Though jazz music was popular in the 1950s, it was known as ‘black’ music, meaning that white people weren’t associated with the music; it was a cultural division between black and white people in America. When looking at the poem, however, it seems as if O’Hara wants to be part of the ‘black’ music and feel a part of it. Unfortunately he can’t because of the racial division in America at the time. What interests me is that this poem doesn’t attack black people; it instead talks about the problems of being white, which according to the norms of the USA at the time should have been the complete opposite. Amiri Baraka, a fellow poet who was a friend of Frank O’Hara at the time, was black.
Gangsta rap and American Culture Should censorship come at a price of complete social exile. In “Gangsta Rap and American Culture” Micheal Eric Dyson a baptist minister, father, and prestigious writer and educator explains his views on Gangsta rap both good and bad. Micheal Eric Dyson background allows him to understand how rap came to be. However Dyson doesn't agree with how the government accuses gangsta rap for the downfall of black youth. All in all Dyson's main points to his argument is understanding how rap came to be, the negative and positive images that gangsta rap portrays to the black community, and acknowledging that rap music shows true beliefs about growing up in bad black neighborhoods.
The warning issued in the song, while harsh and something from days long gone, does bring to mind a biblical sense of revenge. I think that Blacks who were victims of injustice and racism during the 60s (and of course before and even today), might feel a different sense of retribution. The warning to those who seek to keep others down isn’t one of “smiting” one’s child, but a stern warning that restricting the freedom and rights of others based on skin color is only hurting the oppressor: ignorance is a prison cell of
Erick Arellano Josue Arrendondo English 115 20Sept2012 That Ho Don’t Fly “At the close of this millennium, hip-hop is still one of the few forums in which young black men, even surreptitiously, are allowed to express their pain”(603). This excerpt from Joan Morgan’s From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos poignantly expresses the overall motif of the piece. Morgan makes several assertions about the relationship between female degradation in hip-hop music and the failings and shortcomings of black men being the product of society’s prejudicial treatment and in some cases outright abandonment. She does so with too few literary tactics. Off the bat Ms. Morgan makes use of Ethos and Logos.
They “lurk late” and “sing sin” which implies that they see themselves as having much power or reason for what they do. (Brooks 3-4) At the time it was customary for African Americans to sing for many occasions to bring them closer together but especially when the reason was to protest. This protest-singing was seen by the whites as a sin because they, (and
In the South, spirituals were an important way to express slave life. In a way these spirituals were a form of poetry for them that reflected their language, their music and their spiritual concerns. Douglass wrote his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), in which discusses the negro spirituals they sang since they were forced to “make a noise” so that their masters would know of their whereabouts at all times and, at the same time, keep them from communicating with one another so they could not plot any schemes to escape. Another method used was whistling so that the masters knew that their servants were not eating the food that was to be delivered. Douglass referred to these songs as “...a testimony against slavery, and a prayer
A BLACK POET James Weldon Johnson is chiefly remembered for his poetry using Negro dialect. But Johnson also undertook the serious task of writing verse sermons. Johnson steered away from using dialect in his verse sermons because he feared that dialect only supported comic or pathetic scenes and worked laughter or pity from readers and audiences. In addition to composing the words to the “Negro anthem”, he wrote the “The Creation.” In “The Creation” Johnson wished to suggest the nobility as well as the emotional fervor of the Sermons of Negro preachers. At this time we will have a dramatization of “The Creation” a rendition of an old Negro spiritual by Mrs. Katie T. Payne.
An aspect that I was especially drawn to is the eye-opening nature of the passage. The reason for my interest is how strongly Douglass feels about this topic. Throughout the narrative, Douglass is extremely conservative when it comes to giving his opinion; the appendix, however, is quite the opposite. Douglass is very passionate in his dismissal of American Christianity because of life experiences, which include (but are not limited to) occurrences such as the slave songs, Douglass’s questioning of a deity, his masters’ cruelty, and the overall suffering Douglass went through. When the slaves are singing songs on their way to the Great House Farm, Douglass mainly focuses on his utter confusion and sadness regarding them.
He wrote about relationships, good and evil, history, family, and identity. He was a black man, but wanted to be known as an American, not a black poet.” In later years, Robert Hayden suffered from bouts of manic depression. Also noted in “Contemporary Black Biographies” by the Gale Group, Inc., 2006, “Robert Hayden preferred to think of himself not as a black poet but rather as an American poet whose work spoke universally about the human condition. Although many of his best known works explore the African-American experience, Hayden avoided politics and polemic, opting instead for an artistic body of work in the grand tradition of English literature. He labored in near obscurity for much of his life, only becoming recognized as a preeminent poet in the 1960s and 1970s.
Jazz was a way for African Americans to express their dismay and hardship through music. James Baldwin clearly chose to include Jazz music within the passage in order to clearly make it evident of the time period and the urban area in which Sonny and the narrator lived. The audience reading this passage might not fully grasp then importance of Jazz within the urban communities unless having prior knowlege of Jazz history. Baldwin emphasis on Jazz shows how much the community relayed on it as a way to cope with troubling times within the African American community, any other genre would not have gone well with the in depth meaning of the the story. Sonny’s Blues is set in New York after World War II has taken place.