Music in the Civil Rights & Black Power Era

During the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, African-Americans were trying to create their own identity and have a voice of their own in a country that looked down upon them for centuries. They were trying to get equal rights with the white people but still wanted their own culture away from them. This can be seen in the type of music that African-Americans developed during these movements. A type of music that they developed was called free jazz or "new thing". This music was very non-western. There was less composition, more improvisation, small combinations, use of over blowing, and unconventional instrumentation.

The reason for African-Americans creating this type of music was so it could simply not be critiqued or exploited by the white people in the country. It was a sort of unknown type of music that didn't get airplay but the artists did not care about making money they cared about showing their true feelings. "Negro music is essentially the expression of an attitude, or a collection of attitudes".[i] Early Negro jazz was not understood by white critics therefore it wasn't very well liked at first. New Thing music though was established so it totally went away from European styles of music and was not understood by anyone but African-Americans. They did not want their music to be owned by rich white people who make millions off of them and they barely get anything even though they were the ones creating the music and entertaining audiences. This music is not marketable to white audiences and that is exactly what it was intended for. It gave them a sense of their own identity and gave them equality in that they were able to create their own styles of music about their own culture and it could only be criticized by people just like them but at the same time they were different from the rest of the country because their music was nothing like white people's music. They were creating an economy of their own with this type of music relied on their selves to get the music out there. Some of the main points of Black Nationalism were self-definition, self-assesment, and economic self-reliance and this music satisfied all of these points by being defined by them, critiqued by them, and owned by them. There were record labels such as the Self-Reliance Project founded by Milford Graves and Don Pullen that demonstrated the African-American economic-reliance and the power they can have. There was nobody on the outside getting rich off of them and that's why they created this genre.

Sun Ra's song, "The Utter", is a great example of free jazz. It has very unconventional instrumentation and no diatonic scale. It also uses over blowing. This symbolizes the struggling and pain of African-Americans in America. He is expressing the pain that his people feel. Another thing that free jazz involved was the creation of African-Asian music. This combined styles of from African and Asian countries to create their own type of music. This was another way to stray away from the European influence. Songs like, "Africanasia" by Claude Decloo and Arthur jones and "Pan-African festival", by Clifford Thornton are great examples of this music. Frank Kofksy talks about the instrumentation of this music in his article, "Revolution in Black Music: Origins and Direction. "The retreat from Western canons was gathering momentum even before the avant-garde began to draw notice in the African drum adventures of Art Blakey, the Mideastern effects to be heard in Yusef Lateef's compositions, the excursions of Miles Davis into flamenco and cante hondo, and of course Coltrane's hypnotic Indian-flavored dithyrambs on soprano saxophone".[ii] This type of music was popular with Black Nationalists because many of them such as Malcolm X had converted to Islam and a majority of the Muslims lived in the African-Asia area. This was a way for them to have their own culture inside of America.

Free jazz was a way for Black Nationalists to express the hardships they have faced over the years. From their ancestors in slavery, to the modern times when black people did not have equal rights with the white people, all they wanted was to be recognized as real people and were no different from white people. They wanted to be separate but equal. They have their own beliefs about culture and the way of life and they want to continue to have them but also want to be accepted by the rest of the country who has continuously rejected them. They were tired of being used as entertainment for white people and wanted a way to just make music for themselves about themselves without having any outside influence. As mainstream music goes in that era, Black Nationalists did not have much influence on it. Their music was relatively unknown to the majority of people and the popular music of that time did not really change due to Black Nationalist beliefs. Although Black Nationalism did not have much affect on the popular music at the time, it still was able to establish a new genre of music that promoted African-American self-reliance. It was something new for black people who have been suffering in this country for hundreds of years. They were able to see that it was possible for them to create their own identity and get away from the white dominated world of music.

[i] Baraka, Amiri. "Jazz and the White Critic". Black Music. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, reprint 1980. 13

[ii] Kofsky, Frank. " Revolution in Black Music: Origins And Directions". Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York: Pathfinder, 1970. 136.

Bibliography

Baraka, Amiri. Black Music. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, reprint 1980.

Kofsky, Frank. Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York: Pathfinder, 1970