Navigating the Veil
There is a pattern of response to the songs of slavery that can explain the heart of how white faces became the representatives of popular American music originating from black artists. I’ve been writing about the ‘sorrow songs’ this week, and their connection to modern genres, and a key element is how their power and poetry exposed the depths of slavery’s tragedy. This transgression exposed, and its obvious moral depravity fueled the closet abolitionist reactions that are mirrored in public sphere, even to this day. Jon Cruz, the sociologist mentioned in yesterday’s writing, notes the example of Mary Boykin Chestnut, a white woman with abolitionist leanings and wife to a slave owner in his book “Culture on the Margins” (1999). Chestnut records in her journal after being in the presents of a black religious gathering, of the ‘bitter tears’ she weeps after witnessing a ceremony she claims “took place with words that had no meaning at all”. Cruz goes on to say, “Meaningless does not engender such deep pathos. Profoundly meaningful emotions, however, are difficult to render into words, for meaning encompasses language but is not reducible to it.” Chestnut would meet this potent response to soul singing by doing what many abolitionists did to cope with opposing the horrors of slavery while still having a desire to participate in its opposition: she got as far away from it as she could.
This act of engaging in the emancipation of the enslaved black American from a distance was not unique, as many anti-slavery northerners and Republic Free-Soilers found the ability to be critical of the institution while avoiding the confrontation of the actual people suffering under its bonds. The ‘sorrow songs’ enlists, (and likely is the genesis for) the white American tradition of appropriating black music culture as a means of profit in recognition of its powerful message, while completely dismissing the heartbreak of its origins. Nastia Voynovskaya writes in her article, “Setting the Record Straight on American Music’s Black Roots” (Jan 2020) that “…even though Elvis Presley got all the credit for being the King of Rock 'n' Roll, it was Big Mama Thornton who first performed "Hound Dog," and Otis Blackwell who wrote several of his other big hits.” These more modern examples highlight the authenticity transmitted through the language and narrative of the black song, embroidered in disenfranchisement and oppression, while being packaged in a white face, and handed to an audience detached from its foundations. The listener knows there is a moving story being told but is disconnected from the hardship of its placement.
The ‘sorrow songs’ were a name given to the musical compositions that spoke of the suffering of enslaved Africans in the United States. It exposed what W.E.B. DuBois called “the veil”, or the psychological manifestation of the color line that prevents whites as seeing black people as Americans, and from treating them as fully human. The reactions to this music are the narrative that would follow the generations of bold creativity to follow. It became the basis by which America would define its musical voice. Cruz would describe this as the strategy of comprehension and appropriation, defining this function by “embracing the subject of black music but not the black subjects from whom this music comes.” While post Civil War would continue this trend of distancing from the ‘subjects’ of black music while appropriating its ‘subject’, it would not be long before white embrace of black culture would shift trends the other way. Jazz would be its minstrel.
Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow was one such white bohemian that would cultivate jazz music to distance himself from the dominant white society rather than that of the voices oppressed by them. In the Jazz music of New Orleans, New York, and Chicago, white musicians found an avenue to escape the conformity of white society and gain closeness to the subjects of its origins, rather than distance to avoid the harshness the realities for black American poverty and continued segregation oppression. Cruz notes of Mezzrow’s commentary on jazz, that it was “a collectively improvised nose-thumbing at all pillars of all communities, one big syncopated Bronx cheer for the righteous squares everywhere.” Black music, in this case, would be the force that would bring permeations in DuBois’ ‘veil’, and the proliferation of jazz would allow the evolution of its genres to come.
The ‘sorrow songs’ express a powerful and undeniable truth of the grievous wrong embroidered into the American story. When heard, their powerful message invokes the deepest in guttural sadness, for who when confronted with the massive blemish that American slavery is could deny its injustice? As America continues to be baffled by solutions, music continues to express the incomprehensible atrocity. The passion and joy of freedom would sound greater than any heard before it when sprung from the heart of those who knows what it means to be chained. Elation of progress could only be so truthfully exclaimed by those who know what a long road there is to travel. These expressions are what make black music so powerful, and white artists so attracted to its message. This is admittedly, a very binary point of view, and it is not so simple as two sides of a coin, but the history of how these two groups navigate ‘the veil’ of the color line would be the defining characteristics of how America continues to develope its musical identity.
Jazz and recorded sound would be an important chapter of how America would culturally navigate its ideals, and the immediate aftermaths would burst onto television, radio and eventually the internet, creating a world stage of impressive iconic artistry. Here is our old friend Mezz Mezzrow and Sidney Blanchet in today’s listening example, “Tommy’s Blues” from 1947.