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The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis's Musical Language a Master's

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The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis's Musical Language a Master's “I am the Light of the World” The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis’s Musical Language A Master’s Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Graduate Program in Musicology Paula Musegades, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Drew Daniels-Rosenberg May 2021 Copyright by Drew Daniels-Rosenberg 2021 ABSTRACT “I am the Light of the World” The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis’s Musical Language A thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Drew Daniels-Rosenberg Musician, teacher, and preacher, Reverend Gary Davis was a critical figure of the American Folk Music Revival. Due to the commercial success of many of his students as well as a large body of recorded music both sacred and secular, Davis’s repertoire, virtuosity, and influence can still be heard today. His musical range encompassed a swathe of popular, traditional, blues, and gospel tunes among other styles including Civil War marches, spirituals, and original compositions. Recently, music scholars and historians have begun to study Davis’s music, life, and legacy as a masterful musician, gifted musical educator, and torchbearer of a disappearing generation of southern folk artists and performers. Viewed as a central, but often-neglected figure of the time, these studies largely aim to place Davis’s legacy in its proper place among the American musical canon. Using these extensive studies on Davis’s legacy, this paper will analyze Davis’s use of sound and music as a central tool for his survival, focusing particularly on the ways in which he used music to foster a strong sense of identity and belonging. From his roots as a street musician in the Jim Crow south, through his time as an ordained minister and guitar teacher in New York City, Davis relied on the sonic world as a tool for dealing with his blindness. A life fraught with extreme circumstances, Davis iii constructed a fiercely independent identity that often blended between his life as a devout preacher and as a street singer and performer. Davis relied on music throughout his life to support himself financially, to provide himself comfort in frequent times of loneliness, and in order to foster a meaningful –largely musical -community of those who cared for him. Studying Davis through the theory of complex embodiment and the framework of Blacksound, this paper will contribute to the growing scholarship honoring Davis’s unique and impactful legacy as well as provide a case study in the significance of Black and blind musicians and street performers on popular music in the twentieth and twenty- first century. Finally, this study will challenge hegemonic theories of the development of popular music in the United States. By studying Davis’s story, his music can shine a light on issues of equity and radical inclusion, lifting up the stories of those historically unheard. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..……1 Theoretical Frameworks: Complex Embodiment and Blacksound……………………….4 Gary Davis’s Sonic World………………………………………………….……………16 Gary Davis’s Musical Language…………………………………………………...…….31 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….46 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..49 v “This ain’t no hotel, y’understand, this is my house I got from pickin’ that old guitar.” – Gary Davis1 Sitting is his newly purchased home in Jamaica, Queens in the 1960s, preacher and guitarist Reverend Gary Davis imbued a deep sense of pride and accomplishment at how far music had brought him in life. The son of South Carolinian sharecroppers, Davis, who’s life had been fraught with extreme circumstances at every turn, at long last became a homeowner, imparting his success to his musical abilities and guitar, aptly named “Miss Gibson.”2 Davis’s commercial success came late in life. Although he never achieved the level of sustained popularity or recognition of some of his peers, (eg. Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie McTell) or students (eg. Blind Boy Fuller, Dave Von Ronk, Bob Weir), he nonetheless left behind a legacy of powerful music that continues to permeate through American popular music today.3 An in-demand recording artist, touring musician both in America and Europe, and guitar teacher, Gary Davis is marked as one of the most virtuosic, unique performers of the Antebellum South and the Folk Music Revival. Though Davis was popular and highly regarded near the end of his life, he has fallen into relative obscurity in the decades after his death, and until recently, has been largely forgotten outside of the boundaries of the vibrant musical community he left behind. His students, including finger-style guitarist Stefan Grossman, have continued to 1 William Lee Ellis, I Belong to the Band: The Music of Reverend Gary Davis (Memphis, TX: University of Memphis, 2010) 74. 2 Ellis, I Belong to the Band: The Music of Reverend Gary Davis, 108. 3 “The Students of Rev. Gary Davis and Other Performers He Influenced,” University of Chicago Press (University of Chicago), https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/zack/index.html. 1 honor Davis through performances and publications of his music. Popular musical icons such as Bob Dylan continually view him in the highest regard.4 Academic and historical attention in Davis remains limited but growing. Where Davis had traditionally been reduced to footnotes within discussions of his contemporaries, the past decade has seen resurgence in Davis’s work and life including biographical, cultural, and historical studies. Musicological considerations of Davis and his music remain among the slimmest of all. William Lee Ellis’s 2010 dissertation, I Belong to The Band: The Music of Reverend Gary Davis, which he calls “the first extensive analytical examination of the music of guitarist/singer Reverend Gary Davis,” provides an ideal groundwork for further detailed studies into the Reverend’s music and life.5 Davis’s life is a tale of survival and retribution. Born nearly blind and quickly losing what little vision he had in the following weeks, he also lived most of his life in poverty, making his living playing music on various street corners and private gatherings, and preaching in local storefront churches.6 From his roots as a street musician in the Jim Crow south, through his time as an ordained minister and guitar teacher in New York City, Davis relied on the sonic world as a tool for dealing with his life conditions. Davis constructed a fiercely independent identity that often alternated between his life as a devout preacher and as a street singer and performer. He relied on music to support himself financially, to provide himself comfort in frequent times of loneliness, and in order to foster a meaningful - largely musical - community of those who cared for him. 4 Ian Zack, Say No to the Devil: the Life and Musical Genius of Rev. Gary Davis (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), Introduction, Kindle. 5 Ellis, iv. 6 Interview with Glenn Hinson, Harlem Street Singer, 00:22:17. 2 Additionally, Davis’s musical vocabulary was born out of traditional and popular styles of the time, and he incorporated many elements of his material conditions into his musical language. This thesis seeks to understand Davis’s relationship to sound as a means of navigating his life and interacting with the world, which, in turn, had a profound impact on the music he created, leaving a lasting legacy behind. Gary Davis’s musical and personal identities are simultaneously linked to Tobin Siebers’s theory of complex embodiment - both in relationship to Davis blindness and race - and to the larger development of popular music in the United States. Using Matthew Morrison’s theoretical framework of Blacksound enforces Davis’s position within the wider landscape of American popular music as it relates to conditions of race, genre, equity, identity, community, and embodiment. Studying Davis through this lens contributes to the growing scholarship honoring his unique and impactful legacy, and shines a light on the significance of Black and blind musicians and street performers on popular music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the issues of equity and inclusion they faced. 3 Theoretical Frameworks: Complex Embodiment and Blacksound Davis’s musical styling crossed between gospel, blues, spirituals, popular tunes, military marches, original compositions, and more, stretching across the soundscapes of American rural south and northern urban cities. Davis’s music lived between these genre descriptions. He was simultaneously a reverend filled with conviction, while also a street singer who made the majority of his living adapting his performances around his audience. Folklore and Anthropology professor Glenn Hinson explains, “Blind Gary was really coming from this songster tradition from the late 1800s…whatever you asked him to play, he could.”7 Davis developed his repertoire around the music he was exposed to growing up in Laurens, South Carolina. Ian Zack, author of the Davis biography, Say No to the Devil: The Life and Times of Reverend Gary Davis, writes, “For a budding guitarist in Laurens County, music could be soaked up everywhere: out in the fields in the form of work songs; at informal porch gatherings, barn raisings, or daylong country picnic; from traveling tent shows and of course at church.”8 It was not until Davis’s religious awakening, following the death of his mother, that he formally renounced the blues, becoming ordained in Washington, North Carolina in 1937, trading the messaging of his music into one of salvation.9 From that point on, Davis would shift his perspective from playing music to entertain, to playing music in order to save souls.10 7 Interview with Glenn Hinson, Harlem Street Singer, directed by Simeon Hunter and Trevor Laurence, (USA: Acoustic Traditions Films, 2014), Film, 00:22:00.
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