Written by Harmony Lehman
“You know
I sure would like to write a blues
you know
a nice long blues
you know
a good feeling piece to my writing hand
you know
my hand that can bring two pieces of life together in your ear…
you know
if i could write a nice long blues
you know
it sure would feel good to my writing hand
you know
you know
you know.”
-Jayne Cortez, “You Know (For the people who speak the you know language)”
Writing is a gateway for the soul: and oftentimes our souls are broken and hurting things. The need to write the blues--as Jayne Cortez so eloquently illustrates--is a need to reflect and understand the sadness that you carry. It’s a relief to write; it’s a relief to hear; it’s a relief to perform. The blues are a space for sadness. They’re a space to dwell in that grief long repressed by African Americans. However, during the Black Arts Movement, the blues were cast aside in favor of angrier music. They were categorized by authors such as Maulana Karenga as useless, not furthering the revolution, rather spending unnecessary time on struggles supposedly passed. Yet Karenga’s view on the blues is limited and one-dimensional, failing to acknowledge the complexities in blues music and poetry.
Karenga assumes that an acceptance of the poor conditions of African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance is reflected in the blues. He writes, “Therefore, we say the blues are invalid: for they teach resignation, in a word acceptance of reality--and we have come to change reality.” Yet, this is a superficial reading of blues poems; hope is one of the central ideas in the blues. In Langston Hughes’ “Blues Fantasy,” he represents the blues, curiously, as a happy experience as well as one of sorrow. Hughes, in the second-to-last stanza, writes, “Got a railroad ticket, / Pack my trunk and ride / And when I get on the train / I’ll cast my blues aside.” This is a direct contrast to what Karenga defined as the blues. Hughes imagines the blues as not an acceptance of reality, but a hope for a new one. Music cannot be hopeful if there is not an acknowledgement of the current pain one is undergoing; in other words, what Karenga fails to understand is that acknowledging is not accepting. In fact, one of the main ways slaves rebelled when they were severely dehumanized and objectified was through hope. The slaves overcame the radical hardships that the African Americans during the BAM still must reckon with. Whether this was through the enslaved people’s recounting of the stories of the Israelites being freed in Exodus, or through building loving families, slaves maintained a hope for a better future. Hope keeps us human.
I believe that many of those who renounced the blues during the Black Arts Movement could have benefited more than they realize from these sad tunes. Madhubuti’s poem honoring Coltrane, “Don’t Cry, Scream,” describes his music: “Your music is like/ my head -- nappy black/ / a good nasty feel with/ tangled songs of.” The main reason people loved Coltrane’s jazz was because they could identify with it--through his music, they felt seen and heard. To indulge in jazz was to indulge in community. Jazz was an artform that required the participation of everyone involved: whether that be those listening and interpreting what the music means to them, those playing the jazz, or anyone in between. It therefore seems counterintuitive that they denounced the blues so flippantly, for poets felt similarly about the blues. Countee Cullen’s “Colored Blues Singer” depicts the heart that must be poured out in order to produce the blues. She writes, “You make your grief a melody / And take it by the hand.” This acknowledgement that the musician must put their all into producing real blues exemplifies the communal aspect that the blues provides. This experience allows for a group of people to feel seen and heard, similar to how Coltrane’s jazz, an inherently communal experience, brings people together through a shared rage or conviction.
(A bunch of blues artists during the Harlem Renaissance, sharing that community. https://www.thecollector.com/harlem-renaissance-arts-and-culture/)
Hope is not a feeling typically associated with anger; it is a quieter, steadier emotion. It is one of waiting, one of dreamers and artists. To discard this as useless is a mistake. While the blues being written for a whiter audience than Coltrane’s jazz is a perhaps rational criticism of the validity of blues, that definition ignores much of what the blues truly was. Karenga and many of his contemporaries felt the need to simplify the blues into just one aspect of its complex identity. As I did in my previous blog, I want to warn about defining art in rigid ways. These oversimplified definitions don't always simply result in a small misconception--they evolve, they develop. Defining the blues without the word “hope” was, I believe, the major mistake, but perhaps the real mistake was in defining them at all, and, within that, discarding them as “usefuless”’ art. Art has meaning through the beholder, so perhaps if all those beholding a form of art decide it is useless, it is such. Yet art also has meaning through the artist; therefore the very act of creating is a use in and of itself. How can any kind of art not be useful?
