L9-11: “Folkways”--refers to Smithsonian Folkways, founded by Moe Asch. Alan Lomax came on board in the 1930’s as part of Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folksong . The label went under some heavy scrutiny, despite showcasing the talents of Leadbelly, Woodie Guthrie, Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs, etc., because some people felt they were simply using the artists to get money. I believe “Not Yet On Safari” refers to that. Sites: http://www.alan-lomax.com/home.html and http://www.folkways.si.edu/index.html
L13: “silver unicorn”--fabulous equine beast with a long horn jutting from the middle of its forehead. Once thought to be native to India, the unicorn was reportedly seen throughout the world. It was often considered as a composite creature, having the features of various animals. The unicorn is depicted as a beautiful animal, usually pure white in color. It has been used to represent virginity, but also has religious significance in connection with the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The hunting of the unicorn was a subject in tapestries of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (http://reference.allrefer.com)
Outside of that, I think the poem is pretty much there for the taking. The rest is straight forward. It seems to explore the struggle of African-Americans to be accepted (“Waited twenty more/to catch up with tomorrow”) as citizens, and yet still aren’t. Rumors abound --“Is it true that Negroes---?” and African-Americans are still seen as foreign, mysterious, elusive, etc. Something to conquer, in other words, something to attempt to nail down.
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A Reader's Guide
These annotations to Langston Hughes' long poem "Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz" are compiled and expanded each semester by students in Naropa University’s "Investigative Poetics" class, offered through the MFA Creative Writing low-residency program.
Annotations by Section
- Ask Your Mama (1)
- Bird in Orbit (1)
- Blues in Stereo (1)
- Cultural Exchange (1)
- Gospel of Cha-Cha (1)
- Horn of Plenty (1)
- Is It True (1)
- Jazztet Muted (1)
- Ode to Dinah (1)
- Ride Red Ride (1)
- Shades of Pigment (1)
- Show Fare Please (1)
4 comments:
In his liner notes to this mood, Hughes writes, “It seems if everything is annotated one way or another, but the subtler nuances remain to be captured.” This is a direct reference to the Moe Asch / Alan Lomax Folkways project mentioned in the poem, and since Hughes seems to be pointing us to a greater awareness of “subtler nuances,” I suspect that a certain context is needed, of both the hunter, the folklorist / anthropologist, and the hunted, the African traditions of the American Negro. This first long bit, then, comes from Susan Feldmann’s introduction to African Myths & Tales, published in 1963.
To the folklorist belongs the task of tracking down [ oral traditions ], as they pass from mouth to mouth, to study their transformations and persistence, their ways of adapting to different environments, their readiness to serve as vehicles for different meanings and purposes. While the original form of any story is necessarily a matter of conjecture, … [t]he same story, finally, will serve to explain different facts. …Given that myths and tales will have different meanings and functions in different contexts, the folklorist concentrates on what remains the permanent element, namely the story, or plot. [ p. 10 ]
Anthropologists, by contrast, have been mainly interested in understanding a tale in its cultural context, to study its social function, its relation to cult, and the ways in which it both reflects and informs tribal values and modes of behavior. They have stressed the natives’ own attitude to their traditions, and specifically, the almost universal distinction made by native cultures between sacred narratives which are regarded as true and tales told for entertainment. Myth for the native is a true story; … [w]e must beware of reading into native categories of sacred and profane, our distinctions between truth and fiction, or history and poetry. [ p. 11 ]
The Africans attitude to their tradition is more flexible and complex that we would suppose. “We do not really mean, we do not really mean, that what we are going to say is true,” is the traditional beginning of every Ashanti tale. The Sudanese regard their tales as lies in which no everything is false—lies containing a grain of truth…. Storytelling sessions usually begin with the following formula:
“I’m going to tell a story,” the narrator begins.
“Right!” the audience rejoins.
“It’s a lie.”
“Right!”
“But not everything in it is false.”
“Right!” [ p. 12 ]
The oral tale lives in the telling…. African storytelling, it should be added, is a highly dramatic art, interspersed with songs and dances and involving a great deal of audience participation. …[I]n a living oral tradition a given story will have many variants. No single version is privileged as the “true” one. The life of the story consists in the manifold variations of its telling, variations not only in delivery and style, but the development of the plot, incidents, characters, and ending. [ p. 13 ]
…[T]he pervasive theme of African folktales is the victory of cunning over force. …The sophistication of African folklore is evident in its central figure, the highly humanized animal trickster…. The transformation of animals into men or gods and vice versa, present no difficulty to the native mind. Tradition often relates than an animal trickster was formerly a god or man, and in the tales his person emerges as unmistakeably human. …Suave, urbane and calculating, the African trickster acts with premeditation, always in control of the situation; though self-seeking, his social sense is sufficiently developed to enable him to manipulate others to his advantage. [ p. 15 ]
These tales illustrate the traditional right of the individual to contest irrational authority. [ p. 17 ]
As this section of Hughes’ poem, if not the entire poem, does deal with ideas of truth and tradition, the hunter and hunted, the animal trickster and the contesting of irrational authority, I hope I will be forgiven for having gone to such great length to set up what I feel is a necessary context for drawing out the “subtler nuances.” In general, the form of the poem, all twelve moods, clearly falls into the African tradition of storytelling as a dramatic art with its mixing of voices and music as evidenced in McCurdy’s fine staging of the poem.
Lines 5 – 8: “of the now known world” What an odd phrasing, one of a couple in the poem. With the use of the prefix ‘un-‘ over the following four lines, it perhaps is not a stretch to say that this use of ‘now’ to modify ‘known’ is meant to imply that ‘un-‘ should be taken to mean ‘not now.’ That which is not now known, then, is something which is lost, unknowable perhaps, despite the efforts of the folklorist.
Line 12: “where game to bag’s illusive” Another odd phrasing, a homophonetic typo, perhaps? Shouldn’t this be ‘elusive’ is the since of difficult to capture? Considering the interpretation of lines 5-8 that I offered, I suspect that ‘illusive’ here in line twelve is meant to suggest again the lost or unknowable nature of that tradition the folklorist / anthropologist as game hunters seeks to capture.
Line 13: “as a silver unicorn” Of course we all know that the unicorn is a symbol of the incarnation in the European tradition, which ties in with the animal trickster being both god and man; but it also is emblematic for the raw passions of animal nature, which I take to be the meaning that refers to the liner notes for this section, “Everybody thinks that Negroes have the most fun.” That sentence ends with “curious to find out,” which ties in with the hunting motif at work. There is an older meaning to unicorn though, found in the Bible, an animal referred to as a re’em, which Biblical commentators have translated as a unicorn; though it is thought to more accurately refer to the one-horned eland found in the Cape Town region of South Africa, among a number of other possibilities. In any case, this Biblical reference is most notably used in Job 39:9-12, of something which is proverbial for its untamable nature. In many western depictions, the unicorn is portrayed as being collared with a broken chain. This mention of the unicorn here is also an internal reference to the mention of the horse at the end of the section. Why silver as the color? This may be open to great many interpretations, and my favorite might just be so as to avoid using the word white. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn ]
Lines 16-17: “To fertilize the desert / the French may have the secret.” These lines refer to two things at once. “Since 1856 French engineers have carried on a series of borings [ in the Sahara ] which have resulted in the fertilizing of extensive tracts.” [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/SAC_SAR/SAHARA.html ] This idea of fertilizing goes back again to the liner notes reference of Negroes having the most fun. The second half of the phrase, of the French having the secret, may refer to the first three atomic tests made by the French in southern Algeria in February, April and December of 1960. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/27/newsid_2985000/2985200.stm ] The gun that is still to be invented in lines 14-15 now may be seen as another reference to the atom bomb. This is also referenced in the liner notes to this section, “the atom bomb may end all this,” ‘this’ meaning not only the capturing of nuances, the hunt for the unicorn, but also the end of “the end results of love’s own annotation,” which is the fertilizing, or sexual act, being hinted at. This act of fertilization / procreation we will return to at the end of the poem.
Line 18: “Turn, oh, turn” This echoes the refrain of a, perhaps, well-known hymn, No. 263 in the Southern Harmony anthology of William Walker [ 1809 – 1875 ]. [ http://www.ccel.org/ccel/walker/harmony/files/hymn/Oh_Turn,_Sinner.html ] The refrain of “Ay, Dios!” that follows can then be seen as either a congregation’s responsive cry to god, audience participation in the African tradition, or, as suggested by the mention of dark lovers in bed, the cry of ecstasy at climax. This is piquing the curiosity of those who would like to find out if Negroes have the most fun.
Lines 23-30: Again, there are a number of possibilities for the use of the number twenty here. Used four times in these lines, they make the four score that Lincoln used in the famous opening lines of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that would make line 30, “to catch up with tomorrow,” a reference to a lost freedom, or an “illusive” promised freedom. Another possibility is that twenty is the age of accountability in Judaic tradition, and so that could lend meaning to line 28, “for the sadness to be sorrow,” as a movement from an immature childish feeling to a mature adult resignation. One other possibility is that they show an interdependence of economy between farm, rail, and mills as described existing in 19th century Minneapolis [http://www.cr.nps.gov/NR/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/106wheat/106wheat.htm ] Perhaps this same relationship existed between the plantations and the textile factories of the antebellum South. Whatever the case may be, it is hard not to see the repetition as existing in the call-and-response tradition of African oral stories and gospel songs.
Lines 35-48: These lines seem to slip deeply into the African story-telling tradition, with the repetition of “of course” echoing the Sudanese audience rejoinder of “Right,” in the sense that the story being told is one of the future, and the grain of truth it contains perhaps is that suburbia will disappear, or become, like so many other things in the poem, “illusive.” “Meanwhile” suggests that the story is concerned more with the “now known,” as it moves back to the familiar setting of the quarter and the character of the Negroes, who will now be transformed into the horse.
Lines 49-51: Quite likely, the script being referred to is not specifically, for example, “National Velvet” [ 1944 ] or “The Story of Seabiscuit” [ 1949 ], but rather to the number of movies made on this subject [ cf. Mickey Rooney’s film credits ]. Same for the sports writer’s story. Most likely this is simply referring to what rarely was / is mentioned regarding thoroughbreds. [ cf http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA052106.1A.dying.racehorses.7e1a7e5.html ] This form of abuse touches upon the other aspect of the horse that was mentioned in regard to the unicorn, and the act of fertilization, in that many horses are put out to stud for as long as twenty years. [ http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/horse/ALL/1350/ ] This of course is the cynical answer to the question of Negroes having the most fun posed in the liner notes, for if the Negro is understood as a work horse that might slip and break its back, then all aspects of the Negro’s existence are manipulated, as in the case of thoroughbreds.
Line 52: “the horse whose back is broken” This saying comes originally from the Arab saying about the camel, but the first usage of this proverb to make use of the horse is attributed to Dr. Thomas Fuller in his “Gnomologia” of 1732. [ http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/50/messages/279.html ]
Is it True?
L1-8 Hughes seems to be saying that as much attention is being paid to the folk songs of America, that the negro experience is still an elusive mythology cast to the dark corners of America’s awareness at the time.
L10 Alan Lomax- (January 15, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and musicologist, son of John A. Lomax also a folklorist and musicologist. Traveled several countries, (United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain) collecting folk music. Lomax’s life contribution is immense.
He attended Harvard for a time. Finished a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to pursue graduate studied from Colombia, and University of Pennsylvania. He is well known for his work in “Cantometrics (roughly speaking, "song measurements") is a method for relating the statistical analysis of (primarily) sonic elements of traditional vocal music (or folk songs) to the statistical analysis (using computers) of sociological traits, largely as those traits are defined and organized via the Human Relations Area Files.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantometrics).
Lomax’s work as an oral historian brought recordings of substantial interviews with many iconic folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Irish singer Margaret Barry, Scots ballad singer Jeannie Robertson, and Harry Cox of Norfolk, England, among many others. He also produced the first folk/rockand roll concert at Carnagie Hall in 1959 stating, "The time has come for Americans not to be ashamed of what we go for, musically, from primitive ballads to rock 'n' roll songs," Lomax told the audience. According to Izzy Young, the audience booed when he told them to lay down their prejudices and listen to rock 'n' roll. In Young's opinion, "Lomax put on what is probably the turning point in American folk music . . . . At that concert, the point he was trying to make was that Negro and white music were mixing, and rock and roll was that thing." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/alan¬¬_lomax)
Moe Asch- founder of “Folkways Records” (now owned by the Smithsonian Museum ) in 1948. Here is a link to Woodie Guthrie’s “Car Song on YouTube (there are some great pics as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUDtFdnn9oQ
L11- On Safari- It could be said that Alan Lomax ans Moe Asch went hunting for folk music and story. From this perspective they were hunting unicorns- mythological gems from America and around the world.
“Ask Your Mama” – This phase shows up several times in the poem and has been interpreted to put words on the act of emotionally deflecting a question – a question that is perceived by the author as “crude or rude” such as the way it occurs in the line "It it true that Negroes -----" on page 509. I am convinced that this interpretation of the title speaks to the racially charged tension in the poem and conveys the author’s intent. However; my parents used to avoid my difficult questions by simply sending me to the other parent for information (or permission). “Ask Your Mama” suggest “Ask Your Daddy.” Often when I would ask one parent, I would then have to report to the other “He/She said ask you.” The deflections became a circuitous exercise in frustration.
P 501 line 4-“Did I know Charlie Mingus?”
One of the most important figures in twentieth century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church-- choir and group singing-- and from "hearing Duke Ellington over the radio when [he] was eight years old."
http://mingusmingusmingus.com/Mingus/index.html
P 501 line 9 – “In George Sokolsky’s column”
George Ephraim Sokolsky (1893-1962) was a weekly radio broadcaster for the National Association of Manufacturers and a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, who later switched to The New York Sun and other Hearst newspapers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sokolsky
P 503 Line 15 -“Damballa Wedo Ogoun and the Horse”
Damballa Wedo Ogoun - Damballah-Wedo is a Voodoo serpent deity, so his symbol or veves commonly incorporates two snakes. Damballah-Wedo is associated with creation and is viewed as a loving father to the world. His presence brings peace and harmony. As a source of life, he is also strongly associated with water and the rain.
Ogoun – Ogoun, within Voodoo was originally associated with fire, blacksmithing and metalworking. His focus has transformed over the years to include power, warriors, and politics. He particularly likes the machete, which is a common offering in preparation of a possession, and machetes are sometimes featured in his veves.
http://altreligion.about.com/od/symbols/ig/Vodoun-Veves
P 507 Lines 9-11
“Not Even Folkways captured by Moe Asch or Alan Lomax”
http://culturalequity.org
Musicologist, writer, and producer Alan Lomax (b. Austin, Texas, 1915) spent over six decades working to promote knowledge and appreciation of the world’s folk music. Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (New York: Macmillan, 1936), the first in depth biographical study of an American folk musician;
Moses Asch was the son of Yiddish language novelist and dramatist Sholem Asch, and the younger brother of novelist Nathan Asch.
http://www.folklife.si.edu/center/legacy/asch.aspx
Asch recorded and published LP records by such famous folk and blues singers as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger. Cisco Houston and Ella Jenkins. In 1952, Asch's label issued the Anthology of American Folk Music, compiled by Harry Smith, which brought a wider awareness of traditional American folk and blues to a new generation.
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