Negrophilia and Konnakol

Negrophilia is a captivation with a caricature of Blackness, which blurs the boundaries of black identity and fetishizes “primal roots” for entertainment value. This was especially common in Paris in the 1920s. It is an odd phenomenon to modern sensibilities, as there was a somewhat positive attitude toward blackness but was nonetheless demeaning and racist.

Parisians in the 1920s did celebrate and love the African American artists who performed for them. Josephine Baker was an African American dancer for La Revue Négre, and was famous for her Danse Sauvage which emulated the supposed wild roots of African people. ¹ Andre Levinson, a white dance critic, praised Baker for her “carnal magnificence and her impulsive vehemence, her unashamed exhibition comes close to pathos . . . . Josephine Baker, by her extraordinary and disturbing genius, is able with one bound to join her savage forefathers and with another to go back to our common animal ancestors.”² Baker, and other African American artists, were very popular during this time. Darius Milhaud encountered jazz on a trip to Harlem, where he was deeply affected by this music which was completely new to him. ³ He “made the wholesale use of the jazz style to convey a purely classical style” in La Creation Du Monde, using the instrumentation of a jazz orchestra as well as many jazz idioms. ⁴ Both the artists and the music of Black America were loved in Paris.

But while 1920’s Parisian audiences may have loved and celebrated African American artists, they didn’t truly respect them. France was more racially accepting than the US, but racism was certainly present. La Revue Négre was especially disrespectful, as it didn’t think blacks should be represented with “precision dancing”.⁵ Instead, La Revue depicted blacks with savage fervor and animal nature to reflect the jungles of Africa.⁶ Depictions of slavery in the Southern US were prevalent in La Revue Négre, “and they served to reinforce a view of African Americans as only partially civilized and working in a ‘primitive’ agricultural setting.” ⁷ This is certainly not respect towards Black artists. La Creation Du Monde attempted authenticity in its depiction of Blackness, but blurred identities between African creation stories (which weren’t very well researched by Paul Cendrars) and African-American jazz.⁸ Milhaud thought that jazz “had its roots in the darkest corners of the Negro soul, the vestigial traces of Africa.”⁹ White French creators of this music disrespected African Americans by equating their identities with primitiveness, and by portraying their imaginations of an identity they do not understand.

One tradition to which I can relate some of these phenomena is that of Konnakol. Konnakol is a vocal percussion art from the Carnatic tradition of South India, in which a musician recites complex rhythmic syllables (Solkattu). These syllables are based on Sanskrit words from the Hindu Veda texts.¹⁰ When listening to Konnakol, I am amazed by the virtuosity and complexity of the performers. However, it is a somewhat exotic fascination, as it is completely different from any Western classical music I am used to. The different language and the centuries of tradition add to its allure for Western musicians.

Musicians like John McLaughlin have discovered Konnakol and implemented it in their jazz music, similar to Milhaud’s use of jazz for his classical style.¹¹ In fact, we have absorbed konnakol into our curriculum at St. Olaf: the Ta Ka Di Mi system is based on the main Solkattu of Konnakol (and other similar Indian traditions). However, this influence is not often discussed in our classrooms. We have divorced these syllables from their home tradition and used them to bolster our education in Western classical music. Using other ideas as cultural exchange is certainly valuable and important, but this exchange should be transparent so as to avoid the blurring of identities that negrophilia can cause.