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Episodes of Improvisational Lyricism from Hiphop to Pragmatism By

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Episodes of Improvisational Lyricism from Hiphop to Pragmatism By Spectra of Singularity: Episodes of Improvisational Lyricism from Hiphop to Pragmatism by Ryan Snyder Ananat A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Professor Richard Cándida Smith, Co-Chair Professor Jonathan E. Freedman, Co-Chair Associate Professor Penny M. Von Eschen Associate Professor Travis A. Jackson Associate Professor Sharon P. Holland, Duke University Sensitized to the power of the phatic and the ineffable . Paul Gilroy Words can take us so far; words can take us to the edge of the forest. Now we have to go in. Sakyong Mipham And the singular soul meditating in solitude is better than any talking, because it is only in the depths of individual experience that the spiritual can be discovered and lived in a fully real way. Reginald Ray © Ryan Snyder Ananat All rights reserved 2009 to Cabu ii Acknowledgements I’d like to thank the members of my committee. Richard and Sharon offered particularly crucial comments and support. Thanks also to: Ali Neff; Suzy Glazer and Matt Yospin; Emily Woltmann and Nick Lewis; Kristin Seefeldt and Greg Levine; Kristen, Erin, and Lillian Morgan Riley; Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat and the entire Oltmans/Mundt/Chainski/Mark amalgam. My appreciation goes out as well to Priscilla Wald, Jennifer Brody, and Fred Moten for welcoming me into the Duke community. Finally, this dissertation would have been impossible without Hubris (and Nemesis). iii Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Chapter One Introduction: My Hiphop Philosophy—“A Strange Affinity” 1 Chapter Two The Music of William James: Pragmatism as Improvisational Lyricism 26 Chapter Three Gertrude Sings: Stein and the Reenactment of Writing 116 Chapter Four Method of Error: Du Bois and the Aesthetics of Illegitimacy 212 Chapter Five Conclusion: yaknowwhati’msayin 279 Bibliography 298 iv Chapter One Introduction: My Hiphop Philosophy—“A Strange Affinity” This project works backwards: a contemporary concern—my deep engagement with hiphop music—is used as a heuristic device through which to resound the historical trajectory of American modernism. The intention is not so much to explicate an airtight genealogy as to dwell upon the juxtaposition of two bodies of work separated by a temporal gap but nevertheless possessing significant and unexplored similarities. Such a comparison can provide a novel understanding of both terms. Pragmatism—especially as enunciated in the work of William James—is chosen as a starting point due both to its prominence in the history of American modernism and because I believe it holds a strange, but compelling, affinity with hiphop. As soon as I began reading James’s work, I intuited a connection between it and hiphop and as I grew more familiar with it my sense that he and the contemporary musicians I had been studying were concerned with the same issues and had developed remarkably similar approaches to their engagement became stronger. To a large extent, the current project comes down to giving voice to this intuition, despite the difficulty involved in articulating it. I am given assistance, however, by the wide-ranging literature tracing the rich interaction of pragmatism and the African American vernacular, particularly the work of Carrie Bramen, Michael Magee, Ross Posnock, and, of course, Cornel West. 1 1 James’s pragmatism—especially as elaborated by his students Gertrude Stein and W.E.B. Du Bois—touches deeply upon two related concerns that have arisen through my study and enjoyment of hiphop music: improvisational lyricism, on the one hand, and the interaction between personal development and artistic achievement, on the other. The philosophy of affect and expression issuing out of James’s work and the variations his successors performed upon it must be considered acts of art as well as of thought. Pragmatism, as I use it, is a means for enacting thinking as improvisational lyricism and thereby eliciting affective resonance from one’s audience. It is also, at the same time, a method of achieving and reflecting upon self-realization—and thereby reshaping reality—through aesthetic practice and theory. Pragmatism as improvisational lyricism infuses language with music, working with found materials to achieve the unforeseen. In this capacity, it serves as a means for working through and struggling to communicate one’s most unique and deeply felt—and by the same token most difficult to articulate— experiences. That is, it is a program for engaging what I call the existential problematic of singularity in order to trigger an ongoing process of attunement that gives rise to an ever-expanding ensemble of practitioners dedicated to fully sounding singularity’s plural potentials, dwelling upon the differences that we all share. As such, it serves as a touchstone from which to begin explicating the independently invented but deeply similar philosophy that lies behind and motivates the music of hiphop. At the same time, hiphop can be heard as the fulfillment of the promise implicit in the work of James, Stein, and Du Bois. In order to begin unpacking this argument, I will now tell the story of how I got from hiphop to pragmatism in the first place. 2 Once Upon a Time Not Long Ago for now you’re well now you’re forced well ced to lis tea to listen to the teacher ten to the cher les and the lesson and the son CLASS class is in session is in ses sion can in so you can stop guessin so stop guess you tape if this is a tape if this is a a writ o or a written down memo or ten down mem see I pro fes see I am a professional am a sion al this is o this is not a demo in fact not a dem in fact call it call it a lecture a lec ture pic ture a visual picture a vis ual sort of a e sort of a poetic po tic and rhythm like mixture and rhy thm like mix ture listen lis ten KRS-One, “Poetry” 2 One of the first hiphop records I bought, a few years after a friend sent me a dubbed copy of Run-DMC’s Raising Hell , was Boogie Down Productions’ By All Means Necessary . The reference to Malcolm X meant something to me, and it was a major reason why I picked up the album in the first place. As it turned out, more than the cover photo of KRS-One holding an Uzi in one hand and lifting back the curtains to peek out his front window with the other, it was the record’s first track that mixed up the future of hiphop with my own. The DJ drops the question “So you’re a philosopher” and cuts the 3 response “Yes, I think very deeply” with the emphasis on the first syllable so the listener is crystal clear about the positive response. My head starts to bob as the scratched rhythm blends into one of hiphop’s perfect beats—a loop of “Sister Sanctified,” composed by Weldon Irvine and performed by Stanley Turrentine. KRS starts spitting lyrics, and I am hooked for good. More than what he is saying, it is his style that gets me open. It is cool that KRS plays the role of the teacher against wannabe kings and sucka MCs, letting me know “it’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality.” But what makes it real are not these words by themselves, but the way they are transformed by the sound of KRS’s voice and mixed with the beat. The whole style of the song teaches me what it means to be fresh, dope, wild, chill. These are the main qualities that make hiphop what it is. Fresh: smooth, swift, brilliant. Dope: solid, steady, deep. Wild: explosive, exceptional, eccentric. Chill: cool, composed, concentrated. Listening to “My Philosophy” is the first time I remember hearing hiphop in full effect, the optimal balance of fresh, dope, wild, chill. I wanted to follow in KRS’s footsteps. He presented a powerful example of how these four potentially conflicting qualities could be mixed into coherent fusions of language and music, creating improvisational sounds of edutainment. It would take a few years for this lesson to really sink in. Although I knew how to appreciate these sounds, I had yet to learn how to make them my own. I needed to find my own style, make my own voice out of the gifts I had been given. I was in search of a new element, my own original contribution to the world of hiphop. The summer after my junior year in college, I was living in New York City researching my honors thesis, checking out graduate schools, and in general planning my 4 future. Given my limited budget, one of my favorite pastimes—other than free movie screenings and the concerts I absolutely could not miss—was browsing in bookstores. I especially enjoyed the large chains, because the volume of customers could easily camouflage the fact that my casual shopping would often take many hours. I would skim books that I could not afford to buy, taking notes. It was roughly equivalent to the access I had to the university libraries in the area, but the ambiance was better. One day, when I found myself in the Barnes and Noble in Astor Place, I decided to take a break from my studies and check out the magazines. Of course, I went straight to the music section and was struck once again by the sad state of American hiphop journalism. 3 My mood improved when I came across a British magazine called Trace .
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