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In the Aural Tradition: Cultural Pedagogies Of IN THE AURAL TRADITION: CULTURAL PEDAGOGIES OF BLACK MUSIC by Daniel Patrick Barlow B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005 M.A., San Diego State University, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Daniel Patrick Barlow It was defended on March 31, 2017 and approved by Jonathan Arac, Ph.D., Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English George Lipsitz, Ph.D., Professor of Black Studies and Sociology Imani Owens, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English Philip Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English Dissertation Advisor: William Scott, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English ii Copyright © by Daniel Patrick Barlow 2017 iii IN THE AURAL TRADITION: CULTURAL PEDAGOGIES OF BLACK MUSIC Daniel Patrick Barlow, M.A., Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2017 In the context of cultural networks of black Atlantic discourse, this dissertation asks how black music was and is employed for pedagogical purposes. Recognizing that aurality, race, and pedagogy are dynamically involved in the production, reception, and interpretation of culture, the dissertation outlines new directions of inquiry into the aural dimensions and educative functions of African American musical languages. It submits aural tradition as a framework for understanding the ways in which modern African American cultural producers engaged with, intervened in, and regenerated ways of listening that came to mediate popular culture. Moreover, the dissertation conceptualizes African American cultural pedagogy to reveal and constellate a series of cultural pedagogies found within the wide trajectories of African American cultural history. By examining listening alongside African American literature’s epistemological and political investments in recovering diasporic heritage, the undervalued role of listening attains its proper estimation. Hence, the dissertation begins in the early twentieth century when black music came to circulate widely in national and international flows of distribution and reception, and argues that cultural pedagogies coexist as pedagogically reflexive mediations of cultural production in relationship to the sociopolitical dynamics of black diasporicity. The most fundamental relationship between orality and literary production is not writing itself, but the undervalued art and work of listening that effectively enables writing and subsequent learning. By adopting aural tradition as a category of analysis, long-celebrated techniques of literary craft iv used to represent sound and music are further affirmed as virtuosic constituents of African American literary production; in the shift toward listening, however, such techniques are more fully regarded as efforts to recalibrate, recondition, and newly enhance aurality and teachability. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION: AURAL TRADITION AND AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL PEDAGOGY ................................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS .................................................................................................... 13 2.0 THE STORY OF A DISCOURSE: BLUES NARRATIVE FORM AS DIASPORIC CULTURAL PEDAGOGY ....................................................................................................................... 17 2.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 17 2.2 THE BLUES AND BLUES NARRATIVE FORM ................................................................... 22 2.3 BLUES LYRICS .......................................................................................................................... 26 2.4 A TAXONOMY OF TECHNIQUES ......................................................................................... 31 2.4.1 Multimedial Combination .................................................................................................... 31 2.4.2 Intermedial Reference .......................................................................................................... 32 2.4.3 Extended Formal Analogy or Mimesis ............................................................................... 34 2.4.4 Strategic Variation ............................................................................................................... 35 2.4.5 Vernacular Delivery ............................................................................................................. 39 2.4.6 Participatory Musicality ...................................................................................................... 41 2.5 BLUES NARRATIVE FORM AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA ....................................... 43 2.6 HOME TO HARLEM AS BLUES NARRATIVE FORM ........................................................ 46 2.7 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 52 3.0 DIASPORIC LISTENING: GLORIA NAYLOR’S NARRATIVE PEDAGOGY .................... 55 3.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 55 vi 3.2 LEARNING TO LISTEN ........................................................................................................... 58 3.3 GLORIA NAYLOR’S NARRATIVE PEDAGOGY ................................................................ 63 3.4 LISTENING TO LEARN: BLUES AS PEDAGOGY OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA .... 69 3.5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 87 4.0 BLACK ARTS, AURAL RIGHTS: AMIRI BARAKA’S CULTURAL PEDAGOGY ............. 90 4.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 90 4.2 HISTORY, APPROPRIATION, POLITICS ............................................................................ 95 4.3 MUSICAL RE-COGNITION: AURAL RIGHTS IN BLACK ARTS POETRY ................ 100 4.4 AURAL CONDITIONS: BARAKA’S BLUES IN DRAMATIC PRACTICE .................... 111 4.5 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... 130 5.0 “THE WISEST WAY TO BE HEARD”: JIMI HENDRIX AND THE PEDAGOGY OF DELIBERATION .................................................................................................................................... 136 5.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 136 5.2 HENDRIX AMID BLACK ARTS AND BLACK POWER ................................................... 139 5.3 SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO: HENDRIX, MEDIA, AND THE POLITICS OF RACIAL IDENTIFICATION ............................................................................................................................. 144 5.4 LEARNING FROM THE BAND OF GYPSYS ...................................................................... 166 5.5 CONCLUSION: HENDRIX IN THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT ................................... 187 6.0 TOWARD A THEORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL PEDAGOGY ................ 191 6.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 191 6.2 CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY .......................................................................... 193 6.3 CRITICAL PEDAGOGY .......................................................................................................... 194 6.4 CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY ............................................................................................. 195 6.5 PUBLIC PEDAGOGY .............................................................................................................. 196 6.6 CULTURAL PEDAGOGY ....................................................................................................... 198 vii 6.7 AURALITY AS LOCUS OF LEARNING ............................................................................... 202 6.8 CULTURAL PEDAGOGIES OF BLACK MUSIC ................................................................ 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 242 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank each member of my extraordinary committee for inspiring, motivating, and encouraging me throughout this dissertation’s evolution. Jonathan Arac, George Lipsitz, Imani Owens, Bill Scott, and Phil Smith offered me invaluable guidance for the entire time I have been fortunate enough to work under their direction. Jonathan’s interest, expertise, and unhesitating support have been indispensable to my growth as a scholar. George’s insight, clarity, and exemplarity have been deeply instructive. Imani’s knowledge, perceptiveness, and vision have enabled and empowered my writing since I first proposed the dissertation. Phil’s passion, wisdom, patience, musical sensibility, and continuous generosity have made me feel grounded in and welcomed to this
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