#1 "When the Storm Breaks" 1:50
by Ian Stuart
Performed by Screwdriver: Ian Stuart, Mark Sutherland, Adam
Douglas, and Paul Swain.
Blood & Honour Rock-O-Rama (Germany) RRR53 ©1985

Screwdriver is a racist skinhead band from England. While they never use explicit terms in reference to race, the cover art of this album (which I’ll show you in class) makes their intention all too clear. If you listen to the lyrics, however, you won’t have much trouble picking up on the disturbing implications. My reason for beginning this tape with this song is to scare everyone a bit. This album certainly scared me. Contrary to what conventional wisdom may claim these days, I’m afraid that racism is alive and doing quite well. A few minutes searching for white supremacy sites on the web should dispel any doubts you might have. Why do I claim that an English band recording on a German label is proof of racism in the U.S? Primarily because this album and this band have a dedicated following in this country. (The album’s acknowledgements thank "Bob and Michelle from the U.S.A., [and] all our mates everywhere.") The copy I used to make this tape was borrowed from a local record store and sells for $50 as a collectors’ item. The owner of the store told me that a number of skinhead records are manufactured in the United States because Nazi propaganda is banned in Germany, so these German recording companies must come to the U.S. to produce their albums. (This particular album was manufacture in Belgium.) After hearing West speak at the U of M Martin Luther King Day Symposium (1998), I decided that he was right about the dangers of "celebrating" the success of the Civil Rights Movement too casually. American culture still has an ugly and extremely freightening side. By recognizing this dark element of our culture, I hope to show how the issues brought up in the remainder of this tape are still vital to the survival of the U.S. as a true democracy. These songs remain as poignant, compelling, and essential to the ideals of the U.S. Constitution as they were before the Civil Rights Act of 1968 or Wynton Marsalis winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

#2 "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" 3:30
Traditional (first notated in mid-19th century), perf. 1991
Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall Deutsche Grammophon 435 440 ©1992

When the Czechlaslovakia composer, Antonin Dvorak, was brought to the U.S. in 1889? to found a school of "American" composition, he suggested that the two sources of a truly American music were Negro spirituals and Native American song. Spirituals formed the core repertory of the Harlem Renaissance, a social movement that attempted to win social equality through cultural excellence. These songs are not really African or American, but represent a fusion of African music with European hymns and African gods with Christianity. In the late nineteenth century, black composers began setting these folk hymns as art songs and this genre entered the concert hall carried along by many accomplished black opera singers. Kathleen Battle is one of these black operatic stars (or Divas &endash; as female vocal stars are often known -- it’s the feminine form of "goddess" or "divine one"). She performs without the traditional piano accompaniment of Western European art song in an attempt to recapture some of the authentic flavor of original slave performances.

#3 "The Flat Foot Floogie" 2:28
Slim and Slam (Bulee Gaillard and Leroy Stewart) (1938)
The Groove Juice Special Columbia/Legacy CK 64898 ©1996

Slim and Slam were a vaudeville-styled comedy and musical duo. They combined music, virtuosity, tap dancing, and slapstick routines to "entertain." Both artists were black and much like Amos and Andy, were forced to cater to white taste in order to be successful professionally. This song, for example, was originally entitled "The Flat Foot Floozie." A white-owned record company decided that the title was too risque and forced the duo to change it to meet with American puritanical mores. (If they had only known what was to come... ) In the 1960s this assimilationist approach to race relations came under attack by the black power movement. For me, however, artists such as Gallard and Stewart made the best of a limited range of opportunities. Black Power built upon the success of entertainers like Slim and Slam and might not have been possible without them. How successful were Slim & Slam? Well the sheet music to this tune was included in a time capsule buried at the 1939 New York World’s Fair along with John Philip Sousa’s The Stars And Stripes Forever and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue! Why did they achieve this success? --Because a white jazzband leader, Benny Goodman, made a band recording of Flat Foot Floogie that received a lot of radio play. With their reputation made, however, audiences began to see Gaillard and Stewart in concert &endash; i.e., by playing the corporate game, these black performers earned a certain degree of artistic freedom and gained a voice in society.

#4 "Hallelujah I Love Her So" 2:34
Ray Charles (b. 1930; Albany, Georgia), 1956
The Best of Ray Charles Atlantic/Rhino 71722 ©1994

Blind from a childhood case of untreated glaucoma, Ray Charles (Robinson) revolutionized popular music by almost single-handedly inventing Soul. In Soul, Charles combined Rhythm and Blues with the music of the black church, i.e., gospel (along with the secular lyrics and narritives of the blues and country, the big-band arrangements of jazz, and the rhythmic and improvisational characteristics of each.) While Soul originated as another assimilationist strategy, its musical power undoubtedly influenced later black nationalistic musics.

#5 "Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud), Pt. 1" 2:47, 1969
Written by James Brown (b. 1933, Barnwell, S.C.) and Alfred Ellis
Performed by James Brown
Originally from Album entitled, Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud
James Brown Greatest Hits Polydor ©1991

Known as "Soul Brother Number One," "Mr. Dynamite," and "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, " and even "The Original Disco Man," Brown was probably the most successful black vocalist of the 1960s and 70s. With over 800 songs in his repertoire, Brown reshaped music dance music and greatly influenced funk and artists as varied as Michael Jackson, P, and Public Enemy. He adamantly refused to conform his artistic vision to record executives, but owes a debt to the Civil Rights Movement which made this ability to assert artistic control a possiblility. He renegotiated his contract with King in 1965 giving him complete artistic control. Say it Loud resulted from this new found autonomy and broke the top 20 on the pop chart. Pretty amazing considering the racial tensions of the time. In the latter 60s, Brown became a symbol of race pride and a cultural hero. A black man or wealth, independence and influence, he was a symbol of self-determination and triumph over racism. (Note that he triumphed over racism -- he did not defeat or destroy racism.) Brown took this responsibility seriously and recorded songs such as "Don’t be a Drop-Out and "I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I’ll Get It Myself). He even went on TV following the assassination of Martin Luther King to plead for calm. He fell in popularity in the 1970s, but his music served as a prime source of samples for Rap and he continues to perform.

#6 "Strange Fruit" 5:33
by Lewis Allen
Performed by Cassandra Wilson (v), Chris Whitley (resophonic guitar), Lonnie Plaxico (b), and Graham Haynes (coronet).
New Moon Daughter Blue Note 112088 ©1995

First popularized by jazz vocalist Billy Holiday, "Strange Fuit" has become a standard tune for black female jazz vocalists, including Nina Simone and here, Cassandra Wilson. (Wilson performed the female lead (Leona) in Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields.) If you don’t listen to the words you might find this to be a pleasing, even enchanting ballad. The words however paint a gruesome picture of desecrated bodies suspended from trees. "Strange Fruit" is about lynching. While it seems almost unbelievable today, it was not uncommon even 30 or so years ago for vigilanti bands of whites (especially the Klu Klux Klan) to execute blacks accused of crimes or just suspected of political agitation by hanging. My conservative encyclopedia counts 3,000 deaths between the 1880s and the 1960s, but I have read estimates that are much higher. According to records kept by Monroe N. Work, head of the division of records and research of the Tuskegee Institute, there were 54 lynchings in 1916 (50 blacks and 4 whites). When known, the charges (not convictions) for which they were put to death were:

Killing a police officer (10) Attempted Rape (9) Murder (7) Assisting escape (5) Wounding a police officer (4) Rape (3) Insult (2) Hog stealing (1)

What emotions do you get from Wilson’s performance? Does her arrangement accentuate the horror or add to the irony of the ballad?

#7 "Oxford Town" 1:46, ca. 1963
Bob Dylan (b. 1941 in Duluth Minnesota)
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan Columbia CK8786 ©1963

Considered by Rolling Stone to be "the most unpredictable figure in rock," Dylan crosses over between Folk and Rock by infusing his music with poignant and cutting social messages. Oxford Town is such a song. It refers to the plight of a black student, James Howard Meredith, 29, who had won the right in the U.S. Supreme court to attend the University of Mississippi in 1963. An Air Force veteran, Meredith had to be escorted to class by U.S. marshals with Federal troops standing guard because rioting had broken out after the court’s decision. He could withstand the pressure for only 10 months, living under constant Federal guard.

#8 "Stand!" 3:04, 1973
by Sly and the Family Stone (formed 1967 in San Francisco)
Anthology Epic EGK 37071 ©1981

Using black rhythm and a psychedelic sensibility, Sly and the Family Stone fused pop, soul, and rock into a musical synthesis that appealed to both white and black audiences. Along with James Brown, Sly helped invent funk. Their music had a huge influence on later developments in disco and artists such as P &endash; especially because of their aggressive use of racial and sexual themes. "Stand!" was on the pop charts for 80 weeks (i.e., a year and a half).

#9 "Whitey on the Moon" 1:26, 1970
Gil Scott-Heron (b. on April Fools Day, 1949 in Chicago)
125th and Lenox RCA 67113 ©1988

In July of 1969 when Neil Armstrong triumphantly described "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," he did not speak for all Americans. Millions of people believed that the moon walk had been staged by the government to divert attention from the Vietnam War. Others argued that the scientific expertise and dollars spent on space exploration should rather have been spent on social programs. Scott-Heron’s song brings out this tension by focusing on the contemporaneous plight of Americans living in poverty. Is this song only about race issues or is class an element as well? Does it speak only to blacks or to whites as well?

#10 "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" 3:03, 1971
Gil Scott Heron (b. 1949 in Chicago)
Pieces of a Man RCA 67113 ©1988

Obviously, Scott Heron is one of the predecessors of rap. This song has the same combination of lyrical punch, rhythm, and rhyme. Yet rather than samples or scratching, he sings/recites over a mix of jazz and funk. Scott-Heron has described himself by saying, "I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation." Yet he did not speak only to blacks. Disillusionment with the government was hardly the province of only minorities and the unemployed. Events like Woodstock showed that young whites, even those of middle and upper-middle class origin, were frustrated by events like the Vietnam War and H20-gate.

Scott-Heron’s music is certainly political, in even the narrowest sense of the word. How many topical references can you find in the lyrics? Can you identify any of the targets? Does he criticize or embrace television as a vehicle of communication? And what does this song say about the U.S. black population? In 1970, was it a homogeneous seamless whole or a heterogeneous amalgam of individuals each struggling with his or her own objectives and strategies for social change? Do any of the lyrics strike you as particularly resonant for today’s society?

#11 "Which Way to America?" 3:43, ca. 1988
by Vernon Reid (b. 1958)
performed by Living Colour (formed 1983, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Vivid Epic EK 44099 ©1988

Propelled by the success of Vivid’s first cut, "Cult of Personality (#13, 1989)," this tune found its way into a lot of record collections. An all-black band playing hard-edged rock, Living Colour used its notoriety to advocate a political agenda of self-reliance and spearheaded New York’s Black Rock Coalition. Their energetic, rhythmically complex, and harmonically studied music draws equally from Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis post Bitches Brew fusion. The band’s name is taken from the old NBC preprogram announcement: "The following program is brought to you in living colour." Why the British spelling? I don’t know &endash; unless it’s some act of resistance to U.S. mannarisms. Mick Jagger personally financed and produced the band’s first two demos (including Which Way to America?"), but the band did not become successful until a video for Cult of Personality appeared on MTV. Soon after, Living Colour won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. In 1989, the band opened for the Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour. The band broke up in 1995. Trivia Question: Which Star-Spangled guitarist had a huge influence on Vernon Reid’s playing &endash; you should be able to recognize the style in his solo break.

#12 "Every Valley Shall Be Exalted" 3:42
Based on the Messiah by Georg Fredric Handel
Arranged by Mervyn Warren and Mark Kibble, rap lyric by Mike E
A Soulful Celebration Reprise 26980 ©1992

Signifyin(g) is a concept that lies at the core of the African American aesthetic, at least, according to black intellecutals such as literary critic Henry Louis Gates (currently at Harvard). This cut is a great example of Signifyin(g). Here Mervyn Warren takes a piece of Western European classical music and reinvents it using musical elements borrowed from all of black music. In 18??, a group of Bostonians organized the Handel and Haydn Society for the performance of European classical and religious music. The very first work that they performed was Handel’s Messiah. Its popularity has never waned. To this day, the Messiah is performed in almost every community across the United States during the Christmas. It’s popularity helps this classical work bridge the gap between the colonial and democratic sphere, leading to the phenomenon of the "Do It Yourself Messiah". In Chicago, for example, a community group rents out Orchestra Hall and gets a volunteer orchestra together. After passing out music to the audience, everyone in attendance stands and sings along as the orchestra plays the accompaniment.

A Soulful Celebration includes 16 tracks and ends with the most famous Handel excerpt from the Messiah, the "Hallelujah" Chorus. The opening Overture is a capsule history of black musical traditions and each track builds chronologically on a different black musical tradition. Which tradition does this track mine for ideas? Jazz, R & B, the Blues, Gospel, Rap? Is there more than one? What about the lyrics? Warren starts off by sticking close to the original (which is also in English), but the rap lyric bends and expands upon these themes. Even when the text remains the same, do you think that the musical rendition influences our way of interpreting the words? So this is Signifyin(g): take an established cultural object with a set of clear associations and put it into a new context where ideas again become malleable. The Messiah represents the epitome of Western European (read: white) culture, but Warren transforms it into a powerful statement about: (you fill in the blank).

#13 "It’s Wrong" 6:51
Stevie Wonder (b. 1950 in Saginaw, Michigan)
In Square Circle Motown 6134 TC ©1985

Groomed from an early age for Motown stardom, Stevie Wonder mastered that label’s distinctive fusion of pop and soul and then went on to compose far more individual music &endash; an ambitious hybrid of sophisticated Tin Pan Alley chord changes and R & B energy, inflected with jazz, reggae, and African rhythms. He has had a remarkable number of hit songs, and was the first Motown artist to receive complete artistic autonomy. A synthesizer and studio pioneer, he does all of his own production and almost always plays every instrument included on his recordings. Although keeping pace with contemporary musical influences, his political stance reflects 1960s utopianism and non-violent protest tactics, strongly influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

In Square Circle (the album from which this song is taken) won the Grammy for Best R & B Male Vocal Persormance in 1986, but was banned in South Africa along with all the rest of Wonder’s music. Wonder had angered South African radio stations in 1985 when he dedicated his Oscar for best movie song to Nelson Mandela. Blind from birth, he was frequently compared to Ray Charles in his teenage years and marketed and produced in similar shouter mould. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Not only does the use of swahili texts in "It’s Wrong" relect this work’s subject matter, but the polyphonic rhythmic groove symbolizes Africa as well. Studies of African music have focused almost exclusively on rhythm, especially the polyphonic (multi-voiced) interplay of a series of drums. Here Wonder recreates this complex layering of rhythmic patterns on a drum machine. How many percussion voices can you identify? Are they all African sounding or is it a combination of Motown and African sounds?