Possessed by the Musicians He Claimed to Have Studied
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Acknowledgments I would like to begin by thanking my thesis supervisors, who played a major role in this project and who I ultimately consider to have been my collaborators. The argument and structure of this writing grew out of my weekly meetings with Jane Mathieu. Often times, when I had not yet found the language I was looking for, Jane had a clever way of guiding me toward better words and perspectives by asking me difficult, open ended questions. Meanwhile, I would never have landed on my topic were it not for the courses on New Orleans music that I took with Matt Sakakeeny. It was Matt who challenged my conceptions of the city, and his generous feedback on my drafts helped strengthen the writing on many fronts. I would also like to thank the third member of my committee, Dan Sharp, for his help in the final stages. I am very lucky to have taken courses with all three of these people. Each of them has impacted the way that I listen to and interpret music. This thesis grew out of some challenging conversations that occurred in seminars with my classmates. I would like to thank two of my cohort members in particular: April Goltz, whose commitment to facing uncomfortable truths inspires me; and Hannah Isadora Forrester, who came to the see the Revolution sans Prince with me, and taught me a great deal about life. I would like to thank my family for their love and encouragement: Tom and Riiko, Owen and Willem, Jo and Don, Harriet and Frances, David and Sue, Peter, my Grampy, my Aunt Jo, and my new family—Emma, Paula and B. Most of you have listened to me ii talk through my writing at some point or another. If you’re reading this, I hope it finally makes sense. I am at a loss for words when it comes to thanking my best friends, my partner, and my parents. No one has made me laugh more than Ry O’Toole, Brendan Magee and Chris Balcom. I’ll see you all at the Barbershop. This project would never have come to fruition without the support of Kiera Foti, who has been by my side from page ten to the end. The strongest passages in this thesis bear your imprint—they arose from the clarity of mind that you bring me. The more frustrating days were also much easier to get through knowing that I would be spending the evening with you. Thank you for everything. I save my last words of gratitude for my parents, who are largely responsible for my curiosity about and appreciation of music. My Father passed many years before I moved to New Orleans. It was a blessing to be in this strange, beautiful place amid some of the heights of my grief. Over the course of my three years in this city, it was you, Mom, who guided me through my greatest struggles. You’re the best—this is for you! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………..… ii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………. 1 Literature Review Outline of Chapters 2. THE HAUNTED MINSTREL………………………………………………..19 Introduction Africans in Antebellum New Orleans Congo Square: An Introduction Part I: “Possessing Themselves Again” Part II: The Concentric Circle Part III: E.P. Christy at Congo Square Conclusion 3. THE MASK OF CONVERSION.…………………………………………….48 Introduction Raised in The Right Place Voodoo in New Orleans Dr. John’s Gris-Gris The Voodoo Minstrel Conclusion iv BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………..83 v 1 When the white man steps behind the mask of the trickster his freedom is circumscribed by the fear that he is not simply miming a personification of his disorder and chaos, but that he will become in fact that which he intends only to symbolize; that he will be trapped somewhere in the mystery of hell… Americans began their revolt from the English fatherland when they dumped the tea into the Boston Harbor masked as Indians, and the mobility of the society created in this limitless space has encouraged the use of the mask for good and evil ever since. As the advertising industry, which is dedicated to the creation of masks, makes clear, that which cannot gain authority from tradition may borrow it with a mask. Masking is a play upon possibility and ours is a society in which possibilities are many. When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical. — Ralph Ellison, Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke 1. INTRODUCTION Though Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz is centered around The Band in their farewell performance in 1976, what makes the concert film so remarkable for many viewers is the long line of special guests. In addition to some knock out performances by Muddy Waters and The Staple Singers, The Last Waltz features a who’s who of white rock and roll musicians—Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and many more. The film’s sequence of performances takes several left turns along the way, though few are as affective as the transition between a reading from The Canterbury Tales and what happens after a voice announces the arrival of “Dr. John… / Mac Rebennack.” Dressed in a sparkly, dotted suit and donning an earring, beret, and sunglasses, he nods at the bass player and takes his seat at the piano. A first time viewer would not be alone in thinking there was something curious about this musician, and part of the curiosity would surround Rebennack’s obvious amalgamation of Black influences. 2 In discourse on cultural appropriation, there are two dominant viewpoints. One is that the appropriative artist has taken something that was not rightly theirs. The second is that some artist or other is different. Their exceptional qualities might even earn them a “pass”—which is to say that, as far as the person making this case is concerned, this or that artist can be exempted from critique. Though these passes are by no means official, there are various ways of explaining why Rebennack was a longtime holder. A close look and listen at his vast musical output reveals both an undeniable virtuosity in playing Black music as well as a lifelong commitment to interracial collaboration. He began his career in the Jim Crow South, crossing the color line in order to play varied roles in the New Orleans rhythm & blues scene, where he made important contributions as a session guitarist and record producer. After he switched gears to become a popular singer and bandleader, he continued to hire and be hired by Black musicians for the remainder of his life. His immersion in Black culture was so thorough that Charles Neville once professed “you couldn’t call Mac white. His skin might be white, but his soul is black” (2000: 95). A century before Rebennack’s time, a man named Edwin Pearce Christy was rising to fame as a bandleader, singer, banjoist, and dancer. Though he died long before his music could be recorded, the historical record makes clear that he was amongst the most successful performers of his day. He had made his fame and fortune in the blackface theater—the leading American entertainment of the 19th century, and the space that spawned the country’s first form of popular music. The performers, or minstrels, many of them of Northern extraction, wore blackface makeup, played music they often claimed was “authentically” African, and lampooned Black people in a wide variety of sketches 3 and dances. Groups went by names like the Congo Melodists and the Ethiopian Serenaders. A good portion of the material was centered around life on Southern plantations, a subject about which its mainly Northern audiences were curious. Many would prefer to forget about minstrelsy. Scholars have made it abundantly clear, however, that the blackface theater is one of the wellsprings not only of enduring racial stereotypes but of contemporary popular music, both in and outside of the United States. Matthew Morrison has argued that the scripts developed in the blackface theater have their sonic legacy in what he calls “Blacksound.” While the term is not meant to contain all of the sounds made by people of African descent, it does encompass the stereotypes developed in minstrelsy that continue to stand in for the varied experiences of Black life (2019: 789-90). Long after Christy’s heyday, American music still tarries in the shadow of blackface. It may come as a surprise, given the anti-racist disparagement of minstrelsy, that a beloved artist like Rebennack had much in common with Christy. First and foremost, the two musicians share the general attribute of having been successful white artists who appropriated Black culture that they had studied in New Orleans. Given the opportunity to address what many people would interpret as acts of cultural theft, Christy and Rebennack both turned the tables on what would otherwise appear to be a one-way dynamic. In the case of the former artist, this meant implying that he was first possessed by the musicians he claimed to have studied. Though Christy was not apologetic about his appropriative work, he noted that, after some time away from performing, he was “haunted” by the Black music he had heard as a youth. Meanwhile, Rebennack turned the 4 tables on this dynamic in two ways. Firstly, he frequently employed similar language as Christy had, noting that he was “hypnotized” by the music he grew up around. Secondly, he presented himself as a disciple of — even a convert to — Black spiritual culture. In this thesis, I refer to these narratives as “discourses of possession.” Without direct access to the moments when these artists encountered the music they would later appropriate, it is up to the individual reader to accept or reject their claims.