11-, 12-, and 13½-Bar Blues: Time and African American Country Blues Recordings (1925–1938)

2021 ◽  
pp. 365-388
Author(s):  
Andrew Bowsher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Half Minute ◽  
Racial Stereotyping

This chapter examines commercially-issued recordings of African American country blues from the early twentieth century, and considers the politics of representation involved with these recordings related to the metric and structural orthodoxies of blues performance. Often featuring solo male singers performing with guitar accompaniment, the recorded country blues of the 1920s–30s are markedly flexible in their approaches to timing. Drawing upon recordings of important country blues artists including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton, the chapter considers key issues such as the controversy over the speed at which Johnson’s records were recorded, the flexible approach musicians took to the standard 12-bar format, and the strictures that the three-and-a-half minute 78 rpm record side posed for artists’ songcraft. How these factors challenge musicological orthodoxies over conventional blues structures and historical insights into the practice of the blues is illuminated through the proposal that these recordings struggle with contentious narratives of primitivism, racial stereotyping, and authenticity, whereby canonical 78 rpm records are reified to fit a prevailing narrative of the country blues as atavistic and authentic.

Contested Terrain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Weems
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black Business ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
National Bank ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Business Person

This chapter examines the “contested terrain” associated with the founding of Chicago’s Douglass National Bank in 1921. Anthony Overton, one of history’s most prominent African American entrepreneurs, is widely regarded as the founder of the second national bank organized by African Americans. Yet, the evidence indicates that this distinction should go to Pearl W. Chavers, a relatively obscure early twentieth-century black business person. The story of Anthony Overton’s ascent and P.W. Chavers’ descent in the Douglass National Bank’s administrative hierarchy reveals the power of money and influence. It also illuminates the nuances of both group and individual entrepreneur-based strategies for African American economic development.

’Garde ici et ’garde lá-bas

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Native American ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the history of the Creole accordion. Black Creoles in Louisiana have created their own, distinctive accordion music adapted from French, Native American, and African cultures. While Creole musicians in the early twentieth century were often hired for Cajun dances, where they played Cajun dance music, at their own gatherings they played a uniquely Creole repertoire that drew from the African American blues—a repertoire later developed by accordionists such Clifton Chenier and Boozoo Chavis. Zydeco, as this music eventually was labeled, has become a symbol of Louisiana Creole culture. It is argued that despite the pressure on modern zydeco bands to adapt to the demands of the music industry, the traditional accordion and rubboard remain the core instruments, and zydeco accordionists keep playing in a distinctively Creole style.

Behind Enemy Lines with No Beachhead

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald K. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Leader

This chapter examines the changing political awareness of Shepard after he became president of NCC. Moreover, this chapter evaluates Shepard’s role in the early civil rights movement in the Durham, North Carolina, area and how he was affected by the outcome of many protests that took place. Most important, this section tackles the idea of a “conservative” African American leader, such as a Booker T. Washington during the early twentieth century.

Affective Narratives: Harlem and the Lower East Side

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE ROTTENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Way

This paper begins by juxtaposing contemporary discourses on Harlem and the Lower East Side, arguing that the processes of iconization of these two neighborhoods have been very different. Whereas the iconicity of Harlem has always been shot through with ambivalence, the Lower East Side has come to signify a relatively unambivalent sacred space for US Jewry. The second part of the essay then traces the representations of Harlem and the Lower East Side back to early twentieth-century African American and Jewish American novels, claiming that critically analyzing the theme of ambivalence in these texts – and, more specifically, how ambivalence manifests itself differently within each literary tradition – is key to understanding not only why Harlem and the Lower East Side have undergone parallel but divergent processes of iconization, but also the way Jews and blacks have been positioned and have attempted to position themselves in relation to dominant white US society.

Democracy’s New Song

2011 ◽  
Vol 637 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Marina Bilbija
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

W. E. B. Du Bois’s (1935/1998) Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 is commonly regarded as the foundational text of revisionist African American historiography. But Black Reconstruction did more than correct the historical record, it also interrogated the very limits of historiography—what it can communicate, and what and who its “appropriate” subjects should be. Drawing on Susan Gillman’s concept of race melodrama as the dominant framework for late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century racial thinking, this article posits Black Reconstruction as a race melodrama par excellence, with special emphasis on the text’s strategic invocations of music in emotionally and spiritually charged moments. To this end, it traces Du Bois’s use of song, scenes of singing, librettos, and lyrics as both an affective and de-familiarizing device through which he is able to yoke the former slaves’ messianic/religious experience of freedom and their understanding of democracy.

scholarly journals Race, Mobility, and Fantasy: Afromobiling in Tropical Florida

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 805-831
Author(s):  
HENRY KNIGHT LOZANO
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
South Florida ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Tourist Experience ◽  
Hotel Employee

This article explores a popular tourist vehicle in early twentieth-century Florida: the Afromobile. Beginning in the 1890s, Afromobiling referred to the white tourist experience in south Florida of travelling in a wheelchair propelled by an African American hotel employee. Most prominent in Palm Beach, these wheelchairs developed into a heavily promoted tourist activity in the region. Using promotional imagery and travel literature this paper traces the development of Afromobiling as a tourist vehicle that played upon south Florida's tropical environs. It argues that the vehicle's popularity related to its enactment of benign racial hierarchy and controlled black mobility. Moreover, the Afromobile infused US fantasies about south Florida as a tropical and “oriental” paradise for white leisure.

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