The Cinematic Foundations of Native Son, Pt. 2

There are only traces of Trader Horn, the movie Bigger watches w/ Jack and Doc.  We're gonna keep the pictures in our eyes.

The Musical Foundations of Native Son, Pt. 6

"They listened to the pipe organ. It was humming so low that it could scarcely be heard. There were times when it seemed to stop altogether; then it would surge forth again, mellow, nostalgic, sweet."

Maybe the most telling of all musical references in the book.

The Musical Foundation of Native Son, Pt. 5

     "He sat at the table.  The odor of frying bacon and boiling coffee drifted to him from behind the curtain.  His mother's voice floated to him in song.

Life is like a mountain railroad

With an engineer that's brave

We must make the run successful

From the cradle to the grave....

     "The song irked him and he was glad when she stopped and came in the room with a pot of coffee and a plate of crinkled bacon." 

The Musical Foundation of Native Son, Pt. 4

      "Bigger walked to the front of the store and stood looking out the plate glass window.  The, suddenly, he felt sick.  He saw Gus coming along the street. And his muscles stiffened.  He was going to do something to Gus; just hat, he didn't know.  As Gus neared him he heard him whistling: 'The Merry Go Round Broke Down....'
     "'Hi, Bigger,' Gus said.
      "Bigger did not answer. Gus passed him and started toward the rear tables.  Bigger whirled and kicked him hard."

The Musical Foundations of Native Son, Pt. 3

Noiselessly, he went up the steps and inserted his key in the lock; the door swung in silently and he heard his mother singing behind the curtain.

Lord, I want to be a Christian,

In my heart, in my heart,

Lord, I want to be a Christian

In my heart, in my heart....

He tiptoed into the room and lifted the top matress of his bed and pulled forth the gun and slipped it inside his shirt.  Just as he was about to open the door his mother paused in her singing.

The Musical Foundation of Native Son, Pt. 2

     "Say, Jan, do you know many negroes?  I want to meet some."

     "I don't know any very well.  But you'll meet them when you're in the party."

     "The have so much emotion!  What a people!  If we could ever get them going..."

     "We can't have a revolution without 'em," Jan said.  "They've got to be organized.  They've got spirit.  They'll give the party something it needs."

     "And their songs -- the spirituals!  Aren't they marvelous?"  Bigger saw her turn to him."Say, Bigger, can't you sing?"

     "I can't sing," he said.

     "Aw Bigger," she said, pouting.  She tilted her head, closed her eye and opened her mouth.

"Swing low, sweet chariot,

Coming for to carry me home . . . . "

     Jan joined in and Bigger smiled derisively.  Hell, that ain't the tune, he thought.

     "C'mon, Bigger, and help us sing it," Jan said.

     "I can't sing," he said again.

     They were silent.  The car purred along.

     

Body and Soul: Redux

As we continue the Book of Richard, we find these words:

"...but even after obeying, after killing, they still ruled him.  He was their property, heart and soul, body and blood; what they did claimed him sleeping and waking; it colored life and dictated the terms of death."

The easy thing to do with this passage, even all of Native Son, is to run the critique of the gangsta stance, from the first time we sang about a gun going rooty-toot-toot on a rekkid 'til Ice Cube defined a good day.  But that'd be easy, and therefore incomplete.

So instead we observe that the passage reminded us of our versionology of "Body and Soul."  We are taking careful, slow steps up to a few posts on the way music makes meaning in the Book of Richard, and we are uncertain that this passage belongs in those posts.  Nevertheless, the dialectic is obvious, just as it is when we read through tropes of visibility in Native Son and imagine tropes of invisibility that loom so large in the Book of Ralph.

Let us begin by observing that the passage cited offers important political nuance to the approaches to the lyrics we posted back in the day.  In light of this, we think we should come back to the material and consider the place of the citizen in the song.  We should also consider how Dunbar/DuBois, as ancestors concerned about the masks that dual civic status places on citizens, informs the versionology, however indirectly.

As we go, we will, of necessity, observe that the Book of Richard proposes, of necessity, a totality that is belied by the simple historical proof offered by the example of "Body and Soul." This is the same topic we have been addressing in our recent readings in the Book of Langston.  Freedom is demonstrated when we defy the expectation that we'll repeat ourselves, that we'll be consistent.

The Musical Foundation of Native Son

We will put up a longer post on the what's in your headphones when you read Native Son.  Suffice it to say that the book of Richard, or at least this chapter, is more skeptical than either the book of Langston or the book of Ralph.

Mark this highly nuanced passage:

"The singing filled his ears; it was complete, self-contained, and it mocked his fear and loneliness, his deep yearning for a sense of wholeness.  Its fulness contrasted so sharply with his hunger, its richness with his emptiness, that he recoiled from it while answering it.  Would it not have been better for him had he lived in the world the music sang of? It would have been easy to have lived in it, for it was his mother's world, humble, contrite, believing.  It had a center, a core, an axis, a heart which he needed but could never have unless he laid his head upon a pillow of humility and gave up his hope of living in the world.  And he would never do that."

Knowhatimsayin?

The Cinematic Foundation of Native Son

After polishing his nightstick:

"He frowned in the darkened movie, hearing the roll of tom-toms and the creams of black men and women dancing free and wild, men and women who were adjusted to their soil and at home in their world, secure from fear and hysteria."

-- Richard Wright

Where We're Coming From

"Many eyes in the room were fastened upon Bigger now, cold grey and blue eyes, eyes whose tense hate was worse than a shout or a curse."

-- Richard Wright, Native Son

What We're Hearing

It is easy enough to throw the image of Josephine Baker around. We think the difficulty is to make something of the music. This is not because the music offers less than others do -- it is not aesthetically deficient. Not at all. It is so surfeit one overimagines. We think it might turn out to be a story as simple as Phillis Wheatley's, or for that matter Richard Wright's and Dexter Gordon's: travel against the sun for opportunity.