Page 68 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

friend
I’ve got a we go again. The problem is rich. If fundamental, too. My friend Delvyn
But there’s something even more

blackness can draw all of this ornate
literariness out of Steely Dan and all Case, a musician who teaches at

who’s an incurable this psychotic origami out of Emi- Wheaton College, explained in an

nem; if it can make Teena Marie sing
email that improvisation is one of

everything — ‘‘Square Biz,’’ ‘‘Revolu- the most crucial elements in what

Pandora guy, tion,’’ ‘‘Portuguese Love,’’ ‘‘Lovergirl’’ we think of as black music: ‘‘The rais-

ing of individual creativity/expres-

way around a

— like she knows her

pack of Newports; if it can turn the sion to the highest place within the

chorus of Carly Simon’s ‘‘You Belong aesthetic world of a song.’’ Without

to Me’’ into a gospel hymn; if it can improvisation, a listener is seduced
animate the swagger in the sardonic into the composition of the song

vulnerabilities of Amy Winehouse; if itself and not the distorting or devi-

it can surface as unexpectedly as it ating elements that noise creates.

does in the angelic angst of a singer Particular to black American music

as seemingly green as Ben Platt; if is the architecture to create a means

it’s the reason Nu Shooz’s ‘‘I Can’t by which singers and musicians can

Wait’’ remains the whitest jam at the be completely free, free in the only

blackest parties, then it’s proof of how way that would have been possible

deeply it matters to the music of being on a plantation: through art, through

alive in America, alive to America. music — music no one ‘‘composed’’
It’s proof, too, that American (because enslaved people were

music has been fated to thrive in an denied literacy), music born of feel-

elaborate tangle almost from the ing, of play, of exhaustion, of hope.

beginning. Americans have made What you’re hearing in black

a political investment in a myth of music is a miracle of sound, an

racial separateness, the idea that experience that can really happen

art forms can be either ‘‘white’’ or only once — not just melisma, glis- via Getty Images. Turner: Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty Images.

‘‘black’’ in character when aspects sandi, the rasp of a sax, breakbeats

of many are at least both. The purity or sampling but the mood or inspi-

that separation struggles to main- ration from which those moments

tain? This country’s music is an arise. The attempt to rerecord it

you think about it, like a
advertisement for 400 years of the seems, if

and one Saturday while we were certitude of Doobie Brothers-era opposite: centuries of ‘‘amalgama- fool’s errand. You’re not capturing

making dinner, he found a station Michael McDonald on ‘‘What a Fool tion’’ and ‘‘miscegenation’’ as they the arrangement of notes, per se.
called Yacht Rock. ‘‘A tongue-in- Believes’’; in the rubber-band soul long ago called it, of all manner You’re catching the spirit.

of

t Again’’; in the

cheek name for the breezy sounds of Steely Dan’s ‘‘Do I interracial collaboration conducted And the spirit travels from host to

of late ’70s/early ’80s soft rock’’ is malt-liquor misery Ace’s ‘‘How with dismaying ranges of consent. host, racially indiscriminate about
of

Pandora’s definition, accompanied Long’’ and the toy-boat wistfulness ‘‘White,’’ ‘‘Western,’’ ‘‘classical’’ where it settles, selective only about

by an exhortation to ‘‘put on your of Little River Band’s ‘‘Reminiscing.’’ music is the overarching basis for who can withstand being possessed Walter/WireImage, via Getty Images. Lamar: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images. Above left: From The New York Public Library. Above right: Shutterstock.

Dockers, pull up a deck chair and Then Kenny Loggins’s ‘‘This Is It’’ lots of American pop songs. Chro- by it. The rockin’ backwoods blues

a
relax.’’ With single exception, arrived and took things far beyond matic-chord harmony, clean tim- so bewitched Elvis Presley that he

the passengers aboard the yacht the line. ‘‘This Is I t’ bre of voice and instrument: These believed he’d been called by black-
’ was a hit in 1979

were all dudes. With two excep- and has the requisite smoothness to are the ingredients for some of the ness. Chuck Berry sculpted rock ’n’

tions, they were all white. But as keep the yacht rocking. But Loggins hugely singable harmonies of the roll with uproarious guitar riffs and

the hours passed and dozens of delivers the lyrics in a desperate Beatles, the Eagles, Simon and Fleet- lascivious winks at whiteness. Mick

songs accrued, the sound gravitat- stage whisper, like someone deter- wood Mac, something choral, ‘ ‘pure,’’ Jagger and Robert Plant and Steve

ed toward a familiar quality that I mined to make the kind of love that largely ungrained. Black music is a Winwood and Janis Joplin and the

couldn’t give language to but could doesn’t wake the baby. What bowls completely diff erent story. It brims Beatles jumped, jived and wailed Opening pages: Source photograph of Beyoncé: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images. Holiday: Paul Hoeffler/Redferns,

practically taste: an earnest Chris- you over is the intensity of his yearn- with call and response, layers of syn- the black blues. Tina Turner wrest-

tian yearning that would reach, for a ing — teary in the verses, snarling copation and this rougher element ed it all back, tripling the octane

moment, into Baptist rawness, into during the chorus. He sounds as if called ‘‘noise,’’ unique sounds that in some of their songs. Since the

a known warmth. I had to laugh — he’s baring it all yet begging to wring arise from the particular hue and tim- 1830s, the historian Ann Douglas

not because as a category Yacht himself out even more. bre of an instrument — Little Rich- writes in ‘‘Terrible Honesty,’’ her

Rock is absurd, but because what Playing black-music detective that ard’s woos and knuckled keyboard history of popular culture in the

I tasted in that absurdity was black. day, I laughed out of bafflement and zooms. The dusky heat of Miles 1920s, ‘‘American entertainment,

I started putting each track under embarrassment and exhilaration. It’s Davis’s trumpeting. Patti LaBelle’s whatever the state of American

investigation. Which artists would the conflation of pride and chagrin emotional police siren. DMX’s society, has always been integrated,

saunter up to the racial border? I’ve always felt anytime a white per- scorched-earth bark. The visceral if only by theft and parody.’’ What

And which could do their saunter- son inhabits blackness with gusto. It’s: stank of Etta James, Aretha Franklin, we’ve been dealing with ever since Richards: Chris

ing without violating it? I could hear You have to hand it to her. It’s: Go, white live-in-concert Whitney Houston and is more than a catchall word like

degrees of blackness in the choir-loft boy. Go, white boy. Go. But it’s also: Here Prince on electric guitar. ‘‘appropriation’’ can approximate.

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