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Black Music Matters
Excerpts from a historic night at Berklee.
By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Correspondent
March 16, 2007
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| Ysaye Maria Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock |
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| Photo by Bill O'Connell |
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On February 1, Berklee president Roger Brown told a full house at the Berklee Performance Center that it was witness to a "symbolic inception point." He announced a key change in the college's mission statement and discussed Berklee's Africana Studies/Music and Society curriculum initiative. In addition, Princeton University professor Cornel West talked about the importance of black music, and a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock demonstrated the importance of that music in word and song. Cornel West
On the role of music:
"I want to disabuse you of the notion that music is simply a form of stimulation and titillation. It's not about superficial entertainment. It'
s a way of life. It'
s a mode of existence in the world."
On James Brown, who had died a few weeks prior:
"He taught us that there'
s sublime beauty in the funk. He taught us that there'
s a dangerous and contagious freedom in the funk. And if you get down deep enough, he taught us that there'
s a deep and profound love in the funk, if you have the courage to deal with the stink and the stench down there. Why is that important? Because he comes from a people who have had to deal with the funk of America. You can try to deodorize yourself and manicure yourself and sterilize yourself, but your funk sooner or later must come out."
On slaves and the singing of spirituals:
"And we want to remind the younger generation that they were not singing for some cheap, American dream. No, no, no, no. They were singing about freedom. They said, ‘Let freedom ring.'
They didn'
t say, ‘Give me the bling, bling.'
No, they weren'
t looking for just some narrow conception of success. They weren'
t obsessed with the financial prosperity of living large in some vanilla suburb. No, no, they were looking for a greatness and a magnanimity and an integrity of self-respect and of self-regard that allowed them to love themselves and respect themselves, but to do it in such a way that it didn'
t require putting others down."
On democracy and musical collaboration:
"You have a democracy at work. The black musical tradition, in many ways, is the grand species of democratic symbolic action. Finding your voice, having the courage to discover who you really are when you take off the mask and then lift that voice in such a way that you have the humility to hear other voices, so you can engage in active and generous listening of other voices, so that as those voices fuse, it elevates the collective performance of whatever you'
re doing."
On "getting it out":
'I got to get it out.'
Isn'
t that what Marvin [Gaye] told [Motown head] Berry Gordy?
'Oh, we don'
t do concept albums, Marvin.'
Marvin says, 'I got to get this out, Berry. I got something to say and I can't have any interruptions in the album. This has got to flow.'
'Radios don'
t play that.'
'I'
m sorry about the radio, Berry. I got to get this out.'
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Cornel West |
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Photo by Bill O'Connell |
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That'
s what happened in the spring of 1971. . . . Marvin got it out: What's Going On. . . . Thank God Marvin got it out! Another genius, 25 years old: Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life. 1976, he got it out! They did it by finding their voices and staying connected to this grand vision of what it means to be human. That'
s why it is profoundly political, but it is also deeply human. And therefore it goes from the political to the existential. And by existential I mean what it is to exist as a human being. And that'
s why black music is always at its best when cutting against the grain. That'
s why the agent of Curtis Mayfield told him, 'Don'
t show up at the political rallies because it will hurt your career.'
But he showed up with his guitar anyway because he had to get it out. He had to be true to himself."
On the challenge for young musicians:
"But I want to remind young folk, if you have the audacity to be a musician in the black musical tradition, get your courage together because you've got high standards, some of the highest standards in the history of the modern world. You'
re going to have to cut against the grain because if you tell the truth about who you are, it will pit you against white supremacists, it will pit you against male supremaicists. It will pit you against obscene wealth and inequality. It will pit you against imperial arrogance and hubris. It will pit you against the very things that are rewarding for a streamlined mainstream person."
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Before singing their first song:
"We call tonight on our ancestors. We are here because they existed. We are here because they passed their knowledge, their sense of who they were, their courage onto us, their history onto us, through the songs. They sing hopefully through us. Hopefully, they will sing through you as well. We begin this evening in Africa."
Before singing "Wade in the Water":
"We have come from Africa now through the Middle Passage [Atlantic slave trade]. The horrors of the Middle Passage. We find ourselves here, on this continent in this body, and the music we begin to create too becomes to be known as spirituals. It has many, many elements. There are spirituals that describe how we felt about being taken away from where we came. There are spirituals that talk about death, how one wishes to die. There are spirituals that talk about whether or not we want to remain in the condition we'
re in. There are spirituals that are the road map to get to us to the next step of the journey."
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Sweet Honey in the Rock
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Photo by Bill O'Connell
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Before singing "Stranger Blues":
"People started migrating and couldn'
t find themselves in the churches in the big cities. . . . So, we created our own churches in our homes and in storefronts, and that'
s how come the storefronts were always so much more fun. Black music got to the North because of the whole process of migration. A new kind of music came out of migration. But when people left home, one, two at a time, they wrote their own music to sing for themselves, because they were leaving somebody and something behind. That music is blues. This is the blues."
President Roger Brown
President Brown talked about three landmark songs coming out of the black music and cultural tradition—"Amazing Grace," Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads"—as examples of music that should be studied closely. "At Berklee we have now embraced the notion that a performer is likely to more deeply render songs like [those three] if he or she knows the history and cultural roots of that music," Brown said.On understanding musical evolution:
"We believe that Berklee students have a responsibility to know how and why the genres of music upon which we focus—gospel, blues, jazz, Latin, modern compositional music, rock 'n'
roll, hip-hop—evolved as they did. And we believe that will allow our students to be more innovative, more creative as they create the next genre of music in the future."
On changing Berklee's mission statement:
"In the culmination of a process that began with the Faculty of African Descent, endorsed by our faculty union, deliberated upon widely in open meetings within the college, and ratified by our board of trustees last December, Berklee modified its mission statement, adding this first phrase that reads:
'Founded on jazz and popular music rooted in the African cultural diaspora, our comprehensive curriculum is distinctly contemporary in its content and approach, and embraces the principal musical movements of our time.'"
On the idea of the Black Music Matters event marking a new beginning:
"Tonight is a symbolic inception point of working toward a deeper understanding of the music we love and giving our students—through courses in Africana Studies—a window of understanding into the historical and cultural forces that so powerfully shaped the music of the Americas."
Rob Hochschild is senior editor in Berklee's Office of Communications.
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