Jump for Joy: Jazz, Basketball, and Black Culture in 1930s America

Afterword: Jumping as Play: An Aesthetic and Theoretical Perspective

⢇ AFTERWORD : JUMPING AS PLAY : AN AESTHETIC AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE In his introduction to the monumentally significant volume of essays, stories, and poetry titled The New Negro (1925), Alain Locke, the public voice of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote about a “new spirit awake in the masses,” and said that a generation of African Americans was on the verge of a “spiritual emancipation.” Locke spoke of a community entering “a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without.” Yet Locke believed his book would reach only the “thinking few,” and not the “migrant massees, shifting from countryside to city,” not the “multitude” of African Americans who felt only a “vague new urge” for dignity but had no idea how to achieve it.1 The dynamism and buoyancy Locke spoke of as dormant, hidden, or, at best, nascent , were actually in full bloom, all around him. The multitude he dismissed were acting out solutions to social issues, theorizing through behavior. The double irony of the position of African American intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance was that first, popular culture, or the culture of the masses, offered a solution to the intellectual dilemma of the decade: how to maintain individual style and creativity in an increasingly hostile world. Second, music, dance, and sports had become an everyday solution not just for one race but for many.2 The expressive culture that bloomed in the midst of and following the Harlem Renaissance actually addressed the concerns of the larger national culture. Its influence spread rapidly, reached countless people of all races, and it has lasted to this day. George Schuyler framed the problem facing modern society: “We live in a highly organized world in which the individual counts for very little.”3 But jazz, social dance, and basketball provided a counter-statement; they allowed individuals to assert their excellence as soloists even as they remained part of a “highlyorganized”ensemble.Builtintothestructureoftheseexpressiveforms were complex rhythms, improvisation and stylization, call-and-response patterns , and competitive interaction that required individuals to coordinate and synchronize their efforts. Thus, they offered a working model of balanced 188 A F T E R W O R D group and individual expression. As soloists stood to perform alone and then relinquished the spotlight to blend in with the group, big bands showed the rest of the country that it was possible to work in precision with others without losing a sense of individuality. The dancers who followed and inspired them did the same, offering 1930s Americans, in Warren Susman’s words, a “pattern of large-scale participation and close cooperation.”4 These aesthetic concepts have strong and demonstrably African roots. In the introduction to Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, and Slam Dunking I outlined an aesthetic sensibility that is fundamental to African and African American expressive culture, using the following principles: (1) rhythmic and metric complexity ; (2) individual improvisation and stylization; (3) call and response, or active engagement of the whole person with the community; (4) competitive artistic dialogue; and (5) the use of all of these strategies to create a group consciousness (elsewhere in this book called the “soul focal moment”).5 Together , these principles form a cultural aesthetic that is remarkably consistent in African-based cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. And it can be found in many forms of artistic expression, including music and dance, as well as in sports, ordinary speech, and humor. Rhythmic and metric complexity in song, dance, and speech force the individual to become highly attuned to what the group is doing. Each person has a place in the whole, but the whole is complex, and you must pay attention if you are to find your own particular place. Once you have learned the group exercise , then you are encouraged to add individual flair, to improvise and stylize, as do jazz musicians, as did the Lindy Hoppers, as do basketball players. It is by mastering the tradition or the medium that you acquire the ability to improvise . Lindy Hoppers could not create their own steps without first learning the basics. Jazz musicians must completely master chord changes before they reach the point of improvising within the structure of those changes. Without mastery of theme, there can be no variations. Call and response occurs in the music of many cultures: in Western music the same principle is termed “antiphonal” singing or playing. But call and response is a fundamental principle of African music, and given...