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“Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”

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“Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” The Black Scholar Journal of Black Studies and Research ISSN: 0006-4246 (Print) 2162-5387 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtbs20 “Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” P. Kimberleigh Jordan To cite this article: P. Kimberleigh Jordan (2016) “Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”, The Black Scholar, 46:1, 37-45, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2015.1119623 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2015.1119623 Published online: 03 Feb 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtbs20 Download by: [pk jordan] Date: 08 February 2016, At: 10:41 “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn century. Each expresses a distinctive response Me Around” to the lived experiences of black people, and the embodied performance that occurs in Spirituals as Embodied Acts of each period expresses power to resist death- Resistance dealing circumstances and to reach toward possibilities of hope and liberation. I P. KIMBERLEIGH JORDAN examine the embodied performance of the spirituals through a dance analytical lens, fore- or nearly four centuries, people of African grounding the presence of the body and focus- F descent in the Diaspora expressed their ing on ways that black bodies have resisted presence, pain, desires, and hopes through annihilation through faith and spiritual prac- the repertoire of the spirituals.1 Spirituals tice. The spirituals have held a persistent materialize the historic and continuing place in black performance practices through- power and possibility of black existence out the history of the African Diaspora in North through sound, movement, communal and America. The continued powerful and moving spiritual formation, in the face of long histories presence of black bodies in them energizes of racialized oppressions that have violated this study. black bodies, minds, and spirits. By congre- Bernice Johnson Reagon, scholar of gating in performative and spiritually power- African American culture and history and ful ways, black people have connected to founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, “ divine realms and each other, building a foun- describes the spirituals as announc[ing] our ” dation for continued existence in unfamiliar existence culturally and ontologically: and unfriendly lands. My interest in the spirituals departs from the These [spirituals] have to do with stating a usual ethnomusicological analysis, instead worldview, or positioning yourself in the using a dance-analytical lens to engage the world . this culture that empowers you as spirituals as embodied black performance. I a unit in the universe and places you, and argue that the spirituals have been significant makes you know you are a child of the uni- Downloaded by [pk jordan] at 10:41 08 February 2016 sites of spiritual power and resistance in the verse . that would give us a chance to be African Diaspora during three overlapping, different from the recipe that brought us interrelated periods of black performance here . Black singing is running sound history—the congregational, the concert, through your body. [Y]ou cannot sing a and the Civil Rights protest periods. The con- [spiritual] and not change your condition.2 gregational period had its greatest influence during the colonial and antebellum eras of Within this performative complex, sound and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the movement overlap, enabling the performer to concert period began with the 1871 founding experience personal and communal of the Fisk Jubilee Singers; the Civil Rights “change.” This notion of spirituals effecting protest period began in the mid-twentieth “change” is a primary reason that spirituals © 2016 The Black World Foundation The Black Scholar 2016 Vol. 46, No. 1, 37–45, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2015.1119623 engage black bodies—both as laboring, suf- understandings. These adapted theologies fering, commodified bodies, and as bodies and practices cosigned their future emancipa- through which divine power can move. The tion, rather than their continued oppression. spirituals exemplify Black communal per- formance of sound running through the Communal and Congregational [moving] body over three performance Spirituals periods. The earliest performances of spirituals in North America were communal perform- The Congregational Period ances by everyday people in out-of-the-way Africans brought to North America in the colo- places like hush arbors, clearings, and praise nial and antebellum periods came from a houses. Sounds and movement reflected the variety of cultures and spiritual backgrounds. diverse Africanist communities that produced Immaterial elements of their cultures and them. Lyrics and tunes were orally trans- backgrounds were not erased by transatlantic mitted, situating the black moving body as passage.3 Though the white people who the repository of performance. Interwoven enslaved them claimed Christianity as their with the sound of spirituals were rhythmically religion, they were minimally effective in and improvisationally moving bodies. initial efforts to convert Africans to Christian- ity. Instead, Africans would, as one of the spiri- The Ring Shout tuals proclaims, “steal away” to private locations to commune before the divine in A significant example of spirituals as commu- their own ways, absent from the gaze of nal sacred performance running sound white owners.4 Such practices included ritual through moving bodies is the Ring Shout. A gatherings with dance, sound, rhythmic per- unique kinesthetic ritual, it combines a formance, call-and-response, spoken and number of embodied expressions: lower and sung words at their core—all elements of upper body movement, singing, rhythm- immaterial Africanist cultures.5 Participating making, and spiritual formation. Its existence Downloaded by [pk jordan] at 10:41 08 February 2016 in these rituals, early generations of enslaved evidences early generations of diasporan Afri- Africans resisted encroaching Christian hege- cans’ resistance to cultural and spiritual mony, with its notions of how bodies should annihilation, bringing together spiritual prac- and should not worship God. tices from the breadth of Africanist traditions The religious landscape for free and and rematerializing through black bodies. enslaved people of North America began to Native-born Africans and their American- change during the Christian revivalist born progeny practiced the Ring Shout, devel- periods of the mid-18th through the mid- oped it, and passed it on to subsequent 19th centuries. As more enslaved persons generations. were born in North America, more adapted Imagine a group of black people gathered and syncretized Christianity toward embo- in a remote place, away from any authority died worship and liberative theological or audience of slave owners and missionaries. 38 TBS • Volume 46 • Number 1 • Spring 2016 They are standing. They rock, hum, and pray Ring Shout is a fully engaging spiritual prac- lengthy song-prayers for the Spirit to inhabit tice for its participants. their gathering. Eventually a leader “lifts” a song, sometimes called a “runnin’ spiritual.” Concert Spirituals The runnin’ spiritual is up-tempo and accom- panies the Shout’s perambulatory rhythm. As Concert spirituals are the focus of the second “ ” tempo and rhythm quicken, the people performance period. Concert refers to a move into the ring, shuffling in a counter- public performance of music or dance com- clockwise direction, their feet close to the positions previously rehearsed and depen- floor and never crossing their ankles. The dent upon performer technique and training. grounded, linear foot movement creates an Concert spirituals fused Africanist spiritual ongoing baseline rhythm—what James practice and embodiment, as well as Weldon Johnson calls “the fundamental beat western European musical tradition based of the dance.”6 on the diatonic octave scale. This was the A description of a Ring Shout7 in late-nine- post-Emancipation period of Reconstruction, teenth-century Florida: with its historical highs and lows, especially in the struggles of newly freed slaves and the evaporation of promises, proffered to them The Shouters formed in a Ring, men and during Reconstruction, of resources and women alternating, their bodies close equality. Though no longer property, black together, moved round and round on shuf- bodies continued to be in trouble. Where con- fling feet that never left the floor. With the gregational spirituals were birthed in seclu- heel of the right foot, they pounded out the sion, the genesis of concert spirituals was fundamental beat of the dance and with decidedly public. Performed on a proscenium their hands clapped out the varying rhythmi- stage, concert spirituals were sung a capella cal accents of the chant; for the music was, in by virtually immobile performers. Certainly, fact, an African chant and the Shout an running sound through im/mobile black African dance, the whole pagan rite trans- bodies under the gaze of others was planted and adapted to Christian worship. precarious. Downloaded by [pk jordan] at 10:41 08 February 2016 Round and round the Ring would go: one, two, three, four, five hours, the very monot- ony and sound and motion inducing ecstatic Running Sound through Immobile 8 frenzy. Bodies: Fisk Jubilee Singers In the Gullah tradition,9 this “fundamental Fisk University was founded in 1866 in Nash- beat” is a pulse
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