#classicallyblack

I wanted to open up the conversation around what is classic black music to my friends and family. Because who says we can’t redefine and interrogate what is classical” to each one of us. I had a conversation with Qua Saylés, an International Studies masters student at DePaul about what is classic black music to her and why in the conversation below.  Enjoy and many thanks to Qua!

X: What kinds of music did you listen to as a kid?

Q: As a kid, I recall my mom playing a lot of Gerald Levert. SHE LOVES HIM. I remember her getting pulled over for speeding. She was playing something by him and the officer goes “Oh, you jamming huh.” She didn’t get a ticket.

My gma listened to a lot of what my cousins and I used to call “nasty blues.” We called it “nasty blues” because of the sexually explicit lyrics. You know, the same kind Gma doesn’t like to hear coming from Young Thug. Some of her favorite artists are Johnny Taylor, J. Blackfoot, Denise Lasalle, Peggy Scott-Adams. They’re some of mine too.

But my choice of music as a kid was rangy and not classicallyblack: The Spice Girls, Britney Spears, NSYNC, TLC, Lil Bow Wow, Missy Elliot… Uncle Kracker’s ‘Follow Me’ is still a classic for me.

X: So start telling me about when you first heard their songs.When did you realize they were a bop!  For me, their songs really seem to encapsulate black joy. We use them at literally every black party.

Q: Today, I get into these moods where I listen to “old school” or my classicallyblack bops. Rick James’ Mary Jane, Curtis Mayfield’s Pusherman, Al Green’s Take Me to the River, Shirley Brown’s Woman to Woman, Johnnie Taylor’s Who’s Making Love, Peggy Scott-Adam’s Bill. I could go on and on. These are some of my favorite songs - and I know all of the lyrics. These are mostly the songs my gma would play with me, riding shotgun in her blue 1989 Oldsmobile 98. Super rangy, but classic in their style.

My absolute favorite classically black song is Frankie Beverly and Maze’s Before I Let Go.  I don’t know a song that is a bigger bop than this. I remember hearing, definitely not listening to it when I was kid. It was the music my mom would blast at ignorant levels on Saturday mornings to tell me that it was time for me to get up and help her clean the house. Because the music was often in relation to cutting my weekend sleep-ins short and cleaning, I didn’t like it - or at least I thought I didn’t. I think this song is special and powerful because it reminds me of this very moment. Today, it is my favorite song. I still clean to it. I get ready to it. I play it to kick off every party.  It’s soul. It’s funk. It’s r&b. It’s rock. Like, it just makes sense every time you hear it. The instrumental at the very beginning of Southern Girl.... Yoooooooo. I don’t have the words to describe how good this music feels. I just immediately know what it is and it’s a good time. Beverly’s voice and Maze’s incredible play… man, their music is black joy. For this reason, they are a fixture on every black family’s get-together or cook-out playlist. It transcends time because old folk and younger kids like it. I am one of their truest fans. You probably can’t find a 20-something year old a bigger fan than me.

Frances Walker-Slocum’s Brilliance and Advocacy: Bringing Black Classical Composers to the Forefront of Oberlin Conservatory

“Frances Walker was born on 6 March 1924 in Washington D. C. to George Theophilus Walker and Rosa King. Walker attended Dunbar High School, a Black institution known for its prominent alumni. She earned her Bachelor of Music at Oberlin Conservatory in 1945,  the only school to grant an undergraduate degree of music to a Black woman. Walker-Slocum recalled, “every black musician I knew in Washington studied in Oberlin. Oberlin was a vanguard in those days as far as blacks were concerned.”[1] She then taught for one year at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college, where she met Henry Chester Slocum, who would become her husband.[2] Slocum also attended Oberlin, but they never met there. In 1950 they married in New York City because Mississippi then prohibited intermarriage. In 1952, their son George Jeffrey, was born. Walker-Slocum earned an M. A. from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1952, and a professional diploma in 1972.”

Read more here: http://americanfeminisms.org/frances-walker-slocums-brilliance-and-advocacy-bringing-black-classical-composers-to-the-forefront-of-oberlin-conservatory/ 

“For racial culture the home of a self-styled "high-class" Negro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be more aping of things white than in a less cultured or less wealthy home. The father is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or politician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she may do nothing and have a maid. Father is often dark but he has usually married the lightest woman he could find. The family attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found. And they themselves draw a color line. In the North they go to white theaters and white movies. And in the South they have at least two cars and house "like white folks." Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people.

But then there are the low-down folks, the so-called common element, and they are the majority---may the Lord be praised! The people who have their hip of gin on Saturday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round. They live on Seventh Street in Washington or State Street in Chicago and they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhile. 0, let's dance! These common people are not afraid of spirituals, as for a long time their more intellectual brethren were, and jazz is their child. They furnish a wealth of colorful, distinctive material for any artist because they still hold their own individuality in the face of American standardizations. And perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself. Whereas the better-class Negro would tell the artist what to do, the people at least let him alone when he does appear. And they are not ashamed of him--if they know he exists at all. And they accept what beauty is their own without question.”

This is an incredibly interesting piece from Hughes. Throughout the piece, we find Hughes making the argument that music art that is truly authentic to the black experience essentially is found within the working class or even “low-down” folks. And that middle class black folks, particularly in the north, have lost touch with the an authentic black experience. Reading this, I instantly thought about how dangerous it is to fetishize the working or poorer classes. And that assimilation is not as cut and dry as Hughes would like us to believe. I think it is paramount that we start asking the questions: what does resistance look like at different class levels and how can we make sure we are not looking at the black community as a monolith. More thoughts on this to come!