BULLETIN: 'This I Believe' Essay SAMPLE (by Mr. Knight)

THIS I BELIEVE (BLACK MUSIC: JOY IN VERSE, SONG AND HISTORY)
By Larry J. Knight, Jr.
Copy #1

I believe in the power of music. I believe in its transcendent ability to provide us with a link to emotions that know no limit. Throughout history, humankind has always been connected to music. It has provided a tie to perhaps some of the most awe inspiring feelings that one could possibly experience; it is the soundtrack to our joys, our pains, our moments of strife and jubilation. The history of music as it connects to African-Americans is one of triumph and long lasting tradition. From the beginnings of time, the sound of the drum has been inexplicably linked to the foundation of community and family. In Africa, our ancestors told stories and sang songs that were accompanied by a rhythmic beat that channeled the energy and dynamism of the spirits. That beat, through the tragedy of the African slave trade, made its way to the American South. And although the Africans who were affected by the Diaspora were subjected to all types of inhumanity, they still turned to song as a means to ease the pain of slavery. I believe in those songs sung in fields of toil, sweat and blood that were comforting; that music that gave solace to the afflicted, and peace to the spiritually hungry. From those work songs came spirituals that when sung transmitted a beckoning need to be closer to God. These songs spoke metaphorically about salvation and used references such as ‘home,’ ‘chariot,’ and ‘train’ to convey a deep yearning to escape the oppressive bonds of enslavement. I remember the first Negro spiritual that I learned as a child and the effect it had on me when I learned of its true meaning; that song ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot,’ was a rallying cry for slaves who sought liberation on Harriet Tubman’s now famous Underground Railroad. In utilizing the Negro spiritual in everyday life, Africans, who after the Civil War quickly became Americans, reached for a firmament that they felt, would restore them to the dignity and spiritual connection of their motherland. They employed a method of call and response in their songs thus seeking to re-establish what was lost in the slave trade: community.

I believe in the great worth of coping through song. How as the Civil War concluded and the once enslaved African met with the discrimination of economic disparity, men and women expressed their emotional lamentations in loosely structured pieces that were spawned in the bayous of the South. The blues, as it would eventually come to be known as, served as a means to channel a great need and desire for catharsis through song. These sometimes non-secular pieces served as a direct contrast to the spirituals that an equal cross section of the populace longed for. But while the blues was used to cool the enflamed tempers that were directly connected to the plight of a disenfranchised people, its progeny, jazz, a more improvisational form relied heavily on many of the principles that made the blues popular. This free form expression created by African-Americans in the Congo Square section of New Orleans was used as a vehicle to propel them beyond the impediments of the Jim Crow South. They used it to catapult themselves into a sort of artistic representation of equality that only manifested itself within the notes of the music. I now do the same. I listen to the likes of Coltrane, Silver, Davis, Blakey, and others and embrace their free form expressiveness with a commitment and verve that is soon to be passed to my children. In history once jazz migrated and was passed on to the urbanity of the American Mid-west and North, it served as a predecessor to soul music which led to rhythm and blues, which served as a platform for young singers from Detroit and Chicago. Their songs became anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and left an indelible fingerprint on the fabric of American culture. Artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and James Brown, as well as others contributed to the revolution that was taking place in urban streets.

I believe in music’s connectivity to youthfulness. As the youth of the 1960s and 1970s listened to a new revolution in black music that incorporated elements of Negro spirituals, the blues, and jazz, the very nature of the sound began to evolve into a new exciting format that cultivated the growing need for change and rebellion against the status quo. In 1973 at the intersection of Sedgwick Avenue and Cedar Park in the Bronx, under the illumination of street lamps, Caribbean born DJs made the initial steps to pioneer the art form now known as hip-hop. Throughout the early 1980s this new genre in the African-American musical experience found its roots in the beats and notes that emanated from jazz, rhythm and blues, and soul. It was an amalgamation of things that found its liberation in the syncopated beats of the now electronically controlled drum. I remember the moment my life changed when the sound of Eric B. and Rakim’s seminal classic song ‘Paid in Full’ blasted through the speakers of my first boom-box. How the lyricism and poetry in that song lit my passion for words.

To me the pure essence of the black music experience is limitless; its boundaries non-existent. To understand the power and majesty that lies within the beat is to seek the purest form of the music. In today’s world of American Idols and manufactured singers, it could be said with a great deal of assuredness that the traditions of the African-American musical experience are fading away. This steady decay of traditional culture can only be ceased with the fire and enthusiasm of the same youthful vigor that brought many of the genres into existence. It begins with you and me. It begins with a close study of self and the answering of questions: Are you ready to take the challenge? Are you ready to embrace and cultivate the heritage that lies within the notes that serves as a more virtuous blueprint for African-American music? If so, we should turn off our radios and seek Mahaila Jackson, Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, Donnie Hathaway and Eric B. and Rakim. These pioneers are but a few of the revolutionary architects of the universality of music. We are all invited to the revolution. Are you listening?

-30-