Robert Johnson's rhythms and their implications for 'black music'

This article explores the circumstances under which Léopold Sédar Senghor, poet‐philosopher and first president of Senegal, developed a theory of racial belonging, situating the black soul within experiences of modernity. This article addresses the distinctiveness of Senghor’s Negritude, focusing attention on the complex, uneasy relationship between often racist European thinking on Africa and the means by which Senghor, as a pan‐Africanist and a modernist, chose to re‐evaluate African ways of being in the world. To many, Senghor’s reliance upon the coloniser’s views made his thought (and the patronage and arts scene that followed) primitivising. Others have read his assertions as part of a necessary historic moment of postcolonial cultural and racial reaffirmation and reclamation.

The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 2005

2022

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is generally recognised as one of the most influential composer/blues singers of the twentieth century. The forty-one tracks which remain of his recordings constitute a highly idiosyncratic legacy. Their topics concern love, sexual desire and most strikingly traditional magical practices and the supernatural. Many aspects of Johnson’s compositions have been ascribed to African origins, but this betrays a limited knowledge of African song lyrics. The paper explores the different genres implicit in Johnson’s songs with particular emphasis on African links.

The American Historical Review, 2008

2019

Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2005

There is a new laudatory trend in books being published on blues and its more commercial counterpart, rhythm and blues. The field for the last few decades has been almost the exclusive preserve of record collectors and true believers, who tended to write with a fan's enthusiasm and a fan's dedication to unearthing all the facts about the subject that could be found. Thus, we presently have many bookcases-worth of terrifically researched books, delineating the history of blues/rhythm and blues, but what has largely been lacking in them are evocative writing and a sense that the author has bothered to actually make sense of the subject in an analytical way. Until now, that is. An excellent example of this new trend is Arthur Kempton's Boogaloo (2003), an examination of soul music that is built wholly on the R&B research of his predecessors but which exudes vigorous prose and a compelling thesis. Another book reflecting this trend is Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta (2004), an insightful examination of Robert Johnson and the country blues, which not only possesses great writing and wonderful analytical conclusions, but also brings to the table original research.

Ethnomusicology, 2021

The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design, 2019

draft only, final version published in The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design, eds. Reynaldo Anderson and Clinton R. Fluker. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books

European Journal of Language and Literature, 2018

Harlem Renaissance is a significant time when African-American writers took pride in their artistic traditions. In order to create an authentic image for themselves, they created remarkable standards in their literature and art. A new tradition, which changed the well-established boundaries of literary creativity, was gaining full recognition among African-American writers. A new tradition, which changed the well-established boundaries of literary creativity, was gaining full recognition among African-American writers. These two genres had a huge impact in the times when the US was creating a cultural hybridity while the reconstruction of the mainstream meant an "open war" to classics. This paper will try to describe the extent to which Jazz and Blues aesthetics influenced into the African-American literature and how it was manifested in characters, structures, and themes that African-American writers promoted into their literary work.

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War this year, it is clear that various forms of slavery did not end with that legal document. Even now after all this time, we still need to acknowledge our cultural indebtedness in so many ways. In particular, white rock & roll musicians owe an enormous debt to Southern African Americans because without them, America would truly be without a form of music that we could truly call our own. Indeed one of the great ironies of American history is that white singers and musicians found their own personal agency through the music of African-America while the creators of this music were still in the chains of slavery or the apartheid culture of Jim Crow South. I am writing to publicly acknowledge my personal indebtedness and appreciation for my musical forebears through whom I found voice and agency during the formative years of the late 1960’s. I write this as a collection of personal “snapshots” that I have been collecting for almost fifty years now. Some of them come from my own life, others from recorded interviews, narratives and performances of the real trailblazers of rock music who remain mostly unknown or forgotten. Of course there have been many that have already written about some of events presented in the following passages, but like fading photographs, historical images and narratives need continual renewal for each generation in order to minimize distortion and myth and to acknowledge debt and give credit where it is long overdue.