Potency of the African-American Sound - Speech or Presentation Example

Potency of the African-American Sound When you talk about Jazz, RnB, Soul, Rap, Blues music and what will be the first word that comes to your mind? Chances are it would be America, the US or something to that effect. This is not surprising because part of influence that America holds over the world is through its music among other few cultural artifacts. Perhaps, it is even safe to say that music is one of the very rare American exports that are universally seen as benign and not some political, military or economic tool of imperialism. It is interesting, hence, to know that all these music genres are African-American in origin and should have been identified with the Black community even before it is associated with being American. But as anyone of you will agree that has been the case ever since and I would like to say it is not entirely negative: African American music is American and no citizen of the US will say otherwise especially on account of race. The African-American influence is a fundamental element in the American music. There is a very interesting force at work here that deserves naming, credit and, certainly, an intensive examination because it may be demonstrative of the emergence of the African Americans as a cultural trendsetter. For this purpose, several important points have to be covered in my discourse. First is that music is the Black community’s most potent tool in asserting its identity and, certainly, its most successful, particularly in the way that it has encroached not just the American music but also how it affected all socio-economic groups of the American society. Then, Black music has been freer and more soulful because it has been used for expression by a people that has been oppressed and marginalized for generations. For this reason, it has become less ephemeral. Finally, the form and character of the black music represents diversity not unlike the American society, benefiting from the various sources and inspiration that contributes to its unique, flexible and universal appeal. Let me cite the case of jazz - one of my favorite music genres. For students of history and society, this music is essential in understanding the American culture and society including the way in which the jazz musicians use the songs and its singers as metaphors for the different aspects of American culture. Its evolution in the American context reveals the wider African American experience through the years – from slavery, and the various stages of their oppression to the present. According to Frank Salomone, the jazz become some sort of repository of a romantic myth wherein the singer displays and feels suffering and empowerment at the same time. To quote his words: “The creative artist draws inspiration from the supernatural, and it is furthermore to the supernatural that his music inevitably leads. So powerful is that vision that authors frequently depict the gift of music as an ambivalent blessing at best and a curse at worst” (143). Jazz demonstrates how America finds in the Black culture something that is more exciting, because as the music, among other outlets of creative expression show, there is something exotic due to the fact that African Americans do not have the problem of restraint in expressing what they feel. This is mainly due to the fact that, indeed, music has always been a way of articulating the Black community’s marginalized existence. The Blacks have mastered the art of bringing soul into the music and, as America has always been receptive to anything that is innovative, creative and beautiful, the Black music has thrived and gained its influence. Former President Bill Clinton, a jazz fan, once declared that this music had a lot in common with public service because “it is about communication; it’s about creativity but cooperation” and that you can’t “really, really be good at it unless you care about other people” (Clinton, 1622). Kathy Ogren summed the point being made here best when she said: “America chose this powerful new music – characterized by improvised melodies, syncopate rhythms and a strong beat – to represent fundamental cultural changes they experienced in the twentieth century” (160). Jazz, if one is familiar with all its dimensions, is akin to the antithesis of everything that culture represents. This is not to say that jazz is crude or lacking the refinement and harmony of the traditional culture. Rather, jazz breaks away from the Old World to the point that such divergence can be considered as a cultural revolution already from the traditional because it peruses the diversity of the American society. In this manner, Jazz reflects the very core value that America stands for – that the numerous racial and ethnic groups that consisted society contribute to the national music heritage. Raeburn declared, “jazz was a product of a vernacular culture, representing the unself-conscious efforts of common people, in America and elsewhere, to create satisfying patterns out of elements of a new and culturally assimilated environment” and that “vernacular culture was supremely eclectic and borrowed at will from folk, art, and popular genres, creating unity from diversity and transgressing… boundaries” (12). It is for this reason why jazz, for many people is a classic – a genre that does not suffer the fleeting appeal of music created for the masses, say, pop songs. It is also for this reason why it has been flexible, wherein a true artist, such as Bill Crosby, was able to create an almost infinite number of modifications on account of those basic changes. This is demonstrated in the way jazz can seamlessly blend with other music genres. Jazz would be link to various other music genres such as soul, blues and rap. For example, starting in the mid-1950s the soul-jazz fusion emerged. This came about when jazz instrumentalists discovered the instrumental vocabulary that particularly expressed the sound of gospel music and the mannerisms of black preachers. This strong link is somehow inevitable given the “Blackness” of the genre. Soul singers, wrote Vincent Wimbush and Rosamond Rodman, were “popular political exhorters, musical priests, whose sermons of black power, beauty and pride, gave a message of uplift and community, and a directive of love” (785). Soul complemented jazz because the music helped people cope. Wimbush and Rodman must have been thinking about this picture when they said: They used the shouts, falsetto screams, moans, and parodies of holiness and Pentecostal testifying styles, call and response vocal instrumental patterns, Gospel-styles triplets, tambourines, and hand clapping from black sacred music, with sermonic focus on current events, and on personal experiences (785). The characteristic of the soul genre is so close to that of Jazz and the two fit together seamlessly as a hybrid musical genre because, first and foremost, they serve the same ends. This kind of link and relationship between jazz and soul is also manifested in the former’s link to other Black music genre such as blues and rhythm. The development is quite constant especially from the period starting in the 1960s wherein music served an important purpose in areas of historical continuity, in the expression of grief from oppression, of ethics, of familial solidarity, the various messages of community and common good that comes out of relationships among men, the constant redefinition of the black ethos, and even sense of humor. These elements in Jazz and other Black sound contribute to the forces I have mentioned that enable them to command our attention and force an endearment out of hearts. Black music is a powerful force in American music heritage. A big factor why this has been the case is the African American experience, starting when they were slaves, to their continuing oppression way until the latter part of the twentieth century. There was so much spirit in the songs and their singers that it was difficult to marginalize their sound and their message. It is as if the pain felt centuries ago could still be heard in the words sang by contemporary musicians. This the reason why the story about race is integral part in the way African American music such as jazz, soul, rhythm and blues has so permeated through the years. It is potent and diverse; hence, it is pervasive and universal. People have no choice but to surrender to its rhythm and messages. Works Cited Clinton, William. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton, 1998, Book 2, July 1 to December 31, 1998. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2000. Ogren, Kathy. "Controversial Sounds: Jazz Performance as Theme and Language in the Harlem Renaissance." The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations. A. Singh, S. Shiver and S. Brodwin (eds.) New York: Garland Press, 1989. Raeburn, Bruce. New Orleans style and the writing of American jazz history. University of Michigan Press, 2009. Salamone, Frank. The culture of jazz: jazz as critical culture. Lanham: University Press of America, 2009. Wimbush, Vincent and Rodman, Rosamond. African Americans and the Bible: sacred texts and social textures. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. Read More