Lecture Four “ Know it and go on out the Yard”: The journey towards healing

1. Lecture Four“Know it and go on out the Yard”: The journey towards healing •  Communal ResponseandCommunal Healing • Welding of form and content • Use of black art forms: call-and-response in blues, spirituals, gospel, jazz  Beloved and memory as a creative process: dismember, re-member, “disremembered”, “rememory” • Collaborative Storytelling and the idea of “rememory” ―> Baby Suggs, Sethe, Paul D., Stamp Paid, Ella and Denver, the women of the community, and us… • The participating reader

2. “Call and Response as Critical Method: • African-American Oral Traditions and Beloved” • by Maggie Sale • Belovedas an oral text shaped by the principles of call-and-response • Beloved presents and clarifies social problems without resolving them, and so raises or calls out, issues to be discussed or to be responded to by readers and the community. This call for communal response is part of the contemporary healing process that this text is involved in. (Sale 44) (on JSTOR)

3. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child”African-American spiritual “Four Hundred Years of Solitude: Myth, History, and Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” Sally Keenan

4. KausuKuyateh (Senegal) and DemboKonte (Gambia) Kora – West African stringed harp-lute. In the Mande culture – the instrument of the ‘jali’ or griot

5. Skip James (1903-1969) delta blues Blind Willie Johnson (1897 -1945?) – fingerstyle blues

6. “Go Down Moses” by The Jubilaires Gospel/Spiritual  Jubilee singing (1940s) Exodus 8:1“And the LORD spake unto Moses, go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him,thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me.” • The first gospel version (slightly different words to this one) believed to be first written by Harry Thacker Burleigh, (1866-1949)

7. “GO DOWN MOSES” by the Jubilaires Go down Moses Ist voice call Way down in Egypt land 2nd voice call and layering of first voice Tell old all together Pharaoh all together Tell old Pharaoh (layered response and voices) Let my all together Let my all together Let my people, goIst voice and together – layering onto next line Moses died in the land of old Let my people go layering Where he was buried has never been told (call) Let my people go (response) Why don’t you go down Moses (call) Why don’t you (response) Way down in Egypt land (call) Way down in Egypt land (response) Tell old Tell old Pharaoh To let my people go Well God called Moses on the mountain top (call) Why don’t you let my people go? (response) And he stamped his laws in Moses’ heart (call) Why don’t you let my people go? (response) He put his commandments in Moses’s mind (call) Why don’t you let my people go? (response) Said Moses don’t leave my land behind (call) Why don’t you let my people go? (response) I’m singing Go down Moses Way down in Egypt land Tell old Tell old Pharaoh Let my people go (layering)

8. Paul D’s Chain Gang Digital Library of Georgia: Robert E. Williams Photographic Collection http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/hargrett/williams/ Robert E. Williams (d. 1937), an African-American Photographer, operated a photography studio, R. Williams and Son, in Augusta, Georgia, from 1888 until around 1908.

9. Reverend J.M. Gates and the Congregation, Atlanta Georgia, Feb 20th 1928. “I’m satisfied with my race, I’m satisfied to be black” Gates recorded two hundred spirituals and sermons between 1926 and 1941. Paul Gilroy, “Jewels Bought from Bondage: Black Music and the Politics of Authenticity” in The Black Atlantic  301.45196073 GIL

10. African American Musical Form: Call-and-Response • Love of Paul D. and Sethe: Things become what they are in his presence:“a singing man” “Bare feet and chamomile sap/ Took off my shoes; took off my hat” p. 48 -49 & 310 [40 & p. 263] • Paul D. and the chain gang “They sang … and they beat” p. 128 -130 [108 -9] • Baby Suggs’ Call in the Clearing p. 102-4 [87-89] • Denver and Beloved’s duet – “Tell me ... the monologue became, in fact, a duet” p. 90-92 [78] • Amy’s “mamma’s song” p. 95-6 [80-81] • Refrains in the work: “it rained” ; “how loose the silk”; “Mine” • “no one saw them falling” & “This is not a story to pass on”

11. For a long time, the art form that was healing for Black people was music. That music is no longer exclusively ours; we don’t have exclusive rights to it. Other people sing it and play it; it is the mode of contemporary music everywhere. So another form had to take that place, and it seems to me that the novel is needed by African-Americans in a way that it was not needed before. Morrison,qtd. in Linden Peach, p. 110–1 813.54 MOR/PEA

12. Re-membering = Collective Story-telling Rememory : memory as a creative process • “Tell me” said Beloved – catalyst for memory/narrative • Sethe: Sethe’s telling and remembering: Nan’s story pp.72-5 • 28 days - claiming the self p. 111 [95] • Stamp Paid & Paul D pp.257-277 [218-235] • The escape (hush, hush), Joshua & Vashti, Sethe and Beloved • Denver and the modern reader – • seeKrumholz in Casebook (SL) • Ella p. 301 [256] the cape of sound • The participatory reader:Songs & language, tears & laughter • p. 313 [265] Sethe’s acting out

13. “You mean I never told you nothing about Carolina? About your daddy? You don’t remember nothing about how I come to walk the way I do and about your mother’s feet, not to speak of her back? I never told you all that? Is that why you can’t walk down the steps. My Jesus my.” But you said there was no defense. “There ain’t.” Then what do I do? “Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on.” p. 286-289 [243-44]

14. The African-American QuiltPhoto: Robert E. Williams (1888) • Sethe’s wedding dress • Baby Suggs’s quilt • The crazy dresses and • ribbons • The notion of colour • The idea of remembering • pieces of the story • http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/hargrett/williams/ • Robert E. Williams (d. 1937), an African-American photographer, operated a photography studio, R. Williams and Son, in Augusta, Georgia, from 1888 until around 1908.

15. The African-American Quilt • p. 321 [272] • Sethe and Paul D. • Sixo and the Thirty-mile woman • “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, • man, the pieces I am, she gather them and • give them back to me in all the right order. • It’s good you know when you got a woman • who is a friend of your mind” • The image of the quilt – piecing together • the stories • Putting your story next to another’s • “me and you, we got more yesterday than • anybody, we need some kind of tomorrow” Quilt from: Signs and Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts, by Maude SouthwellWahlman.