Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World : Rituals and Remembrances

Ifeoma Kiddoe, Mamadou Diouf

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9780472901203
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Along with linked modes of religiosity, music and dance have long occupied a central position in the ways in which Atlantic peoples have enacted, made sense of, and responded to their encounters with each other. This unique collection of essays connects nations from across the Atlantic---Senegal, Kenya, Trinidad, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States, among others---highlighting contemporary popular, folkloric, and religious music and dance. By tracking the continuous reframing, revision, and erasure of aural, oral, and corporeal traces, the contributors to Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World collectively argue that music and dance are the living evidence of a constant (re)composition and (re)mixing of local sounds and gestures.

PART ONE: RELIGION

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the print version of this title.]

Performing Pentecostalism: Music, Identity, and the Interplay of Jamaican and African American Styles

MELVIN L. BUTLER

A growing trend in contemporary African American gospel has been the incorporation of West Indian influences in performances and commercial recordings. This trend is not particularly surprising, since for decades, music scholars have recognized the transnational ties between Jamaica and the United States. These ties have had a profound impact on the development of sacred and secular musical practice in both locales. Kenneth Bilby, for example, has noted that a significant amount of Jamaican popular music recorded in the 1970s is imbued with a hymnlike quality that suggests the influence of African American church worship on Jamaican expressive culture.¹ This essay discusses African American gospel artists and their music as a dynamically recontextualized, African diasporic phenomenon and focuses primarily on the reception and appropriation of island-influenced gospel recordings among Jamaican churchgoers at home and abroad. I seek not only to emphasize the transnational flows of gospel music from the United States but also to call attention to the ongoing negotiations of identity that occur as a result of these flows. In ways that are understood to be controversial, young Jamaican Pentecostals often strive to make this music by African American gospel artists their own, even as many religious leaders vehemently protest its perceived negative impact on Jamaican youth and the congregations to which they often belong.

Pentecostalism has been developing steadily in Jamaica since the 1920s, thriving along with belief systems such as Kumina, Revival (or Pocomania), and Rastafarianism. In a Caribbean nation where this brand of Christianity is, according to recent studies, now the professed faith of as much as a quarter of the population, ² believers see the music through which they articulate their faith as intimately connected to their religious and cultural identities. African American gospel music coming from the United States plays a complex and at times contradictory role in how Jamaican Pentecostals identify themselves in relation to religious and cultural outsiders. While in Jamaica in 2002 and 2003, I became increasingly fascinated with how Jamaican Pentecostals were appropriating music recorded by African American gospel artists. This music is transmitted to the island when U.S.-based gospel groups tour internationally; through Jamaicans traveling to and from the United States; and, most noticeably, by way of global cable networks, such as Black Entertainment Television, and through Jamaica's gospel radio station, Love 101 FM. Among Jamaican Pentecostals, television has traditionally been deemed an aspect of “worldly” living that is to be avoided as church members seek to lead a sanctified life centered primarily on asceticism and spiritual devotion. Although restrictions on television sets have loosened dramatically (since the turn of the twenty-first century), TVs are still viewed with suspicion by older Pentecostals, and it is only since the mid-1990s that radio has emerged as a significant medium for the transnational spread of North American gospel styles.

I therefore find it remarkable that many Jamaican Protestants and Pentecostals with whom I spoke are now drawn to African American gospel music styles and that they often characterize these styles as “black,” though not necessarily “Jamaican.” For churchgoers living in the urban areas of Spanish Town and Kingston, African American styles provide a means of expressing a “modern” Pentecostal aesthetic while counteridentifying against the “white” hymnody and “white-sounding” imported gospel music that some Jamaican congregations seem to prefer. “Black” styles are associated mostly with contemporary U.S. gospel artists influenced by rhythm and blues and hip-hop, but also with the traditional “clap-hand” choruses and the ska and dancehall rhythms characteristic of contemporary Jamaican gospel music. Whether they emanate from Jamaican or foreign soil, however, I contend that the use of gospel styles experienced as “black” significantly impacts the experiential framework of church “local” musical-social activity.

Gospel concerts in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora often feature a variety of styles, including traditional hymns and gospel reggae, as well as music recorded by well-known African American gospel singers such as Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Donnie McClurkin, and Fred Hammond. These events offer youth an opportunity to enjoy a Christian form of entertainment while socializing with churchgoers outside of their regular congregations. However, gospel concerts are viewed by many older Pentecostals as a recently acquired trend of which true believers should be wary. Thus, there prevails a certain skepticism with regard to any musical practice that is seen as a departure from established tradition.

A fondness for the Jamaica of yesteryear resonates with the lyrics of songs popular among older Pentecostals, many of whom converted during the 1950s and 1960s. These Pentecostals often talk about the way things “used to be,” back when Jamaica was “such a paradise” and when churchgoers took pleasure in singing classic hymns and Jamaican choruses, many of which are unfamiliar to younger generations. Through verbal testimonies and through hymns with titles such as “The Old Time Religion” and “Old Time Power,” believers retell conversion experiences and express nostalgic sentiments brought on by the historical consciousness of past events, as well as through a “re-membering” process that blends lived experience with the biblical account of the day of Pentecost.

The opposition that some Jamaican preachers express toward African American cultural influence takes the form of a scathing critique of contemporary church practices, which, they contend, have strayed too far from the more “authentic” practices of yesteryear. One of the perceived dangers in moving away from traditional practices is that Jamaican Pentecostal identities will be compromised as so-called worldly influences begin to infiltrate congregations. The “modern” musical activities of many Jamaican churches are deemed inauthentic or “artificial” to the extent that they rely on emotionalism and entertainment rather than on the Holy Spirit for their affective impact. Church leaders often express a desire for a return to old times characterized less by “emotional” musical practices that “tickle the ear” and more by the transforming power of God's anointing. One preacher's sermon lamented the many changes that he felt have moved the church away from a genuine experience of the Holy Spirit. “What we need today,” he asserted, “is not more music and emotional singing, but we need the old time anointing.” He added, “This generation has to make so much music because they have to create an artificial joy! In the old times, the people…didn't even have a lot of instruments. But when they sang ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus, ’ oh my! I don't need no organ to help me preach!”

The significant point here is that worldliness and “African Americanness” are conflated, at least implicitly, in the discourses of some Jamaican Pentecostals. Indeed, most of the “changes” mentioned by the preacher are experienced by older Jamaican churchgoers not only as more “modern” and “artificial” but also as evidence of African American influence on traditional Jamaican Pentecostal practices.

The preacher's reference to the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” provides evidence of a Jamaican preference for the meaningful lyrics of traditional hymns and “sober songs” over the “one-liners” and simpler choruses whose appeal derives more obviously from rhythmic or melodic elements. Although hymn singing is practiced by many African American Pentecostals, it is noticeably more prevalent among Jamaican churchgoers. The emphatic statement “I don't need no organ to help me preach!” refers to the organist's practice of interjecting percussive chordal attacks in between a preacher's words during a sermon. This occurs most often when a preacher switches to a singing or “intoned” style of sermonizing, which is more characteristic of African American preachers than Jamaican ones. The use of the organ to complement or “help” the preacher is not commonly found in Jamaica's Pentecostal churches, although I did occasionally notice it in urban areas such as Kingston and Montego Bay, where churches often attract preachers visiting from the United States.

For many Jamaican churchgoers, island-influenced gospel music is a means of expressing both religious authenticity and cultural distinctiveness. It can even become a way of musically asserting, “Not only am I a Pentecostal Christian, but I am a Jamaican Pentecostal Christian.” This type of assertion is most striking among Jamaican Pentecostals living abroad in places such as New York and London, where religious, cultural, and long-distance national identities become a source of personal strength and a foundation for minority group consciousness.

PERFORMING JAMAICANNESS: DONNIE MCCLURKIN'S CARIBBEAN GOSPEL MEDLEY

To illustrate the way in which Jamaicans express cultural identities through gospel music, I would like to focus on a gospel performance by African American gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, using his recording Donnie McClurkin: Live in London and More (2000) to underscore the relation between religious and cultural identity. The recording, which is available in both audio and video formats, is McClurkin's second commercial release and was a hit among both African American and Jamaican churchgoers at home and abroad. After the CD was released, McClurkin made his first professional trip to Jamaica, performing a gospel concert at Church on the Rock, a Pentecostal church in Kingston, in October 2000.³ Since then, McClurkin's popularity in Jamaica has continued to grow. Throughout much of my field research in 2002, one particular track from the recording, “Caribbean Medley,” was played almost daily on Love 101 FM.

McClurkin's performance takes place at London's Fairfield Hall before a predominantly African Caribbean crowd of gospel music enthusiasts. A woman emcee introduces him as “a native New Yorker whose second home is London” and expresses pride in the fact that McClurkin has chosen London as the locale in which to make his live recording. McClurkin and his group perform several selections before launching into a series of traditional Jamaican choruses. As this track on the CD begins, McClurkin introduces the medley and makes a verbal appeal to Jamaicans in the audience.⁴

Well, then, we gon’ sing us some Jamaican songs. But if we sing ‘em, you gotta get outta those seats. And you gotta dance like you're really from Jamaica, or your parents were from Jamaica, or parents’ parents were from Jamaica! But I want you to be true to who you are!

McClurkin humorously exaggerates a Jamaican accent, repeating the word Jamaica several times and placing emphasis on the second syllable, which is drawn out and melodized to mimic the vocal inflection of a native patois speaker. He uses the idiomatic expression “parents’ parents” in an attempt to draw on colloquialisms familiar to Jamaicans in the audience. McClurkin also calls on his listeners to be true to themselves, suggesting that participation in Jamaican-style gospel music and dance is a way for his listeners to assert and confirm their island identities. As McClurkin speaks, the band begins a reggaestyle accompaniment, with characteristic keyboard/guitar offbeats. The first piece of the medley is “I've Got My Mind Up.” When the vocal melody begins, the bass guitar and bass drum complete the sonic approximation of classic 1970s reggae accompaniment, characterized by what is sometimes referred to as the “one drop” rhythm, marked by a stress on the second beat of each measure.

The second piece of the medley is “Goodbye, World.” The keyboards, drums, and guitar continue the reggae-style accompaniment throughout this piece, as the rhythm of the bass guitar changes somewhat to support the new melody and chord progression. From “Goodbye, World,” the group moves into “Born, Born, Born Again,” which is one of the oldest and best-recognized choruses in the medley. In the middle section of this piece, McClurkin's voice becomes more forceful, taking on a rougher character as he imitates the “dub”-style delivery of a contemporary dancehall DJ. He cries, “Born of the water, Spirit an’ de blood. T[h]ank God I'm born again!” which is sung four times against an accompanying backdrop that has shifted into the more percussive and syncopated rhythm also employed in contemporary dancehall performances.

Next, McClurkin's rhythm section returns to the classic reggae groove that underlies a repetition of the first medley piece, “I've Got My Mind Made Up.” The recurrence of this chorus establishes it as the medley's unifying theme. The reggae groove is maintained as the band segues into “I Am Under the Rock,” followed by the chorus “Jesus Name So Sweet.” At this point, the bass line varies once more, switching to a simple arpeggio pattern that, like the previous “one drop” bass pattern, accents the second beat of each measure in typical reggae fashion.

After repeating the chorus’ initial couplet, the rhythm section replays the syncopated dancehall rhythm while McClurkin delights the crowd by adding the short patois refrain “Every rock me rock upon Jesus, Jesus name so sweet!” This phrase does not translate easily into Standard English. However, Jamaican churchgoers explained to me that the repetition of the word rock and the idea of rocking “upon Jesus” suggest the idea of “movement” with Jesus—literally, through holy dancing, and metaphorically,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Religion
• Part Two: Dance
• Part Three: Contemporary Music
• Contributors
• Index