In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

134 13 Signifying in Nineteenth-Century African American Religious Music Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje This essay concerns the role of religious music in nineteenth-century African American culture. Just as religion in African and African-derived cultures is a topic that has received much study, so too has the discussion of the role of music in religion. I find these topics fascinating because both phenomena—music and religion —are central to African peoples. Music scholar J. H. Kwabena Nketia writes, “The most compelling reason for music making in Africa derives from religious experience, for it is generally believed that the spiritual world is responsive to music and deeply affected by it. . . . Hence worship always finds its most intense expression in music making.”1 When practiced in African-derived “folk” and “traditional ” (or “roots”) culture, religion and music are not placed on a shelf to be observed, gazed on, or used only on special occasions, but integrated fully into the everyday lives of global Africans. And for many Africans, life would be meaningless without these phenomena. Music and religion are also interesting because of their link to relationships that are as complex, diverse, and difficult to define as either term in itself. Ethnomusicologist Ter Ellingson explains: Religious believers have heard music as the voices of gods and the cacophony of devils, praised it as the purest form of spirituality, and condemned it as the ultimate in sensual depravity; with equal enthusiasm they have promoted its use in worship and sought to eradicate it from both religious and secular life. Seldom a neutral phenomenon, music has a high positive or negative value that reflects its near-universal importance in the religious sphere.2 Definitions, Sources, and Methodology Although signifying, a concept most often used to explain black language, verbal behavior, folklore, and literary tradition, has been discussed by a number of folklorists , sociolinguists, and literary scholars,3 Claudia Mitchell-Kernan is among the first to frame the discussion broadly so that it encompasses more than the analysis of verbal expressions. In defining the term, Mitchell-Kernan states, “Signifying . . . refers to a way of encoding messages or meaning which involves, in most cases, an element of indirection . . . This kind of signifying might be best viewed as an alternative message form, selected for its artistic merit, and may occur embedded in a variety of discourse.”4 This definition is significant because it alludes both to Signifying in Nineteenth-Century African American Religious Music 135 the technique of signifying and the parameters of signifying. On the first point, Mitchell-Kernan suggests that signifying is synonymous with figuration,5 which refers to the “act or process of creating.”6 Musically, figuration can be defined as “the ornamentation of a musical passage by using decorative figures.”7 When applied to African derived music, Mitchell-Kernan’s definition highlights innovation and creation, which are central to performance in African and African-derived cultures. On the second point, Mitchell-Kernan’s use of the phrase “variety of discourse” implies that signifying can be found in other expressive forms in African American culture. In other words, just as researchers are able to observe, analyze, and find meaning in the encoded messages of African American language, the same can be done for art, dance, and musical sound. Most scholars who note the use of signifying in black performance tend to focus on song lyrics rather than sound (the singing or the playing of music instruments ) or other aspects of expressive culture (movement and visual elements). Also, black secular musical styles (jazz, blues, and popular music) are discussed more prominently than sacred music. For example, in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates makes several comments about jazz and blues musicians who have included signification in the lyrics and titles of songs. One of the few instances when Gates discusses religious music is when he includes comments by Wash Wilson, an ex-slave who states that the term “sig’fication” was a special term and practice for slaves: “When de niggers go round singing’ ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ dat mean dere gwine be a ’ligious meetin’ dat night. Dat de sig’fication of a meetin.’ De masters ‘fore and after freedom didn’t like dem ’ligious meetin’s, so us natcherly slips off at night, down in de bottoms or somewheres. Sometimes us sing and pray all night.”8 Samuel A. Floyd is one of the few music scholars to employ signifying as a conceptual framework for...

Share