Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2012 Learning How to Listen': Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson LaShonda Katrice Barnett College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Music Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Barnett, LaShonda Katrice, "Learning How to Listen': Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson" (2012). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623358. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-fqh4-zq06 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 'Learning How To Listen': Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson LaShonda Katrice Barnett Park Forest, Illinois, U.S.A. Master of Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, 1998 Bachelor of Arts, University of Missouri, 1995 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College ofWilliam and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies Program The College ofWilliam and Mary August, 20 12 APPROVAL PAGE This Dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Committee, April, 2012 and Mary ~ssoci!!ht rofessor, Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University ~~~~· C?~-~y?J A:a&oeiete Professor, Kimberley Phillips, Brooklyn College/CUNY ~0---V\1 ~~·h·-£.:) ~A_.S~~ ~ ABSTRACT PAGE 'Learning How To Listen': Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music ofAbbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson examines the similarities of singing styles and core narrative traits in the original songs of three African American women vocalist-composers celebrated within the jazz idiom. Drawing on years of ethnographic research, including over 150 hours of personal interviews with musicians, attendance of jazz concerts and festivals both domestic and abroad, and a three-year listening journal (based on live performances and recordings), 'Learning How to Listen' is an Africana cultural studies product informed by vibrant multidisciplinary scholarship that bridges Jazz studies, Linguistics and African American history and literary studies. The latter especially extends the project's close relationship to twentieth-century black literary traditions found in poetry, prose, and as witnessed here, also song lyrics. The introduction highlights the significance of Lincoln (1930-201 0), Simone (1933-2003) and Wilson (b. 1955) to the American music canon, and articulates the dissertation's distinctive contribution to the field of black music studies, addressing the work's methodology and the scope of primary chapters which provide an analysis of the: a) singing voice; b) philosophical authorial voice and c) performance style specifically in relation to 'Re-memory' songs which bear witness to an African heritage. Chapter Two engages two distinct modes of discourse generated on Lincoln, Simone and Wilson by jazz critics and jazz musicians. Chapter Three proves the applicability and efficacy of linguistics to the music of Lincoln, Simone and Wilson by examining the collective approach to melorhythm and tonal semantics and the phonological style markers employed by each: Lincoln's phonosemantics; Simone's microtonality; and Wilson's polytonality. Since a significant portion of the original songs by these artists engage a plethora of black women's socio-political issues, Chapter Four analyzes lyrics that demonstrate a gendered philosophical outlook I refer to as womanist autoethno-graphy. Chapters Five and Six examines the creative impulse shared by these artists to bear witness to their African heritage in 'Re-memory' (a term coined by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison) songs that both invoke and re-imagine an African past and celebrate an African present and future. It is my contention that the cultural study of black music is uniquely positioned to delineate the principles and mechanisms by which African diasporic music is connected by similar aesthetic philosophies. Thus, in the seventh and final chapter my project ultimately suggests a model for expanding discourses about black women's music. My termAfrodiasporic 'Voicing,' introduced in the conclusion, is shorthand for the aural and authorial cultural elements that uniquely characterize black women's music across genres and nations. It implies that black American women singer-songwriters and their musical sisters in the African diaspora share conceptual approaches to music-making processes in spite of geographic or linguistic differences. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv LIST OF TABLES xiii EPIGRAPH xiv Chapter One 1 Introduction Chapter Two 38 'Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood': The Challenge of Defining Jazz Singing Jazz Critics and Music Writers On Lincoln, Simone & Wilson ...... 41 Musicians Sound Off On Lincoln, Simone & Wilson ................. 52 The Relevance of Linguistics to Singing ................................. 64 Chapter Three 70 'Learning How to Listen': Of Language And Of The Singing Voice Melorhythm & Stylistic Phonological Markers in the Vocality of Lincoln, Simone & Wilson ............................................... 74 Abbey Lincoln's Phonosemantics ....................................... .. 85 Nina Simone's Blues Muse, Microtonality ............................. 101 Cassandra Wilson's Sleights of Time & Polytonality ................ .. 1 17 Chapter Four 137 'My Name Is Peaches!': Reading Lyrics As Womanist Autoethnography Why Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Cassandra Wilson Aren't Feminists ........................................................................ 143 'Please Read Me': Womanist Autoethnography ........................... 150 Redemption Song: Black Women In Praise ofthe Black Family ........ 156 'First Came A Woman': Womanism, Children & The Subtext of Black Nationalism .................................................................................. .. 167 Singing Truth to Power: Social Protest Songs ............................. .. 174 Chapter Five 188 'Rekindle The Spirit': On The Aural Site of Re-Memory What Is Africa To Me? ........................................................................ 1 9 1 Journeys to Africa ............................................................ 195 'Back to Yesterday's Moon': Re-Memory ................................ 210 'Dance to the Drums Again': On the Aural Site ofRe-Memory ....... 223 'Who Used to Dance': Mytho-History Songs ............................. 236 Ancestor Songs ................................................................ 246 Chapter Six 259 'The Circle Is Never Broken': To/Ward Afrodiasporic 'Voicing' Afrodiasporic 'Voicing' ...................................................... 261 Sounds of Blackness: An Ethnomemoir .................................... 269 Conclusion ...................................................................... 273 APPENDICES APPENDIX A 275 Subject Biographies APPENDIX 8 288 Selected Sound Recordings APPENDIX C 290 Glossary of Basic Musical Terms APPENDIX D 292 Selected Lyrics for Songs Written by Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson REFERENCES 375 VITA 388 11 For love of Abbey lll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The spring I turned twenty-one I boarded the #6 Jeffrey express to Hyde Park. Ear buds fitted just right-if blaring a little too loud, as the bus winded along Lake Shore Drive I listened rapturously to marvelous, swift vocalizing, delighted by how the singer piqued my interest, changing time and meter in a Cole Porter song I knew well but that in her hands had become completely new. The last minute of playful, staccato phrasing swept me up in bittersweet joy: who was this singer? I determined to acquire everything she had ever recorded as soon as the disc jockey named her. But he never did. My stop came, a different singer sang now and I had someplace to be. After my appointment, I headed to a music store that specialized in jazz; surely someone could identify who had swung Cole Porter's lyrics faster than a hummingbird's wings. 'Would you happen to know a female jazz singer with a scratchy, husky voice? She breaks up words and phrases in a time that's all her own? She recorded some Cole Porter.' The store owner smiled, vanished without a word and reappeared in a flash, handing me an album whose cover showed a brunette in a silver dirndl skirt and white parade gloves, sitting on a swing pushed by a balding man. How to tell the obviously proud store owner that the hunt continued? For certain, Anita 0 'Day Swings Cole Porter & Rodgers & Hart With Billy May was not the album I sought. I explained why O'Day could not be the singer in question. 'The woman I heard on the radio sounded like a black woman.' By now he had turned smug, gingerly lV removing the album from the sleeve, placing it on the turntable. 'What does it mean to sound like a black woman anyway?' He asked as the little shop on East 53rd Street rollicked to the right rhythm and voice. Long before rumination about a dissertation topic began I became curious about what it means to sound (and sing) like a black woman.