Simply how one lives

Yesterday I ran across this great bit from LeRoi Jones‘ (later known as Amiri Baraka) book Blues people (here he’s talking about the 1950′s and early 1960′s in the U.S.):

…because the black middle class confused legitimate political and economic desires with their shame at not already having attained these goals, they thought this meant they had to abandon history and the accreted cultural significance of the black man’s three hundred years in America. For the poor, however, “culture” is simply how one lives, and is connected to history by habit. (p. 180-1)

Wow – great stuff. I really love that last line, and since poverty isn’t limited to people of color, one could presumably make a similar statement about, for example, the “hillbillies” in the Appalachians. Or poor urban kids and hip-hop culture in its many colors.

I suspect this is a key part of why people like John and Alan Lomax worked so hard to find and capture this sort of culture, and it’s certainly a key part of why I find the early commercial and field recordings so powerful. It’s important to realize that these aren’t entirely transparent reflections of the culture, since these are creative, intelligent, and often at least mildly ambitious people who obviously bring a lot to the table. Still, though, this typically is the music they grew up with, and the music of their community gatherings and ceremony. It’s the music of the porch more than the music of the parlor, and as such is a crucial document of a piece of our country’s life and history (and contribution to the music of the world).