In his essay-review The day of jubilee, published February 27, 1959 in the Los Angeles Tribune , Chestyn Everett confronts issues concerning the commercialization, dilution, and decontextualization of black spirituals. Everett, who was a scholar, civil rights activist, and later, a professor at Cornell University, starts his essay with a more general condemnation of black and white artists alike for corrupting their renditions of spirituals and remaining less and less faithful to the genre and the historical background. He goes on to make generalized characters and condemning them for each way they have warped the genre.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must admit, however, that the average white artist approaches the Negro spiritual as if the Negro slaves who had created these songs, had studied \u201clieder\u201d composition and voice at some classic conservatory in which they attended evening classes after a day\u2019s session in the cotton fields. On the other extreme, the white popular \u201csingers\u201d approach the negro spiritual as if, instead of the conservatory in the cotton fields, the negro slaves had a \u201crock and roll\u201d band by which they rhythmically picked cotton and did little chores around the house for the \u201cmissus\u201d, and that the \u201ckind ole massah\u201d had put up a \u201cdark town strutters bistro\u201d– and that each night this \u201ctired-happy, free loving, fun loving, maddening throng of dark humanity\u201d converged upon the DTSB singing \u201cWhen the saints go marchin\u2019 in\u201d to the insane-frentic backing of \u201cOld Black Joe and his Cotton Picking Ramblers\u201d<\/p>\n
He continues with several critiques of certain black musicians. First, he critiques black musicians who \u201cclean up the language,\u201d that is, editing the southern slave dialect into more modern english. He argues that this is the same as saying that the slaves who created the spirituals lacked \u201cthe finer points of musical intelligence,\u201d (Everett 9). His next critique is of incompetent black musicians who rationalize the validity of their performances by recalling that slaves would have had no formal training. \u201c[this singer] labors under the unfortunate assumption that being a Negro establishes the assumption that he can sing Negro spirituals, and further that any vocal ability he is conspicuously lacking is inconsequential to the fact that he \u201cfeels\u201d what he is (not) doing,\u201d (Everett 21).<\/p>\n
His main issue with many modern practices of spirituals is with the recontextualization of this music. Similar to what we have learned in class, the way that music, and more specifically, information, is portrayed in the present paints firmly guides how many view the past. While he characterizes and exaggerates these examples, his worry holds true.<\/p>\n
Works Cited:
\nEverett, Chestyn. \u201cThe day of jubilee: an essay-review.\u201d The Los Angeles Tribune, February 27, 1959, pp. 9, 21. African American Newspapers. Accessed on October 3, 2019. https:\/\/infoweb.newsbank.com\/apps\/readex\/doc?p=EANAAA&sort=_rank_%3AD&f=advanced&val-base-0=white&fld-base-0=ocrtext&bln-base-1=and&val-base-1=spirituals&fld-base-1=ocrtext&docref=image%2Fv2:129280BA5DFE7A33@EANAAA-12C5FE6E97CC8398@2436627-12C5FE6EC9A29168-12C5FE6FB0599BF8&firsthit=yes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his essay-review The day of jubilee, published February 27, 1959 in the Los Angeles Tribune , Chestyn Everett confronts issues concerning the commercialization, dilution, and decontextualization of black spirituals. Everett, who was a scholar, civil rights activist, and later, … Continue reading