Curtis Mayfield, Cinematic Sounding, and Cultural

short eyes (directed by robert m . young, 1972, harris/fox production, curtom films), frame grab. In 1977, readers of Billboard magazine and gain access into a community of earlier, he had written the wildly to hear and see Curtis himself. The were extended an invitation by viewers/listeners. The advertisement popular title song for the comedy ticket, the album, and the film each Curtom Records. An independent implied that the community was Let’s Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, relied on the multiple personas of (Don’t Worry) If record label founded by soul artist housed in a theater named for one 1975). As Ebony would write, Mayfield. Seeing Mayfield was also Curtis Mayfield, Curtom urged of the major motion picture studios Mayfield was “as at home in front hearing Mayfield. This doubleness, readers to “Let Curtis take you of the classical era (Warner Bros.) of a 72-piece film orchestra as he shuddering between Mayfield as There’s a Hell Below: to the movies!” The one-page Left with more than a stub, viewers/ [was] with a six-piece jazz combo.” character and Mayfield as guide- advertisement was fairly sparse, listeners would hear the music of However, the bridge between the performer, was part of a broader Curtis Mayfield, with little text beyond that emphatic the film and encounter a multiply- revolutionary Mayfield and the series of cultural productions, which, solicitation, which leveraged the authored conjuring of the past as the capital-driven, multi-national film and though imbricated in the industrial power of a star’s celebrity to needle glided in the grooves of the music industries was complicated. systems of record labels and movie mediate the space between a record. The music was a part of the studios, also spoke against such Cinematic Sounding, Short Eyes (Robert M. Young, 1977) soundtrack, a magazine reader, and cinema, and the cinematic form was corporate formations. The direct was Mayfield’s latest film score, but the movie theater. Against a solid foundational to the music. No mere address of the advertisement it was also the second feature film and Cultural Memory red background, the ad featured an marrying of sound track and film, is one of many utterances in which he made an appearance image of Mayfield’s recently released this was an event to participate in: constituting a counterpublic as a facsimile of himself. In Superfly LP, Short Eyes, accompanied by two the advertisement implored readers of soul that Mayfield had been Mayfield appeared for mere moments yellow movie tickets on the verge to “[g]et in line now for one of the contributing to for over a decade. of falling out of an envelope. With most exceptional performances of a in a club, playing along with the the title “SHORT EYES” stamped on movie music career” (my emphasis). film’s soundtrack. In Short Eyes he First coined by Nancy Fraser and Nicholas Forster each ticket to the Warner Theater, it Short Eyes, the LP, was Mayfield’s was embedded in the story. Not perhaps most famously elaborated was clear that Mayfield was to be a sixth soundtrack in a decade filled only, as the magazine suggested, by Michael Warner, the notion of tour guide for a trip to the movies: with cinematic work, including the would Curtis take readers to the a counterpublic points to those to buy the album was to take a ticket soundtrack for Superfly (Gordon movies, but the reader-turned- discursive spaces in which a Parks, Jr., 1972). Only two years listener/viewer would be brought collectivity is formed primarily 66 liquid blackness : volume two, issue five liquid blackness : volume two, issue five 67 Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield through modes of sociality and grounds for agitational activities shared rhetoric that would otherwise directed toward wider publics.”3 be excluded from what is considered It may seem odd or strange to public space. The concept of a suggest that an advertisement counterpublic puts pressure on the in a trade publication meant for supposed divisions between private those in the music industry signals and public spheres, as these divisions a counterpublic organized around are often frayed if not altogether soul. In the 1960s, at its most dissolved for people who exist within a state of surveillance and exclusion, visible but rarely seen. As Fraser writes in an oft-quoted overview, counterpublics have a two-fold “The music was structure: “on the one hand, they politically resonant and commercially the basis for remaking a rhetoric of personal/impersonal address function as spaces of withdrawal and a part of the successful, soul was, as Nathan L. revolution. It is the very circulation and expansive estrangement of regroupment; on the other hand, they Grant claims,“the raw material for a of non-private experience (even if public speech as conditions of also function as bases and training cinema, and new cultural revolution.”4 As a mode delivered by privatized corporations) of music or a mode of being, soul that structures the formation and (left) figure 1: the cinematic emphasizes collective possibility subsistence of a counterpublic. (above) figure 2: Curtom Records inviting the through a singularly empowered Curtis Mayfield performing in a staged Michael Warner emphasizes the readers to be accompanied voice that shapes a shared intimacy concert meant for both the viewers form was importance of the strange, and by Curtis Mayfield on a trip to between many. Such intimacy may of the film and the characters in the movies. Billboard, October foundational be the foundation of agitational of the stranger, in his theorization Superfly (Directed by Gordon Parks, 22, 1977, 59. Courtesy of Rhino activity; such collectivity may be of counterpublics, writing, Jr., 1972, Warner Bros.), frame grab. Entertainment Company, a “counterpublics incorporate the Warner Music Group Company. to the music.” 68 liquid blackness : volume two, issue five liquid blackness : volume two, issue five 69 Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield their common world.”5 Warner and stranger sociability.”6 Eschewing asked Cooke to hum eight bars of continues, insisting that “even the empirical fastening and authority what soul represented. For almost “soul was part of a religiously inflected the counterpublics that challenge that pollsters claim for data, Warner fifteen seconds, Cooke, without modernity’s social hierarchy of is quick to highlight that publics are hesitation, melodiously hummed. musical discourse that called for economic, faculties do so by projecting the not based solely on co-presence, The shared symbolic grammar space of discursive circulation personal identity, or the shared of soul was part of a religiously- political, cultural and perhaps even among strangers as a social entity experience of an event. Historically inflected musical discourse that not and in doing so fashion their contingent and difficult to explicate, only elongated and re-membered ontological shifts in America.” own subjectivities around the the development and reflexive use the word (one of the foundations requirements of public circulation of a specific discourse remains at of that shared grammar) but called the foundation of the formation for economic, political, cultural, between individualized interlocutors the flexible, malleable space shaped In some ways this discursive of a (counter)public. Mayfield’s and perhaps even ontological shifts who hear his songs—whether live by Mayfield’s music and by his visible exchange among strangers was audience is part of the counterpublic in America. Soul had existed long in a stadium with all the echoic presence on film. Here rhetoric is integral to the much-lauded “For almost announced by soul, a counterpublic before Mayfield, yet the nexus of possibilities of acoustic architecture, reduced and exploded. One can soundtrack for Superfly, which that overlaps with but is not media and revolutionary politics through the crackles of a record, or only suggest. Mayfield is emblematic according to Mayfield, was written necessarily a black counterpublic.7 fifteen seconds, in the world of a film. As Nathaniel of how black performance bends “to be a commentary as though The mobilization of rhetoric and emblematized in the advertisement Mackey’s character N. hints, “I’m and is bent in the latter half of someone was speaking as the the twining of the word are critical for Short Eyes mark an especially Cooke, without suggesting, the falsetto explores twentieth-century America to create movie was going.”10 It was this components of that counterpublic. provocative point to think about a redemptive, unworded realm—a what Richard Iton calls (referring commentary that, for critics like Greil Perhaps soul’s sculpting of the word sociality and the transmedial meta-word, if you will—where the to Superfly’s score) a “certain and Marcus, challenged the film’s visual hesitation, is best heard in a question posed to beckoning of a counterpublic. implied critique or the momentary inevitable contrapuntal effect.”9 construction and its celebration of a Sam Cooke by the radio DJ Nathanael Mayfield’s voice and his reliance on eclipse of the word curiously recuses, The grammar of the advertisement New York City shaped by drugs.11 To melodiously “Magnificent” Montague in 1963. the falsetto, a technique often used restores and renews it: new word, and of the film industry is answered accompany Mayfield to the movies, After explaining his own difficulties in in soul, sound an armored fragility new world.”8 This instability mirrors by the hums and calls of soul. then, was both to participate in the hummed.” describing soul with words, Montague and provide the illusion of intimacy 70 liquid blackness : volume two, issue five liquid blackness : volume two, issue five 71 Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield “The grammar of the advertisement and of the film industry is answered by the hums and calls of soul.” cadences of capitalism and to aurally Pinero during his time in Sing Sing, forces a rethinking of the sonic engage in a critique of that very only heightens the strangeness ecology of black cinema and a structure which produced cinema as of the relationship between wrestling with the importance of a space of stranger sociability.

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