This Is How We Flow : Rhythm and Sensibility in Black Cultures

by Nelson, Angela M. S.

• ISBN13: 9781570031908
• ISBN10: 1570031908
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr

Summary

"This Is How We Flow" provides ten pathbreaking essays in which the volume's contributors illustrate how rhythm is the foundation of all African expression -- music and dance, the visual arts, architecture, theater, literature, and film. They suggest, by example, that an African aesthetic does exist, an aesthetic that revolves around the motif of rhythm. In essays that focus on the medium most commonly associated with the motif, Juliette Bowles discusses rhythm's place in African American music, and Mark Sumner Harvey examines its conceptualization in jazz music. William C. Banfield suggests a methodological framework for composing black music, and Angela M. S. Nelson identifies the primacy of rhythm in African American rap music. From Martin Luther King's speeches to Claude McKay's poetry, the contributors also consider rhythm as a quality in black oratory, literature, and film. Richard Lischer offers a detailed analysis of King's speeches, Ronald Dorris elucidates rhythm's meaning in McKay's poem "Harlem Dancer, " and Darren J. M. Middleton considers the power of rhythm to move people to write and act for social justice, as in the poetry of Rastafarian dub poets. Suggesting that it is through the lens of rhythm that the meaning of black film of the 1980s and 1990s becomes clearest, D. Soyini Madison exposes rhythm as ritual, modality, and discourse in the film Daughters of the Dust. Two contributors round out the discussion by examining expressions of rhythm in African countries. Alton B. Pollard III provides a historical-critical survey of freedom songs in South Africa from the nineteenth century through the 1990s, and Zeric Kay Smith examines "macro- and micro-rhythms" inMalian politics, lending credit to the contributors' collective conviction that rhythm organizes and frames African behavior regardless of context.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(4)
A Rap on Rhythm	5	(10)
Juliette Bowles
Jazz Time and Our Time: A View from the Outside In	15	(17)
Mark Sumner Harvey
Some Aesthetic Suggestions for a Working Theory of the ``Undeniable Groove'': How Do We Speak about Black Rhythm, Setting Text, and Composition?	32	(14)
William C. Banfield
Rhythm and Rhyme in Rap	46	(8)
Angela M. S. Nelson
The Music of Martin Luther King, Jr.	54	(9)
Richard Lischer
Rhythm in Claude McKay's ``Harlem Dancer''	63	(11)
Ronald Dorris
Chanting Down Babylon: Three Rastafarian Dub Poets	74	(13)
Darren J. N. Middleton
Rhythm as Modality and Discourse in Daughters of the Dust	87	(11)
D. Soyini Madison
Rhythms of Resistance: The Role of Freedom Song in South Africa	98	(27)
Alton B. Pollard III
The Rhythm of Everyday Politics: Public Performance and Political Transitions in Mali	125	(12)
Zeric Kay Smith
Notes	137	(14)
Selected Bibliography	151	(2)
Notes on Contributors	153	(4)
Index	157