
The African sense of using song for purposes of satire and praise
And then there was Black Benny, the drummer, six foot six, nothing but muscle. He
Are there any other characteristics of West African music that survive in jazz today? Indeed there are, but they consist of a strange assortment of apparently unrelated details. One characteristic, for example, is simply a matter of a kind of words that go with a song, The New Orleans Creole clarinettist still sings this to a rhumba rhythm:
Si vous tchoué ain poul pou moi
Mêlé li dans ain fricassay,
Pa blié mête la sauce tomate
Avec ain gros galon di vin
Sali dame, sali dame, sali dame, un bon jour
Sali dame, sali dame, mo woir to to, woir to-to
(…)
Original Creole Orchestra. Front row (left to right): Ollie "Dink"Johnson,James Palao, Nomood Williams. Back row: Edward Vincent, Freddie Keppard, George Baquet, William Manuel Johnson. Photograph taken in Los Angleles, summer of 1914. Courtesy Hogan Jazz Archive, Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Tulane University - ID: PH003085 Source
The language is Creole French and the New Orleans Creole cal it a ”signifying song.” In spite of its gaiety and rhumba-like rhythms, this song cuts two ways and the sali dame (dirty lady) to which it is addressed is about to have her reputation shredded. In West Africa, these numbers are called songs of allusion and the people at whom they are directed actually pay the singers to stop singing and go away.
Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz, Oxford University Press, 1956, P. 11
It seems almost impossible for a child of New Orleans to speak without emotion of the Creole songs, they run such a gamut of local sentiment and love, from the past and present. And as for the Creole music, it is quite permissible to say it is in New Orleans, that no one has ever known the full poetry and inspiration of the dance who has not danced to the original music of a Macarty or a Basile Barès.
Grace King, New Orleans, The Place and The People, The Macmillan Company, (1895). p.338
It seems almost impossible for a child of New Orleans to speak without emotion of the Creole songs, they run such a gamut of local sentiment and love, from the past and present. And as for the Creole music, it is quite permissible to say it is in New Orleans, that no one has ever known the full poetry and inspiration of the dance who has not danced to the original music of a Macarty or a Basile Barès.
Grace King, New Orleans, The Place and The People, The Macmillan Company, (1895). p.338
Dancing Figures, c. 1935, Richard Bruce Nugent (American, 1906-1987) Black ink and graphite on textured wove paper. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum Source
The final element of King’s description of the New Orleans musical tradition refers back to another well-documented area of music during the era of slavery, in which slaves performed for their white masters. In many places this was instrumental music, but in New Orleans, according to King, there was a strong vocal tradition, underpinned with the poetry and inspiration of the dance. She states:
Group Singing, Virginia, 1840s, ...all clapped hands in unison, until the air quivered with melody...Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, The Story of My Life (Hartford, 1897), p. 185 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library Source
Under the ancien régime, it was a favourite after-dinner entertainment to have the slaves come in and sing, rewarding them with glasses of wine and silver pieces… and it is a pleasure to own the conviction, whether it can be maintained or not, with reason, that America will one day do homage for music of a fine and original type, to some representative of Louisiana’s colored population.
The Virginia Reel, 1895, Century Magazine, Vol. 27, pg 255. Drawn by Howard Helmick & engraved by W. Miller. Courtesy Victorian Voices and Archive.org Source
King is explicitly referring to Creole songs, but this is a very early statement by any white writer identifying a strand of music is specifically African-American, and crediting it as fine and original.
We can therefore infer from Grace King that, in Louisiana and particularly in terms of plantation music, African-Americans sang work songs that repeated short strains of melody in unison. These involved improvisation, and flattened or minor pitches. French songs were drawn into the cultural mix, expressing a dislike of white Americans and involving subject-matter that also touched on the complexities of racial interbreeding that had produced a caste system of gens de couleur.
A plantation corn-shucking - social meeting of slaves [graphic] / H. Helmick. 1897 - Courtesy the Library Company of Philadelphia Illustration in Mary Ashton Rice Livermore's The Story of my Life, or, The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (Hartford: A.D. Worthington & Co., 1897), p. 336 - Source
This music was often accompanied by percussionists playing explicitly African-derived rhythms, as well as collective dances or acts of worship that involved the achievement of an ecstatic state. By 1895 there was a discernible and distinctive character about the African-American music that was performed for white listeners.
In another letter he (Lafcadio Hearn) wrote:
There could neither have been creole patois nor creole melodies but for the French and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the negro chant are lightened by the French influence, or subdued and deepened by the Spanish
In another letter he (Lafcadio Hearn) wrote:
There could neither have been creole patois nor creole melodies but for the French and Spanish blooded slaves of Louisiana and the Antilles. The melancholy, quavering beauty and weirdness of the negro chant are lightened by the French influence, or subdued and deepened by the Spanish
(…)
Cuban Trio Terceto Yoyo with gourd, guitar and 14 key marímbula c. 1920s [Sometimes called the bass kalimba the marimbula is a folk instrument of the Caribbean, the creation of African slaves and their descendants. It comes originally from rural Oriente province, at the eastern end of the island of Cuba, and was first observed being played there in the mid-nineteenth century. From an essay by Michael Sisson, Ph.D] The Marimbula is aslo prominent in the musical form called Changüí Source
Hearn was musically illiterate, but his powers of observation were keen and his intuitions were quick and penetrating. He felt what I have described as the imposition of French and Spanish melody on African rhythms.
La Rumba (1937) - Courtesy of the Ramos Collection, Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences - by Cuban artist Antonio Sanchez Araujo (1887-1946). - Source
Possibly, however, the elements frequently found in songs of this group not found to any extent of the other groups (French and Cajun) are satire; ridicule or mockery; a sort of crude, suggestive vulgarity, and the mention of food.
The negro ridicules men in municipal politics (cf. Calinda), Frenchmen, a girl jilted by her lover, people wearing tight trousers (cf. Michié Banjo), riders of lean horses, and well-dressed or overdressed negroes, poorly girded.
He eats gumbo (cf.Éy laba), fish stew (cf. Kan motè piti), potatoes (cf. kan pata-la kwit), and meat.
Irène Thérèse Whitfield, Louisiana French FolkSongs, Dover Publications, Inc., 1930, p.126
The old mammy rocked us to sleep, gave us our meals, even bathed us. To the tune of these songs; each occasion having its special and appropriate melody.
When asked where they came from she would insist that they had always existed; that her mother’s mother had taught them to her as she had been taught before.
Mina Monroe, Bayou Ballads, Twelve Folk-Songs From Louisiana, G. Schirmer, Inc., 1921, p. (iii)
The old mammy rocked us to sleep, gave us our meals, even bathed us. To the tune of these songs; each occasion having its special and appropriate melody.
When asked where they came from she would insist that they had always existed; that her mother’s mother had taught them to her as she had been taught before.
Mina Monroe, Bayou Ballads, Twelve Folk-Songs From Louisiana, G. Schirmer, Inc., 1921, p. (iii)
I have heard many tales and theories that jazz music came from slaves on the Southern plantation, but when I was a small boy in the Creole section of New Orleans, I heard folks singing whole songs from top to bottom in French and Patois, just like you hear Bing Crosby singing Blue Skies or I Got Rhythm.
These songs were full of spirit and had a beat, and on Mardi Gras day, you would hear groups or maskers singing in Creole Patois and dancing the Bombouche. The West Indian islanders do the same dance at their social affairs in New York City.
I heard these songs all over the neighborhood. Catholic Creole women doing house work and nursing their babies sing these songs and not the Protestant hymns and spirituals. I used to wonder about these coloured people singing French songs. Most of these songs seemed to ridicule someone and you listened intently you could bet you’d hear the phrase ”mon chere”.
Danny Barker (born Barbarin), Buddy Bolden and The Last Days of Storyville, Continuum, 2001, p. 91
A Negroes Dance in the Island of Dominica, 1779, by Agostino Brunias. Courtesy of John Carter Brown Archive of Early American Images Source
And then there was Black Benny, the drummer, six foot six, nothing but muscle. He
The variety of sounds at Congo Square was commented on by James Creecy who, visiting
There is a marvelous recording of music from The Ursulines’ manuscript, performed by the French