The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism

[The Jazz Aficionado]

The Great African-American Classical Art-Form

 

The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism  

 

Consider those nightclubs such as the Cotton Club where performers were black but the clientele was exclusively white. Why did all those white people seek black entertainment? No doubt most of them came for the erotic floor show, but some of them were interested in the music.  Why? The question is not a new one and the answer is obvious -- in the same way that the applicability of Freud to racism is so obvious that it has been little discussed.  

 

European-Americans have liked African-American music because it has expressive values which are lacking in European and European-American music (Crouch, 1990b, p.83; Keil, 1996, p.49; Small, 1987, p.154; Williams, 1983, p.254).

 

In particular, as we've seen above, African-American music is comfortable with sexuality, while European music is not.

People may have come to the Cotton Club to see black bodies enact jungle pseudo-rituals on stage, but they left with the expressive sound of African-American music boring into their brains.

 

While the jazz club is ostensibly a place for entertainment, it also functions on a deeper level as a school, one in which the teachers are black and the students are white. They are learning a cultural stylization of emotion which is adequate to their needs than the one they learned at home, in school, or in the church.

 

Where the lyncher and his descendants are desperately trying to preserve the restrictiveness of his culture, the white jazz devotee, and his descendants, is trying to break free from that restrictiveness by learning elements of a different culture. In the nightclub scenario, Africa is the teacher and Europe the student (cf. Asante, 1987, p.59).

 

Source

Harvard Press:  Benzon, W.L., 1997. Music Making History: Africa Meets Europe in the United States of the Blues.

 

https://www.facebook.com/keepingtheidiomalive/   

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, The Jazz Aficionado said:

In particular, as we've seen above, African-American music is comfortable with sexuality, while European music is not.

You know, I think I pretty much dig what you're trying to do, but....wow, that's really ignorant. Really, really myopic in historic knowledge and totally finite (shrinking, even) in terms of a landing point from which to gain useable traction for forward movement.

You'll find it difficult, if not impossible, to move past a Post-Colonialist Escapist Confrontation mindset into a Pan-Human Pangeic Awakening by thinking that the great "revolution" of jazz was that it brought sex to music and people where none had existed before. People all over the world have had fuck music, and not just recently. Or are you implying that "Europeans" are uncomfortable with fucking in general?

Consider also that the reductionist term "European" has no real meaning past geography. And also consider that equating "African-American" to "European" is akin to equating "Shortstop" to "Baseball Player". Or is the point that "African-American" music was/is more comfortable with "sexuality" than is "African" music?

You want to talk about a real revolution of the musics of the African Diaspora, start thinking in terms of time (literal time), pitch, color, all that other stuff, how here was the sound of a tradition that did not recognize a strictly symmetrical/fixed system of physical and metaphysical measurement colliding head-on with one that found comfort in the knowledge of exacter measurements and finer classifications. Let's talk about Warm Weather Physics meeting Cold Weather Physics, hell that's a factor in musical inclinations even now, right here in America (but note BOTH Physics are valid strictly within their own points of reference). People Of The Sun and People Of The Ice are still People, both Ice and Sun a part of the Creation Of The One, Ice Caps melting, is anybody really saying Go Sun Go, MELT THE FUCK OUT OF ALL THAT ICE?

When Worlds Collide, neither are left intact. And a failure to recognize Before bodes ill for an ability to recognize After, never mind moving ahead instead of flailing about.

Or you can cast the show as Shakin' Black Asses Made Weak Sexed White Folk Lead With Their Dicks, Yakub Defeated!!!! I'm sure there's a market for that, always has been. EZ Metrics For EZ Peoples. Ask an easy question and you'll get an easier answer. Okie-Doke!

Seems like a totally non-logical plan, to engage 21st Century evolutionary concerns with 20th Century logics, but then again, that does seem to be all the rage these days!

Me, I believe that the man got it right the first time - free your mind, and your ass will follow.

In that order.

 

 

 

[Jazzmoose]

21 hours ago, JSngry said:

 Or are you implying that "Europeans" are uncomfortable with fucking in general?

 

 

Europeans?  Of course not.,  Those who were uncomfortable with fucking in general left and went to North America...

[jlhoots]

21 hours ago, JSngry said:

You know, I think I pretty much dig what you're trying to do, but....wow, that's really ignorant. Really, really myopic in historic knowledge and totally finite (shrinking, even) in terms of a landing point from which to gain useable traction for forward movement.

You'll find it difficult, if not impossible, to move past a Post-Colonialist Escapist Confrontation mindset into a Pan-Human Pangeic Awakening by thinking that the great "revolution" of jazz was that it brought sex to music and people where none had existed before. People all over the world have had fuck music, and not just recently. Or are you implying that "Europeans" are uncomfortable with fucking in general?

Consider also that the reductionist term "European" has no real meaning past geography. And also consider that equating "African-American" to "European" is akin to equating "Shortstop" to "Baseball Player". Or is the point that "African-American" music was/is more comfortable with "sexuality" than is "African" music?

You want to talk about a real revolution of the musics of the African Diaspora, start thinking in terms of time (literal time), pitch, color, all that other stuff, how here was the sound of a tradition that did not recognize a strictly symmetrical/fixed system of physical and metaphysical measurement colliding head-on with one that found comfort in the knowledge of exacter measurements and finer classifications. Let's talk about Warm Weather Physics meeting Cold Weather Physics, hell that's a factor in musical inclinations even now, right here in America (but note BOTH Physics are valid strictly within their own points of reference). People Of The Sun and People Of The Ice are still People, both Ice and Sun a part of the Creation Of The One, Ice Caps melting, is anybody really saying Go Sun Go, MELT THE FUCK OUT OF ALL THAT ICE?

When Worlds Collide, neither are left intact. And a failure to recognize Before bodes ill for an ability to recognize After, never mind moving ahead instead of flailing about.

Or you can cast the show as Shakin' Black Asses Made Weak Sexed White Folk Lead With Their Dicks, Yakub Defeated!!!! I'm sure there's a market for that, always has been. EZ Metrics For EZ Peoples. Ask an easy question and you'll get an easier answer. Okie-Doke!

Seems like a totally non-logical plan, to engage 21st Century evolutionary concerns with 20th Century logics, but then again, that does seem to be all the rage these days!

Me, I believe that the man got it right the first time - free your mind, and your ass will follow.

In that order.

 

 

 

What Jim said!!

[JSngry]

what Duke said.