The Screamers

The Screamers Patrick Burke Abstract: While screaming during popular music performances (at least loudly ampli½ed ones) has become unremarkable and even expected, the mid-twentieth-century United States witnessed a series of debates over the appropriateness and signi½cance of screaming. These debates, fraught with moral judgment and often open panic, focused on issues central to American popular music: sexuality, race, class, and the rights and responsibilities of the individual. Tracing the discourse surrounding screaming audiences from Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/11/1831588/daed_a_00231.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 the nineteenth century to the present reveals that observers have associated female screamers primarily with sexual impropriety while male screamers more often have been depicted as a potentially violent mob. While commentary on screaming often reinforces racial and gender stereotypes, screaming maintains its subversive power because it effectively dramatizes the tension among social expectations, group solidarity, and individual freedom. In 2011, my friend of over twenty years, Jeff Burke (no relation), posted to YouTube a short video with the straightforward title “I Saw Iron Maiden.” It’s only two-and-a-half minutes long, and as of this writing it’s still online.1 The video records Jeff’s good times at a recent concert by the titular heavy metal band, best known for such albums as The Number of the Beast (1982) and Powerslave (1984). Like many friends who attended my predominantly white, rel- atively affluent, suburban high school during the George H.W. Bush administration, I am fond of Iron Maiden; but Jeff, a fellow alumnus, remains a fan as in fanatic. Although his video includes a few brief, grainy shots of the band on stage, most of its running time PATRICK BURKE is an Associate documents Jeff’s reactions to the performance. Jeff, Professor of Music at Washington who has maintained an adolescent joie de vivre well University in St. Louis. His publi- into his thirties, makes this more exciting than you cations include Come In and Hear might expect. He plays air drums. He raises his hand the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street in triumph as Iron Maiden launches into a favorite (2008) and articles in such journals as American Music and the Journal of song. He bangs his head in the quintessential heavy Musicological Research. His current metal gesture. Although he never smiles, he main- book project is What’s My Name?: tains an ecstatic gleam in his eyes that betokens an Rock, Race, and Revolution in the 1960s. almost frightening level of commitment to the music. © 2013 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00231 11 The Mostly, Jeff is loud. He sings along with responsibilities of the individual. When Screamers every word of every song at a volume that young women screamed, were they open- allows his camera’s microphone to pick up ing a safety valve to dispel unwholesome his voice clearly even over the roar of Iron sexual energy, or was that energy danger- Maiden’s ampli½cation system. When ously heightened? Were white screamers singer Bruce Dickinson lets loose with one learning a valuable lesson from the sup- of his famous high-pitched screams, Jeff posedly authentic, natural responses of joins him, not always nailing the pitch ex- black audiences, or were they undermining actly but making a respectable showing. the values of restraint and composure upon His efforts culminate at what seems to be which American–implicitly, European- the concert’s grand ½nale with three blood- American–civilization depended? Was curdling shrieks that no longer match any- screaming a democratic expression of indi- thing Dickinson is doing but seem instead vidual freedom and excitement, or a symp- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/11/1831588/daed_a_00231.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 to express a state of blissful transport. tom of irrational allegiance to a fascist Jeff’s screaming prowess has attracted mob? When we scream, are we just doing favorable attention from his YouTube view- our thing? Or are we powerslaves? ers; the ½rst comment posted reads “Awe- My primary concern here is not with some video, you are an epic screamer :D up singing along, formal calls-and-responses the Irons \m/.”2 Within the video, how- initiated by performers, or hissing and boo- ever, there lurks a hint that not everyone ing at bad performances, although each of shares this opinion. In a brief shot that these practices overlaps at times with the appears to have been ½lmed after the con- kind of screaming that I am addressing. cert in the parking lot, a fellow fan in sun- Rather, I am interested in screaming that glasses and concert T-shirt looks at the expresses an audience’s enthusiasm during camera and says in a not entirely friendly professional musical performances but is voice, “Hey, but nothing against you man, not conventionally “musical” itself.3 This you’re doing your thing . ” before stalking practice ½rst drew widespread attention off. The preceding conversation is absent, during the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s but one speculates that the anonymous fan and has never really gone away since. I has just confronted Jeff about his concert- borrow my title from Amiri Baraka’s 1967 going etiquette, which, to be fair, was pretty short story “The Screamers,” in which unruly even by Iron Maiden standards. wailing tenor saxophonist Lynn Hope (a Even though “I Saw Iron Maiden” may real-life ½xture of the 1950s R&B scene) not reward critical scrutiny in quite the leads his African American nightclub same way as, say, Last Year at Marienbad, it audience, “ecstatic, completed, involved in provides an excellent introduction to this a secret communal expression,” screaming essay’s subject: the screaming audience. into the streets of Newark, where they While screaming during popular music march joyously until police arrive to break performances (at least loudly ampli½ed up the celebration with “sticks and bil- ones) has become unremarkable and even lies.”4 Baraka’s story highlights both the expected, the mid-twentieth century wit- sense of power and release that audiences nessed a series of debates over the appro- can ½nd in screaming and the racial con- priateness and signi½cance of screaming. flicts and ½ghts for control of urban pub- These debates, fraught with moral judg- lic space that often occur in response. As ment and often open panic, focused on cultural critic Tricia Rose demonstrates, issues central to American popular music: aggressive policing of black audiences con- sexuality, race, class, and the rights and tinues into the hip hop era: “a hostile tenor, 12 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences if not actual verbal abuse, is a regular part etc.–behaviour more suited to a broglio Patrick of rap fan contact with arena security and than a musical entertainment.”9 While Burke police.”5 The screamers who have received this account may depict rowdy socializ- the most press, however, typically have ing rather than screaming as such, by the been young whites. In both cases, race and nineteenth century, wasp critics regularly violence are never far from the surface of registered annoyance or bemusement with the critical discourse on screaming. such disturbances as “delirious bravi from the Italian waiters who occupy the stand- While screaming during musical per- ing room behind the orchestra rail” or formances did not become ubiquitous until the “vociferous bellowings” of the “Teu- the second half of the twentieth century, tonic” immigrants who attended Wag- American audiences have been doing it for ner’s operas.10 Diarist George Templeton a long time, often in contexts including Strong described an 1858 New York Phil- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/142/4/11/1831588/daed_a_00231.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 either African American performers or harmonic concert as “a square mile of whites’ attempts to imitate them. Ronald tropical forest with its flocks of squalling Radano, an expert on the history of African paroquets and troops of chattering mon- American music, argues that Americans’ keys.”11 As these references to immigrant very notion of “black music” as a distinct ethnicities and primitive beasts suggest, category can be traced in part to the ec- urban elites saw it as their mission to civ- static singing and shouting at antebellum ilize the supposedly less-evolved masses by revival meetings in which whites as well constraining their wild behavior and pro- as blacks participated.6 At the same time, moting instead the moral uplift purport- in professional theaters, shouting of a more edly borne of quiet, private contemplation profane sort heralded the ersatz racial of sacralized masterworks. Cultural histo- mimicry of blackface minstrels. Musicol- rian Daniel Cavicchi points out “an increas- ogist Dale Cockrell writes that the minstrel ing association of the excessive behaviors audience “felt fully in its right to respond of music loving with the divisive carica- spontaneously, forcefully, and vocally to tures of class politics at midcentury.”12 events on stage.”7 Social historian Eric Lott By the century’s end, highbrow “arbiters points out that “the reported outrageous- of culture,” according to Levine, had large- ness of working-class spectators” formed ly won their campaign to “convert audi- the basis of a “whole genre of journalistic ences into a collection of people reacting theater-crowd observation” of minstrel individually rather than collectively.”13 In performances designed to titillate bour- 1871, Strong noted that “the vile habit of geois readers.8 In short, minstrelsy’s au- talking and giggling is much less general diences were themselves an important part than heretofore,” and at around the same of the show.

Load more