Nappy Edges and the personal/political
. . . the political values inherent in the Black Power concept are now finding concrete expression in the aesthetics of Afro-American dramatist, poets, choreographers, musicians, and novelists. A main tenet of Black Power is the necessity for black people to define the world in their own terms. The black artist has made the same point in the context of aesthetics. –Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement“
Underlying their calls for self-examination, reflection, and scrutiny was the belief that increased knowledge of the self and the collective in society, past and present, would lead to a strong communal consciousness which, in turn, would lead to an empowered and unified activist community ready to transform — Lisa Gail Collins, ““The Art of Transformation: Parallels in the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movements”
cuz we don’t ask a poet to speak personally / we want a
poet to talk like an arena/ or like a fire station/ to be everywhere/
all at once/ even if we never been there
Nappy Edges, Shange’s first collection of poetry, is also her first extended published meditation on what it means to be a black woman/feminist poet in America. It demands a space for the “personal” in black poetry, not just for the expression of the “personal in the sense of the subjective, the emotional, the sexual, but also personal in the sense of “the individuality of the word,” (9); that is, the unique expressiveness and “voice”/sound of the writer. We will want to think about the this question of uniqueness in two (or more) contexts: (1) the importance of collaboration in Shange’s work and (2) the importance of connection to community in Black Arts ideology.
when i take my voice into a poem or a story / i am trying desperately to give you that.
In “The Black Arts Movement,” Larry Neal, a chief BAM theorist, avers that “the black artist’s primary duty is to speak to the spiritual and cultural needs of Black people,” a sentiment of responsibility and connectedness that Collins sees in both the Black Arts Movement and Feminist Art Movement. Does this ideological drive preclude poetry like Shange’s that is intimate and “promiscuous” in its influences? Does the attention to the “folk” mean that middle class writers like Shange need to ventriloquize another’s voice rather than refining their own? (heads up: this issue of class will come up again in Michelle Wallace and Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo).
What are your thoughts about the extended analogy between music and poetry in “takin’ a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative,” particularly the discussions of Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed(3ff)? What are we to make of the volume’s mix of genres–parables, self-interviews, lyric, and literary criticism? How effective is the mix of poems spoken seemingly in Shange’s voice and poems that try to develop specific characters and stories?
Finally, how do we continue to integrate music into our discussions of movement and dance? In an early review of Nappy Edges, Poet Michael Harper faulted the discussion of music in this collection, arguing “her analogy between jazz musicians and poets is weakened by their lack of a shared vocabulary and the different technical demands of their art” (NYTimes 10/21/79). Might we come to a different conclusion if we think about music, movement and language simultaneously? Is Shange developing the shared vocabulary as she writes about the collection? (Or is that a question better asked of her collaboration with with David Murray?)
A note on music
“My ‘yes’ will never be Tina’s ‘yes’. and that’s what I want to discuss with you this evening” (2)
So this week I learned that Tina Turner has a lot of “yesses” or “yeahs.” When I read that line, I immediately thought of her deep, unrestrained “yeah, yeah, yeah,” in “River Deep, Mountain High” (her first solo hit while married to Ike Turner)
But then I found this mike drop “yea” at the end of this classic “Fool in Love” clip. Unfortunately the “for research only” stamp is covering up some of Tina’s hip action:
Sadly, when I watch vintage clips of Tina, I think of Ike Turner’s violence, which then led me back to “with no immediate cause”
the
victims have not all been
identified/
NOTE for class: Gabrielle Davenport and I are still working out the music issues, but here’s a mix I did for “lotsa body and cultural heritage”