DuBois to Detroit: Enter, Motown
The first African slaves entered the Americas in the 1500’s, and possibly earlier as part of Christopher Columbus’s first transports in his expeditions to Hispaniola and the Dominican Republic during the late 1490s. After some 300 years of horrific conditions and horrendous treatment, the music transported across the ocean by the West African storytellers and bards known as the griot would capture the traditions and cultures of a people known for their ability to pass down legend and genealogy of the past through the influence of music. The veil between white and black Americans that grew from this centuries old practice would harden and entrench itself, until the music of the ‘sorrow songs’, (the spiritual singing of Africans that catalogued their suffering at the hands of American slavery), would break through to expose the margins between them. From this music, speaks the tragedy of torment, the hope for release, and the song of salvation that would communicate a dark story of New World in paradox. How could a place that drew from its populace such messages of prosperity contain within its core such offences of human decency? Even as these songs reached our ears, those that sang them bore sincerity through resignation of their letter, and those that heard them either appropriated them as ways to distance themselves from their subject, or to integrate themselves into their genre. Rarely did the audience of the ‘sorrow songs’ challenge the forces that caused their creation. One might postulate that the reason Sam Cooke’s “Change is Gonna Come” has not reached us yet is because there are still more waiting for it to get here instead of acting for its arrival.
In Georgia, a white plantation owner named James Gordy would father a child with a woman he enslaved. The boy, named Barry Gordy, a product of the margins of the color line, had a half-brother named James. James would become the Grandfather of President Jimmy Carter. In the early 1900’s, while Jazz and Gospel music was being born out of the ‘sorrow songs’ in New Orleans and elsewhere, the Ku Klux Klan was lynching black men with chilling regularity. Barry Gordy II would leave for Detroit as part of the great Southern migration to flee from Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the 1,502 reported lynching’s in the first 20 years of the twentieth century. He would father a boy named Barry Gordy III, seventh of eight children. Barry Gordy Jr. went on to create Motown records, and brought an incredible sound to the American identity.
Gordy Jr. fought in the Korean War before becoming the beneficiary of the Civil Rights Movement, and the record company that he returned home to build created much of the soundtrack for the Vietnam War that followed. Motown is a critical genre in expressing the strange duality and cultural margins that exists between white and black equality during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. “The list of his earliest discoveries reads like a who’s who of the golden age of rhythm-and-blues, starting with the Matadors (soon to become the Miracles), Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, and the Primes and Primettes, later to be known as the Temptations and the Supremes, respectively, to name only a few.” as cited by Motwonmuseum.org. In the 70’s, Stevie Wonder would release music on the Motown label, and as Ian McCann writes, “Right away he had things to say about the state of the world, ensuring that Motown and politics would be inextricably entwined throughout the 70s.” From a converted garage behind the two-family flat on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Barry Gordy Jr. brought the voices of black America to the public through recording and radio in the medium of music.
W.E.B. DuBois begins each chapter of “The Souls of Black Folk” with a song. This poetry, accompanied by the melody underneath, speaks to his beginning questions about what it feels like to be a problem. An entire culture of persons born into and meant to struggle with this enforced issue of skin color determining their right to survive and prosper, and from it a music that so poignantly and powerfully makes its case. By the time of Barry Gordy and his contributions to Motown, this story would develop more than just a sorrowful tale. Songs from Dianna Ross, Marry Wells, Marvin Gaye, and many more would give this narrative hope, joy, and pride. We continue to close the gaps of this margin existing between the color line, this void between the veil, this quest for equality in the American identity. Resistance drives progress in many forms, from protest, speech, art, literature, and song. Just as Barry Gordy Jr. found his role in the choir of the ‘sorrow song’, so do I hope that you find yours. Whatever it may be, just keep your foot on the gas.
Enjoy today’s listening example from Barry Gordy Jr. with Marv Johnson’s ‘Come To Me’. Co-written by the singer with Gordy, who also produced the song, it was released as the first single on Tamla Records (catalogue number Tamla 101) on 21 January 1959. (from Paul Sexton’s article “Barry Gordy: The Visionary That Made Motown. (Jan 2020)”
Resources for this writing include:
Ian McCann, “Motown and Politics: From Dancing to Marching in the Street” (June 8, 2020)
Paul Sexton, “Barry Gordy: The Visionary That Made Motown (Jan 12, 2020)
Crystal Ponti, “America’s History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown” (Aug 26, 2019)
Barry Gordy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Gordy
Barry Gordy, https://www.motownmuseum.org/story/berry-gordy/
University of Missouri, Kansan City, U-town News- Motown: the Musical, Unity Through Music, https://info.umkc.edu/unews/motown-the-musical-unity-through-music/