Sun Ra Interview

Here is a fascinating interview with Sun Ra. He discusses his worldview, the need for the development of ethnic structures, and the role of music. When you listen to him in this context, Sun Ra sounds like a mildly kooky cross of J.A. Rogers, Booker T. Washington, Elijah Muhammad, and black nationalist truthsayer. 

Of One Blood

Finally read Of One Blood because of my interest in Sun Ra. Past instances of African American science fiction or speculative fiction seems relevant to any research into Sun Ra's inventive (and, perhaps, wacky) notions. Pauline Hopkins also appears to have beat Ishmael Reed in establishing a fictive link between "voodoo" and ancient Nile Valley civilizations, although Of One Blood is a weaker novel that perhaps attempts to juggle too many competing "out there" or supernatural phenomena (mesmerism, occultism, second sight, magic mirror in Telassar, spiritualism). It also confronts issues of racism, the unity of the human species, incest, and the horrors of slavery on the black family, including a surprising revelation near the end of the novel about Aubrey Livingston's relationship with Reuel and Dianthe. 

But the most interesting aspect of this early Afrofuturist" novel is its use of Meroe, and a hidden city of its descendants, as a symbol of an ascendant Ethiopia who will restore the prestige of the black race in modern times. Drawing heavily on the discourse of Ethiopianism, which had influenced black nationalism in the US throughout the 19th century, "Ethiopia" (really, Meroe or "Nubia) returns to its greatness as one of its lost descendants, an Afro-American passing as white, returns to the throne. Telassar, the hidden city of Meroe's descendants, have maintained their ancient civilization in hiding, and with the return of a descendant of Ergamenes, are poised to return to greatness. Since Ethiopianism drew from Christianity as practiced by African-Americans, Hopkins employs the Bible (as well as sources from classical antiquity) to offer an Afrocentric view of the ancient world, with all civilization and the arts deriving from Ethiopians or their kin in Egypt, Canaan, and Babylon. 

For these aforementioned discursive uses of Ethiopianism in a speculative fiction guise, Hopkins has written perhaps the most interesting of early "Afrofuturist" literature. In terms of its prose and structure, there is room for improvement, but Reuel's use of mesmerism and occultism in the Boston chapters is directly relevant to the advanced hidden science of Telassar and the Afro-American's deep past. There is enough material here to appeal to academics, hoteps, black feminists (particularly through the character of Mira and Aunt Hannah), and those like myself, merely curious about unexpected speculative fiction. 

By the novel's call to a return to Africa, it also fits into the larger history of vindicationist black history, stressing the great past of the African as a way of countering white supremacy and instilling a pride in African Americans. However, it also demonstrates the limitations of Ethiopianist discourse as its centered on a great African past and Christian, Western notions of civilization. It is unclear what Telassar, with its king to inaugurate a new dynasty, will accomplish for an Africa experiencing European conquest. It possesses some advanced technology, but the reader is left in the dark about the future relations between Telassar and imperial Europe. Nonetheless, it is a far more entertaining and interesting world than that of Black Panther.

Joe Jordan Live

Here is a priceless video from the 1970s featuring Joe Jordan singing and playing the piano. Jordan was an important figure in the Chicago South Side music scene in the pre-jazz days when cabarets on State Street featured ragtime and vaudeville performances. While not really a jazz musician in the 1900s or 1910s, Jordan's legacy in terms of the South Side music scene deserves mention, as well as his music's contribution to early jazz in its transitional phase. He was also present at various moments in the development of ragtime (St. Louis), Chicago's South Side (Pekin Theater), and New York (Clef Club). By the 1920s, he was recording "jazz" with his Ten Sharps & Flats. 

Sun Ra Documentary

Ah, Sun Ra. Always an interesting and amusing man whose band reflects one of the most interesting aspects of jazz: its spiritual and alternative dimensions. Like many jazz musicians, Sun Ra's music and writings reflect a search for higher meaning and utopia. In its racial dimensions, it also brings to mind a long trajectory in "the music" for utopian visions and redemption, from Treemonisha to the Arkestra. This documentary is a fascinating capsule of that vision. 

Wilbur C. Sweatman and Early Jazz

After reading Mark Berresford's That’s got ’Em! : the life and music of Wilbur C. Sweatman, one can see more clearly the significance of Sweatman in the rise of jazz music. As a transitional figure whose life encompassed all the 19th and early 20th century musical forms that contributed to jazz, Sweatman, like James Reese Europe, is a perfect figure to study for understanding the transition to jazz and blues in the late 1910s and 1920s. In the case of Sweatman, Berresford emphasizes his past in minstrel, vaudeville, and circus or tent show performances. It also seems very reasonable to agree with the author that the rise of jazz could never be understood solely as a New Orleans phenomenon. Last, but certainly not least, one can see the centrality of ragtime as a musical genre that laid the foundation for the musical changes occurring in the first two decades of the 1900s. 

Further, it would seem that appearance of blues and jazz and the rise of African American popular music in the 20th century owes far more to minstrel, vaudeville, and ragtime-influenced tours that created conditions for African Americans to travel across the continent and exchange musical ideas. P.G. Lowery's group, or Sweatman's later career on the vaudeville circuit, or Chicago's South State Street black cabarets created a propitious climate for the exchange of musical ideas. All these aforementioned aspects of African American music would go on to make Sweatman a pivotal figure in early jazz. His unique clarinet style also included early jazz phrasing, particularly on his recording of "Down Home Rag" for Emerson. His singular sound on clarinet and "hot" style almost makes it plausible that he was playing "jazz" as early as his Chicago years. It also explains why Columbia and Pathé were drawn to Sweatman, who already had an established reputation, for a black jazz band to catch up to the jazz craze. 

Berresford's text, while full of informative details pertinent to recordings and tour dates, can be a tedious read. Ultimately, this study is limited by the loss of Sweatman's autobiographical notes and countless papers and records of his and Scott Joplin that would have shed so much light on ragtime and early jazz. Nonetheless, Berresford's biography convincingly demonstrates the significance of Sweatman in the history of jazz. Several prominent jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s were once associates or former sidemen of Sweatman, whose business acumen, showmanship, and experience impacted luminaries such as Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford. Berresford's study also speaks to the theme of racial integration in jazz and popular music, an area in which Sweatman was a pioneer. 

What is required now is a detailed study of Sweatman's recordings, though Berresford nicely contextualizes the limitations of recording technology, Columbia's control on material, and the competing influence of the New Orleans polyphonic sound versus the large New York syncopated orchestras of the 1910s. One would also have liked to learn more about the relationship between Joplin and Sweatman, and, if possible, any reasons why Sweatman never joined the Clef Club or Tempo Club. What did Sweatman think of "jazz" and ragtime in the context of the "race" and its place in the development of black music? Unless someone locates the lost papers of Sweatman, perhaps we shall never know. 

Songhai Empire

To return to some of my esoteric pursuits, this podcast on the Songhai Empire (and, by extension, Mali, Timbuktu and the "Western Sudan"), is worth a listen. Although really just an introduction to a complex area and period in world history, this podcaster clearly dedicated a lot of time to researching this subject. Although the Songhai state during its imperial period only lasted for a century, its fall ushered in a number of changes in the region that continue to reverberate today. 

Rumba Negro (Spanish Stomp)

A 1929 delight from Bennie Moten. Spanish-flavored, yes, but that irrepressible Kansas City bluesy swing can't help but express itself. Unfortunately, not enough guitar, but excellent solos all around. 

As Serious As Your Life

Valerie Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life is a must-read for all interested in the history of the new thing in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on her own involvement and extensive interviews with the musicians themselves who championed their art, it resolves all doubts of free jazz's roots in the Black community and earlier forms of jazz (as well as African music, since free jazz represented a return to the percussive nature of African music). As as they struggled to survive in a world hostile to their music, the artists came together in cooperatives, ensembles, the loft scene, and related artistic endeavors in the Black Arts Movement to pursue creative music reflecting their cultural, social, musical, and intellectual environments. By letting the musicians speak for themselves, they are further humanized as we learn of their shortcomings, desires, personal lives, and aspirations. 

One cannot speak of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the AACM, or Andrew Cyrille as disconnected from larger currents of their era, particularly as the opportunities for profit in jazz were dwindling and the new music artists sought to define themselves and leave a legacy for future generations. Outside of academia, grants, and a few organizations like the AACM, it does seem like this spirit of jazz is long gone, but one can see in it perhaps the last great creative surge in jazz that existed in tandem with popular Black music of the era, despite its arduous path to reach the masses of African Americans. Black cultural nationalism, socialism, and mystical notions had a certain attraction to these artists, and shaped their music and their self-conception as artists beyond the confines imposed on jazz music in the past. The concert hall, rather than the nightclub, was their ideal performance venue, but they also wanted to reach a large audience and retain links with communities outside of their artistic circles. 

A democratizing impulse in the music can also be found in the period. Wilmer was likely one of the first to seriously consider the question of women in the new music. Besides Alice Coltrane, Amina Claudine Myers, Carla Bley or Linda Sharrock, women artists in the new music were scarce, yet without their finncial, emotional, and artistic contributions, the jazz avant-garde would not have survived. Working women provided the necessary income to support musicians who struggled to find work as the jazz nightclubs were disappearing and the music was not supported by most of the large record labels (with the possible exceptions of Impulse and Atlantic). There was also a push for greater inclusion of women as instrumentalists in the music, not just vocalists. In a sense, jazz was democratizing itself further as women fought for their space. The sidemen versus leader dichotomy was also challenged in this democratizing push, since creative ensembles in which leadership was equally shared were perceived as better for the spirit of musical collaboration and cooperatively-run labels or associations. Jazz, like other forms of music, continue to struggle with these questions, but undoubtedly the free jazz scene paved a way forward for the music.

Spirits Rejoice

In addition to an entire album comprised of spirituals, Ayler's compositions reflect the influence of march music, hymns, folk, and the early source materials of jazz. As someone with a budding interest in the ways in which the jazz avant-garde returned to the roots in the 1960s and 1970s, Ayler's music is always a great start. This composition, "Spirits Rejoice," mixes the aforementioned musical genres into an utterly unique sound through Ayler's transformation of the tenor saxophone into voice. Its cry seems to reflect the birth, suffering, and eventual triumph through its combination of military march and religious sentiment. It almost brings to mind Sketches of Spain-era Miles with its evocations of street processions, yet Ayler's honking saxophone never loses touch with melody.

Katherine Dunham and Haiti (Guest Post)

African American dancer, anthropologist, and choreographer Katherine Dunham enjoyed a lengthy relationship with Haiti. Beginning with her travels as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1930s, Dunham retained her connections to the island for the rest of her life. Moreover, Haiti, the subject of her memoir, Island Possessed, illustrates how important the Black Republic was for her approach to dance, her comprehension of Black Atlantic dance performance and racial pride. Dunham’s central use of Haiti for the development of Black Atlantic dance is an example of “Negritude Dance.” Dunham drew from folklore, anthropology, and a racial pride in which Haiti occupied a central role. Dunham’s thought influenced Haiti, too, leading to the growth of folkloric performance there and other sites in the Black Atlantic. The folk-modern dialectic and shifts in anthropological theory about Haitian dance and popular religion, particularly through the influence of people like Robert Redfield and Melville Herskovits, sheds additional light on the ideological context of Dunham’s relationship with Haiti. Furthermore, Dunham’s experiences with future Haitian president Léon Dumarsais Estimé, Jean Price-Mars and other Haitian intellectuals and folkloric performers, plus direct experience with Vodou initiation, allowed her to develop a relationship with Haitian dance that challenged the observant-participant role of ethnography, making her a pioneer in dance anthropology.

            The ideological context of Dunham’s engagement with Haiti begins with the indigéniste movement. Although African American intellectuals long before Dunham looked to Haiti as a potential home, source of inspiration, and example of black sovereignty, Dunham’s travels in Haiti included socializing and ethnographic work alongside Haitian intellectuals like Price-Mars. Her interest in Haiti developed in a period when more attention was centered on the island nation by African Americans, especially during the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Zora Neale Hurston wrote about Haiti.[1] These African-American writers and activists influenced or were in communication with Price-Mars and the young generation of Haitian intellectuals who looked to Haitian folklore, such as Jacques Roumain. In order to resist the US Occupation more effectively, these Haitian intellectuals believed that they had to bridge the divide between elites and the peasant masses and reorient national identity away from Francophile expressions.[2] One of the significant calls of the indigéniste movement was an explicit demand from Price-Mars that Haitian musicians, composers, artists, poets, and novelists look to Haitian folklore as a source for their artistic works. Through journals such as La Revue Indigène, Haitian poets and intellectuals put this into practice by incorporating folk themes, Vodou religious references, and self-affirming messages about people of African descent in their work.[3] Haitian composers, such as Ludovic Lamothe, and Werner Jaegerhuber, studied Haitian folk music and Vodou ritual song, adapting it to Western classical styles and thereby refining it as Price-Mars had called for.[4] Haitian indigenists believed this was necessary to cultivate Haitian national identity, unite the country against the racist US Occupation, and develop a truly national aesthetic. This intellectual climate shaped Dunham’s relationship to Haiti because it was with these Haitian intellectuals she engaged in her early trips to the island.

Over time, indigénisme birthed the Griots, an organization rooted in noirisme, an intellectual movement that advocated essentialist readings of race. Noirists promoted dark-skinned Haitians as the only authentic or true representatives of Haiti.[5] Noirists and indigenists represented the two ideologies which dominated Haitian interest in folklore and Vodou, which was elevated to a proper religion in the works of Price-Mars. His ethnographic work included extensive trips among the Haitian peasantry to document their religion practices, folklore, and demonstrate the continuity of African influences in the formation of the Haitian people. Price-Mars showed that the Haitian peasantry were, according to Imani Owens, “Neither primitive threat nor nostalgic anecdote to modernity, the folk themselves are modern. By highlighting the historicity of the folk, Price Mars is able to emphasize the material circumstances of their lives and argue for their role in strategies of resistance.”[6] To Price-Mars, “Tales, legends, riddles, songs, proverbs, beliefs thrive with an extraordinary exuberance, magnanimity, and ingenuity. These are the superb human materials from which are molded the warm heart, the multi-consciousness, the collective mind of the Haitian people!”[7] This revolutionary insight in Haitian social thought paved the way for inter-class solidarity and nationalist fervor in Haiti. Thus, by the end of the 1930s, Haitian nationalists unaffiliated with the indigénistes were also willing to promote folklore to celebrate Haitian national identity and promote Haiti on the international stage. Early folkloric troupes emerged at this time, and by the 1940s, folkloric performances were actively sponsored by leaders such as Élie Lescot. A Haitian woman, Lina Blanchet also contributed to the early Haitian folkloric movement by using folkloric musical scores, incorporating these traditions in her piano performances, and introducing her voice and piano students to these traditions.[8] Clearly, folkloric dance and singing became, among the Haitian middle-class and elite, a style appropriate for national representation. Katherine Dunham herself appears to have influenced this shifting reception after a performance at the Rex Theatre in 1937.[9] But these shifts in Haitian social reception of Haitian folkloric dance and the Vodou religion, partly a result of resurgent Haitian nationalist politics, also influenced Katherine Dunham.  

In addition to the influences of Haitian intellectual thought during the time, Dunham’s first trip to Haiti was shaped by American anthropology of the epoch. Her research was supported by Northwestern University’s Melville Herskovits and Robert Redfield of the University of Chicago. After receiving funds for travel in the West Indies from the Rosenwald Foundation, Dunham left to study dance among different Caribbean societies in Haiti, Martinique, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Her approach to Caribbean societies at the time bore the imprint of Robert Redfield’s notion “folk-urban continuum” to understand cultural change.[10] Redfield’s idealized peasant community of “utopian primitives” also shaped Dunham’s early perspectives on Caribbean dance.[11] However, Dunham received additional assistance from Herskovits, who helped connect her to segments of the Haitian political and social elite. More importantly, Herskovits’s own study of Haitian rural life, Life in a Haitian Valley, was only recently published in 1937 and shaped Dunham’s understanding of African cultural retention in the Caribbean. For example, Herskovits noted how Vodou adherents in Mirebalais attended ritual ceremonies, but rushed to the Catholic mass the following morning. He also noted the European influence on  the melodic line of Haitian music. This indicates a cultural fusion of African and European customs in Haiti which Herskovits championed for  the study of African Diaspora anthropology.[12] Dunham acknowledges her debt to Herskovits in Island Possessed but scholar Hannah Durkin argues, “Herskovits and his contemporaries read cultural practices in historical terms, therefore helping to reinforce an illusory concept of cultural purity and disregarding the Black Atlantic as a key site of modernity.”[13] Dunham, however, championed Haitian folkloric dance and black racial pride as modern while acknowledging cultural creolization. Dunham also differed from fellow anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston on the subject of Haiti. Hurston’s Tell My Horse, for instance, did not criticize the US Occupation of Haiti. Furthermore, Hurston’s ethnography played on exoticism and primitivism to depict Haitian society as occupied by liars and seemingly justified US paternalism.[14] Dunham, on the other hand, championed Haiti as a center for negritude and black modernity, best exemplified through her relationship with President Estimé of Haiti.

Negritude, for Dunham, was rooted in Estimé’s politics, black racial pride, and humanist principles. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who helped her receive funding from the Rosenwald Foundation, paved the way for her “receptivity to the thinking of Estimé.”[15] Dunham’s experience with humanism from figures like Fromm and her perceptive reading of Haitian society and politics through Estimé meant that negritude entailed modernity and racial pride. To Dunham, Estimé “was the first in defining the concept of negritude, the placing of the black race in its proper perspective and accord with the rest of the world, a prise de conscience.”[16] She also associated the ideas of Price-Mars and Estimé with Haitian economic development and social progress, admiring the latter for reforming the Haitian educational system and improving government services.[17] Consequently, negritude for Dunham did not entail primitivist readings of Haitian culture but a developed sense of racial pride and assertion of black humanity. And Estimé, who rose to power after a democratic revolution influenced by Haitian cultural nationalists, socialists, and black nationalists, exemplified her grand vision. This definition of negritude importantly evaded the racial essentialism of the noiriste camps in Haitian intellectual thought while supporting modern reforms. The role of folklore for this conception of negritude was intended for reasserting the dignity and equality of African and Black Atlantic arts and dance, thereby developing a modern national consciousness and aesthetic. Dunham’s conception of negritude clearly championed such a perspective, since she refers to her relationship and exchange of ideas with Estimé as being “one with the avant garde of negritude.”[18]

It was also during the presidency of Estimé when folkloric dance skyrocketed to importance for Haitian representation on the national stage. Aforementioned folkloric troupes and classical composers were active in the 1930s, but under Estimé the opening up of Port-au-Prince society to folkloric performance and the use of folkloric dance to represent Haiti expanded exponentially. For example, in the 1940s, Port-au-Prince nightclubs began to feature dance music based on folkloric styles and Vodou ritual music, especially the Vodou-jazz orchestras of the 1940s. These bands, such as Jazz des Jeunes, fused folkloric and Vodou rhythms and references with jazz and Cuban-inspired styles to entertain and assert Haitian identity.[19] Folkloric groups from the pre- Estimé years who represented Haiti in international performances were also expanding, including choirs, dance troupes, and painters associated with the famous Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. The growing tourist sector fueled the expansion of folkloric performance because, as suggested by Brenda Plummer, the development of Haiti as a major research field in the social sciences and the search for authenticity made it more attractive to American tourists. Haitian “primitive” and quaint customs were no longer read as menacing and the blackness of Haitians added to the exotic and colorful nature of the locale.[20] Folkloric dance and Vodou ritual provided excellent opportunities for tourists to use as a vehicle for authenticating a primitive Haiti of their imagination. Although Estimé was personally opposed to the Vodou religion for allegedly distracting the Haitian lower classes from addressing their real problems, he, as part of the broader ideological shift in Haitian society, saw the value of folkloric dance for expressing Haitian identity and boosting state revenue.[21] In fact, Estimé further promoted folkloric performance as a symbol of Haitian identity and progress for the Bicentennial Exposition of Port-au-Prince. A showcase for Haiti on the international stage, Estimé razed slum areas, erected new monuments, and featured folkloric dance, music, and arts for the Exposition.[22] While his intent was clearly to promote Haitian tourism, the fact that he accompanied folkloric performance with novel urban improvement and monuments likely indicates that Haitian politicians did not harbor any primitivist delusions. Folkloric dance and music represented the Haitian nation, brought members of different social classes together, and served Haitian interests in Pan-American conferences, performances, or competitions. Indeed, folklore, according to Ramsey, “held a privileged status under Estimé, a long-term supporter of the ethnology movement.”[23] The Haitian folkloric movement similarly promoted local talent and created opportunities for Haitian musicians, dancers, and painters to travel abroad, hone their technique, and, in some cases, like Jean-Léon Destiné, perform internationally with Katherine Dunham’s company.[24] Moreover, folkloric performance could be used by proponents of noirisme and cultural authenticity to critique light-skinned elites and others for not promoting Haitian identity, negritude or social equality. Of course, this discourse was cynically exploited by François Duvalier and other noiristes to camouflage their own class interests as the rising middle class, but it nonetheless reveals the counterhegemonic nature of Haitian music.[25]

However, without Dunham’s research and elevation of Haitian folk dance abroad, the explosion of Haitian folk music in the 1940s and 1950s would have likely been stalled or delayed. For example, Dunham surprised Port-au-Prince high society during a dance performance at Rex Theatre that incorporated aspects of Vodou ritual dance. According to Kate Ramsey, this April 1936 performance, which included Price-Mars and René Piquion in attendance, featured Vodou dance during a segment of Danse Rituel de Feu by Manuel de Falla. Dunham later performed Haitian folkloric dance for the concert stage in 1938, under official wishes of Haitian government, for the Haitian Coffee Fest at Howard University.[26] Dunham later wrote that her Rex Theatre performance helped open doors for her in Port-au-Prince’s upper-class mulatto families, as well as a becoming a partially successful bridge for the color divide in Haitian society. Her audience included the social elite of Port-au-Prince as well as members of the rising middle class and intelligentsia.[27] Thus, folkloric dance was already connecting Haitians of different class-color backgrounds. Considering that Vodou was still penalized by the legal codes in Haiti at the time, excepting “social dances,” Dunham’s bold move demonstrates how negritude for her was rooted in a humanist sensibility that valorized African-derived traditions and aesthetics.[28] Dunham’s future US performances, which combined various Caribbean folk styles after returning from the Caribbean, similarly stimulated interest and audiences for Afro-Caribbean dance, although adding her formal training and technique.[29] Thus, Dunham’s essential role in promulgation of Haitian folklore for international audiences simultaneously assisted Haiti on the international stage while facilitating the development of a cultural shift in the Haitian arts world. Both Dunham and Estimé participated in this process.

In addition, Dunham’s students, such as Lavinia Williams, later exerted a tremendous influence on Haitian dance by teaching formal dance technique in Haiti. Williams, invited by Estimé’s successor, Paul Magloire, was trained in classical technique and used her training to categorize and professionalize Haitian folkloric dance. Williams added floor stretches, body conditioning, ballet training, and choreography classes.[30] This made folkloric dance, though still rooted in peasant and Vodou dance and style, even more applicable for promotion of Haiti internationally and for tourism. Indeed, Williams hosted her own radio show in the 1950s to support Haitian tourism. However, she also, like Dunham, ensured her students studied the origins of each dance they performed so that they could identify rhythms and understand the social meaning.[31] Jean-Léon Destiné, who entered Haitian folkloric performance through Blanchet’s group, also performed under Dunham. Destiné, like Williams, professionalized Haitian dance, and starred in the “Shango” sequence of Dunham’s Bal Nègre.[32] He also exemplified another trend of folkloric performance, the stylization and professionalization which made it easier for the Haitian middle-classes to identify with without disavowing their bourgeois or European-influenced standards of performance.[33] The desacralized Vodou dances further facilitated Haitian elite and middle class consumption and support by removing folkloric dance from its religious context  In other words, staged folklore performance became a specialized art that, despite drawing on the traditions of the Haitian peasantry, was appropriate for members of the upper and middle class. Destiné’s life in New York, associations with Harlem intellectuals such as Langston Hughes, and his own dance troupe in New York ensured Haitian influence would survive on African American dance troupes, complementing Dunham’s Pan-Africanist aesthetic she pioneered in the 1930s and 1940s.[34] Destiné, Williams, and others thereby cemented the association of folkloric performance with national identity and racial pride, which they inherited from Dunham’s adaptations of Haitian dance as a key node for negritude. 

Dunham’s technique and performances also reveal the significance of negritude in her ethnographic and theoretical works. Her master’s thesis, later published as The Dances of Haiti, categorizes and analyzes every form of dance in Haiti, including the social, sacred, and marginal. Dunham highlights the importance of the sacred and secular dialectic in Haitian music, while also noting the influence of Cuban musical genres and Dominican merengue on Haitian social dance. The Haitian adaptation of contredanse adds other European and non-Haitian elements into Haitian dance. This acknowledges the influence of other Caribbean, African, and European cultures on Haitian dance, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of a romanticized peasantry that is authentically “African.”[35] For Dunham, nonetheless, Vodou permeated all Haitian dance due to its impact on peasant psychology and the role of dance in its ceremonies.[36] The congo, yanvalou, banda, petro, rara and other dances serve different social functions which lend coherence to Haitian peasant society, whether it be artistic expression, community solidarity, sexual, religious, or spiritual. In short, Haitian dances served a number of social and psychological purposes, and contained their own set of logic and categorization. The levels of sophistication, nuance, and community built into folkloric dance were a system worthy of study and performance in themselves. These dances, however, did not mean Dunham rejected other influences. Her fluid conception of black dance and Africanist aesthetics was not exclusive of other styles and recognized multidirectional waves of influence within the Caribbean and between the Caribbean and African Americans. 

Like Zora Neale Hurston, Dunham recognized the prominence of the Caribbean as a bridge between the United States and Africa. Haitian dance and folklore served as a bridge for African Americans, supposedly deracinated, to reconnect with African cultural practices. Indeed, Dunham’s African American background facilitated her access to Vodou ceremonies and peasant homes. Perceived as a deracinated though familiar Other, her Haitian informants inquired about African Americans and their severed ties to the world of the ancestors.[37] Dunham additionally received more liberties in her participation in Vodou due to her “unofficial position as emissary of the lost black peoples from Nan Guinin.”[38] Because Haitians and other Caribbean people were able to retain more aspects of African religion than African-Americans, one can understand why Dunham and other African-Americans looked to Haiti, the Vodou religion, and folklore as a pathway to their African origins and aesthetics. Her canzo initiation in the faith, in addition to later initiations and relationships with priests and priestesses in the Vodou faith, even though she never experienced possession, allowed her to personally experience ritual dances. This gave her an understanding of how a move like the yanvalou is associated with release from emotional conflict by establishment of contact with a superior being, using fluid movement involving spine, base of the head, chest, solar plexus and pelvic girdle. Or how the zepaule, using regular forward and backward jerking of shoulders and rapid contracting and expanding of the chest, enhances self-hypnotism, autointoxication and borders on ecstasy.[39] Naturally, Dunham’s use of Haiti as a source of Africanity for African-Americans and her references to Caribbean peasants as primitives suggests the influence of Herskovits and Redfield. But, she, like Price-Mars and Estimé, wanted Vodou and folklore to unite Haitians and contribute to modernization and economic development.

Dunham’s technique and performances exemplify her notion of negritude. Accordingly, she devised her technique from the steps of Caribbean folk dance, which she then filtered through classical ballet and other perceptions. Her attachment to what she terms the collective in primitive folk society has had the most influence on her performances.[40] Her performance material similarly indicated the fundamental place of Haiti in her aesthetic canon. For example, Dunham had planned to perform a ballet based on Henri Christophe, the self-declared king of Haiti and a hero of the Haitian Revolution. This ballet also recognized the importance of the Vodou religion in uniting the Haitian rebels in defeating France. Although the ballet was never performed, one cannot help thinking of William Grant Still’s Troubled Island, an opera about the Haitian Revolution, another example of African American artists and writers drawing on Haiti.[41] Clearly, Haiti loomed large in the minds of African American intellectuals and Dunham’s elevation of Haiti as a center for humanism that valorized blackness contributed to it. Her other works, such as Bal Nègre and its famous “Shango” sequence, named for the orisha of the Yoruba pantheon, features the serpentine movement of someone perhaps under the possession of Damballah. The women’s costumes in that work also honor the dress of Haitian women, fully incorporating the use of the dress to accentuate their twists and turns.[42] Her Africanist aesthetic also combined styles from Martinique, Cuba, and African American styles, but the basis of the Dunham Technique derives from the combination of yanvalou, petro, and congo paillette with modern dance and ballet steps.[43] The Dunham Technique resembles Dunham’s approach to Vodou and African-derived religious traditions. As Dunham explains in Island Possessed, her initiation into Vodou did not preclude serving gods or spirits of Cuba and Senegal, and she hoped to “bring some reconciliation into these wandering, jealous siblings of different nations but of the same ancestors.”[44] Thus, using Haitian foundations, the Dunham Technique transformed American dance and fostered African Diasporic art. She paved the way for the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s through an aesthetic that showed the world the beauty of Black Atlantic dance forms, rerouting and remixing different Diasporic communities to dance negritude.

Unsurprisingly, Dunham’s negritude humanism also shape her social, gender and sexual politics. Negritude, as she previously mentioned in relation to Haitian president Estimé, was a humanism based in uplifting the impoverished masses of Haiti and asserting the dignity and beauty of the race. Traces of this can be found in Dunham’s approach to gender and sexuality. For instance, her dance company was a center for gay black life in Harlem during the 1940s.[45] Queerness, which could be expressed in Haitian Vodou, followed Dunham’s conception of negritude as a form of free expression. Further, she created a space for black sexual resistance through the yanvalou dance, which freed the pelvic girdle, drawing on Haitian and West African dance.[46] Dunham and her dancers embodied a radical shift in modern dance and ballet which showed Africanist aesthetics that liberated body movement, for male and female dancers. While one may criticize it for an eroticized portrayal of the black body, Dunham used modern ballet and the concert-stage to legitimize Africanist aesthetics as the equal of the European tradition. In addition, Dunham’s gender shaped her dance anthropology and appreciation of negritude. As one of the first black woman anthropologists to study the Caribbean, she engaged in fieldwork on her own, transcended the class-color divisions within Haitian society, and befriended women from all social circles. Indeed, Dunham learned some Caribbean dance styles by befriending Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Haitian prostitutes in Port-au-Prince. These women, mostly Dominicans working at brothels like La Paloma Blanca, taught Dunham how to dance to the rumba, merengue, Haitian meringue, and bolero.[47] A pan-Caribbean sound emerged from this crossroads of musical genres and instrumentation, which Dunham observed in Haitian bamboche, or social dances. Clearly, gender and sexuality shaped Dunham’s danced negritude, which challenged conventional social relations and homophobia.

Ultimately, Dunham’s relationship to Haiti and Haitian folklore was a multifaceted relationship. Dunham perhaps betrayed a rather simplistic understanding of Haitian politics in her comparison of presidents Estimé, Magloire, and Duvalier to founding fathers Toussaint L’Ouverture, Henri Christophe, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. She may have been guilty of a romanticized reading of the Haitian peasantry as the heart and soul of the Haitian people. However, Haiti provided a way to connect African Americans with Africa since Caribbean peoples were perceived as having stronger retention of shared African traditions and customs. Dunham’s ties to Herskovits, Redfield, Price-Mars, and Haitian political figures further shaped her affiliation to Haiti while her own unique standpoint as a woman anthropologist and dancer allowed her to develop a different conception of negritude that showcased Black Atlantic Dance as equal and worthy of performance on the stage. Through her scholarly work, dance performances, and memoir, Island Possessed, one can see how Dunham’s development of a humanist conception of negritude embraced progressive social values that challenged Haitian class and color hierarchies while simultaneously creating an Africanist aesthetic for African American dancers. Her Africanist aesthetic was not opposed to the European ballet and modern dance tradition, but incorporated Haitian dance as a foundation while adding elements of African and other Caribbean traditions and dance folklore. This paved the way for future movements inspired by African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American traditions and styles without pursuing an essentialist notion of race and culture. This proved to be revolutionary in both Haiti and for black dancers all around the world influenced by Katherine Dunham. 

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[1] Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915– 1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 291.

[2] Michael Largey, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 51.

[3] David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race Colour, and National Independence in Haiti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 159.

[4] Michael Largey, Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism, 52.

[5] Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 55.

[6] Imani D. Owens, “Beyond Authenticity: The US Occupation of Haiti and the Politics of Folk Culture,” Journal of Haitian Studies 21, no. 2 (2015): 350, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43741134.

[7] Jean Price-Mars, So Spoke the Uncle, trans. Magdaline W. Shannon. (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1983), 173.

[8] Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti, 57.

[9] Kate Ramsey, “Katherine Dunham and the Folklore Performance Movement in Post-US Occupation Haiti,” in Katherine Dunham: Recovering an Anthropological Legacy, Choreographing Ethnographic Futures, ed. Elizabeth Chin (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2014), 58.

[10] Joanna Dee Das, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 31.

[11] Joyce Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 47.

[12] Melville Herskovits, Life in a Haitian Valley (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1937), 181, 263.

[13] Hannah Durkin, “Dance anthropology and the impact of 1930s Haiti on Katherine Dunham's scientific and artistic consciousness,” International Journal of Francophone Studies 14, no. 1-2 (2011): 11.

[14] Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915– 1940, 288.

[15] Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 42.

[16] Ibid, 46.

[17] Ibid, 42.

[18] Ibid, 144.

[19] Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti, 59.

[20] Brenda G. Plummer, The Golden Age of Haitian Tourism (New York: Columbia University-New York University Consortium, 1989), 15.

[21] Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed, 26.

[22] Matthew J. Smith, Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 107.

[23] Kate Ramsey, “Vodou and nationalism: The staging of folklore in mid‐twentieth century Haiti," Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 7, no. 2 (1995): 357.

[24] Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 157.

[25] Matthew J. Smith, Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957, 60.

[26] Kate Ramsey, “Katherine Dunham and the Folklore Performance Movement in Post-US Occupation Haiti,” 62.

[27] Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed, 155.

[28] Kate Ramsey, “Katherine Dunham and the Folklore Performance Movement in Post-US Occupation Haiti,” 52.

[29] Hannah Durkin, “Dance anthropology and the impact of 1930s Haiti on Katherine Dunham's scientific and artistic consciousness,” 23.

[30] Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964, 158.

[31] Ibid, 176.

[32] Ibid, 166.

[33] Lois E. Wilcken, "Staging Folklore in Haiti: Historical Perspectives," Journal of Haitian Studies 1, no. 1 (1995): 108.

[34] Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964, 166.

[35] Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 1983), 9.

[36] Ibid, 6.

[37] Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti, 15

[38] Ibid.

[39] Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti, 61.

[40] Katherine Dunham, "Open Letter to Black Theaters," The Black Scholar 10, no. 10 (1979): 5.

[41] Joanna Dee Das, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora, 50.

[42] Shango.” Library of Congress video. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003834/.

[43] Hannah Durkin, “Dance anthropology and the impact of 1930s Haiti on Katherine Dunham's scientific and artistic consciousness,” 23.

[44] Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed, 272.

[45] Susan Manning, "Modern dance, Negro dance and Katherine Dunham," Textual Practice 15, no. 3 (2001): 499.

[46] Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti, 61.

[47] Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed, 213.