Race Music, and: Interview with Berry Gordy
- Race Music, and: Interview with Berry Gordy
Race Music
Our business is making musicwhite enough to covereven the deepest blues.We steal to earn our keep.
We pull up troublesome roots& reconstitute meaningfrom a song’s skeletal frame.This is how music becomes echo:
What we don’t gut, we bury.What we don’t bury, we bleachthen iron, shred then darn, untilthe song no longer knows itself. [End Page 750]
Interview with Berry Gordy
Lord knows, we did what we could to keepthe jivers jiving, to move their hipsat pulse’s tempo. We did the footwork,wore the suits & the sequins. We teasedthe wigs. We worked the ballrooms & the TVlounges, the total area of the circuit.But slick as an oil spill, halfwaybetween warble & holler, orchestra& bassline, it was our sound that brought crowdsto the dance floor & took us beyondthe city’s narrow limits. For yearsour sound was the house we lived in: strongenough to withstand its own fire &bold enough to start one. Listento what I’m saying: No, our bodiesnever knew rest or relief, but we knewthe songs and how to sing them—with bikechain, saxophone, hand on calloused hand. [End Page 751]
meredith nnoka is a Smith College graduate with a degree in Africana Studies and English. She has taught English in France and is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poems have appeared in Mandala Journal, HEArt Journal, and Riding Light. Her chapbook, A Hunger Called Music: A Verse History of Black Music, will be available from C&R Press later this year.
