Civil Rights Music

by Reiland Rabaka

  Finally, with regard to Du Bois’s reverence for African American religion, it must be said that he held black church music in especial high esteem. He frequently wrote beamingly and bemusingly of African American religious music, calling it “the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil” (Du Bois 1903b, 191). He adeptly described how black religious music had emanated from the “African forests” to be “adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and hope” (191).

  Where Du Bois emphasized the centrality of the black church in African American history, culture, and struggle, he placed an almost equal emphasis on the centrality of the black sacred song tradition, effusively proclaiming that it has become “the one true expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and hope.” Because of the centrality of the church and its culture, Du Bois strongly stressed, “the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of American history.” As a matter of fact, “[t]he Negro church of today is the social center of Negro life in the United States,” he contended, and “the most characteristic expression of African character” (193).

  However, because of African American’s “African character” and, what Raboteau called above, “African religious consciousness,” Du Bois deduced that African Americans’ “Africanité”—the distinctly African aspects of their humanity, historicity, and identity—had caused them to be crudely collapsed into their problems and seen as a problem people, as opposed to a people with peculiar problems (as with most other human groups). The incessant experience of racial reductionism and constant collapsing of black folk into their problems produced an acute condition where many, if not most, black folk came to internalize negative views of themselves and their “African fatherland.” Du Bois dubbed this psycho-socio-cultural condition “double-consciousness.” Elaborating on African Americans’ divided-selves and double-lives, Du Bois wrote, “[f]rom the double-life every American Negro must live, as a Negro and as an American . . . must arise a painful self-consciousness, an almost morbid sense of personality and a moral hesitancy which is fatal to self-confidence” (202). Prophetically seeming to paint a picture of the kinds of politics and aesthetics that would predominate during the Civil Rights Movement, Du Bois outlined core strategies and tactics of African American survival utilized, not only by black preachers and black socio-political leaders, but also by black artists, including golden age gospel artists:

  The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double-life, with double-thoughts, double-duties, and double-social classes, must give rise to double-words and double-ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense or to revolt, to hypocrisy or to radicalism. (202)

  Who can deny that during the Civil Rights Movement years, many African American artists—especially gospel, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll artists—felt the need to reconcile moral outrage and, sometimes, outright vengeful anger, with a veneer of deference and the appearance of a preference for heavenly salvation over earthly liberation? Indeed, the “double-life, with double-thoughts, double-duties, and double-social classes,” which “give[s] rise to double-words and double-ideals,” was incessantly and adroitly articulated in the gospel and freedom songs of the Civil Rights Movement, so much so that most folk, whether black or white, with little or no critical knowledge or real connection to the movement regularly miss the often masked multiple-meaning key symbols, signs, and sounds of the Civil Rights Movement—what could be otherwise termed the semiotics of the Civil Rights Movement? “Deception is the natural defense of the weak against the strong,” Du Bois declared, and “the South used it for many years against its [Northern] conquerors.” But, in the aftermath of the aftermath of Reconstruction, that same deceptive segregationist white South “must be prepared to see its black proletariat,” which is the socio-economic class from which most gospel artists emerged, “turn that same two-edged weapon against itself” (204). Demonstrating that double-consciousness can be simultaneously self-negating and self-liberating, conceptually incarcerating and mentally emancipating, Du Bois described the seemingly schizophrenic moderatism and militantism of the young black folk who wield the double-edged sword of double-consciousness against their anti-black racist and well-intentioned white oppressors:

  Today the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticize, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States,—is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture? The price of culture is a Lie. (204–205)

  Similar to most other African Americans living under the shadow of American apartheid during the Civil Rights Movement years, gospel artists, no matter how “radical” or “progressive” they may have actually been with respect to racial, social, and economic justice, were forced to feign apathy and religious escapism. As Du Bois observed, they simply could not be “frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive,” the evil socio-political etiquette of American apartheid demanded that they be “silent and wary, politic and sly,” that they “flatter and be pleasant,” that they “endure petty insults with a smile,” and “shut [their tear-filled] eyes to wrong.” Like most Civil Rights Movement leaders, gospel artists understood that in order to make a real and meaningful contribution to the movement, their “real thoughts,” their “real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers,” and that they “must not criticize,” they “must not complain” but, in keeping with the majority of the core strategies and tactics of the movement, they must mask their protest and produce a culturally coded art that meant one thing to church folk and civil rights soldiers, and wholly another thing to folk who were not members of the wider black church world or active members of the Civil Rights Movement.

  According to Du Bois, the masked, multiple meanings almost inherent in the African American sacred song tradition are not only why black church music has been so “persistently mistaken and misunderstood,” but also what makes black sacred songs so brilliant and breathtaking. Few scholars of African American religious music, or black popular music in general, can resist commenting on that hauntingly famous passage from The Souls of Black Folk where Du Bois solemnly wrote:

  Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. (251)

  From Du Bois’s perspective, the black church was the cornerstone of African American culture, and in his studies he traced its connections to the spiritual and broader cultural traditions of Africa, while simultaneously demonstrating the process (i.e., syncretism) by which various disparate groups of enslaved Africans miraculously
became a multicultural and transethnic diasporan community, a many-sided single people—in other words, African Americans. In Slave Culture (1987), Sterling Stuckey pointed out that even before enslaved Africans reached the shores of North America, they began to create a new culture, one where traditional “tribalisms” were nothing more than “a lingering memory in the minds of American slaves” (3). People from as far north as Senegal were piled onto people from Namibia and Angola in the south, people from Kenya in the east were sandwiched between Ghanaians and Nigerians from the west, and in their long and horror-filled voyage to the Americas they initiated the protracted and arduous process of creating a new culture. This new culture was primarily one of resistance, but it must be borne in mind that the bulk of this defiance was grounded in, and grew out of the enslaved Africans’ hark back to the religions and social justice traditions of their ancestors, which, for all of the reasons observed above, are historically embodied in the African American church.

  If the black church is a core component of African American culture, especially black social and political culture, then, the music that is so central to the African American church experience must in some manner reflect both the conservatism and radicalism of the church’s core congregants. Admittedly, it is easier to detect expressions of conservatism in the African American sacred song tradition and arguably much more difficult to discern and decipher often intentionally ambiguous expressions of radicalism and resistance. Hence, Du Bois rhetorically queried, “What are these songs, and what do they mean?” Obviously, as our guide and goad through African American history, culture, and struggle, Du Bois was hinting at the fact that black sacred songs historically have been, and continue to be, more than merely sacred songs—which is to say, they are more than merely religious music. Going back to my above emphasis on the multi-functionality of the black church, here I would like to also strongly stress the multi-functionality of black church music, that is to say, the multi-functionality of African American sacred songs—obviously, a distinct characteristic that has been handed down to each and every form of black popular music that has been derived from the African American sacred song tradition (i.e., blues, ragtime, jazz, jump blues, doo-wop, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, girl groups, soul, funk, disco, techno, house, rap, neo-soul, etc.).

  In response to his incredibly important rhetorical question, “What are these songs, and what do they mean?,” Du Bois sternly stated, “I know little of music and can say nothing in technical phrase,” but tellingly he went further, “I know something of men,” of black folk, and “knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world,” which “tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding”—they are the “voice of exile” (253, 255, 257). African American sacred songs, whether we turn to the spirituals or gospel or freedom songs, “are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment,” and these songs “tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways” (253). However, even in the midst of such seeming despondency, Du Bois argued, “there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things.”

  Similar to The Holy Bible on which so much of it is based, the African American sacred song tradition contains elements of both pessimism and optimism, of the Old Testament “God of War” and the New Testament “Prince of Peace,” and is undoubtedly more complex and complicated than most folk outside of the black church and the black church music tradition fully fathom. Black church music cannot and should not be reduced to pathos and pain, to apathy and escapism, and Du Bois challenged both its connoisseurs and critics to acknowledge that the “minor cadences of despair” in black church music often transforms and translates themselves into “triumph and calm confidence.” He continued, “[s]ometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is,” Du Bois waxed, “the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?” (261–262).

  In innumerable ways, gospel seems to be a response to Du Bois’s queries, “Is such a hope justified?” And, most especially, “Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?” By the very fact that gospel evolved out of the spirituals undoubtedly demonstrates that “the Sorrow Songs sing true,” that the hope that is at the heart of even the most downhearted and dirge-like spiritual inspired subsequent generations of African Americans to “keep hope alive,” to “keep the faith,” and to—as Philippians 3:14 reads—“press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

  Obviously, the message that “sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins” is most often muted in gospel, as it was in the spirituals. According to Du Bois, it is “naturally veiled and half-articulate” in black church music, but buried beneath the surface of “conventional theology and unmeaning rhapsody,” the spirituals—and the same could be said of gospel during the Civil Rights Movement—conveyed the restless, plaintive “soul-hunger” of black folk in ways that were revealing for what they did not say at least as much as for what they did say (257–258). Once again Du Bois waxed, “[o]ver the inner-thoughts of the slaves and their relations with one another the shadow of fear ever hung, so that we get but glimpses here and there, and also with them, eloquent omissions and silences.” An African American musicologist, a musicologist of African American music, whatever term adopted to describe one who seriously studies black popular music must, almost by default, develop a deep preoccupation with the “eloquent omissions and silences” of African American music, and especially black sacred songs.

  Du Bois understood that black folk could not outright physically resist their white enslavers during enslavement and their white segregators during the Jim Crow era. However, African Americans could, however surreptitiously and ironically, implicitly sing what could not be explicitly said in light of the anti-black racist protocols and practices of American apartheid. It is in this sense, then, that Du Bois, however subtly, acknowledged the subaltern status, the subaltern life-worlds and life-struggles insidiously and violently imposed on his beloved black folk. Continuing the “black folk can implicitly sing what they cannot explicitly say” line of logic, Tricia Rose, in Black Noise (1994), asserted that since oppressed people cannot openly express their opposition, resistance is most often manifested in shrouded “oppositional transcripts”—which is to say, the vernacular or “folk” cultural discourse that diverts direct pugnacity and militancy into folktales, humor, fantasy, play, ritual, music, and other cultural forms (99).

  The spirituals were exemplary of the oppositional transcripts of the enslavement and Reconstruction periods, where classic blues and gospel sonically symbolized the oppositional transcripts of the epoch spanning from post-Reconstruction through to the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, the major recurring characters of the spirituals were the oppressive Pharaoh and God’s “chosen” children of Israel suffering in bondage and unceasingly praying for freedom. Other repeatedly referenced biblical heroes and episodes such as Joshua the warrior, the perseverance of Job, David’s courage in the battle against Goliath, Daniel down in the lion’s den, and the faithfulness of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are important oppositional paradigms and points of departure ubiquitous throughout the spirituals that were handed down to gospel artists and adapted and updated to surreptitiously comment on the incredibly unchristian (if not categorically anti-Christian) laws of American apartheid. Rose offers insight:

  Slave dances, blues lyrics, Mardi Gras parades, Jamaican patios, toasts, and signifying all carry the pleasure and ingenuity of disguised criticism of the powerful. Poor people learn from experience when and how explicitly they can express their discontent. Under social conditions in which sustained frontal attacks on powerful groups are strategically unwise or successfully contained, oppressed peopl
e use language, dance, and music to mock those in power, express rage, and produce fantasies of subversion. These cultural forms are especially rich and pleasurable places where oppositional transcripts, or the “unofficial truths” are developed, refined, and rehearsed. These cultural responses to oppression are not safety valves that protect and sustain the machines of oppression. Quite the contrary, these dances, languages, and musics produce communal bases of knowledge about social conditions, communal interpretations of them, and quite often serve as the cultural glue that fosters communal resistance. (99–100)

  Classic and golden age gospel are part of the arsenal of cultural weapons that African Americans have utilized to combat American apartheid and evolve the tradition of “disguised criticism of the powerful.” Just as musical protest was constantly operationalized and utilized for generations during and immediately after African American enslavement, more modern forms of musical protest were put into play to speak to the special issues of the Civil Rights Movement. Not only did the partially prophetic, and partially mystic allure of the spiritual tradition—truth be told, the core foundation of the gospel tradition—last long after the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, but cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, social segregation, political repression and, above all else, anti-black racism were still widespread enough by the middle of the twentieth century to justify new forms of sustained subterfuge.

  In an effort to avoid segregationist and violent anti-black racist backlash, and to surreptitiously evade the objections and heavy-handed restrictions of leery record companies and radio stations, gospel artists were compelled to continue couching their protest in what might sound like nothing more than religious doggerel to both enemies and outsiders. According to Heilbut (1997), this may go far to explain “why lyrics that to white listeners seem abstract” and quite “corny” are very often “charged with specific, resonant meaning”—which is to say, black cultural meaning (262). He continued, “[i]f the gospel world is dreadful,” then it is important to bear in mind that “it merely reflects the inescapable conditions of black life.”