James DePreist (1936-2013)
H. Leslie Adams (b. 1932)
Aaron P. Dworkin (b. 1970)
George Walker (b. 1922)
Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
THE IDENTIFICATION OF OUR SUBJECTS
Dominique-René de Lerma
From
the start, we have never come openly to grips with our own definition
of the people whose lives and works we are discussing, leaving this
rather much in the hands of American sociology -- and in some instances
falling back on the one-drop theory of racists. Were it not for them,
we might have been at a loss. If our topic were those of Italian
ancestry, how sociologically relevant would it be to look at the music
of John Corigliano, Gian Carlo Menotti, Walter Piston (Pistone), Paul
Creston (né Giuseppe Guttoveggio) or Dean Martin (né Dino Paul Crocetti)? Certainly Italian Americans have faced prejudice from the anglophile radicals, but not slavery, not Jim Crow.
So
we have called our subjects by various terms. One need not be reminded
of the "n" word, but there was "negro," and that gradually secured
uppercasing when not the Spanish adjective for Black, which has
satisfied the National Association of Negro Musicians for almost a
century. As for "Black," this was accepted by W. E. B. Dubois, James
Brown, and Leontyne Price. Then there was "colored," which has always
been satisfactory with the NAACP (and perhaps now starting to include
Hispanics -- thanks again to the Anglophile ultraconservatives -- if not
also other "persons of color"). Within recent times the acceptable
"Afro-American" was modified into "African-American." All matters of
pigmentation or continental roots, but not implicitly culture?
Some
years ago, speaking on a non-HBCU campus, my Q&A session elicited a
comment from the departmental chair: "Why do we need to label this
music? Why can we not just accept it only as music?" My response was
because this defines a distinct culture -- that John Coltrane was not
just a musician "who happened to be Black" or Romare Bearden only
accidently of color (and maybe even the misfortune thereof?). The
liberal-minded cultural integrationist at this event, by the way, was
Italian, and I would hate to think of Puccini apart from the rich
Italian heritage of which he was so gloriously a part.
Quite recently, this web site attracted an observation from an enthusiast who nonetheless had other sentiments. The
individual suggested not using "African American," with the thought
that not all Black people were from Africa -- a somewhat disconcerting
comment which for now will be a matter of semantics, rather than
history. Quite so. Many had intermediate
ports of call in the sunny Caribbean, but their ancestors retained
their original identity proudly, generation after generation, no matter
how many slave women were forced to bear mixed-race children. That
one-drop idea again.
But
can we fall back on skin color? Pigmentation is irrelevant in the
study of culture, and maybe even race. In his 1948 autobiography, A man called White,
Walter Francis White (Assistant Secretary of the NAACP) wrote "I am a
Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond." Should
we then allow self-identification? Then what about those who pass,
despite the grandmother?
Is it then a matter of culture? Would that reject William Dawson, who used violins in his Negro folk symphony
(virtually a heresy, according to some students with a pre-conceived
and ill-informed philosophy on Negritude), or Ulysses Kay, whose music
rarely exhibits what others define as authentic? Can we then accept
George Gershwin, who was not a premature Israel nationalist? Or Heitor
Villa-Lobos, whose Brazilian music naturally exhibits that of his
people?
If
we aim for scientific accuracy, DNA tests would uncover more than
grain in the haystacks, but this would be a foolish waste of time for
Olly Wilson, Aretha Franklin, or B. B. King.
Let
us now confess that we rely on two sources: self-identity and social
definition. The former is a matter of pride, the second almost always a
sign of stigma. Both of these provide our points of departure, whatever
term is applied to the people, and both justify our dedication.
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Dominique-René de Lerma
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