Thinking about the overarching theme of storytelling uncovers the ways that African Americans have historically used music to create space to exist in American society— a society that often relegates them to the margins. While research on storytelling’s transformative power looks largely at non-fiction stories or first-person accounts and how they can produce empathy regarding issues of injustice, this paper aims to expand these arguments to include fictional stories as well (Chin and Rudelius-Palmer 2010). Fictional stories build upon this empathy by providing space where black people can offer new approaches/solutions to thinking about these problems, as well as exist expansively and free of society’s constrictions. It permits African Americans …show more content…
Metropolis and is titled “March of the Wolfmasters”. It is a spoken piece designed to sound like an authoritative figure making an announcement. This song is significant in that it’s the first introduction into Monae’s epic three-album sci-fi saga about the android Cindi Mayweather—who exists in a world where humans are the oppressors and androids the oppressed. In “March of the Wolfmasters” the announcer states that Mayweather has fallen in love with a human which is against “The Rules” and thus she is scheduled for “immediate disassembly”. The song acts as an instruction guide to the “bounty hunters” seeking to disassemble Mayweather including both her location, and guidelines to the types of weapons that can be used to destroy her. In this song and throughout her albums, Monáe uses the imagery and storyline of this fantastical world to interrogate and raise questions about our current society. As she states herself “For me science fiction plays a huge role in the future because I can solve problems. I can...take today’s issues and put them in the future and all of a sudden to the listener it means something different. You’re able to get their attention and warn them that if we don’t get our act together this is what our society--we will have a dystopian world if we don’t make some changes”. Through this imagery she reimagines and redesigns what reality could be posing new questions about injustices in our current society, and how they can be rectified by looking at the
For centuries, music has been defined by history, time, and place. To address this statement, Tom Zè, an influential songwriter during the Tropicália Movement, produced the revolutionary “Fabrication Defect” to challenge oppression as a result from the poor political and social conditions. On the other hand, David Ramsey discusses, in mixtape vignettes, the role of music to survive in New Orleans’ violent setting. Furthermore, “The Land where the Blues Began”, by Alan Lomax, is a film and perfect example to understand under what musical conditions profound ways of communication are made to stand the hard work of cotton plantations. As a result, music plays a crucial role in the sources’ cultures and its creation relies on particular conditions such as the social
Using metaphors that bring every word to life, Harper shares remorse with the reader as he describes the expectation of three Idols in the African American community through a more relatable form that is music. As the reader you place yourself on a train which as
Music nurtured the African American tradition and their struggle towards equality in the same century.... ... middle of paper ... ... Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds Pub. Carter, D. (2009).
Before beginning to analyze both Motown and Stax Record’s influence on black consciousness it must first be understood why black consciousness itself can be seen as a step in the right direction in the fight against black struggle. Brian Ward does a great job of capturing the true success of soul music’s influence on black consciousness. Ward says, “[Black radio’s] real strength… was its ability to dramatize and celebrate shared aspects of the black experience… to promote a revived sense of black identity, pride, solidarity and common consciousness” (Ward 449). In his book, Ward also points out that despite this successful development of black consciousness, there was limited success both economically and structurally on behalf of the black music industry. This shows that even though ther...
The plight of the civil rights movement stands as one of the most influential and crucial elements to African-American history. We can accredit many activist, public speakers, and civil rights groups, to the equality and civil rights that African-American men and women are able to have in this country today. We see repeated evidence of these historical movements describes in fiction, plays, TV, and many other forms of media and literature. An artistic license is provided to many authors developing these concepts amongst their writing. When examining specific characters and literary works you can see an indirect comparison to the personality traits, actions, decisions, and journey to that of real-life historical figures.
... the development of black literature, and The Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, marked a turning point for this literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other African Americans. With the Renaissance, African American literature as well as black fine art and performance art began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture. What is important in reading this literature, or listening to the music, is to fully understand the underlying meaning behind the words; the sorrowful experiences of the writers, the insistence in self-definition, the search for self-expression, and self-determination, and a striving after what Alain Locke called "spiritual emancipation." The African American history so rich and deep rooted with sorrow, grief, and struggles have and still influence African artist all over the United States.
The book, The Spirituals and the Blues, by James H. Cone, illustrates how the slave spirituals and the blues reflected the struggle for black survival under the harsh reality of slavery and segregation. The spirituals are historical songs which speak out about the rupture of black lives in a religious sense, telling us about people in a land of bondage, and what they did to stay united and somehow fight back. The blues are somewhat different from in the spirituals in that they depict the secular aspect of black life during times of oppression and the capacity to survive. James H. Cone’s portrayal of how the spirituals and the blues aided blacks through times of hardship and adversity has very few flaws and informs the reader greatly about the importance of music in the lives of African-Americans. The author aims to both examine the spirituals and blues as cultural expressions of black people and to reflect on both the theological and sociological implications of these songs.
Christa Wolf tells a tale about a woman, Cassandra, the story’s narrator, a princess of Troy in Anatolia, a seer, and a priestess of the god Apollo. In many ways, this is both a feminist and an anti-war novel. The struggle between patriarchy and matriarchy was present throughout the story and can still correlate in some ways today. The whole story is seen and experienced through a women’s eyes which gives a different perspective of war and why it is prominent. This idea parallels the position of many women in Wolf’s time, showing how they were dominated and suppressed. Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of being able to see the future but since she turned down his advances, she was cursed with the notion that nobody believes her prophesies. Cassandra
Black art forms have historically always been an avenue for the voice; from spirituals to work songs to ballads, pieces of literature are one way that the black community has consistently been able to express their opinions and communicate to society at large. One was this has been achieved is through civil disobedience meeting civil manners. In this case, it would be just acknowledging an issue through art and literature. On the other hand, there is art with a direct purpose - literature meant to spur action; to convey anger and shock; or to prompt empathy, based on a discontent with the status quo. That is, protest literature. Through the marriage of the personal and political voices in black poetry and music, the genre functions as a form
In essence, this song carries various sociological concepts. It concentrates on the main idea about the social construction of reality and talking about how reality is changing. The song questions the actions and mentally of individuals violating the norms and values of society. The band takes into consideration various factors of why it is happening including the media and religion. As a result they talk about such influences taking control building and developing a sense of self. This is a great song about present day problems and how society changes with them.
Music often carries information about community knowledge, aesthetics, or perspectives. Toni Morrison discusses the power of music and the way it functions in culture in discussions of her craft. Symbolic and structural elements of music appear throughout all of Toni Morrison’s fiction in one way or another. (Obadike) As mentioned above, the title itself, draws attention to the world-renowned music created by African Americans in the 1920s’ as well as to the book’s jazz-like narrative structure and themes.
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.
“Dances with Wolves” is a movie that seeks to deliver a message of the need for cultural diversity. The story follows the main character Lt. John James Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the barely touched western frontiers that house the Sioux people. Once Dunbar arrives at his post, Ft. Sedgewick, he sets out to find his place in his new home. However, due to two plot moving events, the suicide of the officer who dispatched Dunbar to Fort Sedgewick and the murder of the coach driver who took him there, no one else is alive that holds knowledge of Dunbar’s placement.
One of the aims of this essay is to offer an analysis of the intersectionality of oppressions as part of a power discourse in Alice Walker’s seminal novel, The Color Purple, by trying to argue how the political categories of race, gender and sexuality converge throughout the novel. Furthermore, I will delve into the politicized aesthetics of message or philosophical rap artists such as KRS-One and Sister Souljah and establish connections with Alice Walker’s novel in terms of resistance and systems of power. I will discuss these issues and argue that both the novel and the rap songs I will focus on represent highly politicized forms of art, which stand at the core of shaping African American identity. I will place this discussion in the context
12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright is a photo and text book which poetically tells the tale of African Americans from the time they were taken from Africa to the time things started to improve for them in a 149 page reflection. Using an interchanging series of texts and photographs, Richard Wright encompasses the voices of 12 million African-Americans, and tells of their sufferings, their fears, the phases through which they have gone and their hopes. In this book, most of the photos used were from the FSA, Farm Security Administration and a few others not from them. They were selected to complement and show the points of the text. The African-Americans in the photos were depicted with dignity.