The Art of Resistance

May 20, 2018 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: Black American History from Plantations to Rap Culture
Author: Pascal Archimede
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

Guadeloupean writer Pascal Archimede chronicles a cataclysmic era that tested the existential metal of a people. Spanning over three centuries, the Transatlantic Slave Trade moved human cargo from Africa to the New World with blinding efficiency and brutality. That blacks survived and ably acculturated amid poisonous barriers is worthy of study. Through the lens of music, Archimede has opened that discourse in ‘Black American History from Plantations to Rap Culture.’
Archimede offers a concise and well-articulated timeline of the black experience. Segregation followed slavery, culminating with systemic ghettoization or confinement.
Affirmative Action offered relief but overall, progress was ephemeral due to the political and economic policies of the 1980’s.
Still pained by the reluctance of nations to honestly acknowledge their role in an atrocity that filled their coffers, it is important that this chapter of history is never closed. Archimede’s work, while not detailing the violence and psychopathology of slavery and racism, injects a new narrative into an ongoing journey.
To shield the ego from annihilation, blacks, over the years created lyrical melodies. This defence mechanism, a sublimation, to be exact, is evident in the transcendental leaning of Negro Spirituals, in particular.
Many Spirituals, according to the author, compare the situation of the slaves in the New World to the captive Jews in biblical times. The most striking example is the classic rendition ‘Go Down Moses.’
Archimede writes, “The masters regarded Negro Spirituals as songs of resignation while in fact it often carried hopeful messages only understandable by slaves.”
The author defines another artistic expression called Hoolies – communicative shouts among farmers – as a statement that they were no longer slaves despite continued exploitation.
Later, Archimede cites music critic LeRoi Jones: “[S]ome kind of graph could be set up using samplings of Negro music proper to whatever moment of the Negro’s social history was selected, and that in each grouping of songs, a certain frequency of reference could pretty well determine his social, economic and psychological states at that particular period.”
The Blues, Archimede states, emerged from the despair and isolation of slavery and segregation and it was likely “the outcome of the convergence of the worksong, field holler and negro spiritual traditions with European cultural elements such as Anglo-Scottish ballads.”
Again, he culls from Jones: “Blues was a music that arose from the needs of a group, although it was assumed that each man has his own blues and that he would sing them.”
Interestingly, Archimede views Jazz as medium for racial reconciliation that has even assumed a much larger role as the definitive assimilator of musical expressions.
The long-enduring black community exploded in the 1960’s. The emergence of militant outfits jockeyed with Martin Luther King’s passive resistance. Both found an audience. The pulsating, anthemic refrains of black pride echoed through communities. James Brown held court. His aggressively rhythmic sounds called funk was the musical centrefold of that generation.
Rap music, Archimede describes as just one component of what is called Hip Hop Culture that included Graffiti and Breakdancing.
Graffiti, “Viewed as a form of juvenile delinquency,” he writes, “it was diligently eradicated in the subways in the 1980’s but soon found other outlets and a growing acceptance as an artistic expression.”
He then adds, “Indeed, [graffiti] began to enter galleries and museums and presented interest among collectors and gallery owners.”
Archimede later argues that “rap would never have existed without Soul music, Funk and Disco,” and “it is important to bear in mind that rappers of the 1980’s were raised in an environment where soul music was omnipresent.”
He continues, “In the 1960’s, 1970’s, Soul Music stars had sung their pride to be Black and the necessity to unite and stand up for their rights as human beings,” and “the relationship between rap and soul music is obvious, because the first aims at denouncing the abuse the African-Americans were victims of.”
He buttresses his position in presenting James Brown’s formula “I’m Black and I’m proud” as emblematic of a new wave of conscious resistance.
Ever so seamlessly, Archimede offers snapshots of black history through the trajectory of musical resistance. While his work does not address cultural aesthetics it introduces the phenomenology of music as a fulcrum of black ethnography.
And politically, Archimede’s timely offering encapsulates the factional turbulence that oftentimes beset nascent, marginalized movements. He examines the contributions of Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, Dr William Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, each responding to the black crisis through different prisms. The author delivers a definitive message: There is never a monolithic approach to liberation.
For sure, diverse needs and aspirations require multiples approaches to common problems. This Archimede well captures, adding that all too important layer to his overriding thesis.
With timing, form and structure, Archimede presents a study that oozes hope and optimism. His is a primer of invaluable worth, a genesis, no less, of a grander exposition of a people and their Herculean determination to survive.
Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Black American History from Plantations to Rap Culture by Pascal Archimede 2018
Publisher: Nofi Group
ISBN: 978-2-35682-671-8
Available at Amazon
Ratings: Recommended

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