#ellisonessays

[aminutepastthree]

A380, Ellison Essays: Blues and the black experience, identity

For centuries black people have used art, of any form, to express emotion pertaining to their social condition while simultaneously using that art to affect and change their condition; whether through the Harlem Renaissance-era paintings of Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence, poetry by Langston Hughes, the jazz stylings of Thelonious Monk, or the soul singing of Sam Cooke, black people have always used art to consciously voice their struggle.

Through the years, music has become the preferred form of this expressive art.  Gospel, blues (Rock as well), jazz, R&B, and hip hop, all indisputably black creations, have all served one purpose: to chronicle the life experiences of the performer.  Blues emerged as a voice to the struggles of the poor southern sharecropper and when it diffused North, became jazz that broke the mold of both music theory and socio cultural constraint.  R&B shared the wonder and heartbreak of love, while sometimes evoking the spirit of revolution and edification of civility (see Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye).  The earliest forms of contemporary poetry and hip hop, in the work of artists Run-DMC and Public Enemy, criticized police brutality and institutionalized racism.  Even gospel music boasts an overarching message of deliverance from a spiritual oppression and turning to a singular savior.  All these forms of inherently black music share the same roots in social consciousness, in scrapbooking a specific experience.  

In Shadow & Act (1964), in an essay entitled "The Seer & the Seen," Ralph Ellison defines the blues as "an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged gain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy, but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.  As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically" (78).  Ellison describes the blues as a kind of historical museum preserving the trials and tribulations of the black American experience as artifacts.  He suggests that by revisiting these artifacts, one can glean hope, inspiration, and guidance in overcoming future struggle.  

Ellison also alludes to Bessie Smith, famously referred to as "The Empress of Blues."  After tying the blues experience to the childhood struggle of author Richard Wright, Ellison writes, "And like the blues sung by such an artist as Bessie Smith, its lyrical prose evokes the paradoxical, almost surreal image of a black boy singing lustily as he probes his grievous wound."  Bessie Smith's blues influence is also referenced in James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name (1954).  He writes, "it was Bessie Smith, through her tone and her cadence, who helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was a pickaninny, and to remember the things I had heard and seen and felt.  I had buried them very deep...I had never listend to Bessie Smith in America (in the same way that, for years, I never touched watermelon), but in Europe she helped me to reconcile myself to being a 'nigger.'"  Both authors suggest that the blues, in this case sung by Bessie Smith, is more than a reminder of history, but plays a defining role in developing identity.  By "[probing] his grievous wound," Ellison suggests that Wright's dark childhood has scarred him but in a way that allows him to turn inward to gain a deeper knowledge of himself.  Baldwin, on the other hand, writes that Smith similarly points him towards his childhood, but instead to embrace his social struggle as part of his identity.

[stubbornphoenix-blog]

Ellison's Method of Madness

In Shadow and Act by Mr. Ralph Ellison, the author overall seems to be making the point that Negro Americans are first American THEN Negro, though he feels that says nothing of the importance and relevance of BEING Negro.  Also, he makes it clear over and again that he feels Negros and their contributions not only may be more American than generally thought to be, but are the essence of that which we call “American”.  Ellison divides the collection into three parts.  At first when analyzing this strategy and pondering the motivation behind it, it’s a bit unclear why he chose this particular path.   Upon further investigation, however, Ellison’s ingenious scheme seems to unfold itself.

In the opening section, Seer and the Seen, Ellison concentrates a bit on the image of the Negro (more specifically the Negro American) in American art.  (In Twentieth-Century Fiction he dissects the stock character he deems “the trickster”.)  He provides an interview, That Same Pain, That Same Pleasure, in which he speaks very highly of the Negro experience:

In fact, all Negroes affirm certain feelings of identity, certain foods, certain types of dancing, music, religious experiences, certain tragic attitudes toward experience and toward our situation as Americans…  Our strength is that with the total society saying to us, “No, No, No, No,” we continue to move toward our goal…  Our Negro situation is changing rapidly, but so much which we’ve gleaned through the harsh discipline of Negro American life is simply too precious to be lost.

In this first portion of the book he proceeds with a very positive view of the Negro American history, arguing the benefits a Negro American today may draw from it.

In the second section, Sound and the Mainstream, he dwells on the notion of the blues—both as an art form PLENTY respectable enough to be spoken of in the same breath as classic music and as a type of near-poetry in which artists battle to find themselves and release their pain just to keep hold of it.  He provides some wonderfully generous critiques of folks ranging from Charlie “Bird” Parker and Mahalia Jackson and tells some enchanting anecdotes about Minton’s.  He subtly and brilliantly argues the TRUE history of the genre and the importance of knowing said true and knowing the music itself.

And in the third section, Shadow and the Act, Ellison then seems to totally switch gears and offers an interview with an assumedly single, obviously struggling mother (or mother figure) in The Way It Is.  In Harlem is Nowhere he shares his [rather enthusiastic and totally justified] opinion on the Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic in the heart of Harlem and his thoughts on why it is so tragically necessary.  He ends the final essay of this final section with this notion, “Much of Negro culture is negative, but there is also much of great value, of richness, which, because it has been secreted by living and has made their lives more meaningful, Negroes will not willingly disregard.”

My theory bore itself in the observation that most Negro writers of this era (or at least the most recognized) took the route of pointing out the enumerated transgressions of Negro America, putting those tragedies on a bitter and bloodstained platter, and shoving that platter in the [political] spotlight—naked and raw—to offend anyone who up to that point refused to acknowledge (or at best belittled) their existence.  While Ellison DID use that method briefly, in the gentlest way, in the final section, he generally makes his arguments on the cultural stage via an utmost optimistic view of the Negro experience.  I feel he uses the first two sections of the collection to argue and flesh out, slyly and brilliantly, his points and uses the third to quickly and thoroughly drive home said points.

Or perhaps-- if you notice the essays from the last section were written earlier than those of the two previous it-- he is showing that his view has matured, his reasoning refined though his endpoint remains intact.  Or perhaps even alternatively, he REALIZES his strategy is so radically different than that to which the public is accustomed that he utilizes those last key essays to link it to aaall those other proponents of his ultimate view so as to soften the shock of his readers while closing in on the final destination of Shadow and the Act.