Songs of My Soul: Healing and the Black music tradition By Kizzy Joseph Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of the Arts in the American Studies Program Middlebury College May 7, 2018 I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment. 1 The Gift to Sing Who Can Be Born Black? James Weldon Johnson (1917) Mari Evans (1970) Sometimes the mist overhangs my path, Who And blackening clouds about me cling; can be born black But, oh, I have a magic way and not To turn the gloom to cheerful day — sing I softly sing. the wonder of it the joy And if the way grows darker still, the Shadowed by Sorrow's somber wing, challenge With glad defiance in my throat, I pierce the darkness with a note, And/to come together And sing, and sing. in a coming togetherness vibrating with the fires of pure knowing I brood not over the broken past, reeling with power Nor dread whatever time may bring; ringing with the sound above sound above sound No nights are dark, no days are long, to explode/in the majesty of our oneness While in my heart there swells a song, our comingtogether And I can sing. in a comingtogetherness Who can be born black and not exult! 2 Introduction I have always felt this deep love and connectedness to Black music. I remember spending the mornings in the green 1995 Mercury Villager my father drove on the way to school, listening to the “old school” tunes (what I categorize as mid-to-late twentieth century Black music) on WRKS 98.7FM,1 commonly known as Kiss FM by its most beloved listeners. I was a shy, insecure, early adolescent Black girl transitioning into middle school and grappling with puberty. I was accustomed to suppressing my feelings and emotions, lacking the agency to speak up and stand up for myself. It is only now I realize it was the Black music I listened to on Kiss FM (from Motown to funk to golden age hip-hop) that spoke for me, that spoke to me, that helped make sense of my hardships. There is immense beauty, power, and strength in Black music, in its polyrhythms, bass, call-and-responses, and ranging timbres. Hearing Stevie Wonder’s vibrant, youthful tenor voice on the radio always filled me with great joy as he assured me “Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, sugar.”2 I imagined what it felt like to be in love, my heart melting as I listened to “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love” by The Spinners. Sly and the Family Stone’s upbeat, funky child-like melody “Everyday People” always put a smile on my face, alleviating my doubts, sadness, and insecurities. What makes Black music Black music? How is it that its many genres all seem to have a core healing force and power? It is this somewhat indescribable force and power that attracts and intrigues me – what many Black people have collectively referred to as soul. Soul, a term 1 A Black-owned, New York City-based radio station founded in 1981. It was bought out by ESPN in 2012 and is now a sports broadcasting station called WEPN-FM. 2 Lyric from “Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing,” a song on his 1973 album Innervisions. 3 popularized at the height of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s, permeates all aspects of Black life: “soul food,” “soul sista,” “soul brotha.”3 It is my fascination with Black music and evolving interest in New Age spirituality that has inspired me to explore the ineffable, philosophical nature of soul in relation to music, using Black existential philosophy as a theoretical framework by examining this overarching question: How do Black people make meaning of their existence beyond oppression via soul music? I include “beyond oppression” because I want to stress that: 1) while there is no singular Black experience (as other intersecting identities such as gender, sexuality, class, etc shape and impact one’s lived experiences), what concretizes the Black experience is its roots in the “legacy of struggle”4 – the racist, anti-Black institutions and practices (i.e. police brutality and colorism) that continue to oppress Black people all across the world, thus binding them together as a collective; and most importantly, 2) reducing Blackness to mere racialized pain, suffering, and oppression dehumanizes and diminishes the nuanced aspects of our [Black people] lived experiences. I assert “beyond oppression” to emphasize that the Black experience is more than pain, that we are more than our pain. “Beyond oppression,” then, goes beyond discourses of oppression and victimhood. So how do Black people make meaning of their existence beyond oppression via soul music? The simplified answer is through the contemplation and exploration of one’s self, relationship to others and world that enables one to find healing within the metaphysical abode that is soul. I define healing as a process in which one acknowledges pain and strive towards alleviating and transcending that pain in order to restore and affirm the wholeness of self, as well to foster the growth and development of self. Healing materializes in many forms, whether it is through temporary cathartic release from emotional expression, or a belief in the “more than,” a concept 3 Joel Rudinow, Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Midtown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013): 10. 4 “Legacy of struggle” is a term coined by Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990; reis., New York: Routledge, 2000):12. 4 that will be explained further in this section. This contemplation and exploration is translated through a tangible, communicative and expressive outlet. To clarify, there are many outlets through which Black people express the contents of their soul – literature or fashion, for instance. However, the outlet of focus for this thesis is music. Aside from my fondness for Black music, I decided to study music because of its significance, as one of the few (and arguably, the earliest) modes of self- expression and communication for Black people in the United States. Legally prohibited from learning to read and write (and violently reprimanded if caught doing so), early expressive culture for many enslaved Black people became passionate melodies, percussive movements and other types of engaging solo and communal performances that would lay the foundation for Black music in America.5 Moreover, music helped construct a collective Black identity, consciousness, and sense of solidarity. Furthermore, while soul manifests in various forms across different Black musical genres, I center my thesis specifically on American soul music of the 1960s and 70s in order to understand soul at a period when the word soul and label soul music were officially etched in the Black cultural lexicon and came into usage in popular culture. Different questions guide each chapter: 1) “What are interpretations of the soul and how can we racialize the soul using a Black existential framework to understand the Black experience?”; 2) “How has music served as a healing tool for the Black individual operating in an anti-Black society?”; and 3) “How does 1960s and 70s American soul music explore notions of healing for the Black soul?” 5 Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977): 6. 5 Overview In Chapter one, I briefly investigate philosophical and theological interpretations of the soul. How have scholars theorized the soul? What are its components, its function, purpose(s)? Because I want to grasp a comprehensive understanding of the soul, I have organized an inclusive archive, pulling from both Eastern and Western texts that discuss the concept of the soul. While I briefly present various conceptions of soul (ranging from Muslim philosopher al-Kindi’s interpretation in his treatise That There Exist Substances Without Bodies (circa 9th century) to German philosopher G.W.F Hegel’s understanding of the soul in The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), the main focus of this chapter is racializing the concept of the soul and Hegel’s concept of aufheben, grounding it in lived experiences. I do this by utilizing Black existential philosophy as a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between Black American identity and the soul.6 The term that I will use in my work is soul, and the basis of my definition for soul is the distinction I draw between the soul and soul. The soul is a concept deriving from the broad, generalized interpretations of philosophical and theological texts such as those I examine in this chapter – texts that do not address the concept of the soul in relation to identity markers such as age, race, and class, or situate it in a material, temporal context. The soul is related to an essence of being and existence theoretically applicable to anyone, void of identity restrictions. On the other hand, soul is inherently Black. Everyone, regardless of identity markers, can potentially have (based on one’s spiritual/philosophical beliefs) a [the] soul but not everyone has soul. Soul is a racialized spiritual essence tied to the Black experience in the United States that serves as a 6 For now, I will loosely define Black existential philosophy as an Afro-centric existential philosophy. 6 metaphysical abode.7 A synonym or interchangeable term I use for soul is Black soul, which again emphasizes this distinction. I argue that through material expressions of soul the Black individual is able to engage in the healing experience.