, postures,
positions, and movements, which is fine for ballet and other forms of European
and Europe-derived dance, but inappropriate and much less useful for African
and Africa-derived dance forms.15
Analysis and interpretation of dance and music together have been neglected,
and the reason for it is clear:viable analytical theories that might combine the
two disciplines do not exist. The aspects and the practice of African and Africa-
derived dances appear in a variety of sources, including for example Brenda
Dixon Gottschilds Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance:Dance
and Other Contexts. Throughout her book, she makes the point that Africa-
derived dances reveal a democratic equality of body parts [with] one part
of the body playing against another, and movement [that] may simultaneously
originate from more than one vocal point. It privileges flexible, bent-legged
postures [with] shoulders, chest, rib cage, waist, pelvis moved or articulated
in different directions and in different rhythms. Such dances create irony,
paradox, and double entendre and are self referential and nonlinear (1996, 8,
51, 57). Abrief statement from the works of J.H. Kwabena Nketia confirms and
expands Gottschilds:In the dance movements of the many and varied parts
of West Africa, ways of using hands, feet, and arms differ from place to place;

the forms of the dances vary; and their free dance genres are also at variance
(1965,92).
Kathleen A.Kerr has identified Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) as a way of
analyzing folk dance (for the purpose of the present concern, read African and
Africa-derived) in ways that reveal rich constellations of movement behaviors
[by focusing on] style rather than just steps, (38) that is, by focusing on the
shape the body carves through space, the motivation for its movementand the
subtleties that give a movementand a dance formcharacter (38); by focus-
ing on the hips and shoulders moving in rhythmic counterpoint with the head,
[which adds] yet another accent to polymicity of the style (39). For such
analysis, she has constructed a movement quality literacy system (a context
free way of analyzing pure movement) based on what she calls effort factors,
or attitudes:flow, ranging from free to bound; weight, from light to strong or
firm; space, from flexible or indirect to direct; time, from sustained to sudden or
quick (emphases mine). In analyzing these factors, spectators are expected to
focus on movements or gestures characteristic of the dances [general] style
and movement style, movement quality, and differences in movement qual-
ity (39). This system might be one answer, among others, to the need for viable
ways with which to analyze African and Africa-derived dance as a component of
music making.
Gottschilds flexible, bent-legged postures and self referential and non-
linear postures correlate with Kerrs style and attitudes; and Gottschilds
articulated and differently directed shoulders, rib cage, waist, pelvis are
equivalent to Kerrs polymicity of style and rhythmic counterpoint stan-
dards. The same goes for Gottschilds irony, paradox, and double entendre
and Kerrs attitudes and movement style. Both writers tout flexibility of
style, but Kerr places hers within the context of attitudes as weight, space,
and time. So the traits of Gottschild and the factors of Kerr are complemen-
tary, and together could constitute an expansion of Stuckeys dance revelations.
What can we infer from the commentary of these two dance scholars and their
correlations? What are the implications of Gottschilds and Kerrs comments for
analyzing and writing about the black dance continuum? In both cases, miss-
ing is any interpretation of sound-and-sight amalgamation, which is inseparable
from the music that gives it life and credibility.
But the work of Nketia could bring music into the picture. He points out
that the vocal and instrumental resources of the dance continuum throughout
Africa differ widely, ranging from hand clapping and solo song to full batter-
ies that include choral singing and aerophonic, idiophonic, chordophonic, and
membranophonic instruments. Tonal and rhythmic organizations differ greatly
also, and in the governing of these elements, writes Nketia, the choice of move-
ment sequence or the grouping of such sequences may be complex and may be
organized linearly or multi-linearly (1965, 92). In most cases, the complexity of

West African combined music and dance is controlled, structurally ordered, and
artistically governed by a master drummer who uses changing patterns, accen-
tuations, and durational units to bring forth variation in the dancers move-
ments as they respond with differing and variously valued movements, steps,
postures, and countenances (1965).
Thanks to Stuckey and his revelations of Melvilles apparent immersion in
black culture, or his study of it at home and abroad, those who have read his
book are now cognizant of the implied rhythms of Ashantee men, the singing
of Ashantee women, and the dances of both groups, both individually and in
small assemblies. Moreover, we have observed descriptions and mentions of the
line and ring performances in which various movements of heads, shoulders,
arms, hands, and feet are used in the dances as they were presented aboard ship
and through the accounts of Cooper and Dickens. We have imagined through
Melvilles writings the cross- rhythmic and free- metered contexts in which
gapped-scale events are implied when fiddles, fifes, horns, metal, and jingles
were mentioned. We have imagined blue thirds and perhaps blue fifths,
anticipated Signifyin(g) utterances and gestures and imagined gloom and jolly
word and sound eventsall of which are among the telling effects that Ihave
touted elsewhereand the implications and threats of facial countenances and
bodily assertions that amount to Signifyin(g) criticisms of white men on ships
(Floyd 1995b, 96). In Melvilles Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno, dance, like music,
was regulated by Pips tambourine, in the first instance, and in the second
instance by Ashantee flat iron (flat sides of hatchets), aerophones, and assorted
hand percussion instruments. In his Midnight, Forecastle chapter, one finds
the imagery of the ring shout, although it never appeared there in fact (Stuckey
2009, 68,89).
Viewed from an analytical standpoint, we can understand why so little has
been written about complexities of dance and why music scholars have not
contributed much to the fields understanding of African and Africa-derived
music and dance as a mode of inquiry. So far, the source commentaries of early
observers only confirm and document the fact that blacks were dancing in the
nineteenth century (which we already knew) and the character of some of their
movements. As far as interpretation is concerned, we read in Melville that on
one occasion black women aboard ship, when watching acts of murder sang
songs and dancednot gaily, but solemnly; and before the engagement with the
boats, as well as during the action, they sang melancholy songs to the negroes,
and that this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one (in
Benito Cereno, Melville 1987, 112). This passage, Ibelieve, having gloom but no
jolly and therefore no blues, was a spiritualEileen Southerns sacred counter-
part of the blues. But here, there is more interpretation of the music than of
the dance. Just as understanding the blues, in text and in music, requires trans-
formation, so does understanding dance. The source of that transformation is

movement, and the act of that transformation requires interpretation. We recall

that Wilsons heterogeneous sound ideal guides us in our interpretations of
the complex timbres made from the combination of sounding sources within a
particular musical performance. But we must also recognize such combinations
between the sounds and sights that produce timbre and its analogue. (In my
view, to transform is to think about or internally analogize a musical process
the blues, for exampleas a particular feeling, or to think about blues text as
music, or music as text; in the case of dance, physical movement would be analo-
gized as text or as music.)
Sixteen years and twelve years after Melville published Moby-Dick and Benito
Cereno, respectively, the compilers of Slave Songs (Allen et al. 1867, xiiixiv)
described church services among some black churches in which
when the sperichil is struck up [some in attendance] begin first

walking and by-and-by shuffling round, one after the other, in a
ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is
mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire
shouter. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle
they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself
is also sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed
of some of the best singers and tired shouters, stand at the side of
the room to base the others, singing the body of the song and clap-
ping their hands together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike
extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle
of the night, the monotonous thud.
This description is impressive and correct, so much so that American musical

scholarship and other fields too have tended to view it as analytically sufficient.
But if it is not, as Iclaim, how do we move beyond description to analysis and
interpretation in such cases? The answer might be (1) to focus more on, and
extend, current elaborations; (2)to use the elaborations as guides to inquiry in
which keys to imagination and interpretation reside; and (3)to formulate and
ask oneself questions about the how and the why of each aspect of the descrip-
tion. For it is the scholarly spectators responsibility to imagine, interpret, and
explain such writings about dance in early American culture.
Toward such ends, Iwant to add items from the work of Judith Hanna (1989)
to the work of Gottschild and Kerr as a possible mode of interpretation inquiry.
Hanna, in developing performance and analytical concepts for dance analysis,
makes use, like Kerr, of Labans movement concept theory (443).16 In her work
on Ubakala Dance Plays, she notes that the men dance in a circle, leaping and
shuffling, and the women also use the circle and do their own and different ver-
sion of the shuffle. In her disquisition, she mentions the role of angularity and

of melody and intervallic pitch movement as important aspects of dance per-

formance and analysis. But Hanna approaches and explains it and all the other
facets of dance from an ethnological perspective, as she interprets and reveals
the cultural and social meanings, acquired from local experts, of the dances that
she examines (43637). From my own viewing experience, an akimbo position
might have at least five meanings, for example, depending on what other ges-
ture or countenance is combined with it, pleasure, anger, assertiveness, cocki-
ness, or the melancholy of the blues. These gestures, and those of the multiple
musical timbres of which Iwrote earlier, can be more than heterogeneous. They
can easily replace one another in both function and meaning. So Ibelieve that
the analysis of the dance-music continuum calls for integrative spectating
perception, analysis, and interpretation of music, gestures, and movement
and their combinations, and attention to the various and multiple meanings of
events of thewhole.
While writing The Power of Black Music, Icame to the notion that full under-
standing of black music might depend on ones understanding of African and
Africa-derived dance. In writing explanations of dance-related music, Icame to
certain conclusions:first, something important was missing in my analyses; sec-
ond, the missing substance was not music but the bodily movement; and third,
the bodily movement carries its own emotional content, elevating that of the
music. Ifelt that this content was resident in the structures, small and large, of
the music and only needed to be drawn out by viewing bodily movement and vice
versa. Almost fourteen years later, the arrival of Stuckey's book on Melvilles art
brought the issue to the surface once more, placed there by the reverse notion
that full experience and understanding of black dance might depend on ones
understanding of black music. Although Ifeel somewhat presumptuous in mak-
ing such a comment about a field not my own, my reading of Stuckeys book, and
of Melvilles Moby-Dick for the second time in addition to his novella, all from
Stuckeys new perspective, have given me no choice but to pursue these lines
of thinking. Moreover, those ideas about music and dance have brought a new
and quite logical idea:the inseparability of African and Africa-derived music and
dance, at least from the standpoint of analysis and interpretation.
Reading about the Ashantee in Melvilles Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno has
brought memories of an experience I had several years ago. On July 4, 1998,
the island of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, celebrated its Carnival 98 and the
150th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the Virgin Islands. At this
event, a statue of a man blowing a conch shell and holding a large cane knife was
unveiled. On the base of the statue there appeared the word Freedom. Since most
of the slaves in the Virgin Islands had been Ashanti people (the Akan), Ghana
sent members of its Royal Court of the Ashanti to share in celebrating the eman-
cipation.17 Adignified procession took place as the court marched toward and
onto the bandstand to the royal drums. Later in the program, the chief of the

Royal Drums poured a libation as a blessing. Following the program of music and
of speeches by the governor of the Virgin Islands and other dignitaries, the royal
dancers stepped, swayed, and otherwise danced to the music of the royal drum-
mers. When the groups master drummer played by himself, especially at the
time of the libation, Iwondered what those drums were saying. Iwas impressed
by the ceremony and the playing of the drummers and wished that Ihad known
more about the Ashanti, especially about their drumming, just as Iwish now to
know what the hatchet players and cleaners in Benito Cereno were saying to one
another on their hatchets as they went about their occupations. How much were
they saying? My answer is, a great deal, Ibelieveespecially about, and to, Don
Benitos valet Babo and the mulatto steward Francesco, who with Babo ushered
Don Benito and Captain Delano to dinner one evening. So Ifind it interesting
and fortunate that after all the years between that emancipation ceremony and
now, Ihave even more desire to know about the Ashanti people and their contri-
butions, beyond what the fruits of slavery have revealed.
I am aware that by dealing with dance Ihave gone well beyond the proposed
scope of this chapter, but I wanted eagerly to determine the extent to which
Stuckeys study of Melvilles creativity might have implications and possibilities
for the music-and-dance conundrum. In the process, Ihave concluded that, by
following what Stuckey has discovered in his excavation of Melvilles hidden snip-
pets of and about African and Africa-derived music and dance, we might develop
deeper and fuller pictures of the dance texts that we read. In following Stuckeys
tracks, we will understand better the movements, gestures, and postures in the
pictures that we see in drawings of African music and dance from antiquity to
the twenty-first century; and our powers of derivation and interpretation might
be sharpened and made more accurate and warranted, as we read written texts
and view films, videos, and movements of the music-and-dance continuum. This
would be true even if one were to analyze only one term of the binary (the dance
movements, for example) while at the same time imagining the extrapolations
of the accompanying workings of the other (the music). For just as words may
convey irony, as in gloomy-jolly, bodily posture and implied movement in a
drawing can convey sonic accentuation and insinuation. Whatever means one
might use to inquire into the action of the music-and-dance binary, as spectator
or analyst one must be cognizant, every step of the way, of the fact that success
in revealing the aesthetic expressions of the binary will be determined by how
the dance finishes aspects of the music, how the music finishes aspects of the
dance, and, at the end of the experience, how these finish thewhole.

7
Git onBoard, Lil Chillun
Children and Music in the Diaspora (by MelanieZeck)
You go to school, you study about the Germans and the

French, but not about your own race. Ihope the time will
come when you study black history too. Never forget to sing
the songs of your mothers and fathers.
attrib., Booker T.Washington
There is no other subject in the curriculum that touches in
so many places, the developing nature of the child, as does
music. If music is ever to be a real force in human life, it
must be brought to the concrete possibility of being heard,
loved and learned in childhood.
Frances ElliottClark
In this chapter, Iconsult three additional kinds of primary resource materials

sound recordings, textbooks, and early black newspapersas well as facsimiles
of images depicting African-American musicians. Like the nineteenth-century
literary works employed in Chapter6, these resources provide invaluable infor-
mation about the creation, dissemination, and reception of black music. This
chapter dovetails chronologically with Chapter 6, beginning with references
to the second half of the nineteenth century, and its time frame overlaps with
Chapters8 and 9, ending during World War II. Here, Ishow the extent to which
all kinds of musics appeared side by side in the early textbooks published by
the associates of the Victor Talking Machine Company (VTMC). The VTMC
documents also indicate that black children had access to the wide variety of
musical examples through the companys efforts in education and outreach.
The availability of and access to a variety of genres was not entirely new, how-
ever. Iam reminded of Toussaint Louverture, the important leader of slaves
during the Haitian Revolution, whose favorite composer was reported to be
Jean-Baptiste Lully but who also, it is presumed, was exposed to Africa-derived
musics on his island in the Caribbean. Nevertheless, the concept of availability
took on new meaning with the advent of recorded sound, as music making
127

transcended the realm of the here-and-now and could be enjoyed and stud-
ied on demand. Indeed, certain kinds of black musicsespecially the spiritu-
alsformed a prominent component of the VTMCs educational materials for
schoolchildren. But children were not restricted merely to the role of listener
during this time. Rather, many joined youth bands and pickaninny bands,
whose musical contributions formed an essential, but often overlooked, part
of black music history. One juvenile bandthat of Alton Augustus Adams, a
native of the Virgin Islands and the first black bandmaster of the U.S. Navy
might never have existed had its leader not been exposed to and been able
to respond musically to the marches of Sousa heard through the magic of
recordedsound.
Advancements in transportation technology, as well as gradual improvement in

social conditions, had enabled musicians, especially black musicians, to share
their talents in new places. Indeed, traveling minstrel shows, jubilee singers, and
juvenile bands entertained audiences throughout the United States via train, and
in many cases sailed by ship to Europe, where they were well received. Although
the accomplishments of these itinerant groups were certainly groundbreaking,
music makers and their audiences were unprepared for the additional commer-
cial opportunities and educational possibilities that recorded sound technology
would soon afford.1
The lives and music of early recorded artists, both black and white, have been
investigated from numerous angles, as have the novel machines (e.g., the pho-
nograph, the talking machine, the gramophone) through which their musical
creations were transmitted. The companies that manufactured these machines
have also received a fair amount of attention.2 By the end of the twentieth cen-
turys first decade, recorded sound had gained such a following that the lead-
ing companies strove to distinguish themselves from their competitors.3 One
of these, the Victor Talking Machine Co., of Camden, New Jersey, embarked on
what would become a transformative and lucrative endeavor:the use of recorded
sound technology in the classroom.
In one of its many strategic moves, the VTMC hired an experienced music
teacher and supervisor, Frances Elliott Clark, to head the companys newly estab-
lished Educational Department. Clark had stumbled upon a talking machine
while shopping at a store in Milwaukee in 1909.4 On hearing recorded sound
for the first time, she considered the value of a talking machine in her own
classroom, and she set out to prove her hunch. Word of her endeavors reached
Camden, and in 1911 she became the companys primary spokesperson, travel-
ing from city to city and demonstrating the viability of recorded sound as an
educational tool. The Victor in the Schools campaign soon caught the atten-
tion of music teachers and supervisors throughout the nation. So popular were
these machines, commonly referred to as Victrolas, that the VTMC claimed

G it o n Bo a rd, Lil C h il l u n 129
to have placed them in the schools of 500 cities by March 1913 and 2,700 cit-
ies by September 1915. By 1919, just eight years after the campaign had been
launched, Victrolas could be found in the schools of 620 out of 621 American
cities with a population of ten thousand people or more (Clark Papers).5
Yet getting Victrolas in the schools through this effective campaign was only
one small part of the VTMCs master plan. Between 1913 and 1943, affiliates
of the Educational Department, under Clarks direction, would go on to author
and publish a series of books, manuals, and catalogs that explored and provided
teachers with unique ways of incorporating music in the classroom once the
Victrolas had been purchased. The collective contents of works such as What
We Hear in Music, authored by Anne Shaw Faulkner; The Victrola in Rural Schools;
the Educational Catalog and Graded List of Victor Records for Home, School, and
College; and The Victrola Book of Opera served two purposes simultaneously:they
advertised Victors recordings for purchase and advised consumers of their edu-
cational value.6 As Clark writes in her introduction to the first edition of What
We Hear in Music (1913):
The study of high school music must be arranged to attract, hold and
EDUCATE every boy and girl, regardless of whether they can sing or
not, and should furnish opportunity material and instruction that
will enable them to become, not professional musicians, but music
lovers and appreciative, intelligent listeners, knowing the worlds
music. Now the Victor and Victor-Victrola, with the wonderful list
of Victor Records, which is regularly augmented each month, makes
it possible to present the whole subject in a vital form, as it brings
within the hearing of every pupil the real music to be studied and
analyzed in consecutive lessons, starting at a given point, progressing
systematically, and arriving at a legitimate conclusion. It is hoped
that these lessons may furnish the means to produce a Nation-wide
uplift in the love and understanding of goodMUSIC.
Black musics were no exception. Indeed, the recordings, recommendations, and

accompanying information in the VTMC texts provide insight as to what genres
of black musics were in circulation during this thirty-year period of time and
which of them were considered appropriate for consumption by children. The
VTMC came to recognize children as a constituency that the companys advertis-
ing and educational campaign should target. In a speech given before her Victor
colleagues in 1914, for example, Clark emphasizes the role children play in con-
vincing their parents to purchase Victrolas for thehome.
The Victor Company is sending good music to the children of America

and through the children to the homes. The desires, want and needs

of the children are the most potent appeal that can be presented to
fathers and mothers, relatives and all lovers of children . Victor
music in the ears and on the lips of the children of America is not only
the highest possible endorsement from a commercial standpoint, but
it is far more and infinitely higher than that. (Clark Papers)
In spite of the companys claims to educate every boy and girl [in] knowing the
worlds music, there were limitations as to what was included in the texts, and
some contemporary black music genres were rejected. Asurvey of the VTMCs edu-
cational texts reveals that the company chose to include, almost exclusively, black
music genres with sacred connotations, such as spirituals and instrumental rendi-
tions of spirituals, and pieces of black composers born outside the United States.7
For example, the black music examples mentioned in the first few editions
of What We Hear in Music include works by the Afro-British composer Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, such as his instrumental rendition of Deep River and his
famous aria Onaway, Awake Beloved! and spirituals, such as Good News,
the Chariots Comin and Live a-Humble.8 Taylors picture is featured promi-
nently alongside analyses of his contributions, and a small biographical sketch
reads as follows:
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (18751912) is one of the most interesting

personalities in the Modern English School of Music. Although his
education was entirely obtained in England, the father of Coleridge-
Taylor was an African negro, a native of Sierra Leone. The composer
was ever deeply interested in the music of his race and collected many
negro melodies, both in Africa and America. He says:There is a great
distinction between the African negro and the American negro melo-
dies. The African would seem to be more martial and free in character,
whereas the American is more personal and tender, though notable
exceptions can be found on both sides. Deep River is a plantation
song known as a spiritual song by the Southern American negro.
These spirituals are the spontaneous outbursts of the religious
enthusiasm of the camp meetings. The words of the songare
Deep river. Lord Iwantto,
To cross over to the camp ground. (Faulkner 1913, 24950)
Over the course of thirty years and twelve editions, Anne Shaw Faulkner slowly
incorporates additional spirituals into What We Hear in Music as well as relevant
historical and cultural information to facilitate their musical interpretation. For
example, she quotes Booker T.Washington, who had notedthat
the plantation songs known as The Spirituals are the spontaneous

outburst of intense religious fervor, and had their origin chiefly in

the camp meeting, the revival, and in other religious exercises. They
breathe a childlike faith in a personal Father and glow with the hope
that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness
of slavery, into the land of freedom. There is in these songs a pathos
and a beauty that appeals to a wide range of tastes, and their impro-
vised native harmony makes abiding impression upon persons of the
highest musical culture. The music of these songs goes to the heart,
because it comes from the heart. (Washington, quoted in Faulkner
1916,336)
Washington, who had just died the previous year, had been hired in 1881 as
the first teacher of the Tuskegee Institute, whose singers were featured in the
recordings of Good News, the Chariots Comin and Live a-Humble.
The Tuskegee Institute Singers began recording for VTMC in 1914, but they
were not the first group to sing spirituals for the company. The Fisk Jubilee
Singers, who were founded in 1871 at Fisk University in Tennessee, for example,
had recorded ten selections in 1909 and another eight in 1911, but their record-
ings were not included in the Educational Departments publications.9 The
recordings of the Tuskegee Institute Singers were consistently recommended
for study in What We Hear inMusic.
Both Good News, the Chariots Comin and Live a-Humble are also
included in another publication of the VTMC Educational Department, The
Victrola in Rural Schools. The purpose of this text was to continue to bring Music,
greatest of all the arts, into every school and to every child (Clark 1924, 5).10
In her Foreword to this text, Frances Elliott Clark acknowledges that the VTMC
was following the path set by Andrew Carnegie, who attempted to bring the best
literature to far places by establishing libraries throughout the United States.
The Victrola in Rural Schools offers an assortment of strategies for incorporat-
ing music into the classroom, including suggestions of pieces that support the
correlation of music with other arts and branches of study, such as literature
and American history. The section on American history, prepared by Harold
D.Smith, situates the Negro spirituals in their historical and cultural contexts:
The slavery problem called attention to the life of the negro in the
Southern plantation. No better expression of their mode of thinking,
their emotional feeling and religious aspiration exists than the spiri-
tual or camp-meeting song, which grew up either from old African
traditions, or else was the natural product of negro life and thought
on the Southern plantation. We are exceedingly fortunate in having
many of these old songs preserved in record form by the Tuskegee
Institute Singers. Some of the things that we notice in these songs
are the even rhythm in 2-4 or 4-4 measure, the weird harmonies
and minor melodies. Sometimes only a five-tone scale is used. The

negroes are natural harmonistswhen one starts a song others join

in the second, third, or fourth part, a faculty which has not come from
teaching, or knowledge of harmony, but seems to have been born in
this race alone. To the negro blindly groping for the truth, and under-
standing religious teachings only imperfectly, the presence of God,
His saints, and ministering angels was a vivid reality, and he pictured
the New Jerusalem with all the vividness of his imagination. Here is
a typical spiritual which voices the hope of the black man in a future
life, I Want to be Ready. (Music Manual 1924,5354)
Other spirituals included in the text are Good News, Live A-Humble, Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot, and Steal Away. The significance of spirituals to Americas
musical history is made apparent in an informationalnote:
In the new era of educational progress of the negro in the South,

the spirituals in their oldest and purest form are fast disappearing.
Fortunately for future generations the Victor is preserving a number
of these characteristic songs, given in their original forms, unaccom-
panied, by the famous Tuskegee Institute Singersfrom the famous
school founded by Dr. Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee, Ala.who
sing these inherited old Spirituals as did their grandfathers, in
deep reverential spirit, with all the native, peculiar richness of tone-
coloring and harmonies that make these songs of real use in an edu-
cational and historical sense. (Music Manual 1924,112)
Spirituals are also featured in the VTMCs Educational Catalog and Graded List of
Victor Records for Home, School, and College, which was first published in 1918.11
The catalog was a sought-after reference because it contained the Special List
for Music Appreciation, a set of musical recommendations categorized vari-
ously by genre, topic, purpose, or function. This particular list of Negro spiritu-
als identified fifteen examples suitable for study, thereby surpassing the number
of spirituals included in any of the VTMCs previous publications.12
As evidenced here, the VTMCs Educational Department made and attempted
to execute some bold claims during its first ten years of publishing. Indeed, by
1924, VTMC offered its music teachers a catalog of 1,723 records, which, in
turn, presented nearly three thousand selections for use in the classroom (Clark
Papers, 1924).13 Yet, in spite of the successful placement of Victrolas in schools
throughout the United States and the quantity of musical selections made avail-
able for educational purposes, the VTMCs texts and catalogs were not without
their limitations. For example, only musical selections from the United States
and Europe were listed in the publications printed prior to 1924. Even when the
selections of recordings were later expanded to include Oriental music, or more

specifically, the musics of the Chinese, the Hindu,14 the Japanese, the Arabians,
and the Persians, musics from other geographical locations, such as Australia,
Africa, and South America, were either nonexistent or not included to the same
degree. By the end of the 1920s, the only African musical examples listed in both
What We Hear in Music and the Educational Catalog hailed fromEgypt.
With no other African musics mentioned in the texts, the VTMC initially
introduced its student listeners to black music with examples of spirituals, many
of which were recorded by the Tuskegee Institute Singers. However, in the later
editions of What We Hear in Music, these same Negro spirituals appear along-
side additional selections, featuring artists such as Marian Anderson (Were
You There? as well as a rendition of Deep River), members of the Dinwiddie
Colored Quartet, the Hall Johnson Choir (Joshua Fit de Battle ob Jerico,
Bye and Bye), Paul Robeson (Weepin Mary, I Want to Be Ready, Git on
Board Lil Chillun, Deres no Hidin Place, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, On Ma
Journey), and the Hampton Institute Quartet (Swing Low Sweet Chariot).
Other genres of African-American musics, such as ragtime, the blues, and
jazz are not covered in any depth in the Educational Departments publications.
Even in the 1939 and 1943 editions of What We Hear in Music, jazz is mentioned
only in conjunction with George Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue, having given a
dignity and real beauty to jazz and John Alden Carpenters Skyscrapers:ABallet
of American Life. And, in spite of the significant musical contributions to which
the Harlem and Chicago flowerings of the Negro Renaissance had recently given
rise, only the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Viking Song) and R.Nathaniel
Dett (Juba Dance from In the Bottoms) are given full analyses.15 Dett, who was
born in Canada but later served as the music director at Hampton Institute,
is identified by the VTMC Educational Department as one of the outstand-
ing Negro composers of America. Composers Harry Burleigh and Will Marion
Cook are mentioned merely in passing as making negro music equally popular
(Faulkner 1921, 137).16 As for what constitutes Negro music, What We Hear in
Music offers a three-part assessment, taking into account spirituals, work songs,
and Negro-Creole songs ofCuba.
The music of the Negroes is of three distinct types; the Spirituals,

or sacred songs, the work songs (the Negroes sing a different type
of song for every employment), and the Negro-Creole songs. Among
the Negroes of the Lower South who lived in constant dread of
being sold in slavery, the Spirituals are of a deeper and more truly
religious fervor (like Deep River, and Nobody Knows the Trouble
Ive Seen) and those Spirituals of the Upper South, where the
Negroes lived on the same plantation for generations, and expressed
themselves in the music of I Want to be Ready, and Good News.
In the songs of the Negro-Creole are to be found many of the same

characteristics that are noticed in the music of the White-Creole

and, it is of course but natural that the influence of both Spain and
France is to be recognized in this music. The habanera is an excellent
example of the type of dance song used by the Negro-Creoles of Cuba.
(Faulkner 1928,96)17
The publications of the VTMCs Educational Department quietly championed

black musics that conveyed a religious message or sent forth the notion of uplift.
By the same token, the company discreetly omitted black popular musics, even
though both Faulkner and Clark spoke pointedly about the vulgarities and prob-
lems of jazz in external (non-VTMC) publications and addresses. In a 1921 arti-
cle in the Ladies Home Journal entitled Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?
Faulkner launches a diatribe against jazz and offers proof that jazz is an influ-
ence for evil. After admitting her own struggle to define exactly what jazz is, she
cites its demoralizing effect upon the human brain and associates it with inap-
propriate dancing and the current generations decline in decorum. Although
she uses the word evil to describe jazz at every opportunity, Faulkner was sur-
prisingly generous with another black music:ragtime.
Negro ragtime, it must be frankly acknowledged, is one of the most

important and distinctively characteristic American expressions to be
found in our native music. Whether ragtime will be the cornerstone
of the American School of Music may be a subject for discussion; but
the fact remains that many of the greatest compositions by past and
present American composers have been influenced by ragtime.
Regardless of Faulkners favorable opinion of ragtime, she excluded it and its

more vulgar, syncopated counterpart, jazz, from the VTMC publications. Clark
was not keen to include jazz, either, but her sentiment was much less vitriolic. In
an address before the National Education Association in 1923, she noted simply
that, after repeated listenings with sound recording technology, the jazz had
become boresome, while the fine music had aroused intelligent interest (Clark
Papers).
By selecting certain genres to the exclusion of others, the Educational
Department fell short of bringing Clarks 1919 claim the Victor in its
supremacy is the ideal medium for bringing all the music of all the World to all
the Peopleto full fruition.18 However, it offered proof of attempting to
fulfill its printed missionto bring Music, greatest of all the arts, into every
school and to every childin The Victrola in Rural Schools (later renamed Music
Manual for Rural Schools). This text supplies its readers with several pictures of
Victrolas in far places and the people who inhabit them. Children from Iowa
are seen in a classroom doing their schoolwork to Victrola accompaniment.

Students from Indiana are pictured outside saluting the flag with their teacher,
who is operating the Victrola. In another image, pupils dance to music of the
Victrola on their schools grounds in Texas, while another set of photographs
shows African-American children in Georgia enjoying music from a Victrola.19
It remains unknown exactly to what music the children were listening, but one
concept becomes clear. Victors records were entertaining and educating their
youthful audiences.
All of the pictures in The Victrola in Rural Schools/ Music Manual for Rural
Schools document the VTMCs successful foray into the musical education of
children, in at least four ways: first, they remind us of the sheer newness of
early recorded sound and the excitement with which it was received; second,
they emphasize the mobility of the machines through which these sounds were
rendered; third, they portray the act of listening to recorded sound (rather than
participating in or listening to live music); and fourth, they demonstrate that
the Victrola could be used in conjunction with nearly every subject covered in
the standard American curriculum. The pictures of the African-American chil-
dren offer additional historical insight, as the majority of available images that
chronicle African Americans and their relationship to music and music making
do so by portraying interactions with livemusic.
In their book Images: Iconography of Music in African-American Culture (1770s
1920s), Eileen Southern and Josephine Wright (2000) document 150 years
of African-American music-making activities through a series of 260 images.
Given the chronological nature of the monograph, the reader will be sure to
notice the shifts in the media through with which the images have been ren-
dered: from the early hand-colored prints, to oil and water color paintings, to
pen-and-ink drawings and wood engravings, ending finally with photographs.
Grouped loosely into three overarching time framesthe colonial and feder-
alist eras, the antebellum era, and the postbellum erathe images are then
subdivided by the themes they depict: the African legacy, slave life, church and
ritual, the black preacher, and life after Emancipation. Many of the genres and
activities described in The Transformation of Black Music are conveyed visually;
examples include Howard Helmicks The Juba Dance and Edward Windsor
Kembles The Voodoo Dance. Juba was described in Chapter 6, while the
ideas associated with voodoo and Vodou are mentioned in several places. The
Negro preacher, whose description by W. E. B. Du Bois is quoted in Chapter 5,
is given much attention in Images with works by Helmick, Kemble, Carter N.
Berkeley, James Henry Moser, Edward Potthast, and others. Indeed, the pen-
and-ink drawings by Helmick, such as Uncle Aarons Advice from the Pulpit,
and Kemble, including The Funeral Sermon, Hed Call dem Scriptures Out,
and Rev. Ezekiel Moses, portray adults, as do Berkeleys VirginiaScene at
a Colored Revival meetingOh! Come Down from heben, en Ride roun in de
Hearts uv des Sinneres, Mosers Read er Chapter fer de Ederfurkashun of de

Sembled Sinners, and Potthasts Brother Lazarus, Des er Minute fo Yer Fling
dat Line.
In this particular section of Images, the primary characters are, as to be
expected, adult male preachers and, in many cases, their congregants and/or
participantsboth male and femalein the various camp or revival meetings
are adults, as well. In other sections of Southern and Wrights book, we see a
greater variety of subjects, including male banjo and fiddle players, dancers of
both genders, and, of particular interest to this chapter, children. Interestingly,
the vast majority of the images portray the juveniles as the participants in the
music-making activities, whether it involves taking a banjo lesson, singing, play-
ing a horn, or dancing. Henry Ossawa Tanners The Banjo Lesson and Dis
Heahs a Fus-Class Thing ter Work Off Bad Tempers Wid both show an older
man teaching a young boy how to play the banjo. In Joseph Hatfields A Few
Low, Sweet Chords Vibrated upon the Moonlit Air, three young black children
sing to a white female adult who is lying on a chaise lounge. Wade Whipples
Jim, the Ferry Boy depicts a young lad playing his fiddle and several images,
including Frank Mayers Jack Ashore and Kembles On with the Dance focus
on the children dancing outside.
All of the images featuring children and juveniles do so as they participate
in making or listening to live music. In some cases, such as with Images three
examples of bands made up of youthsSamuel Green Wheeler Benjamins The
Juvenile Band, Fernandina; a pen-and-ink drawing published in Frank Leslies
Illustrated Weekly Newspaper On the Observation Platform of a Vestibule Train,
Entering Charleston, S.C., Music by the Bottle Band; and J. G. Mangolds pho-
tograph of The Jug Band of Palatka, Fla.the artistic renderings were com-
pleted and photographs were taken prior to the era in which recorded sound
became mainstream.
These and other juvenile bands (also known as pickaninny bands) in both the
United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands formed an important component of
the American soundscape, especially in the latter part of the nineteenth century
and the early twentieth century. And, as the examples from Images demonstrate,
black juveniles participated in a range of music-making activities. Even though
pictures of children listening to recorded sounds were not included in this key
iconographical reference work, we can be reassured of the phonographs rele-
vance to childrens education and enjoyment by considering, for example, the
testimony of Alton Augustus Adams, whom we met in Chapter3. From a very
young age, Adams, an aspiring musician, was exposed to recordedsound.
How well I still recall the many hours [my friend Felix Padilla and]
I spent in rhapsodic ecstasy listening outside the residence of
Mr. Alfred Mewton, a kindred spirit who was playing Sousa marches
on his phonograph player. At that time, those sporadic phonograph

concerts were not mere musical treats to me. They were like manna from
on high, feeding a hungry searching musical soul. (Clague 2008,84)
Adams, who was born in 1889, was privy to the variety of musics heard in turn-
of-the-century St. Thomas, both live and recorded (Floyd 1977, 174). Inspired
by the recordings, the adolescent flutist began to contribute to his islands musi-
cal life long before he became an adult. For instance, at the age of fourteen, he
managed to establish a band of instrumentalists, and by the time he was twenty-
one he had organized a group called the St. Thomas Juvenile Band.20 The record-
ings, especially those of Sousa about which he reminisced, provided Adams with
a standard to which he and his band members could aspire.
The perceived inexperience of Adamss young band members and their
remote location did not hinder their success. Rather, his ensemble made quite an
impression in a 1917 performance on the island, and as a result it was requested
that the entire group become part of the U.S. Navy, to whose administration
the Virgin Islands had recently been transferred from Danish rule.21 Adams was
subsequently appointed chief musician and, as such, became the first black
bandmaster in the U.S.Navy.
Adamss band was certainly not the first or only group of juvenile instru-
mentalists in the United States, as the photographs in Southern and Wrights
Images attest. In fact, organized bands of young players had been entertaining
audiences for more than twenty years before Adams and his men joined the
Navy. Indeed, the 1890s witnessed establishment of juvenile bands, including
Kansas Citys John Brown Juvenile Band and N.Clark Smiths Pickaninny Band,
which hailed from Wichita, Kansas.22 Called the best boy band in the land, the
twenty-piece John Brown Juvenile Band was established in 1892 (Indianapolis
Freeman, Apr. 9 and Feb. 13, 1892). Residents of Kansas City were prompted to
go out sure and encourage these bright boys, and a mere three months later,
the Indianapolis Freeman reported that the band had scored a grand financial
and music success in Kansas City, Kan. recently (Indianapolis Freeman, Apr.
9 and July 16, 1892). The Freeman, as well as the Leavenworth Herald and the
Kansas City American Citizen, began to chronicle the activities of Smith and his
band in 1894.23 Most notably, in 1899, Smith and his great Pickaniny [sic] Band
and Orchestra of Kansas City Mo. traveled to the South Pacific with M.B. Curtis
All Star Afro-American Minstrels (Kansas City American Citizen, July 21,1899).
On the surface, juvenile bands served an important role in their communities
and surrounding regions by providing concerts and background music at social
functions. Yet behind the scenes, these organizations gave their young members
intense musical training and, in some cases, as with Smiths band, international
touring experience, which would serve the band members well in their future
musical careers. One of the members of Smiths group in the late 1890s, clari-
netist Wilbur Sweatman, would go on to establish his own band in Minneapolis,

work as a vaudeville musician in a number of venues, and make several record-

ings (Berresford 2010,18).
As the 1890s wore on, some juvenile bands performed the music in dramatic
productions, such as In Old Kentucky, Down in Dixie, and Uncle Toms Cabin, to
name a few. In the play In Old Kentucky, for example, the Woodlawn Wangdoodle
Pickaninny Band was featured, and it helped to popularize the juvenile band
phenomenon. The bands director, John Powell, resided in Indianapolis, and
his hometown newspaper, the Freeman, often published announcements and
musicians wanted blurbs on the behalf of the band, which specified which
instrumental talents were required. In other juvenile bands, such as the one that
performed in Down in Dixie, the young musicians were revered not only for their
musicianship but also for their agility, as was evidenced in their noteworthy
Zuave drill (Indianapolis Freeman, Oct. 10, 1896).24
In addition to these dramatic productions, well-known minstrel compa-
nies, such as Primrose and Wests Minstrels, also featured pickaninny bands.
On George Primroses retirement, a May 16, 1903, tribute in the Freeman was
printed in his honor, which notesthat
the firm of Primrose and West once played a remarkable part in the
useage [sic] of colored performers, which will cause their names to
be briefly inserted in the records of genuine colored minstrelsy.
The pickaninny band was also another feature exploited by Primrose
ideas, which drew more boys to blockade the sidewalk than a theatre
gallery couldhold.
These bands were undoubtedly popular, and they could be found throughout
the United States, performing in parades, and for special celebrations and
functionsin places as far flung as Cincinnati; St. Louis; Clarksville, Tennessee;
and Kenosha, Wisconsin. According to a blurb in the August 15, 1896, edition
of the Freeman, the Juvenile Band of Cincinnati, which comprised twenty-one
boys, led a parade in Richmond, Indiana, in honor of the fifth annual session
of the District Grand Lodge of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. The
Odd Fellows in St. Louis witnessed the performance of a bandthe Byron
Juvenile bandfor its grand session in 1898 (American Citizen, Oct. 14, 1898).
Meanwhile and later, other bands were forming and entertaining audiences, such
as the band in Clarksville, under the leadership of Dennis B.Rice, and Henslers
Juvenile band, whose public serenades in Wisconsin received accolades in the
Wisconsin Weekly Advocate (May 31,1900).
The activities of these and many other bands made up of black youths were
covered by the important newspapers of the day. Yet the legacy of one band in
particular, the Jenkins Orphanage Band, continues to be present in more recent
discourse. This band takes its name from the Rev. Joseph Jenkins, who founded

the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina; his son, Edmund, a musi-
cian and composer in his own right, will be encountered again in Chapter8. It
should come as no surprise, then, that the younger Jenkins received his early
musical training through his fathers organization, and, as was the case with
the juvenile bands mentioned earlier in this chapter, such as N.Clark Smiths
Pickaninny Band, the instrumentalists in Jenkinss group also traveled inter-
nationally. In fact, the Jenkins Orphanage Band had the distinct honor of per-
forming for the Anglo-American Exposition in London in 1914 (Green 2010,
184). Edmund Jenkins stayed in England to pursue advanced musical training,
and within the next five years his own instrumental ensemble could be heard in
England performing not only one of Jenkinss own compositions, but also the
works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Interestingly, while Jenkins and the orphan-
age band were entertaining audiences in England, the VTMC was starting to dis-
seminate music to school children in the United States. Then, as Jenkins and his
own group were performing black musics in England, the VTMC was introducing
Coleridge-Taylors music into their educational programs.
Although much of The Transformation of Black Music has focused on the
music-making practices of adults, we see here that children not only became
famous performers of black musics, but they also began to form a critical mass
of music consumers. And, as we take a closer look at this period of time around
the turn of the century, we notice that technologyboth transportation and
recorded sound technologycompletely changed the way music, especially
black musics, could be disseminated to new audiences. Moreover, both kinds of
technology became increasingly important, especially as the flowerings of the
Negro Renaissance in various parts of the world called attention to critical issues
of artistic expression that would come to define and redefine black musics in the
twentieth century.

8
The Movement
Black Identities and the Paths Forward
Throughout coloured America Harlem is the recognized Negro

capital. Indeed, it is Mecca for the sightseer, the pleasure-
seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the
ambitious, and the talented of the entire Negro world; for the
lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea
and penetrated even into Africa.
James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan
The cultural and artistic manifestations of the Harlem Renaissance provide

unique insights into black aesthetics of the 1920s and 1930s.1 With the geo-
graphical nexusHarlemcontained in the nomenclature of the phenome-
non, the centrality of this NewYork City neighborhood is easily recognized. In
this chapter, Iacknowledge the Harlem Renaissance as a movement, a trans-
formative period integral to the black experience in the United States and cel-
ebrated for its provocative artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. Iapproach
the Harlem Renaissance as one important component of a larger multifaceted
Diasporic phenomenon through whose efforts the plight of Afro-descendent
peoples was elevated to a new level of consciousness. Ibegin my discussion,
of course, in Harlem, and through the metaphor of the sailing ship, Iinvesti-
gate other places in which similar cultural, artistic, philosophical, and aesthetic
gestures were being made.2 These placesHarlem, Haiti, Cuba, and Trinidad
(to name a few)all merit substantial inquiry, but since a mere sketch fits
here, I immediately tap into the wealth of written words and thoughts that
came to link (in some cases) or differentiate (in other cases) these places and
their ideologies. The resultant interartistic inquiryin this instance, poetry
and musicreveals commentary on colonial and postcolonial circumstances,
and social and political events. As Iguide the narrative back to music, Icon-
sider musical practitioners during this time, such as composer William Grant
Still and singer Paul Robeson, who responded to the metaphorical call of the
141

movement-at-large and transcended social and/or geographical boundaries in

order to showcase their talents before diverse audiences.
Some of the discussions that drove and celebrated the Harlem Renaissance
took place in the Dark Tower, the ostentatious and fashionable parlor salon
of the beauty-culture heiress Alelia Walker.3 Inspired to support and partici-
pate in Harlems intellectual and artistic life, she dedicated the third floor of
Map 8.1 NewYork City, with Harlem area highlighted

Th e M ove m e n t 143
her Harlem home to that purpose, and the Dark Tower began its life as a vision
of a place where music, art, and literature would be discussed and on display
(Watson 1995, 4, 14344).4 But the hub of activity in Harlem was Lenox Avenue,
alongwhich
stood the jazz clubs of lore and legend:Happy Rhones Black and White
Club, Pods and Jerrys, Mexicos, the Plantation Club. And there also
stood the Savoy Ballroom The Home of Happy Feetwhere the
Lindy Hop was invented. Lenox and Fifth Avenues were the east and
west boundaries of the portion of 135th Street that was the home of
Harlems theater district, literary book stores, and the Harlem Branch
of the New York Public Library where much of the literary activity
of the Harlem Renaissance took place. Lenox Avenue was the street
down which James Reese Europes 369th Regiment Hell Fighters
Band marched into Harlem on its return from France, where it had
enthralled the citizenry with ragtime. (Floyd 1995b,1)
Artistically, the interdisciplinarity and social interaction of the Harlem efflo-

rescence is symbolized by Sargent Johnsons lithograph from the period, Lenox
Avenue, in which he cleverly juxtaposes images of a piano keyboard and lid, a
musical note, a mask or head in semiprofile, and a smoking cigarette, overlapped
and brought together by a combination of curved lines and straight, angled
lines, which, in turn, formed a rhythmic symbolization of the integrative char-
acter of Harlem Renaissance culture. Art historian Allan Gordon (1995, iii) says
the two-dimensional and linear work reads almost as sculpture:a plaque in
low relief or a construction of overlapping parts.
Harlems poet laureate was Langston Hughes (19021967), whose ear for
the sounds of the urban street and his eye for its sights were essential in the
formation of his poetic tastes (Cobb 1979, 64, 65)and for whom the rhythm
of life is a jazz rhythm, as attested by his use of the black idiom of the United
States to reproduce the blue note of melancholy, or to shift to ironic laughter,
while following the metric pattern of the song. Moreover, he expressed the
feelings and the meaning of the Negro spirituals he admired(66).
Nevertheless, it was Harlems Dark Tower that would come to stand as a sign
of the making of the African Diaspora, with its salon culture of Harlemites
some of whom had migrated from Latin America and the West Indies, includ-
ing the bibliophile Arturo (Arthur) Schomburg from Puerto Rico, the writer and
poet Claude McKay from Jamaica, and the numbers kingpin Casper Holstein
from St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Harlems intellectuals and artists were familiar
with those who continued to live in the West Indies, including, for example, U.S.
Navy bandmaster Alton Augustus Adams, who was born and still lived on St.
Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

In Haiti, one of the lands from which Afro-Caribbeans came to Harlem,

the dark-skinned elite constructed their own racial ideology, Noirisme, which
was probably modeled on the ideology of the Harlem flowering of the Negro
Renaissance.5 The ideals set forth in Harlem during the 1920s ultimately
became manifest in francophone locations of Africa and the West Indies under
the guise of Negritude, a movement that had been launched by Aim Csaire
of Martinique, Lopold Sdar Senghor of Senegal, and Lon Damas of French
Guiana while studying in Paris during the early 1930s.6 It was the work of Jean
Price-Mars, however, that had spurred Haitian writers, since he proselytized,
in his book and in his articles, about the relationships between folklore and lit-
erature.7 He urged them to make use of Haitis Creole patois, legends and tales,
and the experiences of the African-American writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Negritude became the way in which Haitis black-conscious cultural elites
expressed African and Africa-derived values through essays and novels, theater
works, folklore, and musical compositions. Inspired by Price-Mars, Haitian writ-
ers and artists began to champion Haitis own culture. Several Haitian compos-
ers, among them Ludovic Lamothe, Justin Elie, Werner Anton Jaegerhuber, and
Frantz Casseus, composed pieces that showcased Haitian themes, rhythms, and
in some cases sonic gestures recalling the Vodou ceremony.8
In Cuba, the year 1928 saw the rise of Afrocubanismo and Minoristas.9 The
former, a nationalistic, working-class, core-culture movement devoted to pres-
ervation and performance of African rhythms and other performance practices,
focused on the son and its derivatives as the foundation and primary expression
of Afro-Cuban culture. The latter were members of the educated elitea racially
integrated movement of visual artists, literary artists, composers, and perform-
ers who were interested in merging contemporary compositional practices with
aspects of Afro-Cuban and African performance practice. These artists had been
exposed to contemporary artistic practices and brought international recogni-
tion to an aspect of Afro-Cuban high culture by living, painting, writing, and
composing abroad during the period of the Negro Renaissance.
Among the Minorista artists publications was La Revista de Avance, which
promoted cultural nationalism and disseminated writings and visual art by van-
guardismo artists. So it seems that although the poets among the Minorismo10
artists found their inspiration in the Harlem Renaissance, poet Langston Hughes
(and like-minded whites in the United States) found theirs not in black sources
of black socio-aesthetic theories, but in the European (based and derived) prim-
itivist movement.
The most prominent among the composers of the Minorismo movement
was the Afro-Cuban musician Amadeo Roldn, one of its founders along with
Alejo Carpentier and others. Roldn and Carpentier often attended Santera and
Abaku ceremonies and Roldn transcribed melodic and rhythmic fragments
[that he] later used in [orchestral] compositions (Moore 1997, 203).11 Although

Roldn was a composer who was influenced simultaneously by elitism and popu-
lism and was committed to the idea that the responsibility of the composer was
to elevate and improve street culture, his Rtmicas, on the contrary, incorpo-
rates [only] small rhythmic fragments taken from black street musics as compo-
sitional material , [and they bear] little relation to popular expression (208,
204).12
Afrocubanismo came about, in part, because of the successes of jazz and other
black musical entertainments in the United States and France. Though jazz and
Afro-Cuban musics, such as rumba, had been considered by some critics to be
but primitive expressions, others felt that the musics warranted respect, as Cuba
was not a primitive society but civilized. Carpentier, for example, statedthat
Cuba should proudly conserve a few elements of local color. Let us

protect our guajira music, our Afrocuban music! Let us defend it
against its detractors! Let us praise the son, the noisy solar, the giro,
the dcima, the lithography on cigar boxes, santera drumming, the
picturesque pregn, the mulata with rings of gold, the light sandals
of the rumbero. Blessed be the lineage of Pap Montero and Mara
la O! When one sees things from abroad, the value of these popu-
lar treasures is understood as never before! (1976, quoted in Moore
1997,176)
The son that Carpentier so wanted to praise had arisen early on in the reset-
tlement of African peoples in the Caribbean. Manuel (1988, 30) says, While
most son musicians were black or mulatto, the genres popularity soon extended
beyond racial, class, and ethnic lines. The sons vitality and importance, indeed,
stemmed from its dynamic synthesis of European and Afro-Cuban elements,
to the extent that it eventually became recognized as the preeminent national
genre of Cuba.
For a broader view of Caribbean ideology and practice beyond that of music,
let us consider some of its poets and how they related to the wider movement.
In no other written document, to my knowledge, is the international nature of
artistic manifestations of the Negro Renaissance more evident than in literary
scholar Martha Cobbs comparative study (1979) of Langston Hughes (United
States), Jacques Roumain (Haiti), and Nicols Guilln (Cuba).
Langston Hughes, Nicols Guilln, and Jacques Roumain represent

in their writings the essential forms and subject matter drawn from
black thought, speech, music and life styles which they perceived and
responded to in their respective countries. Under their pens the vari-
ant dimensions of black reality flow into literary life as a dynamic
currentdistinctive, particular and apart from the reality of the

dominant societies of European origins, albeit encapsulated in their

politics, their social ordering and their myths.(46)
Going further, she writes(55):
Here black literature at its best reminds us of the musical contri-

butions of black people. Jazz, spirituals, blues, the many forms of
American popular music on two continents and the Caribbean, are
uniquely Black even as they are transmitted to the printed page by
means of European notation, can be sung in a European language, and
in performance can combine European instruments, perhaps manu-
factured in America, with other instruments whose point of origin
are African.
Guillns poem Sensemay includes onomatopoeic representations of talking

drums, which call forth a group of people to put an end to evil, taking the form
of a snake (Cobb 1979, 118). Roumains poems evoked Haitian Creole speech
and coumbite songs and Vaudou chants (68).13 Concepts from black folk expres-
sion, such as tracing the magic circle and giving thanks to Legba, are also present
in his novel Masters of the Dew (Cobb 1979, 100). By way of illustration, Cobb
quotes a passage from the novel(100):
Papa Legba, open the gate for us! Ag,ye!

Atibon Legba! Oh, open the gate forus,
So that we maypass!
Well thank the great gods, loayo!
Papa Legba, master of the three crossroads!
Master of the three canals!
Guilln, Roumain, and Hughes knew one other fairly well, with Roumain hav-
ing spent a year with Guilln in anthropological investigations (90). Hughes,
together with Ben Carruthers, translated some of Guillns songs in a collection
called Cuba Libre and some of Roumains works as the collection Masters of the
Dew. Hughes had met both men in Cuba, Guilln again in Paris and Roumain
again when he moved to NewYork to live there for two years. Jacques Roumain
wrote Langston Hughes, a poem; Guilln, who had met Roumain several
times, wrote an Elegy to Jacques Roumain. Together the three had the largest
Diasporic impact of any other single group of Negro Renaissance writers.
Their contemporary, the Haitian writer Ren Depestre, also contributed
to the literature on Negritude. In his essay Hello and Goodbye to Negritude
(1984, 251, 258), Depestre discusses the various paths that lead [sic] to it and

to its equivalents in colonial society, positing it as the modern equivalent

of cultural marronage with which the masses of slaves and their descendants
opposed deculturation and assimilation to the colonial West, moving from
the plantations to new areas that they endowed with their own values, mar-
ronaging wherever possible the horrible deculturing and assimilating mecha-
nisms of the civilization imposed on them. But the new languages could not
be marooned (259), Depestre says, except in the few cases in which Creole
languages or pidgins became widely spoken. In this view, what might be called
urban marronage, then, was a process characterized by the rehabilitation of
black skin, the physical beauty of Blacks, and the rationalization of the socioeco-
nomic concept of race, which was accomplished by Roumain, Guilln, Du Bois,
Langston Hughes, Fanon, Csaire, Claude McKay, Paul Niger, Morisseau-Leory,
Damas, Regino Pedroso, Gui Tirolien, Jean F. Brierre, Emilio Rouimer, etc.
(271). According to Depestre:
The African heritage reevaluation and identification movements can

be traced directly to Haiti between 17911804 and the end of the
nineteenth century. These movements would find their way into the
various social sciences (history, sociology, ethnology, and anthropol-
ogy) as well as music, literature, and the visual arts. This general ren-
ovation of the oppressed spirits within the continent naturally had to
distinguish itself and to differentiate itself according to the national
structures of each of our Mestizo societies. The historic, exotic, and
indigenous factors that have led to a Cuban, a Haitian, a Jamaican, a
Dominican, a Brazilian, and an Antillean identity, as well as our com-
mon American or Caliban identity, do not coincide with each other
simply and plainly at any level.(260)
Moreover, states Depestre(267),
The Martinican, Guadalupan, and Guyanese negritude movement,

more or less contemporaneous with the Haitian renaissance of 1928
that took off with Ainsi parla loncle and La Revue Indigne, constitutes
a vanguardism that does not, however, coincide with that of Haiti.
This movement was organically formed in Paris, where its initiators
attended university. They included tienne Lro, Jules Monnerot,
Ren Menil, Aim Csaire, Lon Damas, Lonard Sainville, Aristide
Mauge, the Achille brothers (the only Haitian of the Antillean group
was Doctor Sajous of Cayes, Haiti); these were joined, two years later,
by the African students Lopold Sedar Senghor, Osmane Sos and
Birago Diop, all from Senegal.

In Trinidad, meanwhile, other poetsmen of wordswere working in an

entirely different, and vernacular, way. According to calypsonian, teacher, and
Director of Culture for Trinidad Hollis Liverpool (1994, 18586),
History has played a decisive role in shaping and changing the calyp-
sonians outlook, oratory, music, and themes. From an enslaved
African to a post-Emancipation chantuelle to a twentieth-century
calypsonian; from basic African rhythms to a present-day soca style;
from sugar and cocoa plantations to kalenda and Dame Lorraine yards
in the nineteenth century; from calypso tents in the 1920s to neon-lit
forums in the 1960s; and from protesters to entertainers, calypso-
nians have today become skilled craftsmen and professional artistes.
Calypsos commentary on social and political events is well known and shared by
the musical practitioners of other islands of the Caribbean. Says Keith Warner
(1988, 53), who hedges and is ambiguous on the question of calypsos origin,
In the area of popular music and the oral tradition, the Caribbean has
had a long history of social criticism, seen in the calypso many years
before it appeared in reggae. There is as yet no consensus on why the
calypso, termed very early the peoples newspaper, developed the
way it did in Trinidad, since essentially similar social conditions pre-
vailed on nearly all the islands. If, as is the claim, calypso evolved out
of certain African survivals, then it would seem plausible to assume
that these existed on other islands as well. Be that as it may, calypso
came to be identified mostly with Trinidad.
And, be that as it may, Beware the mask! says Warner (56), for the most seri-
ous of issues can receive what looks to the outsider like frivolous treatment, but
is actually cleverly disguised criticism and analysis, as is seen in an example,
part of a song Calypsonian Plain Clothes sang about Trinidad Prime Minister
George Chambers in 1985: The public was well aware that the class dance in
Trinidad schools is called duncy, with the effect that the key line Chambers
done see is heard as Chambers duncy, thereby giving an entirely different, and
derogative [sic], meaning to what was being said about the prime minster.
As we consider the impact of black performers on popular culture and the
kinds of statements they made with respect to politics, etc., we must recall that
they had been contributing to the British soundscape as early as the period
between 1910 and 1920 (Rye 1990, 46). In the 1930s, the black presence in
England began to increase, with black dance bands performing various Latin
American musics such as rumba.14 By the 1940s, West Indians had gone to

Britain in large numbers, bringing calypso with them. In 1946, the predomi-
nantly black-cast Ballets Ngres, performing in a negro idiom , featured West
Indian and African dances (Stapleton 1990,93).
There were, indeed, individuals and groups documenting the existence and
charting the demographics and contributions of blacks throughout the Diaspora
during this time; but all through the various transitions and adjustments, the
Harlem flowering of the Negro Renaissance continued to play the leading role.
W. E. B. Du Bois ([1925] 1992, 411) estimated, for example, that in one of its
peak years, there were
twenty-three millions of Negroes in British West Africa, eighteen

millions in French Africa, eleven millions and more in the United
States; between eight and nine millions each in the Belgian Congo
and Portuguese Africa; and a dozen other lands in Africa and America
have groups ranging from two to five millions. The main seat of
their leadership is to-day the United States.
Demonstrating a consciously Diasporic vision, Du Bois continued in a different

context, saying that, led by American Negroes, the Negroes of the world are
reaching out hands toward each other to know, to sympathize, to inquire :
the modern black American, the black West Indian, the black Frenchman, the
black Portuguese, the black Spaniard and the black African (413). Thus, the
leaders of the Harlem movement recognized the existence of a racial and cultural
black Diaspora with Harlem as its capital.
Marcus Garvey, although he was not a member of the Harlem intelligentsia,
was a leader in his own right. Anative Jamaican, Garvey had gone to England
in 1912, remaining there for four years during which the black physician John
Alcindors African Progress Union Committee included blacks born in Trinidad,
Guyana, Barbados, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and South Carolina, and was
able to take a global view of the black world (Green 1986, 6162).
In 1914, Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation
Association and African Communities League; its central objectives were by-
and-large in consonance with the general spirit of the Negro Renaissance. It
resolved
To establish a Universal Confraternity among therace.

To promote the spirit of race pride andlove.
To reclaim the fallen of therace.
To administer to and assist theneedy.
To assist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa.
To strengthen the imperialism of independent African States.

To establish Commissaries or Agencies in the principle countries of the

world for the protection of all Negroes, irrespective of nationality.
To promote a conscientious spiritual15 worship among the native tribes of
Africa.
To establish Universities, Colleges and Secondary Schools for the further
education and culture of the boys and girls of therace.
To conduct a worldwide commercial and industrial intercourse.
Surely Garveys movement had some effect on the character and consciousness
of the diaspora in the 1920s, having had 1,100 branches of his UNIA in over
forty countries, including the United States, the islands of the Caribbean, South
and Central America, Africa, and England, Wales and France (Martin 1993, 442,
443). But Garvey was among those who were, still in the 1920s, advocating
that blacks return to Africa, while his organizations African national anthem
admonished oppressors to Let Africa be free, proclaiming that Ethiopia shall
stretch forth her hand to freedom.16
But there was another side to what has been presented as an elevated
movement:
For all the aspirational elements of the New Negro arts movement,
there was another side of the race renewal agenda:one that probed
uninhibitedly the more sordid and often stereotypical terrains of a
black identity. Josephine Baker, as a willing subject and participant in
this forbidden exploration, was joined by a long list of cultural primitiv-
ists, including [Langston] Hughes, [Miguel] Covarrubias, the Jamaican
writer Claude McKay, and Carl Van Vechten and Paul Morand.
Unfortunately, the peoples and cultures of Africa were the princi-
pal objects of this primitivist mindset. An almost universal ignorance
of Africa, coupled with a legacy of exploitation of African peoples,
created an atmosphere in which Westernersusually taking their
cues from Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and Hollywood jungle mov-
iessaw Africa as either exotic and passionate or dangerous and
fearsome. (Powell 1997,5960)
While the Harlem Renaissance promoted and celebrated African-American art,

dance, music, and literature, the Hoodoo Church was gone, sacrificed in the
hope that if its followers shed their African identity they would become accept-
able in the society in which they lived (Finn 1992,187).
They were no longer prepared from earliest youth to be receptive

to things African; they were no longer sure if the tales of worship

and power, of magic and healing, were true or false, miracles or

superstitions. Were they to give credence to Hoodoo when they
had never seen anyone possessed by a loa? Everything in their
upbringing, their whole environment, denied its possibility; their
Christian backgrounds told them that all those old stories were but
stuff and nonsense, tricks used by the wily to overawe the gull-
ible. But from whence, then, came those vague but all too real
visions which assailed their minds during solitude? From whence
those shrouded visitors who came in the night, who whispered
things which, though half-understood, yet jolted them back to a
sense of their true identity? These recognitionsif they may be
so calledwere the core of Afro-Americans personal and national
dilemma:they were African too; or to paint the problem in bolder
colours, they were neither one nor the otherand they believed
themselves to be both! (18788)
As such, the Negro Renaissance represented multifaceted identities, and the art-
ists found themselves contributing to various endeavors within both the United
States and Europe. According to Rye and Green (1995,103),
There were strong contacts in London between British blacks, the

visiting musicians and dancers, and others of African descent.
Asouvenir program of a social meeting organized by the Coterie of
Friends, formed by [Edmund Thornton] Jenkins and a Trinidad-born
Afro-Chinese doctor named Leekam, indicates that members of both
American shows met with Caribbean-, African-, and Britain-born
friends. Florence Mills, James P.Johnson, and the Canadian-born but
Detroit-raised singer-composer Shelton Brooks also met with mem-
bers of a sports team from the West Indies.
Paul Robeson moved to England in 1927, but kept in touch with Harlem while
also maintaining close company with West Indians and Africans abroad; he
learned from them and, well-traveled himself, taught those with whom he was in
contact about activity in Harlem and other manifestations of the black Diaspora
(Stuckey 1994, 189). Roland Hayes had made evident his Diasporic sensitivities
and commitment as early as 1921, singing songs in Swahili and in Yoruba on a
concert in England.17 According to Lotz (1990, 264), black entertainers roamed
Europe from Scotland to Russia, from the Mediterranean to the polar circle.
Blackswhether Africans, Afro-Americans, West Indians, or European-born
were in close touch with one another, even across barriers of language, profes-
sion, or social status.

In 1904, 1906, and 1910, the black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
(18751912) made trips to the United States, partly to visit and partly to per-
form and conduct his compositions. Many African Americans had already heard
his music and had known not only of his reputation in Europe but also that he
had been influenced by the Fisk Jubilee Singers and their renditions of Negro
spirituals when they visited England in 1890s. Organizations bearing his name
sprang up in major cities across the United States, and young African-American
composers aspired to his level of achievement.
Coleridge-Taylor was the first international black model for talented blacks
who aspired to the classical idiom of musical composition. Moreover, the first
of the highly successful classical compositions by an African American was in
the Coleridge-Taylor mold:a cantata on an African-American theme. The com-
poser was Robert Nathaniel Dett, and the composition was called The Chariot
Jubilee. The work was written in 1919; it embodied the thinking of Harlem intel-
lectuals, who counseled use of Afro-American folk sources as thematic mate-
rial for extended compositions.18 Composed for chorus, soloists, and orchestra,
The Chariot Jubilee contains themes and portions of themes from three Negro
spirituals: Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Ride Up in the Chariot, and Father
Abraham.19
Following The Chariot Jubilee, African-American composers wrote several
other works of extended duration, including William Grant Still (who had admit-
ted to being inspired by Coleridge-Taylor), Hall Johnson (a composer and an
arranger of spirituals), the organist and composer Edward Margetson, composer
and violinist Clarence Cameron White (who had studied with Coleridge-Taylor
in England), pianist and composer Florence Price, composer J.Harold Brown,
opera composer Harry Lawrence Freeman,20 Frederick Work (who arranged folk
songs with his brother John Wesley Work), and expatriate Edmund Thornton
Jenkins. Nearly all of these composers won one or more of the various com-
position prizes that were offered in the 1920s, the Holstein Prize, Spingarn
Achievement Medal, Wanamaker Contest Prize, Juilliard Musical Foundation
Fellowship, David Bispham Medal, Guggenheim Fellowship, Julius Rosenwald
Award, and Harmon Foundation Award. Two of the most highly praised works
were Edmund Thornton Jenkinss African War Dance for orchestra, the 1925
Holstein Prize winner; and Hall Johnsons Sonata, the 1927 winner (Hare 1936;
Southern1982).
Among the works of the U.S. blacks, Detts The Chariot Jubilee (1919) was
no doubt the finest work of the period, and a worthy successor did not appear
until 1930 when Stills Afro-American Symphonya long blues meditation
in symphonic dresspremiered (Moe 1986, 64). Other symphonic works by
U.S.blacks appeared in the early 1930s, including several more by Still and some
by Price, as well. This flurry of activity was brought to a close in 1937 with the

premiere of another Dett triumph, The Ordering of Moses, an oratorio for chorus,
soloists, and orchestra. A temporary hiatus of compositional activity ensued,
prompted in part by the end of the Harlem efflorescence, which was, in turn, a
result of the onset of the Great Depression and various oppositional and politi-
cal developments. These political developments and their social ramifications
will be highlighted in the next chapter.21

9
Afro-modernism and Music
On Science, Community, and Magic in
the Black Avant-G arde (by Guthrie RamseyJr.)
The Negro music that developed in the forties had more than
an accidental implication of social upheaval associated with
it. To a certain extent, this music resulted from conscious
attempts to remove it from the danger of mainstream dilution
or even understanding.
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), BluesPeople
This chapter first explores that critical period between the flowerings of the
Negro Renaissance and the burgeoning fight for Civil Rights in the United
States (ca. 1940s through the 1960s), referred to here as the era of Afro-mod-
ernism. The musicians of this time refused to limit themselves in any way,
and the musical creativity that emerged during Afro-modernism responded
variously to the original calls set forth in previous generations. The resultant
musical contributions represent a shared commitment to breaking rules and
tearing down restrictions imposed by mainstream society on black expressive
artists. Both composers and performers were energized by the kind of freedom
originally espoused by Toussaint Louverture, as, over the course of the twen-
tieth century, these musicians could explore new tonalities, invent new styles,
and take advantage of new opportunitiesincluding those afforded by inter-
national travel, higher education, and the rising field of black music research.
This chapter draws on historical accounts of music making, reviews of ground-
breaking sound recordings, and commentary written by the musicians them-
selves, all of which shed light on how black musicians perceived themselves
and were perceived as agents of change during thisera.
As the Civil Rights movement progressed, a need for new platforms of
expression arose; and, in recalling the metaphor of the sailing ship, we note that
as people moved into new circumstances and had access to new resources, they
also needed new tools to help navigate their new situation. The field of black
155

music answered this need, providing a space to chronicle black music making
from a more academic perspective. Thus, an extension of the time frame above
is necessary here, because during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s black compos-
ers, musicians, educators, and historians accomplished a series of noteworthy
firsts. New professional organizations, such as the Society of Black Composers
(1968), the Black Music Caucus for music educators (1972), and the Center for
Black Music Research (1983), were founded to provide like-minded individuals
with institutionalized support for their endeavors. Academic journals, including
the Black Perspective in Music (19731990) and the Black Music Research Journal
(1980), fostered both positivistic research (based on discovery and description)
and critical discourse (positioning these discoveries and descriptions against the
backdrop of changes in colonial rule, improvements in human and civil rights,
and shifts in academic trends, for example). Thus, this chapter also introduces
the longitudinal implications of Afro-modernism for the ability of black musi-
cians to succeed in mainstream educational and performance venues.
For black politics and culture in America and internationally, the period between
the 1940s and the 1960s was a watershed moment. The term Afro-modernism
is useful to express many of the political, social, economic, and artistic changes
that occurred, one that captures all of the activities and social energies that made
these times so dynamic and relevant. Afro-modernism identifies how blacks
throughout the world responded to the experience of modernity, globalism, and
anticolonialism as well as to the expanded sense of artistic experimentation and
visibility of black expressive culture. Indeed, the years between the so-called
Renaissance era of the 1920s and the Civil Rights and Black Consciousness peri-
ods of the 1960s and 1970s were ripe with dreams of freedom, acts of activism,
and boundless creativity.
These political and creative waves took on many forms. In the United States,
black soldiers fighting fascism in World War II returned to a changing socio-
political environment charged with a new attitude that demanded abolition of
inequality at home. The status quo was no longer an option. The Double-V cam-
paign (victory at home and abroad) fueled the fight for fair access to jobs, educa-
tion, and the right to vote without strictures and harassment. Clearly through
their participation in defending Americas military and political positions on the
global stage, black Americans were now poised to press claims for full participa-
tion in national life on all levels. It was yet another battle to be fought, but this
time, on domesticsoil.
A massive black migration to northern cities continued throughout the
1940s and into the 1970s. The desire for greater job opportunities and lifestyles
unconnected to the stifling, and sometimes deadly, social arrangements under
the Souths Jim Crow inspired waves of humanity to bring all of their hopes,
dreams, fears, and talents to northern cities. Aspirations for black freedom were

A fro - m o de r n is m a n d M u s ic 157
not limited to the United States. Abroad, the collapse of colonialism stirred
across the African continent. These political movements became important
conduits that linked Africans around the world politically and creatively with
unprecedented fervor. Intellectuals, journalists, artistspoets, visual artists,
musicians, and moreused their work to move the black liberation struggle
forward with purpose and commitment.
An array of dramatic social changes of this era include the fall of colonial-
ism in Africa, which served to unite black people around the globe; gradual
desegregation of the music industry; the Civil Rights movement; the radical and
sometimes militant Black Consciousness movement inspiring new approaches
to art and its interpretation; and emergence of a post-Soul moment, which was
caused, in part, by corporate takeover of black cultural production, particularly
music.1 The role of black music as a primary conduit circulating energy, inspira-
tion, and information throughout various movements of resistance such as Pan
Africanism, Negritude, Black Consciousness, and hip-hop culture politics cannot
be overestimated.2 This chapter illuminates how music participated in this wave
of black sociopolitical resistance.
Jazz, the music that named an age in the 1920s, continued to represent a
space for forward-thinking ideas about culture. It was in bebop, for example,
that scores of artists from poets to painters found inspiration and a model for
experimentation. Bebop (also known as modern jazz) emerged in the early to
mid-1940s as an instrumental approach to the swing dance aesthetic, an innova-
tion that abstracted some of swings core conventions. Drummers disrupted the
steady dance beat by dropping offbeat, dramatic accents called bombs. In order
to sidestep paying copyright fees, musicians wrote compositions by creating
new, more challenging melodies on the harmonic structures of existing popular
songs. The harmonic structures themselves featured a sophisticated approach
that exploited the upper partialsninths, elevenths, and thirteenthsand a
strong emphasis on the tritone relationships and flatted fifths, about which
Iwill go into detail later. The virtuosic improvisations of instrumentalists Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and Max Roach set jazz on a new artistic and
demanding course. Vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter influenced legions
of singers with their command of bebop techniques. Pianist Thelonious Monks
idiosyncratic compositional approach and acerbic solo approach emerged as the
quintessential voice of new era in jazz. And, as we shall see, the bebop move-
ment became the starting point for a musician who took jazz into new realms of
experimentation.
As for its relationship to the larger cultural and theoretical model of Call/
Response, the 1940s should be seen as somewhat of a departure from earlier
practices. If Call/Response details a dynamic, historical conversation with and
among black musical tropes, then what we see in the 1940s and beyond is a
dramatic transformation of these practices. With the opening up of educational

opportunities for black citizens across the board, musicians experienced more
unprecedented movement (certainly a metaphorical extension of the sailing
ship) in spaces previously denied them, and with this, they adopted and reworked
musical techniques that originated outside of black culture, as will be explored
shortly. These devices were mixed with black musical tropes, demonstrating in
musical terms the aspirations of social progress and freedom that Toussaints
Beat represented. Women musicians, who were for many years denied full
acknowledgment of their abilities, thrived in the historical arch between the
1940s and 1960s and fully participated in this new shift of musical priorities. As
Farah Jasmine Griffin has argued, the idea of movement perfectly character-
izes the imperatives of black and Latino artistic circles and particularly that of
black women in NewYork of the1940s:
Literally, it means a change in position or place, as in the movement

of those black and Latino people who were migrating to NewYork in
record numbers. Movement is also an important concept in the arts,
one that applies to diverse art forms. In dance it may simply mean a
change of position of posture, a step or a figure. In music it signifies
the transition from note to note or passage to passage, or it may refer
to a division of a longer work. In literature, movement signals the
progression or development of a plot or a storyline. Finally, there is
the political movement, defined as a series of actions on the part of
a group of people working toward a common goal. Black people were
on the move in the 1940s, migrating, marching, protesting, walking,
dancing. These artists sought to imbue their work with this sense of
mobility as well. (2013,1617)
This sense of Afro-modernist urgency, begun in the 1940s and continuing to the
years of the Black Power Movement, demanded new music for newtimes.
In a letter to the editor of Black Perspective in Music, George Russell (1923
2009) expressed his displeasure with the title of an interview that was published
in the BPIMs Spring 1974 issue, in which his ideas about the Concept were inter-
rogated by OliveJones.
The only thing about the forthcoming article that Itake issue with
is the title A New Theory for Jazz. It places a limit on the Concept
[that] it does not have . In fact, the purpose of the study is to
close the cultural and intellectual gap between so called Jazz and
EuropeanMusic.
In the letter, he also lays out his future projects, which include a book analysis of
the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, and Alban

Afro - m o de r n is m a n d M u s ic 159
Berg, among others, with respect to his by-then-famous Lydian Chromatic

Concept, otherwise known as the Concept. Twenty- one years earlier (in
1953), he had published his book aptly titled Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal
Organization:The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity. At the time, Russell seemed
to have been targeting jazz musicians and their quest for ideas to improve their
improvisations, when hewrote:
The Lydian Chromatic Concept is an organization of tonal resources

from which the jazz musician may draw to create his improvised lines.
It is like an artists palette:the paints and colors, in the form of scales
and/or intervallic motives, are waiting to be blended by the impro-
viser. Like the artist, the jazz musician must learn the techniques
of blending his materials. The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal
Organization is a chromatic concept providing the musician with an
awareness of the full spectrum of tonal colors available in the equal
temperament tuning. (Jones and Russell, 1974,63)
Between the time his book was published (1953, revised 1959)and the appear-
ance of the BPIM article and letter, Russell came to believe that his work had
developed a more universal potential beyond the American jazz world. Indeed,
his musical ideas were of interest to and accepted by Europeans, as Russell had
made his home there from 1964 to1969.
The bebop movement had certainly inspired Russell, as a theorist and a com-
poser, as it did many African-American male artists, and some of his earliest
compositions date from the late 1940s, coinciding with the emergence of bebop.
The flatted fifths ubiquity in bebops harmonic language led him to explore and
develop a theory based on the Lydianscale.
After achieving a certain degree of success composing, Russell said that he
began to think about the United States as a closed door for what Iwanted to
do. He believed that there were only two viable musical routes for him to pur-
sue at that time: the freedom direction and the commercial direction. On
the one hand, the freedom direction included some of the free jazz players, who
in Russells estimation presented a kind of stream-of-consciousness playing,
very angry music and very intenseyou know, shouting and screamingwith
free use of all kinds of musical resources (Jones and Russell, 1974, 67). On
the other hand, the commercial route represented, to Russell, the Hollywood
scene. Neither route was of interest to him. Only Europe provided the outlet
he desired.
While he was abroad, he toured his own band and made connections with
the Western art music world of experimental music. Moreover, as Russell men-
tioned in the letter to the BPIM editor, Danish Radio produced in 1965 two per-
formances of Karlheinz Stockhausens Piece for Three Orchestras with a strategic

performance of his own sextet between them. He and Stockhausen developed

a friendship and discussed on Danish television the mutual influence between
contemporary jazz styles and what he called New European Music. Europe, in
Russells estimation, gave him the appreciation and attention for his experimen-
talism that the United Stated did not:I had to leave because my inner self didnt
feel that that [i.e., the existing state of jazz] was a very comfortable position for
me to be in (1974,68).
There is much evidence that affirms why Russell was a singular avant-garde,
both musically and socially. He believed that, unlike other music theories,
the Concept was both a pedagogical tool and a prescriptive theory for creat-
ing music and not an explanation of the syntax and grammar of compositional
practices already in existence. Like Charles Ives, he composed primarily out-
side the typical political economies of the art world, a fact that allowed him
greater freedom. He did not consider himself to be a regular participant of
the music business and could, thereby, freely create from his inner impulse.
He believed in a hierarchy of creativity in art. From top to bottom, this meant
artist-philosophers, the artist, the popularizer, and the incompetent. No con-
scientious artist, Russell believed, should think about staying in the status quo
to please audiences; artists should continue to grow. This view, of course, goes
against the grain of a huge part of the logic of the music industry, which is
based on regulation and predictability.
Russell believed in breaking with received notions or laws in music, partic-
ularly in the case of the Concept, which eschewed jazzs reliance on the major-
minor modes. There was a parallel to this for black people in the social world
outside of music. Russell thought that his work in tearing down systems in the
music world could serve as a model for blacks generally. He appeared to live by
a number of mantras:do not accept your social position as the ironclad rule,
break the law, resist the powers that be, and think outside the box. Russell said,
So its OK to talk about black liberation and black this-and-that, but nothing
is going to change fundamentally in this society which is ruled by laws that
are so precious to their makers. One has to question laws (Jones and Russell,
1974,72).
The saxophonist and composer John Coltrane was another example of a jazz
musician who questioned laws. The musical recordings he made in the years pre-
ceding his death in 1967 are considered his late works, and they brought to
the jazz world an idiosyncratic view of spiritualitya view also sated with an
experimental, intellectualized approach. As Salim Washington writes in an essay
discussion of Coltranes 1965 recording Joy, the saxophonist was searching for
a way to make his spiritual investigations of various world religions and the sci-
ence, or rather, the formal execution, of his music answerable to one another.
And he searched far and wide with regard to these two spheres. Although some
of these techniques put him at odds with jazz critics of his moment, he remained

undeterred in his insistence on expanding jazzs sonic language. As Washington

putsit:
It was precisely the musical elements outside the strictures of

Western music practice that confounded music critics . His use
of long vamps over modal passages, and extended soloing; of non-
tempered tuning including shrieks, honks, and screams; of glissandi
like smears; and of melismatic melodic gestures were features that
earned Coltrane respect and praise from some quarters and oppro-
brium from others. (Washington, 2010,124)
Much of Coltranes work near the end of his life exuded these techniques as well
as his concern with the spiritual. As a former addict who had successfully kicked
his habit, Coltrane made music that was testimony, in Washingtons eyes, of a
man determined to live a life beyond the harsh strictures of race and of the typi-
cal working jazz musicians by experimenting. Like many other black musicians
of his moment, including Rosetta Tharpewho will be discussed shortlyhis
early orientation was in the Protestant church. Yet he absorbed those tech-
niques and ultimately transcended them, shaping his music into something that
would transport his listeners as well. In this way, Coltrane inserted into Afro-
modernism an expansive and heady sense of aesthetics, politics, spirituality,
andas it was interpreted by someprotest.
Another musician in what Salim Washington refers to as the holy quadrum-
virate of free jazz, Ornette Coleman, epitomizes for many the face and sound
of avant-gardism in jazz (Washington, 2004, 32). Washington has argued per-
suasively that free jazz should not be considered any more revolutionary than
jazzs previous stylistic fissure, namely, bebop. The revolutionary qualities on
the formal level of the music allowed many to imbue it with an overtly politi-
cal registration, although some of the musicians associated with it were sim-
ply attracted to aesthetic experimentation. It is difficult to pin down exactly
why, but Colemans music seemed to threaten the jazz traditionalists more than
Coltrane did, although the latter did draw his share of detractors. Perhaps it was
because Coltrane had a longer history in the more mainstream groups like that
of Miles Davis. At any rate, Coleman can certainly be considered one of the most
polarizing figures in avant-gardejazz.
As Robert Walser points out in a collection of readings in jazz history, when
Colemans groundbreaking recording Free Jazz (1960) was released, Downbeat
published two reviews of the work, one mostly positive, and one negative. In
apparent disgust and a sense of betrayal, John A.Tynan described the record
as an eight-man emotional regurgitation. To his ears there were no aesthetic
rules, describing the music as nihilistic and in mental health terms:Where does
neurosis end and psychosis begin? The answer must lie somewhere within this

maelstrom (Walser, 1999, 225). Tynan accused the group of trying to destroy
jazz. Pete Welding recognized the danger of collective improvisation in his
review, but he was sympathetic to the enterprise, for the most part. He writes
that repeated listenings allowed him to hear the connection of Colemans music
to early Dixieland jazz. In other words, he entreats listeners to discipline them-
selves and the music in order to hear logic and history emerge from cacophony
(254). Add to this critical discourse the idea that free jazz was a direct affront to
Western imperialism, as some writers purported, and it is clear how Colemans
Afro-modernism became a most controversial expression. And Colemans now-
famous extended engagement at the Five Spot added a necessary piece to this
puzzlelive musical presentationto the fresh, challenging sounding record-
ings and the critical discourse in order to launch his revolution.
When John Coltrane began courting his future wife Alice, he admitted to
being amazed when learning about her many musical talents and interests. She
responded, You never knew a lot of things about me. The same could be said
of many women in jazz with respect to their participation in and mastery of the
idiom. Born in Detroit in 1937, Alice McLeod, like many black women musicians,
began her early musical training in the church, where she was part of a devoted
family that strictly adhered to the repertoires and conservative doctrinal teach-
ings of the church. As Tammy Kernodle notes, Coltrane moved back and forth
between Baptist and Pentecostal settings as a child, playing a variety of reper-
toires and crafting a dynamic view of what it meant to be spiritual. These early
experiences make a strong case that the focused spirituality she was known for
later in life (particularly after she met and married John) could also be attrib-
uted to her childhood. In other words, as Kernodle states, she was more than
simply a disciple of her husbands evolving worldviews. And she was more than
a church musician who dabbled in other genres. After a teenage life immersed
in various kinds of music, she broadened her palette to jazz, particularly bebop,
when she became a bebop musician in the likeness of the virtuoso Bud Powell.
Powell favored a pianistic style based on fast, angular melodic lines played in the
right hand against staccato, scaled-down voicing in the left hand, as opposed to
the barrel house jig piano style of the church. Alice McLeod met and studied
with Powell when she visited and toured Paris in the early 1960s. The arc of
her musicianship was, indeed, impressive, stretching from her early beginnings
in gospel to her young professional life in bebop. And she would push into yet
another realm of experimentations in more free-form jazz styles.
John and Alices personal and mutually beneficial relationship seems to be
the context through which each journeyed further into non-Western forms of
spirituality as well as into the soundscape of free jazz. As Kernodle points out,
Alice denied that it was she who was leading John in that direction, but some
fans blamed her for the transition. Although Alice credits John with teaching
her to explore, there were signs that Alice was moving away from standard

bebop conventions before she joined Johns band. Bennie Maupin, a musician
who played with Alice during bebop years in Detroit, maintains that she experi-
mented with open harmonic structures that invited experimental approaches
to improvisation before her marriage to John (Kernodle, 2010, 78):While the
marriage of spirituality and jazz was nothing new in the late 1960s, Alices musi-
cal approaches were unparalleled as she combined the nuanced practices of the
traditional Black church with religious and musical traditions of the East(74).
The Afro-modernist practices of Alice Coltrane would come into full fruition
after John Coltranes passing. Between the years 1968 and 1978 she produced
what Kernodlecalls
the most highly experimental and spiritual music the labels [Impulse
Records and Warner Brothers] ever produced. The aesthetic ideals of
freedom in the music and faith, that were associated with the avant-
garde, were revealed in the level of experimentation that Alice under-
took in her recordings, and her spiritual life and her recordings serve
as a record of her self-actualization.(88)
Yet even with this celebration of Coltranes achievements it is important to keep

in mind what she was up against with regard to her being understood as an art-
ist. Her journey through gospel, bebop, and free jazz aesthetics was marked by a
stark and formidable challenge, one that did not mark the new freedom in jazz
as a space for new freedoms for women participants and listeners:the notion
of freedom in jazz became an aesthetic value that was defined in a more male-
centered construct. Freedom of the black male body, his sexuality and identity
from centuries of racial and sexual ideologies, became the standard through
which the race would be uplifted (85). Despite these obstacles, Alice maintained
her focus on personal spiritual growth and how it could be sustained and expe-
rienced through experimental music. This journey led to her exploring South
Asian faith traditions under tutelage of the guru Swami Satchidananda, eventu-
ally changing her name to Turiya Aparna and forming a religious community
in Southern California. Withdrawing from her former public life, Alice wrote
compositions that, as Kernodle notes, blended her gospel and jazz sensibilities
and sacred Hindu text, and these adaptions of sacred texts and melodies, much
like the religious compositions of Mary Lou Williams, have created a distinct
African American tradition within the larger worship life of the religion (96).
As alternative approaches to Afro-modernism, they created what Alma Jean
Billingslea Brown calls alternative epistemologies, new possibilities beyond
the male-dominated cultures in which they had worked their entire careers. Alice
Coltrane, and indeed Mary Lou Williams, juxtaposed the science of technically
demanding music with the magic of spirituality, with a goal toward healing
and building community.

By the mid-1940s, Mary Lou Williams (19101981) was perhaps the most
prominent woman instrumentalist of jazz. She was introduced to the piano by
her pianist mother and was known in her early life as a prodigious child who
could duplicate what she heard effortlessly. She built a substantial career on the
road during the swing era and toured with and wrote for big bands led by men
such as Andy Kirk, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington. When she moved to
Harlem in 1943, she began a quest for greater artistic freedom, for a community
of artists that would support her creative impulses, and for a spiritual journey
that would help balance her higher purposes and the political economy of the
music business. At a time in which Leftist politics and black freedom struggles
conjoined, Williams was fortuitously booked in NewYorks Caf Society, a night-
club centered in the progressive politics of its day. The circle of artists who per-
formed there represented a community that became linked to black freedom and
labor struggles. The Caf Society engagement was a turning point for Williams,
as she had gigged on the road consistently since she was in her early teens. This,
together with the NewYork apartment into which she moved during this time,
provided Williams with a domestic and professional stability that had eluded her
during the many years she spent on theroad.
As Farah Jasmine Griffin has detailed, Williams had been interested in mysti-
cism since her childhood, and during this fertile and creative period of her life
it influenced her music. Her extended composition Zodiac Suite began to fer-
ment during her tenure at Caf Society Uptown. She wanted this piece to be an
amalgam, played by a group that would bring together black and white, male
and female, European classical music and jazza truly democratic ensemble
(Griffin, 2013, 165). It debuted at Town Hall in December 1945 to critical reviews
that labeled it ambitious and innovative (166). As an extremely gifted and
skilled pianist, composer, and arranger, Williams knew she had nothing to prove
to the professional music world she had participated in since she was a child.
But for all of her accolades, she sought more than fame and fortune:she wanted
(as Alice Coltrane did) to make a difference in the lives of her people. Jazz,
Williams once wrote, is a spiritual music. Its the suffering that gives jazz its
spiritual dimension (164). Williams would later be drawn to mystical practices
such as fortunetellers as well as to charitable work that targeted Harlem youths
who were suffering the most from Harlems postWorld War II socioeconomic
decline. Because of shifts in American musical tastes and her remarkable insis-
tence on musical experimentation, Williams fled to Europe in the early 1950s.
After experiencing an emotional crisis there, she temporarily stopped writing
and performing, only to eventually return to her pedagogical practices and spiri-
tual works via Catholicism. As Griffin argues, the modernist Williams saw these
two life projectsmusic and spiritualityas one entity(185).
When the Second Vatican Council issued the Declaration on Religious Freedom
and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy between 1962 and 1965, these

documents signaled sweeping changes in the Catholic Churchs liturgy. In turn,

these changes gave Williams an opportunity to creatively contribute to a pro-
gressive musical movement that integrated various musical styles with litur-
gical forms and altered the performance and composition of music within the
Catholic Church (Kernodle, 2004, 199200). At the request and encouragement
of her friend Brother Mario Hancock, Williams composed a piece titled A Hymn
in Honor of St. Martin de Porres to commemorate the canonization of the
black sixteenth-century Peruvian known for his care of the poor. She set music
to Father Anthony Woods original poetry, and the piece debuted in November
1963. Tammy Kernodle has described the piece in her study of Williams:
a cappella with the exception of an eleven-measure piano solo, [it]

consisted of complex harmonies that at times coupled the voices
antiphonally against one another. The melancholy, repentant mood
of the piece was broken up only by Williamss piano solo, which, with
its Latin-tinged rhythms, provided the only cultural link with de
Porress Latin American heritage. (2004,201)
Although the piece received mixed reviews at the time, Williams continued to
write music that would unite her passions for social justice and creativity, which
she characterized as jazz for the disturbed soul and as music for emotional
healing. Her Anima Christi composition, written in collaboration with the
exceptional trombonist and arranger Melba Liston, united gospel, blues, and
jazz with this purpose in mind:to reach the average listener. Williamss Afro-
modernist period was clearly defined by her search for spiritual meaning and
guidance. And, as Griffin argues, Williamss music served as a spiritual medium,
a conduit to something outside of herself as well as a vehicle for expressing a
sense of the spiritual, if not the divine (Griffin, 2013,164).
At the same time George Russell was outlining the Concept and the Coltranes
(together with composers such as Dorothy Rudd Moore) were stretching the
boundaries of what would be called black music, the music being produced right
in the pocket of the blues aesthetic was undergoing changes that would cast a
long shadow into the future. If bebop abstracted swing and popular song, then
early rhythm and bluesan umbrella label for a constellation of black vernacular
styles that appeared somewhat contemporaneouslytook the swing aesthetic
and intensified its dance feeling with a heavier backbeat, a proclivity for twelve-
bar blues form, repetitious and riff-based melodies, and lyrics whose subject mat-
ter comprised all of the earthiness and humor of traditional blues, though with
an urbane twist. Perhaps best exemplified by Ruth Brown and Louis Jordan, the
rhythm-and-blues style was sonically related to rock n roll, which emerged in
the 1950s as a way to market the new dance music to white teenagers during
the beginning years of the Civil Rights Movement and fears of desegregation.

Although black performers such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino
certainly counted among early rock n roll starsmany believed it to be another
strain of rhythm and bluesas the style became codified as a genre with its own
race-specific social contract, it became understood as primarily white. The
mainstream of rhythm-and-blues styles featured elements from gospel, blues,
and jazz, an imaginative repertoire of lyrics employing vivid imagery from black
life, together with qualities derived from specific locations such as the urban
blues sound from Chicago and Los Angeles. Independent record labels were pri-
marily responsible for recording and disseminating early rhythm andblues.
One of the most dramatic disruptions in the blues aestheticthe music
thought to be most emblematic of an imagined, mythic, and ancient past
occurred in its instrumentation when musicians began to literally electrify it.
These sounds were heard as avant-garde even as they also asserted elements
of the styles past. When coupled with the sonic elements of the blues and the
historical social connotations associated with black musicians in American soci-
ety, the relatively new sounds of the electric guitar became a charged cultural
symbol that reverberated for decades thereafter. Electrified blues established an
entirely different trajectory for black music during the same years that jazz was
moving from its cultural position as Americas sound of pop in the 1930s and
1940s and beginning its arts pedigree in the late 1940s and 1950s, a move
buoyed by written criticism and theoretical treatises such as George Russells
Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization.
Steve Waksmans brilliant account of the electric guitars cultural journey
takes the Afro-modernism topic in quite another direction. The invention of
the instrument was the result of a small number of experimenting inventors
and business-minded people. He lists several notable changes that took place in
African-American popular music between 1941 and1955:
the changing concentration of blues performers in rural and urban

areas, as well as between north and south; the displacement of field
recording practices in favor of studio recording; the growing African-
American acquaintance with technologies of sound production and
reproduction like the tape recorder and the electric guitar; and the
increased potential of African-American music, and of black perform-
ers to cross over into success with white audiences. Thus Waters
and Berry can be considered as examples, at once representative and
exceptional, of the complex range of processes that shaped African-
American popular music and were shaped by black performers in the
years surrounding and following World War II. (1999,115)
In 1930 the Dobro company made the first electric guitar, and other companies
followed quickly thereafter with their own models. What began as motivation

to have the instrument heard above the rest of the band became a decadeslong
obsession exploring the outer limits of technology. Through the materialism of
the electric guitar, then, technology became an important platform for establish-
ing an individualized, highly personal voice in the music field. And it did much
more than that. Waksman argues that the guitars role in shaping sound design
through manipulation of volume, distortion, feedback, and pitch bends was par-
ticularly prominent in how Chicago blues countered the perceived NewYork
centrism of Afro-modernist sonic experimentation. The great aesthetic-sonic
divide between acoustic and electric guitars became a charged ideological field
of play, one that pop audiences invested with strong feelings and meanings. If
music was able to create, embody, and circulate information that conforms to
or disrupts social orders, then electrified blues may be read as a dramatic and
important index of change.
Audiences were conditioned to hear the sound of the electric guitar in terms of
macho excessas a sonic shot of power and sexual politics. During the war years
there was another twist making the electric guitars emergence a game changer.
In Chicago the specificities of the racial lines reinforcing segregation created an
atmosphere in which musicians catered sonic organization to the requirements
of their audience and not the larger market forces. In this case, the audience
was an Up-South mix of urbanite and newly arrived Southerners, the kind of
people who would delight in hearing music that resembled their social experi-
ence:hard-core, hybrid, and full of elements of a Southern past and Northern
possibilities. If during the 1940s and 1950s Alfred Lions East Coastbased Blue
Note label represented for jazz an institutional model for building an art world
sensibility for the music, then a Chicago record label became an important cata-
lyst for the electric guitars role in changing the trajectory of American popu-
lar music. Waksman shows that beyond the efforts of folk music collector Alan
Lomax (who was on his own mission to preserve and protect styles from Afro-
modernist experimentation), the Chess label provided a space for new blues ter-
ritories and musical personalities to emerge.
Just as small New Yorkbased record labels gave Thelonious Monk, Dizzy
Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, and other beboppers opportunities to
develop their own modernisms, the Chess label helped to cultivate a musical cul-
ture that formed another version of stream of Afro-modernism that attracted a
popular audience. One modernism was acoustic, this one electrified and electri-
fying. Guitarists and singers Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry stood at the center
of this movement. Although they represented different types of musicians
Waters being an ensemble-focused instrumentalist, while Berry was more of a
soloisttogether they presented a new type of performed masculinity that
became a signature of rock, R&B, funk, and rap. The Chess phenomenon also
brought into focus the producer as a cultural icon central to making recordings
because the Chess brothers inserted themselves into the creative processes of

their products. This was markedly different from the live performances of the
electrified blues. In live spaces, the musicians were freer to experiment and sat-
isfy their own muses and craft highly individual styles in the competitive envi-
ronment of Chicago nightclubs.
Guitarist Rosetta Tharpe, in many ways, was just as much a pioneer into this
world of electrified blues, although the style she played was labeled gospel. Yet
as her biographer Gayle Wald states, she should be considered as much a pro-
genitor of rock n roll as someone like Chuck Berry. Testimonies abound about
the power of her playing and singing, her charismatic musical personality, and
the influence she had on her generation of musicians. For many, she made the
guitar talk. As Wald explains:
When Rosettas fans said she could make that guitar talk, they meant
she could play the instrument with abandon while still exercising
exquisite control. When she made the guitar talk, she gave her audi-
ence an opportunity to feel excitement, pleasure, power, and emo-
tional release in the sounds she generated. She loved nothing more
than the cacophony of a few hundredor several thousandfans
yelling out:Go on, girl! Make it talk, Rosetta! (2007,73)
Tharpe learned the connection between music and the ecstatic from her
upbringing and training in the black Pentecostal sect of the Church of God in
Christ (COGIC), a denomination known for its combustible, evocative, and
sensational worship styles. Dynamic music plays a key role in connecting con-
gregants with the divine, and as this approach jumped the track into popular
music styles like rock n roll, Tharpe and others created a standard for American
music that would define it as a singular style throughout the world. Indeed, as a
woman, Tharpe had an influence that clears room for our need to consider the
advancement of Afro-modernist praxis to be as much a female endeavor as it
was a male one. Thus, Wald argues:Well before the guitar gods of more recent
decades made a fetish of the guitar solo as an orgiastic expression of male sexual
libido, Rosetta perfected something both more subtle and more radical:the art
of the guitar as an instrument of ineffable speech, of rapture beyond words
(2007,73).
Although well acquainted with the excesses of black church worship styles
and the pleasures of pop music, an important generation of black composers
would move in other musical directions, benefiting from opportunities that
opened in education as a result of the long Civil Rights Movement. As a result
of this shifting tide, many would secure professorships at American universities
in addition to earning major prizes and commissions. Their works exemplified
several styles, ranging from neoclassical to the avant-garde, and featured equally
diverse performing bodies, including chamber groups and symphony orchestras,

as well as solo singers and entire opera companies, among others. Undine Smith
Moore, Ulysses Kay, George Walker, and T.J. Anderson were among those who
led the way, establishing reputations within the academy and the larger art
musicworld.
Undine Smith Moore (19041989) served as a music supervisor in the public
schools of North Carolina for one year (192627) before commencing her illus-
trious career at Virginia State University in 1927, from which she did not retire
until 1972. A graduate of Fisk University and Columbia University Teachers
College, Moore received musical training in piano, organ, theory, and composi-
tion. Although many of her instrumental pieces employ standard forms such
as the fugue, theme and variations, prelude, and waltz, her extensive list of
vocal solos and choral works shows her inclination to compose pieces of a sacred
nature and to portray concepts relevant to the black experience. She is often
called the Dean of Black Women Composers in honor of her myriad accom-
plishments in an era typically considered closed to black women, and for her
dedication to ushering in the next generations of black musicians through her
teaching and mentoring. Her commitment to furthering black music in educa-
tion can best seen in the essay Black Music in the Undergraduate Curriculum,
which was published in 1973. Her coauthors were Portia K.Maultsby and John
A.Taylor, as well as Johnnie V.Lee, to whom this book has been dedicated. In
addition to her impressive career as a university professor, Moore produced
some powerful compositions during her retirement years. She is perhaps most
famous for her 1980 oratorio Scenes from the Life of a Martyr:To the Memory of
Martin Luther King, for which she received a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
But her final work, Soweto (1987), a trio for violin, cello, and piano, attests to
Moores personal awareness of the civil unrest in South Africa during Apartheid,
and especially during the Soweto uprising of1976.
Ulysses Kay (19171995), nephew of the jazz cornetist Joe King Oliver,
composed approximately 140 pieces over the course of his career. He spent most
of his life in the United States, but he was presented with unique opportunities
to travel and live abroad. As a result of winning the Prix de Rome twice and a
Fulbright Scholarship, he lived in Rome from 1949 to 1952 (Wyatt 1999). As
part of the U.S. State Department Cultural Exchange Program, he joined the
American composers Roy Harris, Peter Mennin, and Roger Sessions on a trip
to the USSR in 1958 (Cairns 2014). On his return, Kay wrote of his experi-
ences in the National Music Council Bulletin and the American Composers Alliance
Bulletin, offering his readers insights about the musical and cultural activities
taking place in Russia and the Soviet Union, which were, at that time, not widely
accessible to or understood in the West. A1940 graduate of the Eastman School
of Music (University of Rochester) with a masters degree in composition, Kay
ultimately pursued an academic career as a professor of music theory and com-
position, most notably at Lehman College of the City University of NewYork

from 1968 to 1988. He counted among his many awards the 1972 University
of Rochester Alumni Award, as well as several honorary doctorates. At the time
of his death, he was working on a piece that had been commissioned by the
NewYork Philharmonic.3
Also a graduate of the Eastman School of Music (DMA, piano performance),
George Theophilus Walker (1922) soloed with some of the worlds best
orchestras during the early stages of his musical career and went on to cap-
ture audiences and win awards with his compositions. Like Kay, he was able to
hone his skills abroad; as a pianist, he studied at the American Conservatory
in Fontainebleau, France, in 1947, and he returned to Paris a decade later
for composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger. During the 1950s and 1960s,
Walker taught at a number of colleges and universities and served as a pro-
fessor at Rutgers University from 1969 to 1992. After retiring from the uni-
versity, Walker continued to compose; indeed, his Lilacs for Soprano or Tenor
and Orchestra garnered the 1996 Pulitzer Prize, making Walker the first black
composer to win theprize.
T. J. Anderson (1928) pursued opportunities in jazz during his forma-
tive years but turned to music education (M. Mus. Ed., Pennsylvania State
University) and composition and music theory (Ph.D., University of Iowa) dur-
ing the course of his graduate studies. Anderson taught at a number of institu-
tions, including the public schools of North Carolina, but he eventually secured
a professorial position at Tufts University, which he held from 1972 to 1990.
During this time, he contributed mightily to the currents in musicological litera-
ture and to the burgeoning field of black music research. His essays and articles
can be found in publications such as the College Music Society Report (1982),
Images of Blacks in American Culture (1988), and the Black Music Research Journal
(1990), among others. Moreover, he conducted the premiere performance of the
Black Music Repertory Ensemble (the resident ensemble of the Center for Black
Music Research) in 1988. In 1972, he was also a founding member and the first
national chairman of the Black Music Caucus of the Music Educators National
Conference (MENC [now the National Association for Music Education]).4
Anderson continues to advocate for music education and music appreciation
within the United States, and we will encounter some of his more recent ideas
later in the Epilogue.
Moore, Kay, Walker, and Anderson were involved in academic circles as com-
posers, but not all Afro-modern composers pursued university positions. Howard
Swanson (19071978), for example, was employed by the Internal Revenue
Service, but managed to compose prolifically at night. After his formal training
from the Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M.) and additional studies with Nadia
Boulanger (19381940), he saw his Short Symphony premiered by the NewYork
Philharmonic (195051) and he received commissions from the Juilliard School
of Music and the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, among others. His works have

been the subject of much analysis published in the Black Perspective in Music, the
Black Music Research Journal, and the Negro History Bulletin.
Although Dorothy Rudd Moore (1940) did not hold a position at a uni-
versity, her compositions represent an important musical approach in the era
of Afro-modernism. As Alice Coltrane and Mary Lou Williams did before her,
Moore confronted the preconceived parameters and made her musical mark on
her own terms. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, Moore did not mind
being labeled an African-American woman composer although she refused to
label her output as black music, a term she believed segregated or ghettoized
her music from the larger art world. She understood the African-American expe-
rience to be broad and all-encompassing, and African Americans were vast
and various in their musical tastes and appreciation (Walker-Hill, 2002, 225).
Indeed, as author Helen Walker-Hill points out, Moore rarely deployed musical
materials from the traditional African-American culture in her compositions,
choosing rather to work with more abstract gestures and forms and earning a
reputation for writing music with communicative power, integrity, intelligence,
and impeccable craft(219).
Moore spent her childhood in a small black community in an integrated
suburban enclave outside of Wilmington, Delaware, one that was invested in
concert music and in which her mother was a respected soprano. After rigor-
ous compositional training at Howard University and a summer of lessons with
Nadia Boulanger, Moore went on to cofound the Society of Black Composers in
1968, which was formed as a forum to promote and disseminate information
about black composers.5 In one of the organizations newsletters, the groups
members argued for the freedom to express themselves as black composers in as
many musical languages as possible:
And while a common vocabulary or grammar is not even desirable

among black composers, a new and highly desirable consensus of
positive and assertive attitudes is clearly emerging. The questions
of a year agomost often concerning which specific musical sounds
and materials would be necessary to make black musicare no longer
necessary. We know that because we are black, we are making black
music. And we hear it, too! (Southern, 1997,555)
Their optimism and creative works were well received, as many of these compos-
ers pursuits led to international ventures.
Like many women musicians, Moore continued in the tradition of fam-
ily music making and collective building: she married cellist, conductor, and
composer Kermit Moore, and wrote music for him, among other commissions.
Dorothy Rudd Moore could be considered a feminist in her own right, as she set
the poetry of black women in some of her song cycles. Some of her other vocal

works focused on the inner emotional lives of women, and her well-known song
cycle Flowers of Darkness focused on black women, although all of the songs are
based on poems by black men. According to Helen Walker-Hill, Moores music
contained experimental elements marked by complex structures, dissonant
counterpoint, and tritones that challenged musicians (2002, 232). Certainly, her
musical output makes her work as important to black concert music traditions
in the 1960s as Alice Coltranes was to the free jazz movement.
As we can see, in both realmsjazz and concert musicblack musicians exer-
cised their right to move beyond traditional materials to express themselves.
Talented musicians were operating during the era of Afro-modernism, but their
contributions were often ignored by the critical press of their time and by the
historical record. If there are threads connecting the work of Afro-modernist
women across genres, it would be that they usually were musically nurtured by
their mothers, they believed in acquiring technical brilliance and experimental
sonic materials, and they felt that one of musics higher powers was its ability to
forge strong bonds in a community.
From the midtwentieth century on, stimulated in part by another south-to-
north mass migration during and after World War II, black music with roots
in the popular spherejazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, and all their multifari-
ous sonic iterationsdefined, for many, the aesthetic core of what was singular
about American music culture. Despite their divergent social functions in the
public sphere, they shared sonic and conceptual characteristics. Independent
record labels were the key in disseminating the music as their owners sought
to maximize profits, what with major labels initially ignoring these styles.
Ultimately, major labels would seek out, record, and distribute the music, and
by doing so facilitate their dominant national and international impact. Black
musicand this should certainly include the art music of black composers dis-
cussed abovecame to be seen as an important expressive force representing
the richness of African-American culture. It was a metaphor for the processes
of creativity in such fields as literature, visual arts, and dance, and as a symbol
for the structural integration of black people into the mainstream of American
society. As African-American citizens confronted modernitymany would say
they were critical in defining itmusic was a reservoir of social energies, a fount
of and even a mouthpiece for the palpable aspirations of freedom that define
theage.

10
Africa and the Trope of the Return
Contemporary black South Africa has generated a dialect of
popular music quite different from the Highlife or Juju of the
West Coast and the Caribbean-tinged, guitar-dominated styles
of Zaire and the East Coast (Tanzania and Kenya). Sometimes
called vocal jive, gumba-gumba or even jazz, it is most often
labelled Mbaqanga. The literal reference is to mealie-porridge
or corn mush, a staple of the black diet; the implication is
that this music is a local, homely product. Home cooking.
Dailybread.
Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in ItsPlace
While the Afro-modernists of Chapter9 were breaking rules and forging new
pathways of expression, modern Africans were breaking free of Europes colo-
nial grip, with their individual nation-states emerging as constructs in which
multifarious peoples of diverse cultures lived alongside each other. This chap-
ter acknowledges the tumultuous transition into the postcolonial age, but it
focuses primarily on how African musics responded to the original responses
encompassed in the Diasporic Call/Response. The critical lens of Call/Response
provides a tool that enables us to grapple with the transformation of black
musics conceived on the African continent and then taken, with their practi-
tioners, by sailing ships to places throughout the Diaspora. As we have seen in
this book, the process of transformation has resulted in new genres and styles,
some of which are linked to their African predecessors through rhythmic and
sonic remnants, while others are accompanied by physical gestures similar to
those found in the African ring. In Chapters 3, 7, and 9, we have also wit-
nessed the successes of Afro-descendent composers in Europe and throughout
the Americas who have succeeded in creating their own responses to the art
musics originating from Europe. Indeed, Africans and their descendants were
able to thrive musically in their new locales. But the sailing ships were not a
one-way operation. This chapter explores the kinds of musical expressions that
were made possible when Diasporic musics returned to Africa; having been
already transformed, these musics and their makers affected Africans modern
173

soundscapes through unexpected encounters that would not have been pos-
sible without real and metaphoricalships.
John Collins (1989) employs the term feedback to describe the musico-cultural
aspects that characterize the New-World-to-Africa portion of the trans-Atlantic
musical cycle. He lists six examples, which demonstrate how feedback has
been manifest in the Diaspora since the early-nineteenth century:
1. The impact of Jamaican Maroon Goombay music on West and Central Africa
(via freed slaves returned to Sierra Leone) from the 1820son
2. The catalytic effect of West Indian troops stationed in nineteenth-century
West Africa on local syncopated brass-band music (e.g., GhanaianAdaha)
3. Ragtime and black minstrelsy influences on early West African highlife music
and local comic opera (the concertparty)
4. The dissemination of new musical ideas in nineteenth-century Africa by
black American and African sailors (e.g., the Krus of Liberia)
5. Effect of jazz and swing on West African dance orchestras, introduced by
wartime soldiers and later by Louis Armstrong and other African-American
jazz artists
6. Afro-Cuban and Calypso influences on 1950s highlife dance bands and soul,
disco, and Reggae influences on current African popularmusic
In the late eighteenth century, Africans displaced to other lands had begun to
return home, settling along the continents western coast from Sierra Leone
and Liberia to the ports of current-day Benin and Nigeria.1 S. Y. Boadi-Siaw
(1993) has written about relocation of Brazilians to Africa, and Akintola J. G.
Wyse (1993) has described the rise of the Krio society in Sierra Leone, which
was made up of Jamaican Maroons, African returnees from Nova Scotia and
England, and liberated Africans from other regions of the continent. Verger
(1984, 274) noted that when the descendants of Africans who had been taken to
Bahia and Brazil, and in some cases the Africans themselves, returned to Africa,
they did so having been indoctrinated in the culture and mores from abroad.
Boadi-Siaw (1993, 42829) has also discussed the nineteenth-century return to
Africa of Brazilians of African origin, who constantly looked back to Brazil and
always referred to their Brazilian experience. These relocations of Africans from
abroadhowever different might have been the return and the places in which
it occurredconstitute a trope of return that is remembered and preserved in
the songs, poems, legends, and myths (Harris, 1993b, 6).
Meinig (1993, 302)has examined the process of repatriation, referencing
both Sierra Leone and the establishment of Liberia:
The idea of shipping freed Blacks back across the Atlanticrepa-

triationwas an old one and by 1800 had become a reality in the

Af r ica a n d t h e Tro pe o f Retu r n 175
country of Sierra Leone, founded by British philanthropists on the

west coast of Africa. Initiated at Freetown with a shipment of Black
Loyalists from Nova Scotia, the project was of interest to Blacks as
well as Whites. In 1816 the American Colonization Society was
formed to expand upon this concept and initiative. Through a com-
bination of gifts and threats a foothold was eventually obtained
from local Africans at Cape Mesurado 250 miles down the coast from
Freetown. Here in 1822 the town of Monrovia was laid out and about
150 American Blacks began the physical creation of Liberia.
Established as a settlement in 1787 by British government interests, Sierra

Leone became a British Crown colony in 1808 and was populated primarily by
four groups of people: escaped slaves who had first settled in London, blacks
from Nova Scotia, Jamaican Maroons, and liberated slaves from western Africa
and within the area of modern Sierra Leone (Wyse 1993, 340, 343, 345). Out
of this amalgamation of peoples came the Krio Society, whose culture blended
Western and African cultural values and practices (343). By the middle of the
nineteenth century, however, Krios had begun to disperse to other African
nations. According to Wyse, this dispersal benefited the other African territo-
ries but deprived Sierra Leone of many of its skilled professionals and artisans
(35153).
For blacks in America, repatriation became a reality starting in 1820, when
the American Colonization Society began bringing emigrants to Liberia. Among
the returnees were Cleveland Luca, the founder and leader of the Luca Family
Singers, who composed the Liberian national anthem (Southern 1997, 1067;
Cuney-Hare 1936, 204), and Newport Gardner, the former slave and singing-
school master from Rhode Island, who wrote several musical compositions,
of which Promise Anthem, The Bill of Rights, Newport Assembly, and
The Seaside are extant.2 For the present discussion, what is important about
Gardner is the fact that he was one of approximately thirteen thousand blacks
from the United States who emigrated to Liberia between 1820 and 1866, and
he lived there until his death in1826.3
The notion of Back to Africa, Meinig (1993, 304)points out, was inevi-
tably a troublesome and divisive concept for American Blacks. For although
such programs held out hope of a degree of freedom and dignity and future
prosperity beyond anything that seemed likely in America, a large number
ofthem
bitterly rejected the whole concept as a White scheme to expel the

colored man entirely from the country (and it prompted some groups
to drop African and substitute colored in their name and in com-
mon parlance). We do not mean to go to Liberia, declared Frederick
Douglass; Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all

that countenance such a proposition. We live herehave lived here

have a right to live here, and mean to live here.(304)
So the return was not massive, or successful, but it did yield a degree of cul-
tural exchange between Africans and African Americans, however one-sided it
may have turned out to be. In 1893, according to musicologist Charles Hamm
(1995, 17879), several local white entrepreneurs organized an African Native
Choir among students attending mission schools in Kimberley and Lovedale,
which performed in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, and in
1897 the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) established in South Africa
at Evaton in the Transvaal, a Wilberforce Institute that was modelled on the
American Tuskegee Institute. Although there was significant cultural interac-
tion between the two churches and the between the two institutes, musical
flow was one way, with Afro-American styles brought to Africa by occasional
live performance and much more importantly by the mass media (printed
music, phonograph discs, eventually films), while Americans remained ignorant
of the music of South Africa (179). There were also African-American sing-
ing groups that toured in South Africa, including Orpheus McAdoos Virginia
Jubilee Singers beginning in 1890. Such visits may have contributed something
to the emergence of the a cappella singing that was developed in South Africa by
groups ranging from Solomon Lindas Evening Birds in the 1940s to Ladysmith
Black Mambazo in the 1970s.4
For its first South African performance, which took place on June 30, 1890,
McAdoos group sang in Cape Town, and by all accounts the audience was mes-
merized.5 Writing to the Southern Workman newspaper from Cape Colony,
McAdoo said of the white population, Everyone seemed captivated with the
singing; never heard such singing in all their lives, and they said, and just to
think that black people should do it (Wright 1976, 322). And an article in
the Thursday, October 16, 1890, issue of the black South African paper Imvo
Zabantsundu of Kingwilliamstown said, inpart:
Four gentlemen and six ladies of our colour have shown, and are
showing, that as many voices may be made so to blend as to sound as
one voice, which is cultivated to such perfection as to be set to every
trick of the art, conceivable or inconceivable. One would suppose that
now a hundred people were singing, and then but one was, while all
the time these Jubilee Singers were singing together. It has been well
said that such singing, sui generis, has not been heard in this coun-
try, and will probably not be heard soon unless this Concert Company
elect [sic] to re-visit South Africa. (quoted in Wright 1976,323)
McAdoos group, the members of which had been formerly Fisk Jubilee Singers,
were well trained and thus had an impact that no other African-American group

Af r ica a n d t h e Tro pe o f Retu r n 177
at that time could have had. But before he and his group left South Africa, they
were able to hear the black South African chorus of the Lovedale Institute.
Reporting on the experience, McAdoos brother, Eugene, who made the tour
with the company, wrote this to the Southern Workman, which was printed in its
January 23, 1894,issue:
We were soon shown into the Assembly Room where we were to

sing. The girls and boys came in much in the same way as do the
students here [at Hampton]. There were nearly five hundred of them,
and their faces were a picture of interest and anticipation. We sang
for them for nearly a couple of hours, and then they favored us with
some of their songs, which we thoroughly enjoyed, for their voices
were indeed good. In passing out, many of them shook our hands and
bade us good-by after thanking us for singing. (quoted in Wright
1976,326)
In their encounter with the black South African population, Orpheus McAdoos
Virginia Jubilee Singers touched off, according to Doug Seroff (1990, 5455), an
outbreak of chorus and quartet groups among black South Africans who began
to echo the four-part harmony singing of the many African-American jubilee
groups that were then flourishing in the United States. Around 1919 ingoma
ebusuku choirs first appeared among Zulu industrial workers, singing a dis-
tinctive hybrid of traditional Zulu and Western elements (55). In the 1930s
the Wilberforce Institute Singers of South Africa made a recording of Negro
spirituals under the African-American director Dr.Herman Gow, who was then
living in Africa. In the following year, while he was a student at the historically
black Hampton Institute, in Hampton, Virginia, the Zulu musician Reuben
T.Caluza formed a quartet of West Africans and taught them Zulu songs
[and] toured the eastern United States with the Hampton Institute Quartette;
somewhere around 1940 Solomon Lindas Evening Birds recorded the song
Mbube, which became so popular in South Africa that the ingoma ebusuku
style in which it was written became commonly known as mbube (55). In
describing the style, Seroff writes that the ingoma ebusukugroups
sing primarily in the Zulu language. Many of the background chants

used are clearly non-Western. Percussive clicks, glides, trills exe-
cuted with the tongue, slide whistle imitations, and other unexpected
delights are strictly African in origin. In a deeper sense, after nearly
one hundred years of intermixture, it is impossible to separate the
Western and Zulu elements in this conglomerate musicalform.
The descendants of these groups are the isicathamiya groups that were
inspired by the unprecedented success of Ladysmith Black Mambazo,

which continues to feature strong bass singing and full, deep-pitched, close
harmony (56,55).
So, obviously the example of Orpheus McAdoos Virginia Jubilee Singers had
a lasting impact, inspiring black South Africans to create their own version of
harmonic singing. In fact, more than a century after South Africans first heard
McAdoos group, a cappella choral ensembles constitute South Africas domi-
nant performance medium (Hamm 1995, 173). Interestingly, however, South
Africa lacks a number of musical traditions that are commonly found in other
African regions, including drumming. Melodic instrumental music is also not
as common in South Africa as in other regions, although flute music played by
herd boys and reed-pipe ensembles do exist(173).
Small flutelike metal instruments, which are played in a manner similar to a
recorder and are known as pennywhistles, have been a staple of South African
music for decades.
In the 1940s, first in Johannesburg and then elsewhere in southern

Africa, black musicians could be observed playing tin whistles on
street corners and in other public places, hoping for a few pennies
from passersby. Most of these street musicians were young, often in
their early teens; their instrument was a small metal cylinder with
six finger holes and a whistle mouthpiece, brought to South Africa by
marching units attached to the British military and imitated by bands
of black musicians as early as the 1910s. (Hamm 1995,237)
The first of the early pennywhistlers to be recorded, according to Hamm, was

Willard Cele, who appeared first in the film The Magic Garden and then on 78
rpm disc; then came Johannes Spokes Mashiyane, who by the mid-1950s
had recorded more than twenty titles for Trutone and whose Kwela Spokes was
awarded a Golden Disc (certifying sales of 50,000 copies) by the South African
record industry (237). Kwela (pennywhistle-jive music), according to the
Africanist scholar Gerhard Kubik (1999b, 685), who plays in Donald Kachambas
Kwela Jazz Band, is a South African off-shoot of American swing jazz, [and]
originally was characterized by short cycles, a swinging rhythm, anticipation
of chord changes by one beat-units, strong off-beat accentuation, and medium
tempos. Kwela is well represented by Kachambas band, whose music is deeply
rooted in his childhood experience of kwela, sinjonjo, saba-saba, hauyani, simanje-
manje, and other southern African urban dance music genres of the 1950s and
1960s, although with his own blend of musical expressions (685).6
According to Hamm (1995),
In the 1950s, jive gradually replaced jazz as the generic term for a
large repertory of black South African social dance music descended

Af r ic a a n d t h e Tro pe o f Retu r n 179
from marabi and characterized by a succession of brief melodic frag-

ments, repeated and varied but never developed in the Western sense,
unfolding over a constantly reiterated harmonic cycle of four, eight,
or sometimes twelve chords.(238)
According to Todd Matshikiza (quoted in Ballantine 1993, 61), African jazz was
reborn. The original productMarabihad died when American swing tookover.
Also in the 1950s there came vocal swing, usually consisting of trios or quar-
tets accompanied by a rhythm section (Hamm 1995, 176) with such groups
as the African Ink Spots, the King Cole Boogies, and the Black Broadway Boys
becoming popular. Even today groups such as the Soul Brothers, says Hamm,
draw on elements of vocal swing, though their rhythmic and instrumental
vocabulary is more contemporary(177).
In the 1960s, before the rise of Ladysmith, black American pop and soul art-
ists had had significant influence on music in South Africa. According to Hamm
(148), Music and musicians have afforded an important link:each successive
phase of Afro-American music reached southern Africa and was emulated by
local musiciansragtime, syncopated dance music, early jazz, swing, and now
soul, gospel, and disco. Individual singers such as Percy Sledge, Curtis Mayfield,
Wilson Pickett, and Ray Charles have performed there, and numerous others,
such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and Chubby Checker have been heard
on sound recordings. By 1969 South African groups such as the Inne Laws, the
Black Hawkes, and similar early groups had been formed and Black African
identification with Afro-American life and culture reached a new peak(199).
As described above, the musical life of South Africa was transformed by a
variety of external influences between the 1890s and the 1960s, and these
influences subsequently bonded South Africans to fellow black musicians on
the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, other forces, such as the Pan-
African Congress, were also hard at work, uniting African peoples from Europe,
the Americas, and Africa through the ideologies of liberation and nationalism.
By the fifth meeting of W.E. B.Du Boiss Pan-African Congress, held in 1945,
African leaders had emerged as world-renowned figures. Among them were Jomo
Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, who were later to become the
presidents of Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria respectively (Davidson 1991, 32931).7
Independence eventually came to African nations, country by country, includ-
ing Tunisia and Morocco (1956), Ghana (1957), and Tanganyika (1961), quickly
followed in succeeding years by Uganda (1962), Kenya (1963), Nyasaland and
northern Rhodesia (1964, as the republic of Malawi and Zambia, respectively),
and Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique (1975). The approximately sev-
enty years of colonial oppression of African peoples by Europeans, generally
from around the 1880s to the 1960s, together with the conditions for indepen-
dence that were imposed on them and the European-oriented acculturations
they had already undergone, made the governments of these liberated nations

essentially Western systems in the East, staffed by members of the tiny educated
African elite. But for the very large majority of Africans, their cultures remained
the same:traditional, under a colonial-trained government (Oliver 1991, 220
29). Colonial oppression and the past destruction and undermining of African
empires and city states by Europeans would be the primary obstacles to growth
and elaboration of African nations as equals among the nations of theworld.
The growing solidarity of Diasporic Africans with their African homeland was
celebrated when Trinidadian musicians living in London composed a calypso
entitled Freedom for Ghana. The dedicatee of this song was Kwame Nkrumah.8
From his Ussherfortcell

Where they bolted the doorwell,
Nkrumah made his clarioncall.
And the people voted him one andall,
CHORUS
Freedom, Freedom is in theland,
Friends let us shout long live theC.P.P.
Which now controls Africans destiny.
Gbedemah the Labourman,

Botsio for Education,
Kwesi Plange local government,
Edusle the man with the whip in hishand.
CHORUS
They called us the verandahboys,
They thought we were just a bunch oftoys,
But we won the vote at midnighthour,
Came out of jail and tookpower.
CHORUS
With Appiah the ambassador,
Casely Hayford the barrister,
These two gentlemen did quitewell,
When they got us out of the jailhousecell.
CHORUS
The British M.P. Gammans wasrude,
By his dog-in-the-mangerish attitude.
But like an ostrich, we know thisman,
Can go and bury his head in thesand.9

During the colonial period, Western religions had a significant impact, negative
and sometimes positive, on African cultural expression and on what in the West
is called progress and modernity. On the return from America, it was the
returning Africans non-African side, their Latin American originality, that
[the formerly enslaved Africans] cultivated and tried to highlight (Verger
1984,276).
This issue of a return from Christian ways to partly traditional ways of wor-
ship can be seen with clarity and force in developments among the Zulu in South
Africa. The Bantu Zulu began early to migrate from central into southern Africa,
and by the seventeenth century had settled around Natal province, which is part
of the area now known as the Republic of South Africa (Lawson 1985, 14). By
1879, Zululand had been invaded and taken over by the British and by 1910 had
become a state of the British Commonwealth. In 1913, a portion of traditional
Zululand became a reservation, the remnants of which have become known as
the homeland, of traditional Zulu people(15).
Lawson, in his Religions of Africa, discusses the Zulu religion as it was por-
trayed in the writings of missionaries, anthropologists, and colonial adminis-
trators dating from the nineteenth century. He describes important features of
Zululand, the kraal (traditional Zulu village) and the umsamo, an altar or place
within the village huts where items of ritual significance are situated (Lawson
1985, 1719). The principle figures in traditional Zulu religion are (1)the head-
man/priest (umnumzane), who is also the chief of the village and who mediates
between the people and the ancestors; (2)the ancestors themselves, whose spir-
its, known variously as amalozi or amakhosi or amathonga, have power to punish
humans who wrong or ignore them; (3)diviners, mostly women, who diagnose
problems and refer patients to herbalists, medical specialists who prescribe and
administer medicinal remedies, traditional or modern; and (4)the heaven-herd
who, in his ritual relationship with the God of the Sky, is expected to repel, or
divert the approaching storm and to mitigate its effects (2022).
The ancestors are regarded as living in or under the earth. They are
also identified with the earth. But they have a particular association
with two places in the kraal, the umsamo and the cattle kraal, espe-
cially that place in the cattle kraal where the important religious ritu-
als are performed. They are constantly watching over the activities of
their descendants.(25)
Thus traditional Zulu religion contains elements similar to those of West African
peoples (e.g., Yoruba and Fon), as does also their art and their system of pre-
serving knowledge. Among the arts in Zululand, religious drama deals with the
use and misuse of powerwhat it is and how it is expressedusing ritual to
explore and sustain the intricate balances of everyday Zulu life(24).

The amalgamated religions in South Africa, as with Vodou in Haiti, blend

African and European religious systems. Both South African Shembe and Vodou,
for example, provided spiritual sustenance and religious dignity for traditional
and geographically displaced Africans and served as a means of transforming
experiences from undesirable to desirable, from degrading and hopeless to
affirming and optimistic. Even in the North African countries of Morocco and
Algeria, residents of black communities still engage in sub-Saharan religious
practices, continuing to adhere to beliefs and rituals of their lands of origin
(Hunwick 1993, 313).
In the late nineteenth century, with the arrival of Christian missionaries in
colonized lands, Western European concert music was introduced, together with
the values that accompany it, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, it
had begun to take hold among European-educated Africans in Nigeria, particu-
larly in and around the coastal towns of Lagos, Abeokuta, and Badagry/Badagri
(Omojola 1995, 56, 9, 15). According to Nigerian scholar and composer Bode
Omojola (14), this music consistedof
songs, vocal duets and quartets, religious plays and musicals, arrange-
ments of English folk songs and excerpts from cantatas and oratorios,
especially the music of Handel and Mendelssohn. Instrumental per-
formances were generally restricted to those on the harmonium, the
piano and the violin, with occasional appearances of the police band.
Musical items were often performed along with plays and poetry that
showed a particular fascination for Shakespeare. Traditional Nigerian
pieces were rarely performed, even though most of the performers
were African.
Yet, these kinds of concerts were not typically affordable for the general Yoruba
population. According to Omojola, European music was appreciated and pro-
moted by primarily by Saros, former slaves who, with assistance from the
British, had returned home to their native land. Because the Saros were sepa-
rated socially from the indigenous people, the traditional music of the Yoruba
developed distinctly from that which had been influenced by the European
styles (15).
The early works of Nigerian composers, which Omojola (1415) says first
appeared in the nineteenth century, were European-derived in form and idiom,
with African elements existing only peripherally. Because traditional music had
been banned in the orthodox churches since it was said to carry pagan connota-
tions, European musical forms all took hold in the new churches that came with
the missionaries, with their hymns, liturgy and dogma (17). Although native

African music was used on extra-service occasions, the United Native African
Church began to use it as a part of worship and was prosecuted for doing so.
Nevertheless, the practice continued, and by 1917native airs were being used
in the United African Methodist Church, and by 1918 drums were being used
by the Ethiopian and Brotherhood Churches (19). Thus began a trend toward
use of traditional African music in Christian churches in West Africa.
With these precedents, T.K. Ekundayo Phillips (18841969), who began com-
posing in the 1920s and later became organist and choirmaster of Christ Church
Cathedral, encouraged use of indigenous music in the church and trained a num-
ber of Nigerian composers, including Fela Sowande, Ayo Bankole, and Samuel
Akpabot (Omojola 1995, 28).10 Another early Nigerian composer was Ikole
Harcourt-Whyte, who, according to Omojola, is known as the father of Igbo
church music (34). Harcourt-Whyte, Omojola writes, was an unorthodox com-
poser whose harmonic vocabulary [was] often a product of both the vertical con-
ception (typical of protestant hymns) and the contrapuntal movement common in
Igbo traditional vocal music. As a result, Nigerian Church music contained both
European elements, including diatonic harmony, and the use of strophic forms,
and Nigerian elements, including pentatonic scales, call and response patterns
and the sympathetic relationship between language inflection and melodic forms
(37). Sowande began composing in the 1920s and became the most accomplished
of those who went before him, laying the foundation on which younger genera-
tions of Nigerian composers have continued to build (40), notably Akin Euba,
Lazarus Ekwueme, Meki Nzewi, and others. The works of these third-generation
composers, like those of Phillips, Harcourt-Whyte, and Sowande, according to
Omojola, are often characterised by striking experimentation aimed at bring-
ing about a resolution and synthesis of opposing styles and techniques (39).
Sowandes cultural nationalist political philosophy is reflected in his compositions.
Traditional rituals still have currency in West Africa. Henry John Drewal and
Margaret Thompson Drewal, in their book Gld:Art and Female Power Among
the Yoruba, define spectacle as a fleeting, transitory phenomenon that may
be a display or performance for the gods, ancestors, or the mothers, and that
may also refer to mental images (1990, 1). They go on to say that a spectacle
can be a vision a remembrance a narrative or a festival (1). As a
narrative, a story is a spectacle in the sense that it is visible through the story-
tellers dramatization, and the spectator visualizes it further in his minds eye
(1). These various usages, they say, are otherworldly phenomena whose worldly
manifestations are temporary and periodically reintroduced or regenerated (1).
Spectacle must involve participants and a multiplicity of images and ideas con-
verging in the same time frame, and they must have opening and closing con-
ventions (2, 4). To this end, a sacrifice is performed before the festival begins
to put the drums into a ritually transcendent state, and at the close a cooling

rite (tt) is performed to restore them to normalcy, thereby confirming the

transitory nature of the event(4).
In modern Africa some of the more ancient secret societies still exist, includ-
ing the Poro and the Sande, which I discussed in Chapter 1. In Sierra Leone,
Freemasonry was installed, over time, among the African Creoles of color, the
elite of Sierra Leone society who took the British as their model and patterned
their society accordingly:
In the early 1970s almost one of every three Creole men in Freetown
was a Freemasonalmost all of the citys 2,000 Freemason were
thought to be Creoles. There were seventeen Masonic lodges in
Sierra Leone organized under either the English or the Scottish
Constitution of Freemasonry. In spite of their English orientation,
however, the Creoles of Sierra Leone retain strong allegiance to
African culture, speaking Krio at home, retaining and giving African
names to their children, practicing aspects of African religious cus-
toms, and participating in African-based secret societies (in addition
to Freemasonry). (Area Handbook for Sierra Leone 1976,93)
According to Attah Mensah,
The atrophying and death process in traditional artistic life contin-

ues, while the new Western-derived arts of Africa grow in breadth
and quality. But so also has been the effort to rescue the traditional
arts [through] ministries, departments, and institutes of culture
geared towards the collection and study of traditional art forms.
(1992,21)
Meanwhile, however, Jahn says (1961, 226), in Africa men with European
education do indeed stand between the civilizations, going on to quote the
Ghanaian Dei-Anang writing:
Here westand
Poised between two civilizations
Backward? To days ofdrums
And festal dances in theshade
Of sun-kistpalms
Or forward?
Forward!
Toward?
The slums, where man is dumped uponman?
The factory

To grind hardhours
In an inhumanmill
In one long ceaselessspell?
Jahn (226) says that this either-or is usually put before the African by the
European with the demand that he make up his mind; and since there can be no
turning back, he expects the answer that will make the African his pupil.

Epilogue
SAMUEL A. FLOYDJR.
Over the course of my fifty-year career, Ihave witnessed creation of the field
of black music research and its shift from a positivistic approach to one that
embraces critical theories, all the while casting its ideologies against the back-
drop of an ever-evolving modernity. Indeed, discoveries about black music are
being made all the time, and we must continue to excavate information about
our past. My participation in this field has ultimately generated a list of four
areas of inquiry, which Ioutline here, in the hopes that the fruits of future schol-
arship will reinfuse black music research with the vitality it so deserves.
I.ATurn Toward Antiquity

Claudio Monteverdi composed his opera Orfeo in 1607. This five-act opera, one
of the earliest written, recounts the ancient Greek legend of Orfeo and Eurydice.
In the last act, after Orfeo has ascended into the heavens with Apollo, the opera
concludes with an instrumental rendition of a dancea moresca. Yet by the
time Monteverdi crafted this particular moresca, the word itself seems to have
lost what may have been its original meaning. As one might expect, moresca
stems etymologically from the word Moor, which historically speaking, was used
to refer to dark-skinned people. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary provides a
definition for the original usage:a native or inhabitant of ancient Mauretania,
a region of North Africa corresponding to parts of present-day Morocco and
Algeria. Its definition for later usage is a member of a Muslim people of
mixed Berger and Arab descent inhabiting north-western Africa (now mainly
present-day Mauritania), who in the 8th cent. conquered Spain. The dictionary
also notes two concepts of importance to the present discussion. First, in the
Middle Ages, and as late as the 17th cent., the Moors were widely supposed to
be mostly black or very dark-skinned, although the existence of white Moors
was recognized. Thus the term was often used, even into the 20th cent., with the
187

188Ep i lo g ue
sense black person. The word moor, in turn, serves as a morpheme of the word
blackamoor, which simply means a black African.
As for the moresca itself, the Grove Music Online indicates that some fea-
tures of this dance, including blackening of the face, were part and parcel of
fertility rites of ancient times. Although it appears that the morescas of the
European Renaissance may not have had any direct or substantiated relation-
ship with these ancient dances that required face blackening, Paul Nettl provides
some interesting food for thought in his Phylon article of 1944. In Traces of
the Negroid in the Mauresque of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, he
references fertility rites as integral to modern carnival customs and recognizes
the presence of Mauresques in masquerades. As evidence of morescas, or, in
this case, mauresques in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Nettl cites
directly from the Orchesographie of Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan Tabourot), the sole
French treatise on dance published during the last half of the sixteenth century.
Regarding the Mauresque, Arbeau wrote:In my youth Ihad an opportunity to
see how often in good society, after supper was over, a youth with blackened face,
with a white or yellow taffeta band over his forehead and bells on this ankles,
would perform the Mauresque. Here, the taffeta band and the ankle bells evoke
the image of a masquerade.
Nettl presents musical evidence attesting to the presence and performance
of morescas and morescalike dances throughout Europe, including England,
Vienna, southern Germany, Spain, and Italy during the Renaissance. The
examples he cites may have but tenuous links to actual Moors and Moorish
dances, but Nettl is quick to point out that composer Orlando Lasso actually
saw Moresche while in Naples, and he provides examples of melodic and
rhythmic patterns that Lasso employed in conjunction with topical references
to negra, etc. According to Nettl, Lasso was inspired to compose moresche
by a 1560 publication titled Villotte Napoletane, in which Negros appear as
comic characters.
These [comical characters from the Villotte] also appear in the

Moresche of Lasso. They are characterized in language by the fact that
they speak in a comical jargon supposed to be typical of Negro speech.
In addition cries to Allah appear, for the Negroes had preserved the
Mohammedan faith. Also their being in a position of slavery to the
white population is the regular theme of these Mauresques.
Nettls discussion of Lasso sheds light on the morescas characteristics, and con-
temporary musicologists, including Gianfranco Salvatore, are taking the discus-
sion of the morescas history in an interesting direction.1 Iposit that studying
the moresca is merely one viable portal to understanding Africas historical

E pil o gu e 189
influence on musics in the Diaspora. The moresca, as described above, tech-

nically falls within the European Renaissance; evidence suggests that there is
still much to be learned about Africa and its Diaspora by investigating black
antiquity.
Primary sources for black antiquity range from the writings by the Greek
Herodotus (ca. 485 bc to ca. 425 bc) to substantial archeological evidence.
Herodotus works are said to be the earliest, most extensive, and best on
Africa. The Histories, which was written in approximately 440 bc, reveals
what Herodotus perceived as Egypts profound influences on Ancient Greece.
Though his written contributions have been considered controversial, there
are frescoes, petroglyphs, and other art and artifact works documenting the
African presence in Europe. We also know that early blacks themselves, in their
homeland (Africa) and in other locales, had been making art in the forms of
sketched, painted, sculpted, and weaved products. In todays world, in a search
for objects and writing about them in Africa, focus might be laid on Ancient
Ghana, Songhay, and Timbuktu in West Africa, and Axum (or in Aksum) in
Ethiopia of East Africa.
The Americas too, might prove to be good sources. In an article titled More
Evidence of Early African and Chinese Travelers to Peru, author R. Victoria
Arana (2011) considers the possibility of African voyages to Mesoamerica as
early as 1200400 bc. Referencing extant sculptures found in Mexico and in
Peru, she points out that the evidence in question includes ceramics and other
stoneware vases of the Moche people, which show Negroid faces, and large out-
door replicas of Negroid heads during the time of Olmec civilization, along the
Pacific Coast. To view such items and others, she recommends the Museo Larco
Herrera and the Museo Nacional de Arqueologa e Historia del Per. Both muse-
ums are in Lima. The Larco is dedicated to pre-Columbian art, and the National
Museum to archaeology and anthropology of the country. At the least, these
institutions could help facilitate an investigation on early black art and culture
in South America.
Images of blacks in the Diaspora number in the thousands. In fact, the Image
of the Black in Western Art archive at Harvard Universitys W. E. B. Du Bois
Institute for African and African American Research contains approximately
thirty thousand such pieces of artwork, which feature visuals of blacks from the
times of the ancient Egyptians through the 20th century (Bindman and Gates,
2010). Some of the archives holdings are being reproduced in a series of books
coedited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr. As of the time of this
books writings, the series, The Image of the Black in Western Art, now contains
ten volumes. The first volume, From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire,
is followed by two others ranging from the Early Christian Era to the Age of
Discovery. The remaining seven volumes cover a large span of time, beginning

190Ep i lo g ue
with the Age of Discovery and concluding with artistic contributions of the
twentieth century.
Why should we research and study antiquity? Iposit that by our doing so,
the flaws embedded in the current historical record would be corrected as the
annals of history are revisited. The treasures of antiquity, which attest to black
presence and productivity, form the beginning of a lineage that continues today
in the modern black expressive arts. Such a lineage, in turn, requires that black
music historiography expand its chronological range (to consider the longitudi-
nal implications of black music practitioners in antiquity on current practices)
and conceptual framework (so that it, as a mode of intellectual inquiry, will be
recognized as part of an overarching expressive arts discourse that subsequently
provides space for performative practice).
II.On Philosophy
In his chapter Afro-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective, Paget
Henry (2000) offers an Africana reading of Afro-American philosophy, mak-
ing use of these two essential components: (1) historicism, as a way of advanc-
ing change via the evolution of political, social, and economic matters; and
(2) poeticism, as manifesting and promoting transformative agency by way of
prior changes in self-conception through the creative arts (145, 48). Henry
uses the writings of Caribbean citizens such as C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon,
Wilson Harris, Sylvia Wynter, and others to consider the African precedents of
and the constructive elements in an Afro-Caribbean philosophy. He points to
the relationships between traditional African philosophy and various Afro-
Caribbean religions, such as Vodou, Santera, Obeah, and Cumfa, noting that
the shared continuities, while noticeable in the practice of these religions, are
also found in the writings of Harris, Jamaica Kincaid, and Edward Braithwaite
(45). He hypothesizes that this merging of elements from two schools of
thought will result in a metaphysics based on modern-age Western philosophy
and the belief in a viable relationship between humans and the African world
of spirits.
Although music is glaringly absent from Henrys analysis and proposed solu-
tion, he has opened the way to a wider pursuit of this area of scholarship by
unearthing and extracting Caribbean philosophy from previous historical and
literary discourse and by proposing that historicisms literalist materiality be
moved toward a closer tie with poetics immateriality. In doing so, he empha-
sizes the importance of both spirit and the facts as the proper interpretive
center of Afro-Caribbean philosophical inquiry.

E pil o gu e 191
In his chapter on Afro-American philosophy, Henry focuses on the differences

that emerge between American and African readings of Afro-American philoso-
phy, and then promotes what he considers to be a viable Afro-Caribbean phi-
losophy. He cites the work of Cornel West, who characterizes Afro-American
philosophy [as] an expression of the particular variation of European modernity
that Afro-Americans helped to shape, and who believes that any compet-
ing Afro-American philosophy based on African norms and notions would
be theoretically thin (West, cited in Henry 2000, 146). West situates Afro-
American philosophy as a framework within which social change and freedom
can be accomplished, which is why he also does not investigate the African past
or promote an African reading of this philosophy in which foundations are con-
sidered. West points to convergences between Afro-American philosophy and
pragmatism, highlighting how personal agency and democratic practices are
enhanced (14647).
Henry, however, argues that African readings on Afro-American philosophy
offer important points, and he references the contributions of Lucius Outlaw
and Lewis Gordon. Outlaw is concerned first and foremost with the Africana
tradition of resistance to European imperialism and racism (Henry 2000, 147).
His work demonstrates the relevance of ones historical (African) past to under-
standing modernity and the future. A problem arises, however, if the variety
of peoples of African descent were to go in search of historical commonalities.
Outlaw is unconvinced that there is a shared, common identity, e.g., a set of
underlying principles or common contents that could unify the diverse prac-
tices of peoples of African descent. Thus, an African reading of Afro-American
philosophy cannot use as its foundation a set of shared symbols; rather, for
Outlaw, this reading is necessarily based on the agendas, norms, and practices
that Afro-American philosophers consider relevant. For Henry, Outlaws work
is problematic because it compromises the notion of identity at the point when
Africans become Americans. Thus, Henry turns to Lewis Gordons existential-
phenomenological approach, whereby he uses the subjective turn of modern
European philosophy to address problems of black self-formation and its
racialization in the white societies. Gordon grounds his African reading of
Afro-American philosophy in the Pan-African task of reconstituting this racial-
ized self in the wake of the phenomenological disappearance of its humanity
and its African heritage (Henry 2000, 14748). But Henry is radical, having
taken for himself (temporarily at least, until others come aboard his philoso-
phy) the task of eradicating the existential exploitation of Caribbean subjects,
by focusing on recovering Caribbean philosophy from its position of relative
invisibility.
Richard Shusterman, in a chapter of his book Pragmatist Aesthetics:Living
Beauty, Rethinking Art, writes of The Fine Art of Rap,2 treating among many

192Ep i lo g ue
other items the historical source of hip-hop music, its complex attitude, its
reliance on mass-media culture, its autonomy and distance, its tenable
metaphysical position associated with American pragmatism, and a new cul-
tural form that is evolving in rap, whose artists seek to undermine the socially
oppressive dichotomy between legitimate (i.e., high) art and popular entertain-
ment by simultaneously asserting the popular and artistic status of hip hop
(2000, 21213).
For rap philosophers are really down with Dewey, not merely in
metaphysics but in a non-compartmentalized aesthetics which high-
lights social function, process, and embodied experience. [para] For
Knowledge rap not only insists on uniting the aesthetic and the cog-
nitive; it equally stresses that practical functionality can form part of
artistic meaning and value.(212)
Add to that writer Ta-Nehisi Coatess view, as he claims:
This is my particular experience. Talk to some other black person

and you will get another. What Iam trying to convey is that what
you see here (and what Ihope you like here) going from Hobbes to
Voyager to Franais to CTE to drones is a byproduct of my commu-
nity (because this is how we talk) and the music Iloved as a child.
Hip-hop says All Your Sonics Are Belonging to Us. And all your
knowledgetoo.3
In my view, Shustermans form could be there waiting; it is raps transformation

into a type thats needed, as was the case in the sixteenth-century madrigal grow-
ing into opera. Rap could be transformed into an operatic type, for example, and
called something like OperaRap or RapOp. As opposed to the vernacular sources
employed in modern musical creations such as R.Kellys rap opera or hip-hopera
Trapped in the Closet, the richness of this new type would be drawn from and have
a range that reaches from black antiquity and the Renaissance to the present day;
from black philosophers and thinkers from C. L. R. James and Alain Locke, to
Cornel West and Paget Henry; from Moresca to rap; from political figures rang-
ing from King to Obama; from jazz, blues, and popular figures from 1900 to the
present day, and the same for composers of classical music; from treatments of a
rap Porgy and Bess to a rap Malcolm X; and from mixes of traditional recitative
and aria to rap itself, with rappers telling stories in different ways. But the new
type of black expressive art, in the new vein, would require (1)composing libretti
and music, and (2) funding for production. Something like this would give rap
another name, so to speak, having become another black expressiveart.

E pil o gu e 193
III.Black Music, Classical Music,

and Canonization
For this third line of discussion, Iam reproducing thoughts on improvisation
from T.J. Anderson on what orchestras have to do to survive!
The future of the American orchestra will depend on its ability to

improvise. The concept of improvisation is part of the musical history
of mankind and is connected to the idea of freedom.
My personal epiphany came when Ireread a letter (Sep.5, 1984)by
my dear friend, Dr. Chester Pierce, Harvard University professor of
psychiatry. At the end of the letter he said, Yet the one person Iknow
whom Ithink people may know in two-or three hundred years from
now is T.J. Anderson. That sentence pointedly made me consider
my music and its implications. My chamber concerto, Remembrances,
commissioned by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, was my first
step towards breaking away from the orchestral tradition. In that
piece, duos, trios of instruments act independently on their own in
a style which is completely notated. There is a Beethoven motive fol-
lowed by a section of free graphic notation.
The next work that comes to mind is my Piano Concerto, in which
no notes are written for the piano. The work, commissioned by the
University of Iowa on the hundredth anniversary of the School of
Music was performed by Donal Fox and the University orchestra,
William La Rue Jones, conductor. This work is influenced by the
music of Thelonious Monk and J.S.Bach.
The third composition, Freedom, for orchestra leaped into
another direction. Performers are free to explore improvisational
parts or they may play the written-out examples of expectations.
The work makes use of several improvisational possibilities.
Tetrachords, contour lines, modes, chords, and graphic notations
are all represented. Listeners have always told me that my composi-
tion Variations on a Theme by M. B. Tolson sounds improvised. Yet,
the piece is totally written out. The creative process has always
been a shared experience between the composer and the performer.
No artist invents, we all recreate. Thus, my link to music history is
the study of scores.
Over the years, other works point to further explorations into this
creative process.
T. J.Anderson, June 9,2013

194Ep i lo g ue
Attempts to save the symphony orchestras in America have been filled by small
chamber groups, ensembles, and other scattered mixtures, and by recording
projects. Recording projects with titles like Out of Africa And Around the World
(showcasing Denis Azabagic) and Intersection:Jazz Meets Classical Song (featur-
ing soprano Patrice Michaels) are taking advantage of changes in some of the
opportunities that abound. Both are released by Cedille Records, located in the
hometown (Chicago) of the Center for Black Music Research.
And in a larger realm, John T.Peek founded the African-American Philharmonic
Orchestra in 1988, which now exhibits a complete range of artistry on the fea-
tured contemporary, classical, jazz, and gospel works.4 Black Pearl Chamber
Orchestra, of Philadelphia, was established in 2007, with Jeri Lynne Johnson as
its music director. The mission of the BPCO is to take the audience beyond spec-
tatorship to participation in the musical experience by combining artistic excel-
lence with cultural diversity and innovative community engagement.5
From 1987 through 2001, the CBMRs Black Music Repertory Ensemble
played a number of works that included social dance music, parlor music, precur-
sors of jazz, show music, and concert works, and launched two specialist projects,
performed by professional musicians:Ensemble Kalinda Chicago (19941997),
which explored African, West Indian, and Afro-Latin musics; and Ensemble Stop-
Time (19982000), which demonstrated R&B, soul, rock, rap, gospel, and the
stylings of the AACM. Ensemble Kalinda Chicago was under the musical direc-
tion of Miguel Rivera, and Ensemble Stop-Time was under the musical direc-
tion of T.S. Galloway. Guest conductors of the original Black Music Repertory
Ensemble included Michael Morgan, Kay George Roberts, T.J. Anderson, and
Kirk Edward Smith. Instrumentalists included Kenneth G.Adams, woodwinds,
Sanford Allen, violin, George Blanchet, percussion, Nathaniel O.Brickens, trom-
bone, Lyman A.Brodie, trumpet, Winterton Garvey, violin, Jack Jeffers, tuba,
Jennifer Lloyd, flute, Elaine B. Mack, cello, Toni-Marie Montgomery, piano,
Sylvia Morris, violin, Walter Payton, tuba and double bass, George Taylor, viola,
and George Wellington, double bass. Vocalists included Donnie Ray Albert,
bass-baritone, William A. Brown, tenor, Hilda Harris, mezzo-soprano, Bonita
S.Hyman, mezzo-soprano, and Bernadine Oliphant, soprano.
Since 1999, the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble (NBMRE), under
artistic director and conductor Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, performed cham-
ber works through full symphonic works in almost every genre, including a
midsixteenth-century Latin motet, eighteenth-and nineteenth-century violin
concerti, black gospel, art song cycles by twentieth-century composers, jazz
such as Luther Hendersons orchestral adaptations of works by Ellington and
Strayhorn, and numerous other pieces and genres. After Perkinsons tenure, the
NBMRE was led by Leslie Dunner and Kirk EdwardSmith.
Anne C.Shreffler, in her article Musical Canonization and Decanonization in
the Twentieth Century, references an opinion common among ethnomusicologists,

E pil o gu e 195
namely, that the implicit definition of the musical canon as a body of notated
works, rather than recordings, performances, or genres had the effect of excluding
music involving improvisation or music that did not depend primarily on notation
for its transmission (2011, 2). She notes that, in spite of the antagonism toward the
singular canon, it has neither eroded nor been replaced by another singular entity.
Rather, a large set of multiple canons for different musical subcultures and styles
has grown up, maintained by decentralized institutions and by large groups of spe-
cialists, listeners and aficionados (4). Avariety of musics have been partitioned into
their own canons, among them early music, rock, country music, and many others.
In Bruno Nettls Grove Music Online article Improvisation, he tells us that, in
the West, improvisation has been typically associated with the early music and
with jazz. By contrast, before the 1970s, the field of musicology tended to treat
improvisation as a craft in contrast to the art of composition (2013). (And it
remains thatway.)
What would be needed for an inclusive Canon? Iposit:
1. Black music: that is, music composed with or in the style of traditional
characteristics
2. Musical practitioners (performers, composers, creators, and other entities)
who make use of such characteristics, regardless of race, and who follow the
rules governing integration of improvisation with music of thefuture
3. Individuals who develop, support, and manage procedures for such operation
Here are three pieces I believe are worthy of study and inclusion in such a
Canon:Olly Wilsons 1967 Cetus; Wendell Logans Roots, Branches, Shapes, and
Shades (of Green) (1990); and T.J. Andersons opera Walker (1992). In all of these
pieces, improvisation is thekey.
In creating Cetus (1967), Olly Wilson notes that improvisation was integral
to the piece. He writesthat
the compositional process characteristic of the classical tape studio

(the mutation of a few basic electronic signals by means of filters, sig-
nal modifiers, and recording processes) was employed in the realiza-
tion of this work and was enhanced by means of certain instruments
which permit improvisation by synthesized sound. Cetus contains
passages which were improvised by the composer as well as sections
realized by classical tape studio procedures.
In Wendell Logans Roots, Branches, Shapes, and Shades (of Green) (1990),
the pianist improvises for about two minutes, building to a grand

sound that culminates in a bottom-to-top keyboard glissando that

196Ep i lo g ue
moves the work into a slow section involving the entire orchestra in a
sustained one-measure ostinato that repeats throughout the section.
Against this, the piano weaves a slow, lyrical melody. (Steinke 1999b,
74344)
In T.J. Andersons opera Walker (1992),
unique transitions take placea series of cadenzas scored both for

solo instruments and for larger, varying combinations of instru-
ments. It is in the cadenzas and in selected moments of the general
accompaniment that Andersons penchant for structured improvisa-
tion emerges and complements the overall approach to the under-
scoring and setting of the libretto. (Steinke 1999a,41)
IV.Black ExpressiveArts
In my career, Ihave made three attempts to examine black music from an interar-
tistic perspective, writing Black American Music and Aesthetic Communication
in 1980; in 1991, Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black
Music Inquiry; and in 1998Toward a Theory of Diaspora Aesthetics, using
elements of John Deweys philosophical work, especially the ideas articulated in
Art as Experience (1934), to explore relationships between and among the black
expressive arts. Any of these attempts will reveal that Iam not a philosopher.
In 1993, the Center for Black Music Research convened a roundtable of schol-
ars to begin dialogue on how the various disciplines might together develop a
common mode of inquiry for the study of the subject. One of the most provoca-
tive statements made at that meeting came from Professor Dwight Andrews, of
Emory University:
It seems to me that many of the professional academic disciplines

today have very, very, different goals and aspirations in terms of the
kind of work they do. Music Theory, for example, is concerned with
order, with construction, with systems. Musicology in many ways is
looking at the history of musical expression. Cultural musicologists
have a very different approach from many other types of musicology.
Ethnomusicologists sometimes look at simply the way the music acts
in a culture and dont look at any hard ways to quantify the actual
musical practice. Part of our challenge, then, is to integrate these
various disciplines so that we might all look in the same direction.
(Andrews, in Floyd 1995b, 3536).

E pil o gu e 197
In 1995, the CBMR launched Lenox Avenue, a scholarly journal dedicated to

exploration of the interarts component of its mission. The journal was planned
as a five-issue project, but the problem Andrews spoke about still prevails, and
another study is warranted owing to the passage of time and accretion of learn-
ing and wisdom. As for myself, six years after the start of the CBMRs foray into
interarts inquiry, Iwrotethis:
Interarts inquiry is based on the analysis of two or more art works in

interaction. Drawing on knowledge and analytical insight from several
artistic fields and humanities disciplines, analysts use the works under
inquiry to read one anothermusic to read visual art, visual art to read
literature or poetry, poetry to read visual art, vice versa and so on. The
basic assumptions of interarts inquiry are (1)that a work or performance
of art belonging to one artistic mode can yield knowledge not only about
itself individually but also about works and performances from other
artistic modes and (2) that such study can produce deeper and wider
knowledge about the art works themselves, about the nature of art, and
about the world or worlds from which they spring. (Floyd 1999c,12)
Scholars of the InfoMus Lab at the University of Genova, Italy, have written an
article about a Multimodal Analysis of Expressive Gesture in Music and Dance
Performances (2003), in which they provide information about expressive ges-
ture communication in dance. They believe that their experimentation in music
is considered as a first step towards the understanding of the relation between
movement and sound parameters of a performance, their expressive forms,
and functions, and their communicative function for spectators. Projects like
those produced by InfoMus Lab are worth watching for the future for music-
and-dance inquiry.6
In 1999, the CBMR saw published its International Dictionary of Black
Composers (IDBC), which swiftly won seven national honors and awards. Inow
regard that publication as a possible step toward the development of a solid black
music historiography. It will be joined by a forthcoming reader and reference
book, to be compiled and edited jointly by Samuel A.Floyd Jr., Rosita Sands,
and Melanie Zeck. The two-volume work (forthcoming from Oxford University
Press) contains a comprehensive and carefully selected collection of articles, the
topics of which span the centuries between the Renaissance and the present day,
covering a range of African and Africa-derived vernacular and nonvernacular
musics. Each of the eighty-two articles contained in the work is preceded by
annotated comments from the editors.
Taken together, the works cited immediately above provide an overview to
knowledge and issues that might serve the purposes of scholars, interested

198Ep i lo g ue
readers, and students. Some of the writings mark the achievements of singu-
lar figures whose influences, within and outside the realm of music, have tran-
scended national and cultural boundaries. Others trace the development of
entire communities whose remarkable creativity evolved and flourished in ways
that reaffirm blackness in both local and Diasporic terms. Many of them will
encourage new scholarly inquiry as they correct false or antiquated information
and revive unsettled issues, and many are useful because they provide glimpses
into black music making through the centuries, across cultures, and in various
locations. Finally, these works inspire self-reflection at the individual and collec-
tive levels in black music scholarship as scholars explore and reexplore, evaluate
and reevaluate the modes of inquiry and analysis that support previous writings
in the field. Moreover, they will be found to be of assistance as we move swiftly
toward understanding the relevance of antiquity to the prevailing future of black
music scholarship.
In a thoughtful and generous article titled Toward a Desegregated Music
Historiography (1996), Leo Treitler asks, How, in practical terms, do we
find our way toward a historiography of the W[estern] E[uropean] C[lassical]
T[radition] that can embrace black-music history? The question is a fair one,
and he says, the historical concept of a WECT excludes black music and black-
music history by definition. And the exclusion is reinforced by the screening
effect of a network of strands of the music concept that goes with the idea of
a WECT historically (5). Moreover, he cites a small excerpt of sentences from
an article by Wolfgang Jaedke that reads: Every culture has its own history,
and an evolutionary dynamic in the sense of Western high culture cannot be
presupposed, with Treitler commenting, in his own words, or superimposed,
we mightadd.
Well, historically, we did it once, so lets try itagain.

APPENDIXA
Excerpt fromRing Shout! Literary Studies,

Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry
Black Music Research Journal 11, no.2 (Autumn 1991):26587
The Ring Shout:The Foundation

ofAfro-AmericanMusic
One of the central tenets of [Sterling] Stuckeys Slave Culture:Nationalist Theory
and the Foundations of Black America (1987) isthat
the ring shout was the main context in which Africans recognized
values common to themthe values of ancestor worship and con-
tact, communication and teaching through storytelling and trickster
expressions, and of various other symbolic devices. Those values were
remarkable because, while of ancient African provenance, they were
fertile seed for the bloom of new forms.(16)
The shout was an early Negro holy dance in which the circling about in a
circle is the prime essential (Gordon [1979] 1981, 447). From contemporane-
ous descriptions of the shout we learn that the participants stood in a ring and
began to walk around it in a shuffle, with the feet keeping in contact with or
close proximity to the floor, and that there were jerking, hitching motions,
particularly in the shoulders. These movements were usually accompanied by
a spiritual, sung by lead singers, based by others in the group (probably with
some kind of responsorial device and by hand clapping and knee slapping). The
thud of the basic rhythm was continuous, without pause or hesitation. And
the singing that took place in the shout made use of interjections of various
kinds, elisions, blue notes, and call-and-response devices, with the sound of the
feet against the floor serving as an accompanying device.1
199

APPENDIXB
Figures and Institutions fromthe First Black

Renaissance
The American Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded in 1833 in Philadelphia

by William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, and othersestab-
lished its headquarters in NewYorkCity.
Institutions
(organizations that promoted literacy and learning among African Americans)
Philadelphia
Reading Room Society(1828)
Female Literary Society(1831)
Library Company of Colored Persons(1833)
American Moral Reform Society(1836)
Pittsburgh
African Education Society(1832)
Boston
Afric-American Female Intelligence Society(1832)
NewYork
Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Children(1847)
First Black Renaissance: Creative and Informative Works

The First Black Renaissance produced a number of artistic works of poetry
and narrative, and fostered the creativity of musicians. Several newspapers (cir-
culars, and the like) were established to keep African Americans informed of
political, social, and cultural events.
Poetry
George Moses Horton, The Hope of Liberty(1829)
Daniel Payne, The Pleasures and Other Miscellaneous Poems(1850)
James Whitfield, America and Other Poems(1853)
Frances E.W. Harper, Slave Mother (1854), Bury Me in a Free Land (1864),
Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects(1854)
201

202Ap p end i xes
Narrative works (fiction and nonfiction)

Olaudah Equianos autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African(1789)
David Walker, Appeal, in Four Articles (Sep.28,1829)
Robert Alexander Young, Ethiopian Manifesto(1829)
Charles L.Reason, Freedom(1847)
Magazines, journals, and newspapers published by African Americans kept

readers informed of artistic trends, as well as political issues and events.
The first black magazine, for example, titled The Mirror of Liberty, was founded
in 1838 by David Ruggles in New York City. That same year, the National Reformer
became the official publication for the American Moral Reform Society, estab-
lished in Philadelphia (see above). Newspapers such as Freedoms Journal (1827),
North Star (1847), and Christian Recorder (renamed in 1852 from the Christian
Herald, which was founded in 1848) kept African Americans informed of artistic
and political issues and events.
Music
The nineteenth century witnessed the musical creations of numerous African-
American composers. In Boston, for example, Henry F.Williams (18131903)
was writing parlor music; in and near Philadelphia the bandleaders Francis
Frank Johnson (17921844) and A. J. R. Conner (d. 1850) were perform-
ing social dance music; and in St. Louis, J. W. Postlewaite (18271889) was
writing social dance music. Traveling acts such as the Luca Family Singers of
Connecticut, Black Pattis Troubadours, and others provided audiences of the
1890s with heavy samplings of their varied repertoires.

Notes
Introduction
1. Hayden published four versions of the poem Middle Passage, appearing in Phylon (1945),
Cross Section (1945), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), and Selected Poems (1966).
2. The Amistad (LAmistad) adventure took place when, in July 1839, an African named
Cinqu led a group of fifty-two fellow Africans, who had been taken against their wishes,
to rebel and kill the captain, seize the ship, and direct it back to Africa. The ship, the
Amistad, was intercepted by the U.S. brig Washington, however, and the Africans were
imprisoned in the United States; they were ultimately freed through their defense before
the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams in a pivotal case in the history of slavery in the
United States:The United States v.The Amistad. Although some of the rebel Africans died
at sea or while imprisoned, thirty-five set sail to return to Africa, accompanied by mission-
aries, in 1841. Relevant original documents related to the case are available online from
the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad/supreme-
court-opinion.html, which help to preserve the legacy of the Amistad case and properly
situate it in the enterprise of abolition.
3. As an example, in Chapter6 Icompare features of the blues with those found in the sing-
ing of a Tikar woman in Cameroon during the mid-1960s.
4. For information about early trans-Atlantic movement from the Americas back to Africa,
see Kenneth M.Bilby, Africas Creole Drum (2011).
5. In my article Black Music in the Circum-Caribbean, I speculated about the source or
sources of the cinquillo rhythm, citing several writings as sources. Since that article was
written, Iran into an item that gives another possible source for that rhythm. According
to Gage Averill, in A Day for the Hunter, ADay for the Prey:Popular Music and Power in Haiti
(1997, 33), cinquillo has its origin in Kongo culture, having been borrowed from the kata
(time line) for the Vodou rhythm kongo and the rhythm used for carnival and rara bands,
rabday.
6. For more information on the ring, see Floyd, Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical
Studies, and Black Music Inquiry (1991), an excerpt of which has been reprinted in
AppendixA.
Chapter1
1. According to Basil Davidson (1987, 58), These pottery heads and figures of central
Nigeria stand much nearer to our own day, but they are nonetheless very old. Thus four
scraps of carbonized wood from these Nok levels have yielded radio-carbon datings of
about 3500, 2000, and 900 bc, and ad 200. As Davidson continues his discussion of the
carbonized wood, he references the work of Bernard Fagg, who, with respect to the first
203

204Notes
two dates (3500 bc and 2000 bc) notes that they are almost certainly derived from ear-
lier sediments, whereas 900 bc (approximating to the beginning of the Nakuran Moist
Phase) and ad 200 probably mark the upper and the lower limits of the Nok Figurine
Culture (1987, 58). The Nok people are considered to be the direct ancestors of some of
the peoples who live in central Nigeria today(59).
2. The kingdom of Ghana, whose dates of existence span from approximately the fifth to
the thirteenth centuries, should not be confused with the current nation-state of Ghana,
which lies to the southeast of the former kingdom. The kingdom, which was nestled
between the Senegal and Niger Rivers, was known for its abundance of gold and flourished
in the trans-Saharan gold trade around ad1050.
3. Gao, which became the capital city of Songhay, was a stop along the trans-Saharan trad-
ing passages. The region of Songhay was consumed within the empire of Mali during the
fourteenth century. Niani was an important center for Mali, but, as Malis power waned,
Songhay declared its independence. It then developed into an empire, only to be the vic-
tim of a Moroccan invasion in1591.
4. Before the seventh century ad, when North Africa was invaded by the Arabs, black
nomads had been in cultural and social contact with the nomadic North African Berbers
and Tuaregs, who had brought with them to the Sahara the religion called Islam. The
Arabs settled in some of the Sudanese towns, having failed to conquer the Sudan as they
had North Africa, and by the eleventh century Islam had become important there. The
term Sudan, which comes from the Arabic word el-Sudan, translates as the black peoples.
Historically, Sudan refers to the area of grasslands south of the Sahara desert and is not
related to the current nation-states of Sudan or SouthSudan.
5. Among these East African kingdoms were the Waqlimi and the Monomotapa in Sena,
Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe, and other locations, (Davidson 1987, 167). Soon, on the coast
of Kenya and Tanzania Davidson notes that, according to an ancient pilot-book, the
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, there came imports such as lances that are made at Muza
especially for this trade, and hatchets and daggers and awls, and various kinds of glass;
and at some places a little wine and wheat, not for trade, but to serve for getting the good-
will of the savages, while there was exported much ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell,
and a little palm oil(176).
6. Although Davidson refers to this channel as the Madagascan channel, other scholars
have named it the Mozambique Channel.
7. They were repeatedly surprised by the ease and substance of the ports and towns they
saw and sheltered in and plundered. They found themselves repeatedly disregarded as
strange and uncouth. When we had been two or three days at this place, says the laconic
logbook of da Gamas flagship, the So Gabriel, of an encounter at a port that was prob-
ably Quilimane, two senhores of the country came to see us. They were very haughty; and
valued nothing which we gave them. One of them wore a cap with a fringe embroidered in
silk, and the other a cap of green silk (Davidson 1987,196).
8. This settlement had been accomplished most probably by the peoples of the Zanj
(Davidson 1987, 227), who were workers in metal, energetic traders, and hunters of
ivory. Jet black people with hanging lips, [the Zanj] were great orators and elegant
speakers who lived by mixed agriculture, cultivating grain and grazing cattle, and by
trade (15556).
9. See Shillington (1993 [1989]), 10815, 16367.
10. Gold, iron, ivory, slaves, and tortoise shells were important African exports, the latter
especially to Mesopotamia. Yet it is perhaps through the Chinese connection that one
may glimpse most clearly the wealth and long endurance and extent of this African trade
with the countries of the east (Davidson 1987,196).
11. Unfortunately, we know even less about the city-states of East Africa than those of West
Africa. Less imposing, less wealthy, less deeply rooted in its hinterland, the eastern
African coastal civilizations, which might seem as fine and comfortable as most of the
maritime cities of Europe or Indiaset as they were beside a glittering ocean in white
terraces of tall houses, ringed with strong walls, paved with firm quays, crowned by forts

Notes 205
and palacesand brave enough to stand for all eternity (Davidson 1987, 199), lost their
fame and have vanished, some of them, entirely.
12. According to If myth, the Yorubas migrated to Il If from the east under the leadership
of a warrior chief named Oduduwa. It is difficult to date the time of the Yoruba move into
West Africa because of limited archaeological research on the subject. Estimates range
from between sixteen hundred to twenty-five hundred years ago (Fatunmbi 1992, 1). See
also William Russell Bascom, The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria.
13. According to Wande Abimbola (1976, 3), regarding the controversy about the terms If
and Orunmila, both refer to the same deity, and the former, If, refers both to the deity
and the Yoruba divination system. If the deity and other major deities came to earth
from heaven and first landed at If, which the Yoruba people believe to be the cradle of
mankind (4). Regarding the location of Il-If, Abimbola refers us to Fela Sowande, who
warns: Because we have an Il-If in Western Nigeria today, it is quite understandable
that people naturally think that this is the Il-If which figures in the oral traditions con-
cerning Yorubaland . Opinion is still divided on the location of If but one is certain
now that it is more than likely that the Il-If of tradition was anywhere but where the
present one is (Sowande, quoted in Abimbola, 4).
14. Gluckman (1960, 12122), in a quite different context, has listed such universal ques-
tions as:What is man? Whence does he come and whither does he go? Why should there
be good and evil, prosperity and misfortune? How is human society set in the world of
nature? What of the relations of men and women, parents and children, magistrates and
people? What of the dealings of different groups with one another? These problems may
be summed up, perhaps, in the general question: What is mans place, as a member of
society, in the world? The answer is given partly in myth and legend, partly in dogma, and
largely in rituals.
15. Some commentators refer to this system of beliefs as supernatural, but Robin Horton, in
his Rationality:Key Concepts in the Social Sciences (1970, 136), retorts, after explaining the
concept of experimental physics, that to say of the traditional African thinker that he is
interested in supernatural rather than natural causes makes little more sense than to
say of the physicist that he is interested in nuclear rather than natural causes. Both are
making the same use of theory to transcend the limited vision of natural causes provided
by common sense.
16. The concept of orisha is a complicated one. Leo Frobenius, a German ethnologist
whose contributions to the field of African history straddled the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, originally translated the word as meaning gods. However, the
twentieth-century German writer, Ulli Beier, offered a differently nuanced translation.
His translation of r puts forth an amalgamation of several symbols:a force of nature,
an ancestor, a musical pattern, etc., simultaneously. Beiers employment of r in this
way has been used by Gerhard Kubik in his own work, most notably in his 1990West
African and African-American Concepts of Vodu and r.
17. Acomplete catalog of these patterns seems unavailable.
18. These secret societies are found among other ethnic groups in western Africa.
19. Although Basil Davidson implies that witchcraft and sorcery could be considered as part
of the matrix of religion, the work of the anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and others,
suggests that witchcraft, sorcery, magic, and religious phenomena are different entities.
Issues regarding witchcraft and magic in southeastern parts of Africa will be illuminated by
Moya A.Malamusi in his forthcoming work Za Usinganga Ndi UfitiAbout Healing Practice
and Witchcraft:ACulture and Personality Study of Traditional Healers in Southern Malawi.
20. It is important to not to single out Africa, or even parts of Africa, in connection with
witchcraft, magic, sorcery, etc. In fact, the concept of hoodoo is referenced in music of
the United States, as will be demonstrated later in this book. Gerhard Kubik includes an
entire chapter on hoodoo in his book Jazz Transatlantic (forthcoming).
21. On the other hand, there was the wizard who has succumbed to the lust for power, he
disturbs and destroys the life force of his fellow men, and spreads terror for its own sake
(Jahn 1961,130).

206Notes
22. Ihave substituted the term traditional healer for Jahns medicineman.
23. See Nketias 1974 work Music of Africa (53, 81, 85, 87, 92, 103, 104, 144, 166, 161,163).
24. With respect to the trans-Atlantic movement of Central African music to the Western
Hemisphere, see Kubiks Extensions of African Cultures in Brazil (2013).
25. For more information, see David Evanss entry on Robert Johnson in the International
Dictionary of Black Composers (1999).
26. Kubiks Theory of African Music (1994) contains an insightful discussion of the time-line
patterns in African music, and the reader is referred enthusiastically to Kubikswork.
27. Initially, salt was the main commodity, with kola nuts, grains, horses, captive slaves,
cotton, leather goods, and various European goods as secondary commodities (Oliver
1991,150).
28. Basil Davidson has reprinted an English translation of Mohammed Habibullahs French
translation of the Arabic text Masalik el Absar Fir Mamelik el Amsar, in which an expedi-
tion of ships from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean is recounted. Davidson deems it
a tall story, perhaps; yet Mali had outlets on the Atlantic seaboard, while North African
mariners evidently knew of the Azores several centuries before the voyage of Columbus
(1987,74).
Chapter2
1. According to Harris, Africans were present in sixth- century Yemen, ninth- century
Mesopotamia, and twelfth-century Canton. See Harris, Africans and Their History (1987).
2. The first Moorish dynasty, Umayyad, ruled Spain from 715 to 750 (Chandler 1992, 162).
According to Chandler, the second dynasty, Abbasid, reigned from 750 until 756, at which
point the Umayyad dynasty resumed its control. In 1086, the third Moorish dynasty,
the Almoravid, began, and it was followed by the fourth and final Moorish dynasty, the
Almohade, in1145.
3. According to anthropologist Wayne B.Chandler, So, in time the Sahara came to be occu-
pied by two distinct groups of people:the original Maurs or Moors and the Berbers who
later became Tawny Moors. The rest of North Africa, from Egypt through the Fezzan
and the west of the Sahara to Mauretania (Morocco and Algeria), were peopled by black
Africans, also called Moors by the Romans and later by the Europeans. Eventually, these
Moors would join with Arabs and become a united and powerful force. The Arab follow-
ers of Mohamet had found converts among the African Moors, both black and tawny, and
both Arab and Moorish officers were later to lead the predominantly Moorish soldiers into
Iberia (1992, 15859). And, according to Shillington (1993, 132), the term Moor was
used by European Christians more generally to refer to all Muslims, whether African
orArab.
4. Drake gives a different and earlier date for the Almohade invasion, saying: Negroes
entered Spain with the Almoravid armies from Morocco. When the Almohade dynasty
replaced this one in A.D. 1121 more black troops came (Drake 1990, vol. 2,116).
5. During this Indian Ocean slave trade, which continued into the nineteenth century,
enslaved Africans were given Arabic names (Hunwick 1993,297).
6. In his article The Music of the Moors in Spain, Yusef Ali (1992) does not attempt to
discuss the influence of the music of black Africa on the music of Moorish Spain. Since
apparently no documents exist that describe black African music making in Al-Andalus
(Andalusia) and no notation to study, he avoids the issue by describing only the notated
music and descriptions of Arab music, including that of Ziryab. The name Ziryab is ren-
dered by different writers as Zaryab, Zeryab, and Zariyab. See also Chejne (1974).
7. To support slavery, the slave trade, and sugar production of the West Indies, the European
nations established Middle- Passage transport enterprises. From 1493 to 1789, the
Spanish had a monopoly on trade and navigation in the Caribbean (Williams 1984, 46
49). England and France had a monopoly on production. But by the 1580s Spain was no
longer able to protect the monopoly or defend the empire, with England, France, and

Notes 207
Holland undermining its status and usurping wealth through piracy, contraband trade,
and territorial encroachment (7376).
8. The Maroons in Hispaniola alone numbered seven thousand in the sixteenth century.
9. The Small Coast, which lies near the Pacific Ocean, runs from Guerrero State to Oaxaca
State and includes the cities and municipalities of Acapulco, San Marcos, Tecoanapa,
Florencio Villarreal, Ayutla, Cuautepec, Copala, San Luis Acatln, Azoy, Igualapa,
Tlacoachistlahuaca, Xochhistlahuaca, Ometepec, Cuajinicuilapa, and Santiago Jamiltepec.
10. See also Bilby,1985a.
11. Traditional music of Martinique can be heard on an audio tape entitled Bel Alians:Traditional
Music of Martinique, Le Blia des Allis, Sacem BA93; and a 1958 recording produced by
Carter Harman for Cook Records (Cook 01021, featuring Groupe Mi-O) that has been
more recently made available through the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in2004.
12. Blanco y Negro: Hispanic Songs of the Renaissance from the Old and New Worlds. Ancient
Concert Singers and the Ancient Instrumental Ensemble. Klavier KS540, 1975. The pro-
gram annotations were written by Stevenson.
Chapter3
1. For more information, see Riberas Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain (1970),59.
2. According to Bruno Nettl (1995, 139), some of [Mozarts] greatest works are literally
and musically sharply critical of social injustices, inequality of classes and genders, and
brutalities such as duels and racism.
3. Freemasonry involves the teaching of morality and virtue through the symbolism of
stonemasonry. According to Cecil Hill and J.V. Cotte (Grove Dictionary Online), the lodges
admitted individuals who were interested in the equivalent validity of all religious and
mystic revelation and was an ideal form of expression for the political and social liberal-
ism of the middle classes.
4. For more information about Lusitanos life and musical contributions, see Barbosa (1977)
and Berger (1980).
5. According to Davidson (1987, 131), by the early sixteenth century there were parts of
Portugal where the number of Negro slaves was said to be larger than the number of native
Portuguese.
6. Although the influence of black musicians in Britain on British music is difficult to deter-
mine, their participation in nineteenth-century British musical life is not. Paul Oliver
(1990, 9, 13)tells us that in 1815 slaves from the United States and the Caribbean worked
as shantymen on British ships at sea and in the ports of Liverpool, Bristol, and London,
perhaps influencing the development of the call-and-response structure of British shan-
ties. It is also known that black military bandsmen were employed in many regiments
in the eighteenth century (9) and visiting blacks such as Francis Frank Johnson, of
Philadelphia, gave concerts there (Southern 1977). Pickering (1990, 23)has commented
on Joseph Emidys artistic successes at parties and concerts in Cornwall and on ship,
playing hornpipes, jigs and reels for evening entertainment (although a public perfor-
mance in London was denied him because of his race). By the middle of the nineteenth
century, according to Howard Rye (1990, 44), visiting entertainers were presenting music
with distinctive Afro-American content and following the visits to England of the Fisk
Jubilee Singers in the 1870s and 1880s, black religious music became popular there, with
sheet music of spirituals and plantation songs being sold, according to Oliver (1990, 12),
in single copies and in folios. By the 1880s black shows, with black rather than white
performers toured Englandmost in blackfaceand by the 1890s banjo pieces, jigs,
cakewalks and coon songs were selling in millions (1112). In 1904 the Williams
Colored Singers were formed, giving [in that year] 130 performances in an 18-week run
at the London Coliseum, and being trained singers with a more legitimate approach they
sought to counter the impact of the minstrel shows and bridged the cultural gap with the
audiences (1112).

208Notes
7. Josephine Wright (1979), in referencing the information gleaned from a 1782 edition of
Sanchos letters published posthumously by Miss F.Crews in London, notes that Sancho
was born on a slave ship that was moving from Guinea (in West Africa) to Cartagena
(which is now part of Colombia). He was orphaned as an infant and taken to England by
his master at the age oftwo.
8. There seems to have been some discrepancies regarding Bridgetowers place and date of
birth, which have been outlined by Josephine Wright (1980).
9. Aplaque commemorating Emidys arrival in Falmouth in 1799 was installed there in 2005;
a picture of the plaque has been made available online by the BBC at http://www.bbc.com/
news/uk-england-cornwall-33211440, accessed Sep.9,2015.
10. Emidy is currently making a comeback, as his life and musical accomplishments have
been the subject of two recent BBC projects, both of which were made public in 2015. In
his June 21, 2015, article Joseph Emidy:From Slave Fiddler to Classical Violinist, BBC
News Online writer Miles Davis chronicles the remarkable achievements of the genius
violinist. Davis emphasizes that Emidy, after having been freed from slavery, became
Britains first composer of the African diaspora, an attribute that has been engraved
on the Falmouth plaque. In addition, Emidys life and music are featured on a BBC Radio
4 program In Search of the Black Mozart, which has been created by Chi-chi Nwanoku, the
principal bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and produced by Sarah
Taylor. Other musicians of African descent who are featured on their show are George
Bridgetower, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Ignatius Sancho.
11. Gossec left the orchestra to conduct the Concert Spirituel (Banat 1990,186).
12. The other two composers were Giovanni-Giuseppe Cambini and Jean-Baptiste Davaux.
13. The Concert des Amateurs ceased to exist after enduring financial difficulties in 1781,
at which point Saint-Georges began conducting LOrchestre de la loge Olympique. Banat
(1999, 986)refers to the latter as a reincarnation of the former.
14. Considering the fact that Lully was Toussaints favorite composer, did he know also of
Saint-Georges, a former Guadeloupean neighbor?
15. When the outline of this chapter was originally conceived, I had been intrigued by the
work of Gerard Bhague for some time. In 1979 (79), he claimed that the oldest music
manuscript that had been located in the Minas Gerais area was dated exactly two hun-
dred years prior, in 1779. Since the publication of Bhagues statement, scholars and stu-
dents alike have benefited greatly from an online publication that provides a chronological
listing of Brazilian composers of concert music, opera, religious music, dance, and vocal
music. Readers are encouraged to consult this spreadsheet, Brazilian Composers from
Colonial Age (1500) until Independency Time (1822), which was created by Edson Tadeu
Ortolan and is available at www.classical.net/music/composer/brazilian.pdf. Two addi-
tional sources of information are provided within the same spreadsheet: 19th Century
Brazilian Composers and 20th Century Brazilian Composers.
16. See Tinhoro (1972).
17. This search for riches began in the1670s.
18. Nkiru Nzegwu has identified an Afro-Brazilian architect named Aleijadinho (Antnio
Francisco Lisboa), who transformed the Catholic architectural landscape in the Brazilian
state of Minas Gerais, and Mestre Manoel Friandes, who designed and built the Church
of Lapinha, the Ordem Terceira de So Francisco, and numerous commercial buildings in
Salvador-Bahia (Nzegwu 2008, 108,109).
19. Ouro Prto (Black Gold) was the capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 to 1897. It was sub-
sequently placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in recognition of its architectural
prowess.
20. The term baroque may have been applied to music with obviously much later style char-
acteristics because the churches of Minas, with which this music was affiliated, were com-
monly described as baroque. Indeed, Minas was known for its abundance of gold, which
in turn, enabled the construction of lavish, ornate churches in Ouro Prto, So Joo del
Rei, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro.

Notes 209
21. Scores for three of these works, Jos Joaquim Emrico Lobo de Mesquitas Antiphona de
Nossa Senhora (1787), Coelho Netos Himno (Maria Mater gratiae, 1787), and Gomes da
Rochas Novena de Nossa Senhora do Pilar (1789), have been published by the Universidad
Nacional de Cuyo, Escuela Superior de Msica, Departamento de Musicologia in Mendoza,
Argentina.
22. According to Bhague (1979, 7980, 84), the Confraria de Nossa Senhora das Mercs dos
Homens Crioulos, of which Mesquita was a member, was one of a number of such orders
that also included the Black brotherhood of So Jos dos Homens Pardos.
23. For more information about Mesquita and a list of his works (including recordings made
from unpublished manuscripts prior to 1999), see John E.Druesedow (1999), 81720.
The principal archive of Mesquitas works is in the Museum of Mariana, which is located in
Minas Gerais, Brazil. During Mesquitas time, it was very expensive for composers to get
their works printed, as printing was available primarily in Portugal. But thanks to both the
interest in Mesquitas music and the advancements made in musical notation software,
twenty-four of his works are now available (2015) on IMSLP:Petrucci Music Library in
clear, typeset editions.
24. For more on Garcia and for the availability of his works, see de Lerma (1986).
25. Here, we should take note of the continuation of the confrarias, counterparts or predeces-
sors of which had been established in Spain, by the Moors, by the early fifteenth century
as confradas, and also perhaps in Portugal, and in Mexico, where they sprang up as cabil-
dos, probably as a way for blacks to continue with the ideal of African secret societies.
26. Avril Coleridge-Taylor can be heard discussing her fathers work Hiawathas Wedding Feast
on a 1974 BBC Radio 4 show, which is available on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=8dt_knOC3ko, accessed Sep.1,2015.
27. In his preface to Samuel Coleridge-Taylors Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, Tuskegee Institute
founder Booker T.Washington deemed the composer to be the foremost musician of his
race, noting also that Mr. Coleridge-Taylor is himself an inspiration to the Negro, since
he himself, the child of an African father, is an embodiment of what are the possibilities of
the Negro under favorable conditions.
28. The recording also includes a concerto by the Chevalier J.J. O.de Meude-Monpas, who had
been mistakenly considered of African descent in previous accounts. Abrief discussion of
this album and of the corrected information regarding Meude-Monpass identity is avail-
able on William Zicks important and informative website, AfriClassical, at http://africlas-
sical.blogspot.com/2007/09/violin-concertos-by-black-composers-of.html (accessed Nov.
6,2016).
29. For a comparative assessment of George Bridgetower, Jos White, and Claudio Jos
Domingo Brindis de Salas, see Fikes (1982). Anumber of resources convey information
about Afro-Cuban musicians who created and/or performed art music of a European style.
See, for example, Orovio (1992), Carpentier (2001), and Moore (1997).
30. Deberques name and dates are given as Jacques Constantin Deburque (18001861) in
Southern (1997,134).
31. Lester Sullivan acknowledges several spellings of the composers name: McCarty,
McCarthy, and Macarthy. Sources also vary on Macartys date of birth. Eileen Southerns
Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians pinpoints the year 1821;
Sullivan provides a range of years, from 1817 to1823.
32. For more information about these composers, see their entries in Floyd (1999b).
33. Lucius Wyatt (1990) lists approximately seventy-five works that have been identified,
but we know that Dd composed more than 250 dances and songs besides his works for
orchestra, ballet, opera, operetta, and other performing media. For more information on
Dd, see Sullivan and Sears (1999).
34. Sullivan and Sears (1999) inform us that Dd became a full member of the French Society
of Dramatic Authors, Composers, and Editors of Music; moreover, his compositional out-
put was well received, as evidenced by written critiques published in LArtiste de Bordeaux.

210Notes
35. An entry in the Black Perspective in Music 10, no.2 (Autumn 1982)lists her date of birth
as Mar. 30, 1887, but the entry in another 1982 publication, the Biographical Dictionary of
Afro-American and African Musicians (BDAAM), presents a different year:Mar. 30,1888.
36. See Southern (BDAAM 1982, 288)and Walker-Hill (1995). George Shirley, with his accom-
panist William Bolcom, recorded Nickersons Chere, Mo lemm toi and Michieu Banjo
alongside songs by other black composers, including works by A. J. R. Connor, James
Bland, and Will Marion Cook. Shirley attracted attention from the NewYork Times (Apr. 7,
1961)at age twenty-six when he became the first African American to win the auditions
sponsored by the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera. The reader is encouraged
to listen to Shirley and Bolcom on the sound recording Battle Pieces Albany, NY:Albany
Records,2003.
37. Readers are referred to Trotters groundbreaking book Music and Some Highly Musical
People. Trotters book (1878), along with Slave Songs of the United States (1867), which is
referenced several times throughout Transformation, are two of the earliest written works
of substance and length that provide information on a variety of contributions by African
Americans. The writing of Gustavus Pike (1873) is equally valuable in its recounting of the
trailblazing efforts of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the United States and Europe, beginning
in 1871. Yet by default, Pike chronicles only one performing ensemble; conversely, the
joint efforts of Lucy McKim Garrison, William Francis Allen, and Charles Pickard Ware
document musical practices of African Americans in a variety of locales within the United
States, as does the book by Trotter.
38. Two years later, another vocal ensemble was established in Cincinnati, the Mozart Circle.
This group comprised twenty-five members, and its inaugural (1875) performance of the
cantata Daniel was met with deserved praise and recommended to others as refined
musical entertainment (Trotter 1878, 31819).
39. We will return to the American influences on Adams and his juvenile band in Chapter7.
40. During my own visits to locations such as Trinidad, Aruba, St. Kitts, and Nevis, and other
islands over the course of thirty-plus years, Ihave heard similar but gentler comments.
Unfortunately, however, when Ihave read important music books about the Caribbean,
Ihave not found much information about the Virgin Islands.
41. In 2014, for example, the Journal of the American Musicological Society (JAMS) published
an article on the Black Swan (Elizabeth Greenfield) by Julia J.Chybowski. Black Patti, for-
mally known as Matilda Sissieretta Jones (18681933), was the subject of a JAMS article
in 2000; she had previously been featured in the Black Perspective in Music (1976) and in
the Music of Black Americans (1971, 1983, 1997). See Graziano (2000).
42. Although the focus here is on vocalists, the readers attention is directed to Chapters7,
8, and 9 and the Epilogue for insight about the astonishingly diverse ways in which black
instrumentalists, composers, and academics helped to shape our soundscape during the
twentieth and twentieth-first centuries.
43. Robesons life has been chronicled extensively, and readers may be interested to learn that
he was multitalented outside the world of music. Educated as an attorney, he also exceled
at football, for which he had earned a college scholarship. He and his musical career suf-
fered irreparable damage as he was accused of being a communist during the years follow-
ing World War II, making it very difficult for him to earn a living abroad and at home as
racial tensions were nearing their peak. Afile of FBI documents pertaining to Robeson can
be found at the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago. In the early months of 2016,
the Whitney Museum of American Art in NewYork City featured Steve McQueens exhibit
on Paul Robeson, End Credits, which makes use of these documents.
Chapter4
1. The term isles of rhythm is borrowed from the title of Earl Leafs 1948 book, Isles of Rhythm.
2. Callaloo (calalou, calalu) a West Indian soup, or stew, made from any of several tropi-
cal plants that were introduced from the Guinea Coast (q.v.) in colonial times (Nuez
1980,104).

Notes 211
3. Jekylls collection also contains songs from Angola and Dahomey.

4. Esu, who we encountered in Chapter1 and will see again later in the book, is known as
an orisha, hailing from the Yoruba religion and involved in various New World traditions.
As an orisha (spirit/deity), Esu is known for trickery. In the red-hat, black-hat parable,
for example, Esu walks into a village wearing a hat of two colorsred one side and black
on the other. As the story goes, two friends, who share an unbreakable bond, see Esu
and the hat. Yet they disagree as to the color of the hat, and since each friend sees a dif-
ferent side of the hat, each friend speaks the truth about the hat from his perspective.
Unfortunately, their disagreement breaks their bond of friendship, which is a direct result
of Esus trickery.
5. Sometimes spelled ti-bois.
6. Cinquillo was also present in the transformation of the danzn into the danza habanera and
on into the Argentinean tango (Santos 1982, 1), which Slonimsky (1972, 56)has identified
as an isotope of the Habanera.
7. Nuez (1980, 158) defines the danzn as a lively Afro-Cuban dance played on pianolas
with accordions and gourds.
8. Robin Moore has observed that the cyclical, antiphonal and highly improvisatory nature
of the montuno bears a striking similarity to the formal organization of many traditional
West African musics, whereas the initial strophic sections of sones (known as canto or
tema) more closely resemble European musics. See Bhague and Moore, Cuba (n.d.).
9. Helio Orovio (1992, 139), in the Diccionario de la msica cubana, credits Prez as hav-
ing created the (first) danzn, Las Alturas de Simpson, but John Santos (1982,
3)says that a dance by that name was being performed in Matanzas at least twenty
years earlier than Falde Prezs musical version. Santos traces its path from the con-
tradanza through the danza habanera, and the habanera proper, and indicates also
that it was influenced significantly by the sn afrocubano (12). According to Orovio
(1992, 139), the danzn is slower, more rhythmic and varied than the danza or the
contradanza.
10. The question of the origins of musical genres is contested, sometimes hotly, among the
islands of the Caribbean, and Itake no sides in these issues. In this book, in all cases, my
positions are based on the best documented and most persuasive information available
to me. The contestation has been succinctly demonstrated, by way of a comment about
dance, by a former Trinidad newspaperman, John Grimes (1964, 434):I have seen the
Limbo danced by people of African descent in British Guiana as a boy. Later in Trinidad
Isaw it resurrected from the hills to become a cabaret attraction. In Jamaica it is older
than the oldest inhabitant. And yet each territory claimed it as its own. The only differ-
ence in the performances in these three places was the musical accompaniment, and these
differences were merely superficial.
11. According to Nuez (1980, 54), the bambouladrum dances of the West Indies blacks
was common until 1865 in Saint Thomas when street masquerading began to replace it.
See January 30, 2004, interview with Copemann in St. Croix Source.
12. Iam indebted to Sterling Stuckey for this citation.
13. Also spelled Anancy.
14. Also Ashanti, Ashantee.
Chapter5
1. r (Yoruba), abosom (Ashanti), vodun (Fon), alose (Igbo).

2. Also known as Legba, Exu (Brazil), Esu Elegbara, Eshu Ellegu.
3. Ishould like to point out that the discussion of African retentions in the New World has
long been a topic of discussion. The reader is encouraged to revisit the works of Melville
Herskovits and John Storm Roberts with this in mind. However, retentionists, or those
invested in retentionist theories, have become the subject of much critique. For a dialogue
about retentionist theories as they concern black music, see Floyd and Radano (2009).
4. Translation by RoseAnna Mueller. See also Floyd (1999a).
5. Im grateful to Sterling Stuckey for calling my attention to this citation.

212Notes
6. The two-part structure is also reflected in the dirge-to-shout structure of New Orleans
jazz funerals. Variations on this structure exist, of course, which can be brought about
by what ethnomusicologist Stuart Goosman calls basing and blending, whereby
a European construct embraces African-American constructs. He describes in detail
a Tin Pan Alley song in a traditional (European) thirty-two-bar song form (AABA)
that also features call-and-response, a musical characteristic commonly found in
African American musics. He notes: Performers situate the latter in the context of
the former, but I do not believe that one takes precedence over the other; they are
enmeshed, cooperative modes. In specific performances either a lead vocalist sang the
melody and words of a song, accompanied by call-and-response background harmony
patterns, or all the vocalists sang the lead melody in harmony. A song commonly com-
bined both structures. In the latter musical strategy, the A sections of a song would
typically be organized around a call-and-response (leader/chorus) pattern, the lead
vocal being backed by group riffs (brief, repeating musical phrases consisting of words
or vocables). Singers of the period refer to this as backgrounding a lead; the older
concept was called basing. Over the bridge, or B section (the channel), the melody
could again be sung in concerted harmony (1997, 81). Goosmans work illustrates
a kind of linear circularity in which AA is followed by B and then by A, as the whole
moves through the two-part ritual structure of European-to-African performance
practice foci.
7. Sheila Walkers use of the same term in her discussion of the black preacher in the black
Pentecostal Holiness Church, and Fleurants use of the ceremony in referring to the Bwa
Kayiman event that triggered the Haitian Revolution, and my use of the different term
ritual, raise the question of the distinction between ritual and ceremony. According to
Hans Lunds paraphrasing (1992) of Max Gluckman (1960), A ritual is related to a mystic
power which works to support and enrich. Aceremony, more common in the industrial-
ized world, has rather a social function. It marks a passage rather than lending a mystic
power of ritual to it(73).
8. According to Gonzlez-Wippler (1985, 12), In Cuba, the Yoruba beliefs gave birth to a
mixture of Catholic and Yoruba practices which became known as Santera, that is, the
worship of saints. This was the result of the identification of some of the orishas with
Catholic saints.
9. Sometimes called Berek in Cuba. See Nuez 1980,70.
10. Ortiz (1951).
11. As Jahn has pointed out, Dancing in couples, which is conceivable in Africa only as the
fulfillment of the fertility dance and is therefore very unusual, had to be considerably
altered in America. Its symbolism necessarily lost clarity and was adapted to the norms of
European morality. In Europe the dance was further and completely emptied of meaning
and became the expression of abstract movement (1961,86).
12. Ihasten to clarify that the use of steel pans in the Bahamas is not new. As early as 1956,
Iheard steel pan performances in many locations in the Nassau region when Iwas there as
an assistant director with the Florida A&M University Marching Band and was promised
by the honorable Lynden Pindling that he would personally send me a set. They got lost
in the mail, Ipresume.
13. The Cross River basin is located in the region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern
Cameroon.
14. Robert Stevenson (1968a, 484) points out that these cofradas, which had Andalusian
precedents going back to 1403, existed in Spanish America throughout the three colo-
nial centuries, were everywhere fostered among the blacks, and were fundamental to
the preservation of Negro identity in Spanish America.
Chapter6
1.
Slave Songs of the United States is a watershed anthology of 136 short pieces, transcribed
and compiled by three white musicians, William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and

Notes 213
Lucy McKim Garrison, in 1867. The work carries a thirty-six-page Introduction, a small
part of which states:The musical capacity of the negro race has been recognized for so
many years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto been made to
collect and preserve their melodies. More than thirty years ago those plantation songs
made their appearance which were so extraordinarily popular for a while; and if Coal-
black Rose, Zip Coon, and Ole Virginny nebber tire have been succeeded by spurious
imitations, manufactured to suit the somewhat sentimental taste of our community, the
fact that these were called negro melodies was itself a tribute to the musical genius of
the race. The public had well-nigh forgotten these genuine slave songs, and with them the
creative power from which they sprung, when fresh interest was excited through the edu-
cational mission to the Port Royal islands, in 1861 (Allen etal. 1867, i). At the end of the
book, the editors wrote, These, certainly, are songs to be desired and regretted. But we
do not despair of recovering them and others perhaps equally characteristic for a second
edition (115), which never came to pass, but the book itself is one of multiple printings.
2. See Boyer (1976). See also Southern (1976b).
3. Appendix Aprovides a more detailed account of the RingShout.
4. See also Melville (1987), 99,112.
5. The term Juba has symbolic force in the literature of black music, appearing as a descrip-
tion of a dance and a particular pat. Master Juba is the name of an incomparable black
dancer whose stunning feats were first recorded in 1842 by the English author Charles
Dickens in his book American Notes. During a visit to Five Points in New York City, Dickens
saw a black youth whom he described as the greatest dancer known, and whose feats that
day took place in this context: the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long
as he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and all are so long about it
that the sport begins to languish, when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue.
Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the tam-
bourine . Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and crosscut: snapping his fingers, rolling
his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on
his toes and heels like nothing but the mans fingers on the tambourine; dancing with two
left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legsall sorts of legs
and no legswhat is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life, does man ever
get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off
her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling
for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one
inimitable sound! (1898, 1078)
6. Rahn (forthcoming); see Arom (1984).
7. See Rahn (forthcoming), and Amira and Cornelius (1999), 35, 38,46.
8. For an extensive collection of articles and essays on speech surrogacy (drum languages,
talking drums, whistle languages, etc.), the reader is encouraged to consult Sebeok and
Umiker-Sebeok (1976).
9. Although Brothers developed his list of concepts for the period 18901950, they could
equally apply to periods that precede it.
10. Reconstruction is typically considered to include the years 1863 to 1877 for the Southern
United States and 1865 to 1877 for the United States as a whole. See Coolen (1991).
11. Grinding Song by a Tikar Woman from Central Cameroon, Feb. 14, 1964. See analytical
discussions in c hapter 5 of Kubik (1999; CD is included). Mississippi Matilda (Matilda
Powell), voc., acc. Sonny Boy Nelson (Eugene Powell) and Willie Harris Jr., guitars. Hard
Working Woman, reissued RCA 07863 66719-2. Rec. New Orleans, La., Oct. 15, 1936.
Orig. recording Blue Bird B6812.
12. The original and only source for this idea is a two-paragraph statement on http://basin-
street.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1850-1914-B.pdf, accessed Nov. 6,2016.
13. Dr.Watts hymns refers to those of Isaac Watts, a late-seventeenth, early-eighteenth-
century writer from England.
14. See the indented quotation originally published in Pitts (1999), 12425:the slaves were
trying to find [my emphasis] a musical style so close to their own.

214Notes
15. Iam referring here to ballets fixed categories of foot placement, demi and grand plis, vari-
ous battement and relevs, and the many positions of all ofthese.
16. See also Ann Hutchinson Guest, Labanotation: The System of Analyzing and Recording
Movement, rev. 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2005).
17. Here I employ the common spelling of Ashanti, but when referencing Melvilles work
Iemploy the spelling he uses, Ashantee.
Chapter7
1. Thomas Edisons 1877 invention, the phonograph, was initially conceived as a tinfoil-
coated cylinder; subsequent improvements included a heartier wax cylinder, and later,
disc records. The phonograph was originally employed as a dictation device, but its value
to entertainment quickly became apparent.
2. See, for example, Kenney (1999) and Brooks (2004).
3. These companies included the National Phonograph Company (which became Thomas
A. Edison, Inc., in 1911), Columbia Records, and the Victor Talking Machine Company
(VTMC).
4. Clark was a nationally recognized figure in the field of music education by 1907, as she
was instrumental in organizing the Music Supervisors National Conference (MSNC) and
serving as its first president. The MSNCs name was later changed to the Music Educators
National Conference, and in 2011 it became known as the National Association for Music
Education.
5. Clarks synopsis notes that probably that one [the 621st school] has them also only we
have not yet received the report.
6. The Victrola in Rural Schools (1916) garnered national attention as it was revised and
reissued several times (1917, 1919, 1921, 1924), under the title Music Manual for Rural
Schools with the Victrola. The Educational Catalog and Graded List of Victor Records for Home,
School, and College, which was first published in 1918 and then revised and subsequently
reissued in 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1927, was distributed as a free resource. Victors
Educational Department also published The Victrola in Music Memory Contests, The Victrola
in Correlation with English and American Literature, and The Victrola in Physical Education,
Recreation, andPlay.
7. Most of the examples were accompanied, as relevant, by a brief composer biography, cul-
tural and historical contexts of the music, lyrics, and suggestions for classroom learning.
8. Samuel Coleridge-Taylors Onaway, Awake Beloved! is the famous aria from the first can-
tata, Hiawathas Wedding Feast, of The Song of Hiawatha, which was discussed in Chapter3.
9. The Fisk Jubilee Singers first three recording sessions for Victor took place on Dec. 1,
8, and 9, 1909. These folk, revival, and camp songs were recorded: Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot, I Couldnt Hear Nobody Pray, Little David, Play on yo Harp, There is a Balm
in Gilead, Roll Jordan Roll, Great Campmeeting, and There is a Balm in Gilead. In
addition, the singers also recorded Negro lullaby by John Wesley Work II, and minstrel
songs by Stephen Foster, including My Old Kentucky Home and Old Black Joe. On Feb.
6 and 7, 1911, the Fisk Jubilee Singers returned to the Victor label with The Ole Ark,
Good News, Done What You Tole me to Do, Po Moner Got a Home at Last, In Bright
Mansions Above, My Soul Is a Witness, Band of Gideon, and I Know the Lord Laid
His Hands on Me. In his 2004 book Lost Sounds, Tim Brooks (32223) speculates that
the VTMC knew that the Fisk Jubilee Singers were considering leaving the company to
record for Columbia and consequently did not place their recordings in the VTMC educa-
tional materials. Although the Fisk Jubilee Singers were not included in the Educational
Departments publications, the recordings of the Tuskegee Institute Singers were marked
by the company for educational properties, beginning with those from their initial record-
ing session on Aug. 31,1914.
10. This sentiment is echoed and nuanced in Clarks other writings, including in her address
delivered to the audience at the 1919 (Aug. 2529) Educational Convention held at the

Notes 215
Victor Offices:The Victor in its supremacy is the ideal medium for bringing all the music
of all the World to all the People (Clark Papers,1919).
11. Other editions appeared in 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, and1927.
12. The recommended spirituals and songs are Deep River, Go Down, Moses, Golden
Slippers, Good News, Hear, De Lams A-Cryin, Heaven Song, I Want to Be Like
Jesus, I Want to Be Ready, Little David, Play on Your Harp, Live a-Humble, Negro
Spiritual Melody, Nobody Knows, The Old Time Religion, Steal Away, and Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot. It should be noted that in spite of their shared religious contexts, the
catalog separates its list of hymns and religious songs from that of Negro spirituals and
songs.
13. The number of records was announced at the Traveling Mens Meeting regarding sales of
Victrolas in September1924.
14. Hindoos in the original.
15. Coleridge-Taylors Petite Suite de Concert was featured in the Analyses of the 1931 edition.
More information on juba is found in Chapter6.
16. In this edition, Burleigh and Cook are mentioned alongside David Guion and William
Arms Fisher. By 1928, Fisher has been removed from the list and Nathaniel Dett has been
added. This solidifies by 1931 and remains consistent through 1943: Henry F. Gilbert,
Burleigh, Cook, Guion, and Dett; although most of the recordings on the Victor label of
Cooks music took place between 1900 and 1914, only his name is included in What We
Hear in Music, starting in 1921. Examples of Cooks repertoire that had been recorded
by Victor are Who Dat Say Chicken? Voss First Regiment Band, 1900, Metropolitan
Orchestra, 1900, Sousas Band, 1900; Darktown Is out To- night, Metropolitan
Orchestra, 1900 and 1902; On Emancipation Day, Vess L.Ossman, Len Spencer, Victor
Minstrel Company, 1913; Molly Green, J.W. Myers, 1902; Mandy Lou, Billy Murray,
1904, Haydn Quartet, 1905; Bon-Bon Buddy, Billy Murray, 1908; Red, Red Rose,
Albert Campbell with Haydn Quartet, 1909, Arthur C.Clough with Haydn Quartet, 1909;
Whoop er up, Billy Murray, 1910; Down de Lovers Lane, Peerless Quartet, 1911, Paul
Robeson, 1927; Exhortation, Reed Miller, 1914; Swing Along, Victor Male Chorus,
1914, Imperial Quartet, 1915, Orpheus Quartet, 1915, Henry Burr Octet, 1927; Allus
the Same in Dixie, Victor Minstrels, 1929. See Discography of American Historical
Recordings, s.v. Will Marion Cook (composer), http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/
talent/detail/40008/Cook_Will_Marion_composer, accessed Aug. 19 2014. It should be
noted, however, that not all of Cooks compositions were recorded by Victor. The reader is
encouraged to examine Marva Griffin Carters thorough listing (2008), which includes the
recordings made by other companies.
17. This statement also appears consistently throughout the 1943 edition. However, 1931
edition adds a comment about the habanera: It takes its name from the city where it
became most popular, Havana.
18. Emphasismine.
19. Altogether, there are three pictures of the children in Georgia. In two of them, the children
appear to be dancing to the sounds coming from the Victrola. In one of the images, the
children and the Victrola are on awagon.
20. The members ages ranged from eight to fourteen.
21. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark on Mar. 31,1917.
22. The book Out of Sight:The Rise of African American Popular Music, 18891895, documents
several performances by the John Brown Juvenile Band and N.Clark Smiths Pickaninny
Band. According to the authors, the difference in nomenclature used in the names of these
groups arose from the difference between functioning within the black community and
venturing into the broader commercial entertainment arena (Abbott and Seroff 2002,
404). The John Brown Juvenile Band, for example, which had been formed in 1892, per-
formed primarily within the black community. Other terms employed to refer to instru-
mental ensembles of black youths included boy and kidbands.
23. Smiths compositions, such as the Pickaninny Band March, were advertised in the Jan.
18, 1896, edition of the Leavenworth Herald. Announcements of his compositional talents

216Notes
are printed in other sources, such as that found in the Wichita Eagle (July 13, 1895), which
predicts, He may become the most noted colored composer in the world.
24. AZuave drill team presents precise routines that often involve high-step marching and
other synchronized athleticmoves.
Chapter8
1. In the United States, there were two main flowerings of the Negro Renaissance: the
Harlem Renaissance, which took place from approximately 1917 to 1935, was followed by
a flowering in Chicago (19351950). In this chapter, Ideal with the Harlem Renaissance,
but Iencourage readers to learn of the musical activities associated with the Renaissance
in Chicago by turning to Chapter5 in The Power of Black Music (Floyd 1995b). Iwill, how-
ever, make occasional references to important Chicagoans, especially with respect to their
contributions in artmusic.
2. I would be remiss, however, if I did not acknowledge what Joseph E. Harris (1993c, 52)
calls the first black renaissance to take place in the United States from approximately
1820 to 1860. In Appendix B, readers will see information about the literary, artistic,
and musical works that were produced during this time, as well as a listing of some of
the most pertinent organizations designed to promote the abolitionist agenda and pro-
vide educational opportunities for African Americans. Most of these organizations were
founded in the major metropolitan regions along the east coast: Boston, New York City,
and Philadelphia.
3. The Dark Tower was named after Countee Cullens Opportunity column of the same name
as well as his poem, From the Dark Tower. Like Walkers home in Harlem, which provided
a safe haven for black intellectuals and artists to exchange ideas, so too did the home
of Estella Bonds (b. 1882)in Chicago. Bonds, who was a music teacher at the Coleridge-
Taylor Music School, opened her home to both local and traveling musicians who hap-
pened to be in town. From an early age, then, her daughter Margaret (19131972) was
exposed to some of the best African-American talent in the nation. Indeed, she followed
in her mothers footsteps and became a musician in her own right, studying first with the
renowned composer Florence Price (18871953), and then attending the Juilliard School
for her bachelors and masters degrees in music. Bonds made history by being the first
black female pianist to solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; her debut was June 15,
1933, at the age of twenty. The following year, she gave a performance of Florence Prices
Concerto in One Movement with the Chicago Womens Symphony Orchestra.
4. The Dark Tower served as an inspiration, long after the end of the Harlem Renaissance.
In 1970, for example, composer Dorothy Rudd Moorewho we will encounter again in
the next chapterset eight texts to music and named the resultant song cycle From the
Dark Tower. Composed for mezzo-soprano, cello, and piano, this piece showcased texts
by James Weldon Johnson, Arna Bontemps, Herbert Clark Johnson, Georgia Douglas
Johnson, Waring Cuney, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.
5. Noirisme is generally considered to have come to full fruition in Haiti during the 1930s,
as the countrys own branch of Ngritude, after Jean Price-Marss work gained recogni-
tion and support. Since the coining of the French term Ngritude, the English cognate
has gained currency. Thus, some authors employ the English rendering of Ngritude
(Negritude) in their writings and in their translations of original French materials.
6. Ngritude (Negritude) in the French world, Negrismo in the Hispanic (Cobb 1979, 4546).
In Brazil, Quilombismo refers to the Ngritude.
7. See, for example, Jean Price-Marss Ainsi parla loncle (1928).
8. See Largey (1994).
9. According to Robin Moore (1997, 282), a Minorista is a member of the Minorismo move-
ment; pertaining to the Minorismo movement.
10. According to Moore (1997, 282), Minorismo is an elite, academic, pan-artistic movement
of the afrocubanismo period, roughly synonymous with vanguardismo. Advocates of the

Notes 217
most progressive tendencies of the day, Minoristas aspired to reconcile the afrocubanismo
aesthetic with that of experimental modernism.
11. Roldn was also a member of the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, founded in 1936 by
Fernando Ortiz to study Afrocuban subject matter. Nicols Guilln was a member as well
(Moore 1997,145).
12. As in the Harlem movement, middle-class blacks in Cuba, according to Moore (1997, 210),
recognized the contributions of Afrocuban artists to Cuban culture, but only those who
created works in a European style. The Cuban publication Adelante, just as the U.S.-based
publication Negro Music Journal might have done, published high-cultureviews.
13. Coumbite references the collective effort of farmers by which they assist each other, espe-
cially as they clear land for planting and at harvesttime.
14. According to Stapleton (1990, 93), one of the most popular dance bands was run by
Edmundo Ros, whose band roster included several performers from Africa.
15. In some versions of this, the word Christian replaces spiritual.
16. For the full text of the song, see Esedebe (1982, 7374). See also Floyd (1995b,101).
17. For more information, see Green (1990), 158. See also Green (1982), 3334,39.
18. We do not know how successful were John Thomas Douglass opera Virginias Ball (1860s),
or the operas of Harry Lawrence Freeman. N. Clark Smiths Negro Folk Suite is a light
work with little apparent reception history; and Scott Joplins Treemonisha would not be
heard until much later. However, Freemans opera Voodoo has been resurrected, so to
speak, by the Harlem Opera Theater and the Harlem Chamber Players. In the summer of
2015, Voodoo was performed twice, and both performances were sold out. According to its
review in the NewYork Times, Voodoo had not been staged since1928.
19. Antonin Dvorak in 1893 had called on American composers to write in this vein, trans-
planting to the United States the nationalistic influences and practices then taking place
in Europe, and in 1922 James Weldon Johnson called for essentially the same approach to
composition. In addition, Johnsons brother, Rosamond, according to musicologist John
Graziano (1999), was one of the first American composers of vernacular music to intro-
duce Hispanic rhythms in his songs. Sounds of the Times:Lindy, for example, features
a habanera rhythm.
20. Freeman seems to have been the most prolific of this group, having written fourteen
operas, most of which were produced in the United States between 1893 and 1930 at loca-
tions between NewYork and Denver, a symphonic poem, two cantatas, a good number of
songs and a variety of instrumental pieces. Among the operas are The Martyr (1893), his
first, and Voodoo (1920s?).
21. See Floyd (1990), 25. See also Floyd (1995b),118.
Chapter9
1. This chapter is focused exclusively on Afro-modernism in the United States; the next
chapter addresses, in part, the release of Europes colonial grip on Africa during this same
period.
2. The previous chapter provides more detail about the role of black music and Negritude.
3. Composer Ulysses Kay Dies at 78, Arizona Daily Star (May 31,1995).
4. The Black Music Caucus was organized by two hundred black musicians in 1972 who had
gathered at a biennial meeting of the Music Educators National Conference to protest
their exclusion from MENC divisional and national Planning sessions and programs. Now
called the National Association for the Study and Performance of African American Music
(NASPAAM), the organization continues to exist as a non-profit professional organiza-
tion whose members are dedicated to promoting, performing, and preserving all facets of
African American music. The NASPAAM website is www.naspaam.org. The reader should
take note that MENC superseded the Music Supervisors National Conference, which was
founded, in 1907, and led by Frances Elliott Clark. As demonstrated in Chapter7, she was
subsequently hired by the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, to

218Notes
head its new Educational Department. This department was responsible for producing
and publishing educational guides that would help teachers select appropriate music for
classroom listening.
5. Although Moore did not seek a long-term teaching post at a university, she and her hus-
band Kermit were hired by the esteemed Dorothy Maynor to teach at the Harlem School
of the Arts, which had been established in 1964. Maynor was the only African American
to be included in the Music Educators National Conference symposium in 1967, Music in
American Society. At this symposium, participants discussed the trend of multicultural
curricula and whether the field of music education should consider becoming multicul-
tural in scope. The proceedings of this symposium were published in the November 1967
issue of the Music Educators Journal, along with photographs of all thirty-one participants.
Within five years of this publication, the Black Music Caucus was formed.
Chapter10
1. In additional to the settlements of Monrovia in Liberia and Freetown in Sierra Leone,

other important places where emigrants reestablished their lives were Agou, Ouidah,
Porto-Novo (Republic of Benin), and Badagri and Lagos (Nigeria).
2. Newport Gardner (n Occramer Marycoo; 17461826) was among the first black musi-
cians in the United States. Marycoo was brought to the United States from Africa by a sea
captain who had promised his mother that the boy would receive an education. Instead,
the captain sold him to Caleb Gardner of Newport, Rhode Island, from which the moni-
ker Newport Gardner was coined. At the time (ca. 1760), the town of Newport was an
important port-of-call for ships from the West Indies (Meinig 1986, 1067). Given its
location and significance as a port, the city had a substantial population of blacks, approx-
imately five thousand in the mid-eighteenth century, many of whom were employed as
household servants (101). For more details about Newport Gardners life, see Southern
(1976).
3. According to the Table of Emigrants Settled in Liberia by the American Colonization
Society, which was printed on pages 18290 in the Memorial of the Semi-Centennial
Anniversary of the American Colonization Society, Celebrated at Washington, January 15,
1867, 11,909 emigrants settled in Liberia between 1820 and 1866. These included blacks
who had been born free, those who had purchased their freedom, others who had been
emancipated to go to Liberia, and Freedmen, as well as 346 persons from Barbadoes
[sic], W.I., and 68 people whose circumstances were not known. An additional 1,227 peo-
ple settled at Maryland in Liberia through the Maryland State Colonization Society.
4. For early discographical information on this style of a cappella singingthat is, before the
commercial success of Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 1986see Seroff 1990, 57.
5. In a letter addressed to General Armstrong, McAdoo writes that his singers performed in
Cape Town under the patronage of Sir H.B.and Lady Locke on June 30, 1890. The letter,
which was originally printed in the Southern Workman (Nov. 1890, 120), is reprinted in
Wright (1976,322).
6. For more and earlier writing on the music of Kachamba and his brother Daniel, see Kubik
(1974).
7. In 1919, W.E. B.Du Bois organized the first Pan-African Congress, an international event
at which scholars and intellectuals from the African Diaspora met to discuss relevant
issues. The idea of Pan-Africanism was not new, as Du Bois had participated in the first
Pan-African Conference in 1900. Du Boiss Congresses continued along the same ideologi-
cal trajectories of the conference, meeting in 1919 (Paris), 1921 (London), 1923 (London),
1927 (NewYork), 1945 (Manchester), 1974 (Dar es Salaam), and 1994 (Kampala). The
first meeting in 1919 of the Pan-African Congress serves as a critical time marker in
our discussion here, for it precedes several key contributions to this notion of solidarity
and progress among blacks of the Diaspora. For example, Fernando Ortiz published his
Glosario de Afronegrismos in 1924, which over time became an important reference for

Notes 219
Afrocubanism. Ayear later, in March 1925, Alain Locke coined the term New Negro in a
special edition of Survey Graphic, entitled Harlem:Mecca of the New Negro, for which he
served as editor. Then, in 1928, came Jean Price-Marss work Ainsi parla loncle, which was
mentioned in Chapter8 and which served as a valuable resource for Haitian writers. See
Cobb (1979).
8. After establishing a political party in 1949 known as the Convention Peoples Party (CPP,
which is named in the song), Kwame Nkrumah ultimately became the leader of the Gold
Coast, Ghanas predecessor state. In that capacity, he guided his people to independence
from British colonial rule in1957.
9. Words reprinted from a newspaper clipping in the Morning Telegraph (Sekondi, Ghana)
held in the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Ghana. Provided by John
Collins.
10. For information about these composers, see Floyd (1999b).
Epilogue
1. Gianfranco Salvatore is a musicologist whose recent work focuses on the iconographical

evidence of morescas in Renaissance Europe.
2. For more information about the art of rap, see Something from Nothing:The Art of Rap,
a documentary film directed by ICE-T and Andy Baybutt, http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt2062996/
3. Ta-Nehisi Coates, The World That Hip-Hop Made. Atlantic (Feb. 23, 2013). http://
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/02/the-world-that-hip-hop-made/
273420/#.USiepCrC5eE.email, accessed June 18,2014.
4. Alfreda Asbury, Atlantas African American Philharmonic Orchestra. http://urbansub-
urbanmagazine.com/homeaway/homeaway_atlanta-african-american-philharmonic-
orchestra.htm, accessed June 182014.
5. http://www.blackpearlco.org/web/bio.aspx, accessed Oct. 25,2014.
6. http://www.nici.ru.nl/mmm/papers/Camurrietal04.pdf (accessed Dec. 6,2016).
Appendix
1. Some of the best descriptions of the shout can be found in Gordon ([1979] 1981), Epstein
(1977 [2003]), and Courlander (1963); and there are numerous descriptions in the WPA
Slave Narratives.

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Index
Africa Bolster, W.Jeffrey,xxi

African hemiola style,2324 Brazil, 56, 93,97101
central African aesthetics,21 Brothers, Thomas,116
conquest of,1213 Buskirk, Martha, xxiiixxiv
east African aesthetics,21,23
Ethiopia,1012 capoeira,97101
Ghana, 67,10 Caribbean,29
Kingdom of Kanem,1214 circum-Caribbean, 44,87107
kingship music,1920 Carpentier, Alejo,14445
Mande,20 Center for Black Music Research, xxviii, 65,
Muslim invasion of,67 156,196
pre-colonial,6 Black Music Repertory Ensemble, 170,194
pre-Columbian expeditions,28,41 Ensemble Kalinda Chicago,194
rituals,87,89 Ensemble Stop-Time,194
Sierra Leone, 17475,184 International Dictionary of Black Composers,197
Songhay empire,89 Lenox Avenue,197
South Africa, 176179,181 New Black Music Repertory Ensemble,194
southern African aesthetics,22 Chess label,167
Swahili,1112 Civil Rights movement in the United
timbral mosaic, xxvi, 2324,83 States,15557
Timbuktu,78 Clark, Elliott Frances, 12729,134
west African music,20 Coates, Ta-Nehisi,192
Yoruba,1318 Coleman, Ornette, xxxiii,16162
Afro-modernism, xxxiii, 15658, 163,16667 Collins, John,174
Colored American Opera Company,6466
Baraka, Amiri,155 Coltrane, Alice, 16263,165
Beethoven, Ludwig van,5354 Coltrane, John, xxxiii, 16063,165
Black Consciousness Movement,15657 Cooper, James Fenimore, 11213,123
Black Music Caucus,156 Costa Rica,40
Black Music Research Journal, 156,170 Cuba
Black Perspective in Music, 156,158 music,79,81
Black Power Movement,158 rumba, 9495, 101,145
Blue Note label,167 Santera, 89, 9396,101
blues son,145
distinction from spirituals,123
impact of electric guitar,16667 dance analysis,12126
Moby-Dick,117 Dargan, William,120
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,117 Dark Tower,14243
origin,11718 Depestre, Ren,14647
Rain Fall and Wet Becca Lawton,11820 Dewey, John, xxv, 192,196
relationship to rhythm and blues,165 Dickens, Charles, 11213,123
235

236Ind e x
Dominican Republic,8182 masking, 1056,148

double fundamentals,23 Mardi Gras,1056
Douglass, Frederick, 11314, 117,120 Meinig, D.W., xxi,17475
Du Bois, W.E.B., 92, 135, 149,179 Melville, Herman,xxxi
Benito Cereno, 11112, 114,123
Esu, 72,84,87 Moby-Dick, 11114,123
Pips tambourine, 115, 121,123
Falde Prez, Miguel,79 Mexico
Floyd, Samuel A.Jr. black music,4143
Call/Response, xxivxxvi, xxix, xxxi, 84, black presence, 3840, 47,189
15758,174 Haro, David,39
four areas of inquiry for field of black music la Negra, Toa,39
research,18798 Ojeda, Salvador,39
The Power of Black Music, 84, 117,12526 Yanga,3940
Minas school of composition,34,57
Garvey, Marcus,14950 Moors, 3235, 81,18788
Gates, Henry Louis, 84,189 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus,50
Gordon, Lewis,191 musical transactions, xxiixxiii
Griffin, Farah Jasmine, 158,164
Guilln, Nicols,14546 Negro Philharmonic Society,61
Negro Renaissance, xxxii, 151,155
Haiti Afrocubanismo, xxxii,14445
1791 Revolution, 91, 127,147 Chicago,133
music,8182 Harlem, xxxii, 133, 14142,14951
Noirisme,144 Minorismo,144
Vodou, xxix, 8891,93 Negritude, xxxii, 144,14647
Hamm, Charles, 173, 176,17879 New Negro,150
Harlem,14143 Noirisme, xxxii,144
Hayden, Robert, xxi,31 New Orleans, 61, 63,10506
Henry, Paget,19091
hip hop,19192 Oraib, 3334,49
Hughes, Langston, 143, 14445,150 orchestras,193
African-American Philharmonic
Images:Iconography of Music in African-American Orchestra,194
Culture (1770s1920s),13537 Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra,194
improvisation, 193,19596 Outlaw, Lucius,191
Jamaica,83 Peru, 4344,189

jazz, 13334, 145, 16465 Porgy and Bess,66
bebop, 157,159 Puerto Rico,8081
four concepts of,116
free jazz,16061 ragtime,134
juvenile bands,136 repatriation,17476
Jenkins Orphanage Band,13839 rhythm, 29,116
John Brown Juvenile Band,137 batuque,7475
Juvenile Band of Cincinnati,13839 bl, 73,7576
N. Clark Smiths Pickaninny Band, 137,139 calinda,75
St. Thomas Juvenile Band, 6465,137 call-and-response singing, 73, 76,101
Woodlawn Wangdoodle Pickaninny Band,138 cinquillo-tresillo complex, xxx, 69, 7273,78
dance ring,76,97
Legba, 14, 8990, 93,146 danza, 69,7881
loa,8992 danzn, 69, 73,79,82
Logan, Wendell,19596 functions,116
Louverture, Toussaint, xxix, 127,155 line dances,7677
nation dances,74
Mabed,32 ostinatos, 115,119
Maroons, 40,167 rhythm and blues,16566
cimarrones,38 ring shout, xxiv, 44, 76, 84, 114, 116,12021
quilombos,36 rituals

I n de x 237
Afro-Baptist church,88 Tharpe, Rosetta, 161,168

caolinas,88 Toussaints Beat, xxix-xxi,158
carnival,1023 Tracey, Andrew,2427
of enslaved Africans in Jamaica,88 Treitler, Leo,198
festivals,1034 trickster, 84,10304
of Haitian Vodou,8889 Trinidad, 75, 93,102
Junkanoo,1012 calypso, 44, 78, 82, 103, 105, 148,180
sacred,8994 festivals,102
samba, 9697,101
secret societies,1067 Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation
secular,94102 Association and African Communities
of West Africa,183 League,14950
Roberts Band,64
Roldn, Amadeo,14445 Van Sertima, Ivan,28,31
Roumain, Jacques,14546 Victor Talking Machine Company, xxxii,127
Russell, George, xxxiii,165 black musics,12935
Lydian Chromatic Concept,15860 children as constituency,12935
Fisk Jubilee Singers,131
sailing ship, xxvixxvii, 29,111 publications,12935
black sailors,4547 Tuskegee Institute Singers, 131,133
related to Diasporic, cultural, and musical Victor in the Schools campaign,12829
dynamics, xxii, xxxi, 4547,85 Victrolas, 12829,135
Scioto Valley Brass Band,64 see also Clark, Elliott Frances
Showboat,66 Virginia Jubilee Singers,17678
Shusterman, Richard,19192 Vodou, xxix, 8793, 101, 146,182
Signifyin(g),101
Slave Songs of the United States, 112,118 Walker, Alelia, 14243 (see also DarkTower)
slave trades, 29,31,35 Washington, Booker T., 127,13031
Society of Black Composers, 156,171 West, Cornel,191
Soliman, Angelo,4950 Williams, Mary Lou,16465
spirituals, 123,13032 Wilson, Olly, xxiv, 24, 83, 11617,195
Stevenson, Robert,xxvii
Stone Ages,3 Yoruba culture, 15,183
Stuckey, Sterling, xxxi, 84,11113 deities,1418
African Culture and Melvilles Art: The Creative festivals,1517
Process in Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick, music,18,23
11114, 117, 121, 123,126 orisha, 36, 77,89,92
blues 117,120
Douglass, Frederick, 11314, 117,120 Ziryab, 3233,49

Index of Performers and Composers

of Classical/Art Music
Adams, Alton Augustus Sr. (18891987), 6465, Emidy, Joseph (17751835),54

128, 13637,144 Estes, Simon (1938),67
Akpabot, Samuel (19322000),183 Euba, Akin (1935), 1920,183
Anderson, Marian (18971993), 6667,133
Anderson, T.J. (1928), 169, 170, 193,19596 Fisk Jubilee Singers, 64, 131,176
Freeman, Harry Lawrence (18691954),152
Bankole, Ayo (19351976),183
Bars, Basile (18451902),62 Garcia, Jos Maurcio Nunes (17671829),58
Bologne, Joseph (Chevalier de Saint-Georges) Gardner, Newport (17461826), 175,218n2
(17451799), 5456,69 Gotay, Frances, ne Sister Marie Seraphine
Bonds, Margaret (19131972),67 (18651932),62
Bowers, Thomas J.(ca. 18261885),66 Greenfield, Elizabeth Taylor (ca. 18241876),66
Bridgetower, George Polgreen (ca. 17791860),
5354,59 Hall Johnson Choir,133
Brown, J.Harold (19021982),152 Hampton Institute Quartet,133
Bumbry, Grace (1937),67 Harcourt-W hyte, Ikole (19051977),183
Burleigh, Harry (18661949),133 Hayes, Roland (18871977),151
Casseus, Frantz (19151993),144 Jaegerhuber, Werner Anton (19001953),144

Coleridge-Taylor, Avril (19031998),5960 Jenkins, Edmund Thornton (18941926),139
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel (18751912), 59, 130, Jimenez, Jos Julian (1833ca. 1890),61
133, 139,152 Jimenez, Nicasio (d. 1891),61
Cook, Will Marion (18691944),133 Jimenez-Berroa, Jos Manuel (18551917),61
Johnson, Hall (18881970), 133,152
da Rocha, Francisco Gomes (ca. 17501808),57 Johnson, James Weldon (18711938),141
Deberque, Constantin,6162 Johnson, John Rosamond (18731954),217n19
Dd, Edmond (18271903),6163
de Mesquita, Jos Joaquim Emrico Lobo (ca. Kay, Ulysses (19171995),16970
17461805),5658
de Salas, Claudio Brindis (18001872),61 Lambert, Charles Lucien (18281896),61
de Salas, Claudio Jose Domingo Brindis Lambert, Lucien-Lon-Guillaume (18581945),61
(18521911),61 Lambert, Richard (d. 1862),6162
Dett, Robert Nathaniel (18821943), 133,15253 Lambert, Sydney (b. 1838),61
Dinwiddie Colored Quartet,133 Lamothe, Ludovic (18821953), 82,144
Dobbs, Mattiwilda (19252015),67 Luca Family Singers,175
Douglas, John Thomas (18471886),217n18 Lusitano, Vicente (1522after 1561),5052
Dubuclet, Laurent (Lawrence) (18661909),62
Duncan, Todd (19031998),66 Macarty, Victor-Eugne (18211881),62
Margetson, Edward (18921962),152
Ekwueme, Lazarus (1936),183 Martin, Thomas J., (n.d.)62
Elie, Justin (18831931),144 McFerrin, Robert (19212006),67
239

240Ind e x o f Per f or mer s and Composer s of Cl assica l /A r t M u s ic
Moore, Dorothy Rudd (1940),17172 Shirley, George (1934),67

Moore, Undine Smith (19041989),169 Snar, Franois-Michel-Samuel (ca. 1832after
1880),62
Neto, Marcos Coelho (17401806),57 Soubise, Julius (17541798),53
Neves, Igncio Parreiras (17301791),57 Sowande, Fela (19051987),183
Nickerson, Camille (ca. 18871982),63 Still, William Grant (18951978), 141,152
Nzewi, Meki (1938),183 Swanson, Howard (19071978),170
Omojola, Bode,18283 Tuskegee Institute Singers, 131,133

Orpheus McAdoos Virginia Jubilee
Singers,17678 Verrett, Shirley (19312010),67
Phillips, T.K. Ekundayo (18841969),183 Walker, George Theophilus (1922),170

Price, Florence (18871953), 67,152 Warfield, William (19202002),66
Price, Leontyne (1927),6667 White, Clarence Cameron (18801960),152
White, Jos (18351918),60
Robeson, Paul (18981976), 66, 133, 141,151 Wilberforce Institute Singers,177
Work, Frederick (18801942),152
Sancho, Ignatius (17291780),5253

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The Transformation of Black Music

Published in the United States of America by Oxford UniversityPress

Oxford University Press2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin

You must not circulate this work in any otherform

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

To the legacy of Mrs. JohnnieV.Lee

Sam, thank you for leading by example.

PART I: BLACK MUSIC AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

1. Out of Africa:Setting Sail from the Motherland 3

2. The Making of the African Diaspora:Ships on the Oceans 31

3. The Diasporas Concert Worlds:Europe and the Americas 49

4. Isles of Rhythm:The Cinquillo-Tresillo Complex in the

5. Ties That Bind:Myth and Ritual in the Circum-Caribbean

PART II: CASE STUDIES

6. Pips Tambourine:Black Music and Sterling Stuckeys Revelations

7. Git on Board, Lil Chillun:Children and Music in the Diaspora

8. The Movement:Black Identities and the Paths Forward 141

9. Afro-modernism and Music:On Science, Community, and Magic

10. Africa and the Trope of the Return 173

Chapter1 (Out of Africa: Setting Sail from

Chapter 2 (The Making of the African Diaspora)

Chapter4 (Isles of Rhythm)

Chapter8 (The Movement)

African-American music (from 1989 to the present), referring to musics of the

Note on Word Choice, Spellings, and Usage

ORTHOGRAPHY AND DIACRITICAL MARKINGS

xviiiAck nowled gments

Guthrie RamseyJr. is the Edmund J.and Louise W.Kahn Term Professor of

I n tro du ctio n xxiii

Examining the integral aspects and features of African retentions in Diasporic

I n tro du ctio n xxv

Evaluating the interrelationship of black music and aesthetics, most notably

I n tro du ctio n xxvii

in Haydens Middle Passage, explores the trauma endured by enslaved Africans

Encyclopedias found today in public libraries still tend to restrict

I n tro du ctio n xxix

I n tro du ctio n xxxi

of interartistic inquiry that ultimately highlights a group of musicians and con-

I n tro du ctio n xxxiii

Throughout The Transformation of Black Music, a number of recordings and web-

The Transformation of Black Music

BLACK MUSIC AND

The seductively agreeable belief so dear to nineteenth-century

Map 1.1a Outline of Africa with major lakes and rivers

Map 1.1b Political map of Africa:modern nation states

6The Transformation of Black Music

ATLANTIC Lake INDIAN

Map 1.2 Outline of Africa with historical empires/kingdoms depicted:Ghana,

8The Transformation of Black Music

Kingdom of Ghana, eleventh century AD

Map 1.2a Kingdom of Ghana, eleventh centuryad

(Shillington 1993 [1989], 99)where, according to Diop (1987, 17778), between

Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth century AD

Map 1.2b Empire of Mali, ca. fourteenth centuryad

10The Transformation of Black Music

Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth century AD to 1591

Map 1.2c Empire of Songhay, late fourteenth century ad to1591

To the northeast, according to Davidson (1987, 219 20), the Amharic

Kingdom of Ethiopia, ca. early sixteenth century

Map 1.2d Kingdom of Ethiopia (Abyssinia)

12The Transformation of Black Music

Kingdom of Kanem and Kanem-Bornu Empire,

Yorubaland, nineteenth century