Civil Rights Music
Page 5
Truth be told, then, both of these Foucaultian methodologies endeavor to radically reinterpret the social world from a micrological standpoint that allows one to identify discursive discontinuity and discursive dispersion instead of what has been commonly understood to be continuity and uninterrupted identity evolution and, as a consequence, Foucault’s methodologies enable us to grapple with and, in many instances, firmly grasp historical happenings, cultural crises, political power-plays, and social situations in their complete and concrete complexity. Furthermore, both Foucaultian methodologies also attempt to invalidate and offer more nuanced narratives to commonly held conceptions of master narratives and great chains of historical continuity and their teleological destinations, as well as to hyper-historicize what has been long-thought to be indelibly etched into the heart of human history. In other words, and more meta-methodologically speaking, in discursively deploying archaeology and/or genealogy Foucault sought to disrupt and eventually destroy hard and fast bourgeois humanist historical identities, power relations, and imperial institutions by critically complicating, by profoundly problematizing and pluralizing the entire arena of discursive formations and discursive practices—hence, freeing historical research and writing from its hidden bourgeois humanist social and political hierarchies, by disavowing and displacing the bourgeois humanist (and, therefore, “socially acceptable”) subject, and critically theorizing modern reason and increasing rationalization through reinterpreting and rewriting the history of the human sciences.
Here, my intentions are admittedly less ambitious than those of Foucault, although, I honestly believe, they are just as relevant considering the seemingly ever-increasing amnesia surrounding the Civil Rights Movement and its soundtracks in the twenty-first century. In Civil Rights Music, therefore, I seek to reinterpret and rewrite the history of contemporary cultural criticism, radical politics, critical social theory, and socio-political movements in light of the increasing “amnesia” surrounding the Civil Rights Movement and its soundtracks, as well as the Civil Rights Movement and its soundtracks’ potential contributions to present and future black popular music, black popular culture, and black popular movements. By identifying and critical analyzing the soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement, Civil Rights Music reinterprets and rewrites the conventionally conceived histories of the movement and its music, ultimately revealing that black popular music, black popular culture, and black popular movements historically have been and currently continue to be inextricable—constantly overlapping, interlocking, and intersecting, intensely infusing and informing each other. Black popular music, black popular culture, and black popular movements are not now and never have been created in a vacuum, but within the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic context of the U.S. This means, then, that like the black popular music, black popular culture, and black popular movements that preceded them, the soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement are emblematic not only of African America between 1954 and 1965, but also eerily indicative of the state of the “America dream” (or, for many U.S. citizens, the “American nightmare”) during the 1950s and 1960s.
Chapter 2
The Musicology of the
Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement and the African American Movement Music Tradition
Over the last half century or so since its end, there has been a great deal of discussion concerning the Civil Rights Movement and the ways in which it, literally, deconstructed and reconstructed American democracy, citizenship, and education.[1] There have been a number of scholarly studies of the movement’s politics, as well as several books centered around the social justice agenda and economic impact of the movement.[2] Additionally, there have been studies that have examined the ways in which the movement helped to revitalize mid-twentieth century American culture, and other studies that have explored the regional and local cultures, politics, and tactics of the movement.[3] In spite of these very often innovative studies, most work within the world of civil rights studies seems to only superficially treat its soundtracks, and the wider historical, cultural, social, political, economic, and aesthetic contexts from which civil rights music emerged and evolved.
Even in light of all of its sonic and aesthetic innovations, it is important to point to civil rights music’s extra-musical aspects. Too often African American music is treated as though it exists outside of African American musical and other artistic traditions. This is not only unfortunate, it is extremely disingenuous, as it makes it seem as though each new form of black popular music is some sort of free-floating, “postmodern” sonic signifier, and not, as is most often the case, deeply connected to and undeniably indicative of the origins and evolution of African American musical history and culture, as well as African American social history and culture. Therefore, in order to really and truly understand civil rights music much must be understood about the history, culture, and ongoing struggles of its primary producers: black ghetto youth in specific, and African Americans in general.
In often unrecognized ways, the origins and evolution of civil rights music have actually come to be treated or, rather, ill-treated much like African Americans—especially, black ghetto youth—in mainstream American history, culture, and society. To return to the theme of one of my previous volumes of African American musicology, Hip Hop’s Amnesia, there seems to be a serious amnesia surrounding the origins and evolution of civil rights music and the broader Civil Rights Movement that the music reflected. Conceptually amnesia, which according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary means “a partial or total loss of memory,” offers us an interesting angle to revisit, re-evaluate, and ultimately “remix” the origins and evolution of civil rights music and the Civil Rights Movement.
At this point it can be said with little or no fanfare that most work in civil rights studies only anecdotally explores the origins and evolution of civil rights music, and civil rights popular culture more generally. Consequently, civil rights studies stands in need of serious scholarly works that transcend the anecdotal and critically engage not only civil rights music’s musical history, but also its spiritual, intellectual, cultural, social, and political history. If, as most civil rights studies scholars would more than likely concede, civil rights music reflects more than merely the “young folk’s foolishness” and naïveté of Civil Rights Movement black ghetto youth and, eventually with the crossing-over of rock & roll, white suburban youth, then a study that treats civil rights music as a reflection of post-war youth’s politics and social justice agenda between 1945 and 1965 is sorely needed. Civil Rights Music was researched, written, and routinely “remixed” specifically with this dire need in mind.
It is generally accepted that black popular music and black popular culture frequently reflect the conservatism and radicalism, the moderatism and militantism of the major African American movement of the milieu in which they initially emerged. Bearing this in mind, Civil Rights Music critically explores how the soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement were more or less movement musics. Which is to say, classic gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll literally (albeit most often implicitly) mirrored and served as mouthpieces for the views and values, as well as the aspirations and frustrations, of the Civil Rights Movement.
There is, indeed, a serious need for more historically-rooted, culturally-relevant, and politically-radical research within the world of civil rights studies. Too often fans and critics listen to, speak of, and write about civil rights music and civil rights popular culture as though contemporary black popular music and contemporary black popular culture are not in any way connected to a historical and cultural continuum that can be easily traced back to the black popular music and black popular culture of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Building on the sociology of music and politics of music-centered epistemologies and methodologies developed by Bernice Johnson Reagon (1975), Jon Michael Spencer (1990, 1996), Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison (1991, 1995, 1998)
, Kerran Sanger (1995), Nathan Davis (1996), Mark Mattern (1998), Mellonee Burnim and Portia Maultsby (2006, 2015), Ian Peddie (2006), Courtney Brown (2008), William Banfield (2010), William Roy (2010) and Ruth Feldstein (2013), Civil Rights Music is a study about music and socio-political movements, aesthetics and politics, as well as the ways in which African Americans’ unique history, culture, and struggles have consistently led them to create musics that have served as the soundtracks or, more or less, the mouthpieces for their socio-political aspirations and frustrations, their socio-political organizations and movements.
Obviously at this point many of my readers may be asking themselves a couple questions: “But, does classic gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll really reflect the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement? If there is really and truly such a thing as ‘civil rights music,’ how come I haven’t heard of it before? And, can music be popular, but yet politically progressive and convey a serious social justice message?”
It is these questions that lie at the heart of this book, and which have burned and bothered me longer than I care to remember. It should be stated openly and outright: These are very valid questions. Indeed, they are critical questions that I am sincerely seeking to ask and answer throughout the following pages of this book. In a nutshell, what I have come to call “civil rights music” actually does not rotely resemble any previous African American musicological concept. But, by the time my readers get to the fifth and final chapter of this book they will see that, yet and still, “civil rights music” historically has been and currently continues to be a musical and political reality. As will be revealed in the three chapters to follow, the origins and early evolution of black popular music, especially civil rights musics such as classic gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll, are very varied. Rapid and radical changes in “mainstream” American history, culture, politics, economics, and society have made it such that there are great and often grave differences between the origins and early evolution of each form of black popular music, just as there are great and often grave differences between the origins of each black popular movement.[4]
Civil Rights Music argues that many of these “great and often grave differences” are easily observed in the history of black popular music and black popular culture, and that, even more, black popular music and black popular culture are often incomprehensible without some sort of serious working-knowledge of historic African American social and political movements. Taking this line of logic even further, Civil Rights Music contends that neither Civil Rights Movement aesthetics nor Civil Rights Movement politics can be adequately comprehended without some sort of serious working-knowledge of historic African American social and political movements. Ultimately, then, this book is about “partial or total loss of memory” or, rather, what has been forgotten but should be remembered about the origins and early evolution of civil rights music in direct relationship with the Civil Rights Movement.
However, Civil Rights Music is not simply about the historical, cultural, and musical “amnesia” surrounding civil rights music and the Civil Rights Movement. It is also about the intense interconnections between black popular culture and black political culture, both before and after the Civil Rights Movement, and the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement in many senses symbolizes the culmination of centuries of African American politics creatively combined with, and ingeniously conveyed through African American music. Even the term “civil rights music” can be seen as a code word for African American message music between 1945 and 1965, and this even though most of the messages in the music seem to have been missed by many, if not most, people who were not actively involved in, or in some significant way associated with, the Civil Rights Movement.
The main aim of this chapter is to offer an analysis of the unique role of black popular music in black popular movements in order to ultimately discursively develop a musicology of the Civil Rights Movement. Prior to our protracted exploration of civil rights music, it will be important to place the soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement within the African American movement music tradition. If, indeed, “music is more than merely music” for many, if not most, African Americans (especially those actively involved in social, political, and cultural movements), when, where, how, and why the unique relationship between black popular music and black popular movements developed is a key question? Beginning with a brief discussion of the broader historical, cultural, social and political contexts of the Civil Rights Movement, next the chapter gives way to a discussion of the often overlooked popular culture of the Civil Rights Movement—what I call “civil rights popular culture.” The chapter will conclude with an examination of black popular music as a form of cultural expression and cultural action, in a sense setting up the subsequent chapters by providing the reader with an overview of the African American movement music tradition that civil rights music arose out of.
The Civil Rights Movement, Collective Identity, Collective Agency, and Cognitive Praxis
In Social Movements, 1768–2004 (2004), noted political sociologist Charles Tilly essentially argued that social movements are most often made up of ordinary people, rather than members of the politically powerful and elite, and it is these “ordinary people,” these “organic intellectuals”—à la Antonio Gramsci’s provocative work in his Prison Notebooks—who collectively think, act, and speak in the best interest of, and in concert with every day average people—the so-called “masses.” Gramsci (1971, 9) famously contended that “[a]ll men are intellectuals,” but “not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.” It is extremely important to emphasize this point because neither black youth nor the ghettos they have been callously quarantined to have been recognized for their intellectual activities and positive cultural contributions. In other words, black ghetto youth have contributed much more than merely vice, vulgarity and viciousness, and their contributions to black popular music and black popular movements during the Civil Rights Movement are especially significant.
Although “one can speak of intellectuals,” Gramsci declared, “one cannot speak of non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals do not exist.” In point of fact, “[t]here is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded: homo faber cannot be separated from homo sapiens,” which is to say, the “primitive man” (homo faber) cannot be completely divorced from the evolution of the much-vaunted “wise man” (homo sapiens). Intellectuals do not simply inhabit college campuses and highbrow cafés, then, they can also be found in each and every community in this country, including the slums, ghettoes, and barrios. Right along with “philosophers” and “men of taste,” Gramsci included artists in his conception of “organic intellectuals,” contending: “Each man, finally, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a ‘philosopher,’ an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought” (9; see also 3–43).[5]
It is not only movement leaders, but rank and file movement members in general, whether they consider themselves moderates or militants, intellectuals or activists, who have a “conscious line of moral [and frequently political] conduct,” and who, consequently, contribute “to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought.” Many of the “new modes of thought” and political practices that the Civil Rights Movement brought into being did not stem from civil rights issues exclusively, but frequently arose from myriad social, political, cultural, economic, and employment issues. This conception of social movements is in clear contrast to those who embrace what could be termed the “old” conception of social movements, which holds that social protest and social movements are almost exclusively motivated by class interests and carried out by members who share the same
class status. Generally the goals of conventional social movements revolve around institutional changes that yield political and economic redistribution along class lines.[6]
The “new” social movement model offers several correctives for the limitations of the “old,” essentially Eurocentric social movement model which, from critical race, feminist, postcolonialist, pacifist, and queer theorists and activists’ points of view, did not adequately engage social issues and injustices stemming from racism, sexism, heterosexism, war, and religious intolerance, among other issues. According to Rhys Williams in “The Cultural Contexts of Collective Action: Constraints, Opportunities, and the Symbolic Life of Social Movements” (2004):