Table Of ContentTHE POWER OF BLACK MUSIC
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THE
P O W ER
OF BLACK
MUSIC
Interpreting Its History
from Africa
to the United States
Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.
New York Oxford 1995
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay
Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi
Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1995 by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Floyd, Samuel A.
The power of Black music : interpreting its history from Africa
to the United States / Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references, discography,
filmography, and index.
ISBN 0-19-508235-4
1. Afro-Americans—Music—History and criticism.
2. Music—United States—History and criticism.
ML3556.F65 1995 780'.89'96073—dc20 94-21
Since this page cannot legibly accommodate the acknowledgments,
pages v-vi constitute an extension of the copyright page.
9826543
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Text
Birago Diop, poem, from African Music: A Peopled An by Francis Bebey.
Copyright © 1975 by Francis Bebey.
Reprinted by permission of Lawrence Hill Books.
"The Pig's Nose and the Baboon's Rear" and "Why Monkeys Live in Trees,"
from African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World by Roger D. Abrahams.
Copyright © 1983 by Roger D. Abrahams.
Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Esu trickster tale, from Tales of the Orishas by Migene Gonzales-Wippler.
Copyright © 1985 by Original Publications.
Reprinted by permission of Original Publications.
"Big Chief Blues," "Boxcar Blues," "C and A Blues," "Panama Limited," and "Papa Long Blues,"
from Blues Lyric Poetry: An Anthology and a Concordance by Michael Taft.
Copyright © 1983 by Garland Publishing.
Reprinted by permission of Garland Publishing.
Oscar Brown, Jr., "Signifyin' Monkey," from Talk that Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling,
edited by Linda Goss and Marian E. Barnes.
Copyright © 1989.
Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster.
Langston Hughes, poem, from Selected Poems by Langston Hughes.
Copyright © 1959.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
African-American toast, from Deep Down in the Jungle:
Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia by Roger D. Abrahams.
Copyright © 1963, 1970 by Roger D. Abrahams.
Reprinted by permission of Aldine de Gruyter.
Eero Tarasti, excerpt from Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music,
Especially that of Wagner, Sibelius, and Stravinsky by Eero Tarasti.
Copyright © 1979 by Mouton de Gruyter.
Reprinted by permission of Mouton de Gruyter, a division of Walter de Gruyter and Co.
Claude McKay, "If We Must Die," from Selected Poems of Claude McKay.
Copyright © 1979.
Reprinted by permission of the Archives of Claude McKay, Carl Cowl, Administrator.
Dudley Randall, poem, from The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall.
Copyright © 1971, 1988.
Reprinted by permission of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell.
Larry Neal, "Malcolm X—An Autobiography," from The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall.
Copyright © 1971, 1988.
Reprinted by permission of Evelyn Neal.
Musical Examples
Example 1: Adzida Dance, from Studies in African Music by A. M. Jones.
Copyright © 1959 by Oxford University Press.
Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Example 2: Runagate, Runagate by Wendell Logan, set to poem by Robert Hayden.
Reprinted with permission of MMB Music, Inc., St. Louis.
Copyright © 1989. All rights reserved.
Examples 3 and 4: "For You There Is No Song" by Leslie Adams.
Erom Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers, compiled by Willis C. Patterson.
Copyright © 1977 by Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Reprinted by permission of Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Text from Collected Poems o/ Edna St. Vincent Millay, edited by Norma Millay Ellis.
Copyright © 1981. Reprinted by permission.
Example 5: "Dancing in the Sun" by John W. Work, set to poem by Howard Weedun.
Reprinted by permission of the composer's family.
Example 6: "Soliloquy" by John W. Work, set to poem by Myrtle Vorst Sheppard.
Reprinted by permission of the composer's family.
Example 7: "A Red, Red Rose" by George Walker, set to poem by Robert Burns.
Reprinted with permission of MMB Music, Inc., St. Louis.
Copyright © 1975. All rights reserved.
Example 8: "Faithful One" by Robert Owens, set to poem by Langston Hughes.
Copyright © 1969.
Reprinted by permission of Orlando-Musikverlag, Munich, Germany.
Example 9: "Velvet Shoes" by Hale Smith, set to poem by Elinor Wiley.
Copyright © 1974 by Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Reprinted by permission of Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Examples 10 and 11: Two Songs /or Julie-Ju by Noel DaCosta, set to poems by George Houston Bass.
Copyright © 1977 by Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Reprinted by permission of Edward B. Marks Music Company.
Example 12: "A Song Without Words" by Charles Brown.
Copyright © 1977.
Reprinted by permission of the composer.
Example 13: "A Death Song" by Howard Swanson, set to a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Copyright © 1951 by Weintraub Music, a division of Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP).
Reprinted by permission.
For
Theora
Barbara
Wanda
Cecilia
Sam III
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Acknowledgments
For their contributions to the inspiration and support I needed to undertake
this project, I would like to thank James Winn, director of the Institute for
the Humanities, University of Michigan, whose fellowship support allowed me
to explore the implications of critical theory to black music inquiry; Richard
Crawford, professor of music at the University of Michigan, whose friendship,
sharp and scholarly eye, and helpful criticism made my introductory article
in this area better than it otherwise would have been; Orin Moe, my remark-
ably well-read friend who called my attention to Peter Kivy's four books on
the philosophy of music and Lawrence Kramer's work on musico-literary analy-
sis; and Bruce Tucker, guest editor of an issue of the Black Music Research Jour-
nal, for inviting me to submit the article in which many of these issues were
first raised, for contributing to the identification of one of the seminal ideas
in that piece, and for reading portions of the present work. It was Bruce, a
former colleague at Fisk University and now a freelance writer, who encour-
aged me to write The Power of Black Music from a personal perspective. Rich
Crawford, Marsha J. Reisser, and singer William Brown read the entire man-
uscript and offered corrections and valuable content and editorial suggestions.
William Komla Amoaku critiqued chapter 1 and offered valuable suggestions;
Calvert Bean, Orin Moe, and Mark Tucker, all of whom serve on the editorial
board of Black Music Research Journal, read chapter 9; composer T. J. Ander-
son read and critiqued chapters 7 and 8; and Eileen Southern read the man-
uscript's early chapters. Chapter 10 profited from Douglas Dempster's astute
comments on the philosophical issues I discuss there. Early in my research,
Horace Boyer provided me with recorded examples of certain performances of
gospel music, which proved helpful, and information about the Boyer Broth-
ers' recordings; his brother James provided me with a recording that had proved
otherwise impossible to obtain. Country-music scholar Charles Wolf directed
me to DeFord Bailey's recordings, and record collector Roger Miscewicz pro-
vided recordings of the blues pieces I discuss in chapter 9. My discussion in
chapter 5 of the Chicago flowering of the Negro Renaissance was aided greatly
Description:When Jimi Hendrix transfixed the crowds of Woodstock with his gripping version of "The Star Spangled Banner," he was building on a foundation reaching back, in part, to the revolutionary guitar playing of Howlin' Wolf and the other great Chicago bluesmen, and to the Delta blues tradition before him.
