Civil Rights Music Read online

  Where Kuhn conceived of scientific “paradigm-constituting entities” and “scientific revolutions,” it is possible for us to conceive of black popular music and black popular culture-constituting entities and countercultural revolutions that historically have and currently continue to “serve to realign [social, political, and cultural] thinking and that represent ideal examples of fundamentally innovative [social, political, and cultural] work”—à la George Lipsitz’s collective contentions in his volumes Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990b), Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place (1994), The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (1998), American Studies in a Moment of Danger (2001), Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Culture (2007), and How Racism Takes Place (2011). In applying Kuhn’s conception of scientific revolutions to the relationship between black popular music and black popular movements in general, and gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, rock & roll and the Civil Rights Movement in specific, it is relatively easy to see how black popular “songs and singers can serve a function akin to the exemplary works that Thomas Kuhn characterized as being central to scientific revolutions.” However, within the context of black popular music and black popular movements the focus logically shifts from natural science to the human, cultural, and social sciences, from scientific revolutions to social, political, and cultural revolutions. In this sense it would be difficult for anyone knowledgeable of the history of black popular music to deny the ways in which its unique dialogical and pedagogical relationship with black popular movements has consistently helped to “realign” and reinvigorate social, political, and cultural thinking and “represent ideal examples of fundamentally innovative” social, political, and cultural work either inspired by or emerging from black popular movements.

  Hence, when black popular music and black popular culture between 1954 and 1965 is viewed as part of the “symbolic action” and “cognitive praxis” of the Civil Rights Movement a qualitatively different, and more constructive conversation emerges. As both cultural expressions and “exemplary actions” of the Civil Rights Movement, gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll can be perceived as simultaneously “knowledge-bearing,” “identity-giving,” and “self-revealing.” As a result, civil rights music constitutes “symbolic representation[s]” of civil rights individuals and the civil rights collective which, taken together, expose us to many of the core concerns, political views, and social visions of the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, the representational nature of civil rights music in many senses “symbolizes all the movement stands for, what is seen as virtuous and what is seen as evil”—from the groundbreaking gospel of Mahalia Jackson and the polished “pop R&B” sound of Motown to the blistering genre-jumping iconic sonic social criticism of Nina Simone and raucous rock & roll of Little Richard.

  As Eyerman and Jamison (1998) observed, “art and music—culture—are forms of both knowledge and action,” they are “part of the frameworks of interpretation and representation produced within social movements and through which they influence the broader societal culture. As such, they are much more than functional devices for recruitment or resources to be mobilized” (23–24). In other words, even though it often appeared as though gospel, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll did not have a political agenda or viable social vision in the traditional social movement sense, because the Civil Rights Movement was actually the culmination of every black popular movement and every black popular culture that preceded it, many of its most significant cultural concerns, political views, and social visions were actually articulated through its cultural expressions and “exemplary actions,” including its music, dance, theater, literature, art, film, fashion and forays into more mainstream cultural conversations, social movements, and political struggles between 1954 and 1965.[18]

  However, even as we acknowledge the ways in which civil rights “art and music—[essentially, civil rights] culture—are forms of both knowledge and action” and “part of the frameworks of interpretation and representation produced within [the Civil Rights Movement] and through which [it] influence[d] the broader societal culture,” it is important for us not to overlook the myriad instrumental uses of black popular music in both “old” and “new” African American social and political movements. Tempering their discussion of the extra-musical functions of music within the context of social movements, Eyerman and Jamison maintained, “[i]t is not our intention to deny that there are instrumental uses of music in social movements and elsewhere, but, to the extent that social movements are able to transcend these instrumental (and commercial) usages, music as exemplary action becomes possible” (24). When we make critical distinctions between commercial and communal civil rights music and the myriad other forms of civil rights music—especially gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll—then the ways that civil rights music “transcend[s] . . . instrumental (and commercial) usages” and simultaneously serves instrumental, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, social, and political functions is even more evident.

  Many aspects of civil rights culture—not merely civil rights music—remarkably reflects the political views and social visions of the Civil Rights Movement. But, along with Eyerman and Jamison, I believe that music is an especially powerful political and pedagogical tool in relationship to modern social movements in light of the fact that it is essentially inextricable from, and at the heart of what could be called “civil rights popular culture,” and especially civil rights style, performance, opposition, leisure, consumption, representation, and, increasingly, liberation (both physical and psychological liberation). Continuing this line of logic, Eyerman and Jamison insightfully asserted:

  As cognitive praxis, music and other forms of cultural activity contribute to the ideas that movements offer and create in opposition to the existing social and cultural order. Perhaps more effectively than any other form of expression, music also recalls a meaning that lies outside and beyond the self. In that sense it can be utopian or pre-modern. In saying this we do not mean to imply that such truth-bearing is inherent in music, part of some transcendent and metaphysical fundament. Our argument is more modest in that we restrict our claim to music in relation to social movements. In social movements, even mass-produced popular music can take on a truth-bearing significance. (24)

  As will be witnessed when we reinterpret gospel, freedom songs, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll as “cognitive praxes” and “exemplary actions” emerging from within the cultural context of the Civil Rights Movement, the myriad genres of civil rights music consistently conveyed the collective “ideas that [the Civil Rights Movement] offer[ed] and create[d] in opposition to the existing social and cultural order” which, sad to say, continues to ideologically enslave, racially colonize, and economically exploit African America close to two decades into the twenty-first century. If nothing else, then, Civil Rights Music will discursively demonstrate how “even mass-produced [and mass-consumed] [black] popular music can take on a truth-bearing significance” and serve instrumental, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, social, and political functions within the context of arguably the most-noted black popular movement of all-time: the Civil Rights Movement. Moreover, this study will also take great pains to point out the ways past black popular movements’ relationships with past black popular musics were handed down to the Civil Rights Movement and essentially provided it with a paradigm with which to incessantly invent and evolve its relationship with not simply civil rights music, but also other forms of civil rights popular culture.

  African American movements historically have been and unrepentantly remain much more complicated and complex than most historians, sociologists, political scientists, and economists of social movements have been willing to concede. All of this is to say that when I write of “civil rights music” in the pages to follow, I am invoking a key cultural and aesthetic aspect of a momentou
s and multidimensional movement that is much like the turn of the twentieth century African American movements (e.g., the Black Women’s Club Movement, New Negro Movement, and Harlem Renaissance) which, whether acknowledged or not, provided the Civil Rights Movement with not merely its aesthetics, but with the firm foundations upon which it built its pioneering desegregationist and integrationist history, culture, politics, and social justice agenda. Moreover, here by summoning “civil rights music” I wish to move the conversation concerning the Civil Rights Movement forward, above and beyond critiques—constructive or otherwise—about movement moderatism, conservatism, bourgeoisism and integrationism. Quite the contrary, Civil Rights Music seeks to turn our attention anew toward the ways in which one-dimensional discussions that crudely collapse the whole of the Civil Rights Movement into desegregationist and integrationist, non-violent and civil disobedient politics, erase or, at the very least, render invisible not only the Civil Rights Movement’s unique aesthetics, culture, and popular culture (e.g., music, visual art, dance, theater, literature, film, and fashion, etc.), but also the myriad ways in which it articulated its ideals and ethos via an incredibly creative combination of both politics and aesthetics.

  Perhaps, nothing exemplifies the Civil Rights Movement’s expression of its ideals and ethos via an incredibly creative combination of both politics and aesthetics, both social movement and popular music, better than the sacred soundtracks of the movement: gospel music and freedom songs. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to the sacred soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement and explore two often-muted and much-misunderstood mouthpieces of the movement. In the spirit of W. E. B. Du Bois, let us look at, and attentively listen to the 1950s and 1960s “sorrow songs”—songs of heavenly salvation and earthly liberation. Songs of sorrow. Songs of hope. Songs of freedom. Indeed, freedom songs.

  Notes

  1. For further discussion of the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement deconstructed and reconstructed American democracy, citizenship, and education, and for the most noteworthy works that influenced my interpretation here, see Burns (1990), Butler (2016), Crosby (2011), Dudziak (2011), Francis (2014), Hale (2016), Hogan (2007), Mantler (2013), Polsgrove (2001), Salmond (1997), Sitkoff (2008), Sullivan (2009), Thuesen (2013), and Tsesis (2008).

  2. For examples of noteworthy works on the Civil Rights Movement’s politics, economics, and social justice agenda, see K. T. Andrews (2004), Ashmore (2008), Chong (1991), Clayson (2010), Ezra (2013), Hall (2005), Katagiri (2014), Lawson (2014), Le Blanc and Yates (2013), Luders (2010), Mann (2007), and G. Wright (2013).

  3. For examples of noteworthy works that engage the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement helped to revitalize mid-twentieth century American culture in general, and regional and local cultures in particular, see K. T. Andrews (2004), Ashmore (2008), Boyett (2015), Brown-Nagin (2011), Chappell (1994), Clayson (2010), Crosby (2011), de Jong (2002), Dittmer (1994), Eskew (1997), Estes (2015), Fairclough (2008), Friedland (1998), Gonda (2015), Greene (2005), Hale (2016), Katagiri (2014), Lefever (2005), Levy (2003), Little (2009), Lovett (2005), Marshall (2013), Moore and Burton (2008), Norrell (1998), Pfaff (2011), Ralph (1993), Rogers (1993), C. F. Smith (2008), Sokol (2006), Thuesen (2013), and Wallenstein (2008).

  4. For further discussion of the distinct histories and cultures of African American social and political movements, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my analysis here, see D. W. Aldridge (2011), V. P. Franklin (1984), Giddings (1984), Gore, Theoharis and Woodard (2009), V. Harding (1981), Hine and Thompson (1998), Kelley and Lewis (2000), Kendi (2012), Marable and Mullings (2000), Payne and Green (2003), C. J. Robinson (1997), Singh (2004), Theoharis and Woodard (2005), Walters (1993), and Y.R. Williams (2015).

  5. For further discussion of Antonio Gramsci’s life and legacy, especially his intriguing conception of the “organic intellectual,” and for the works which influenced my interpretation here, see Adamson (1980), Boggs (1976), Fiori (1990), Germino (1990), Gramsci (1977, 1978, 1985, 1995, 2000), Hoare and Sperber (2015), Holub (1992), S. J. Jones (2006), McNally (2015), and Rosengarten (2014).

  6. My interpretation of the new social movement model has been influenced by Goodwin and Jasper (2003), Laraña, Johnston and Gusfield (1994), S. S. Lee (2014), Mullings (2009), Morris and Mueller (1992), Porta and Diani (2006), A. Scott (1990), and Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2004).

  7. For further discussion of the Civil Rights Movement’s unique utilization of radio, television, print media, grassroots political organizing, and more traditional forms of social activism in its efforts to establish and express its “movement ideology,” and for the works which influenced my interpretation here, see Bodroghkyozy (2013), Classen (2004), Cripps (1977, 1993), Davies (2001), Delmont (2012), Savage (1999), Sturkey and Hale (2015), Torres (2003), and B. Ward (2001, 2004).

  8. For examples of the scholarship that influenced my interpretation of the defining characteristics of new social movements, see Dalton and Kuechler (1990), Goodwin and Jasper (2003), Haynes (1997), C. A. Kelly (2001), Laraña, Johnston and Gusfield (1994), S. H. Lee (2007), McAdams, McCarthy and Zald (1996), Meyer and Tarrow (1998), Petras (2003), Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2004), and Sutton (2000).

  9. For further discussion of the ways in which American apartheid assaulted all African Americans, as well as their kith and kin from other countries, whether they were moderates, militants, or “silent members” of the Civil Rights Movement or not, see Bartley (1969), Berger (2010), Bloom (1987), Chappell (1994), Colley (2013), Egerton (1994), Eskew (1997), Holsaert, Noonan and Richardson (2010), Houck and Dixon (2009), Lavelle (2014), Lefever (2005), Leidholdt (1997), G. Lewis (2006), Lovett (2005), McMillen (1971), Moore and Burton (2008), Ownby (2008), Rogers (1993), C. F. Smith (2008), and Webb (2005).

  10. For further discussion of the Civil Rights Movement’s regressive, if not outright reactionary, elements, and for the works which influenced my interpretation here, see Boyd (2012), Draper (1994), Dupont (2013), Ellis (2013), Isserman and Kazin (2015), Lawson (2014), Ownby (2002), C. Taylor (2011), J. M. Ward (2011), and J. E. Williams (2003).

  11. My emphasis on the Civil Rights Movement in the American social imagination and American cultural memory has been influenced by a number of noteworthy works, including Armstrong (2015), Dwyer and Alderman (2008), Eagles (1986), Fosl and K’Meyer (2009), Lavelle (2014), Lyon (1992), Mendel-Reyes (1995), Rogers (1993), Romano and Raiford (2006), and Valk and Brown (2010).

  12. For further discussion of the “movement cultures” within the wider Civil Rights Movement, and for the works which influenced my interpretation here, see Countryman (2006), Crosby (2011), Dittmer (1994), Eskew (1997), Gellman (2012), S. Hall (2005), S. S. Lee (2014), Moore and Burton (2008), Morgan and Davies (2012), Pfaff (2011), Sokol (2006), Street (2007), and Theoharis and Woodard (2005).

  13. With regard to the cultural histories of the Civil Rights Movement that I have in mind, and that have influenced my interpretation here, see Chappell (1994), J. E. Davis (2001), Dierenfield (2008), Dittmer (1994), Eagles (1986), Egerton (1994), L. E. Hill (2004), Levy (1992, 2015), Lucks (2014), Norrell (1998), Polsgrove (2001), Robnett (1997), Sullivan (2009), and Weisbrot (1990).

  14. My critical exploration of the origins and early evolution of the Civil Rights Movement as far back as World War II and its immediate aftermath (circa 1939 to 1954) has been indelibly influenced by C. Anderson (2003), Berrey (2015), Brown-Nagin (2011), Cashman (1991), Estes (2005), Ferguson (2002), Griffin (2013), Hamlin (2012), Jones-Branch (2014), Kruse and Tuck (2012), Kryder (2000), Rosenberg (2006), Savage (1999), Scott and Womack (1998), C. Taylor (2011), Wall (2008), and R. P. Young (1970).

  15. For more detailed discussion of the Africana tradition of critical theory or, rather, Africana critical theory, see Rabaka (2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2014, 2015).

  16. Along with Africana studies and more general critical social scientific research methods, Africana critical theory has also been deeply influenced by the monumental meta-methodolo
gical studies by Bonilla-Silva and Zuberi (2008), Chilisa (2012), Denzin, Lincoln and Smith (2008), Gunaratnam (2003), Kovach (2009), Mertens, Cram and Chilisa (2013), Sandoval (2000), L. T. Smith (1999), and S. Wilson (2008), each of which seeks to decolonize research methods and emphasize their importance for the development of critical theories of white supremacist patriarchal colonial capitalist societies. The influence of these works on Africana critical theory’s methodological orientation cannot be overstated.