"Where Is the Love?": Racial Violence, Racial Healing, and Blues Communities

Gussow, Adam

doi:10.1353/scu.2006.0047

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…The allusion to "That's Your Red Wagon" is a rare instance of Faulkner not simply having what Adam Gussow calls geographic, chronological, and thematic proximities to the blues, but apprehending vernacular music's ability to speak for African Americans. 58 While Gussow accurately notes the sparsity of blues musicians in Faulkner's Mississippi, the evocation of Lucas Beauchamp as a blues listener is just as noteworthy, suggesting that Crudup's music and lyrics inform the character's low-key, bemused reaction to slipping the noose of Jim Crow, representing much the same oblique challenge to racial injustice as the more mythologized figure of the bluesman. Although there is no concrete proof that Faulkner was lending an ear to Arthur Crudup as assiduously as, for instance, a young Elvis Presley was, growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, the crossover popularity (or co-optation) of Crudup's song does reflect the increasing power and reach of African American music in the late 1940s.…”

Section: Yoknapatawpha's Shifting Soundscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Motion and the Noise

Sutton

2020

JAAAS

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William Faulkner's dislike of unwanted sound is well documented. The acoustic environment of rural Mississippi amplified irreversibly after the introduction of the automobile, airplane, and automated farm machinery. In his Intruder in the Dust (1948), the jukebox and radio absorb pointed criticism for producing "canned" sounds outside of their "proper" environment. The narrowing gap between town square and dance hall signifies encroaching chaos, as noise drowns out the attenuated "harmony" that keeps elite whites in power and Intruder's African American protagonist Lucas Beauchamp out of the hands of the lynch mob. For Faulkner, the shift in the auditory environment presents both a disruption and an impediment to a system built on white bourgeois ideals. However, Faulkner's pessimism is counterpointed by sociological studies undertaken by Fisk University researchers. The Fisk study identifies the emergence of a blues culture in the Delta whose energy and boundary-crossing impulses illustrate the liberating possibilities of an expanding soundscape. By juxtaposing Faulkner's damning descriptions of "the motion and the noise" with the Fisk University researchers' illuminating fieldwork, this essay interprets a transformative period in the constantly shifting soundscape of the U.S. South. In line with Jacques Attali's dictum that "our music foretells our future," Intruder in the Dust anticipates the cultural upheaval that would energize the Civil Rights Movement. Both in fiction and in fact, the "noise" emanating from jukeboxes and radios in 1940s Mississippi accelerated social change at a volume much higher and a tempo much faster than Faulkner and other gradualists desired.

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Section: Yoknapatawpha's Shifting Soundscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Motion and the Noise

Sutton

2020

JAAAS

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Rethinking youth violence and healing

Kumsa

Ng²,

Chambon

et al. 2013

Journal of Youth Studies

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In a world where violence and healing are posited as oppositional, critical youth studies, youth work practitioners, and human rights and social justice activists often locate themselves on the healing side of the divide, shedding light on the suffering and alleviating the pain of the violence. However, current theoretical developments prompt us to critically engage this oppositional binary constructed between violence and healing. We have come to a crossroads where we can no longer innocently position ourselves on the side of healing because we are deeply implicated in the violence as well. In this paper, we draw on our research on the healing practices of racialized minority youth in Canada to think through the prevailing dichotomy of violence and healing. We use a poignant case scenario of an ordinary encounter in an ordinary place to explore the complexities of the space between youth violence and healing and make visible their inseparably relational and interactional nature. We draw on both foundational and emergent conceptualizations of encounters, emotions, spaces and places, as well as subjects and subjectivities to rethink and theorize youth violence and healing.

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Blues-based stigma songwriting with adults on an acute mental health inpatient unit: A cluster-randomized trial and reflection

Silverman

2024

Musicae Scientiae

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Self-stigma often functions as a treatment barrier for adults with mental health conditions and can hinder recovery. Blues-based stigma songwriting may constitute an empowering and engaging medium to educate people with mental health conditions about self-stigma, identify it as an oppressive social construct, and encourage treatments to augment the likelihood of recovery. The purpose of this cluster-randomized effectiveness study was to determine whether a single group music therapy songwriting intervention can impact self-stigma with adults on an acute mental health unit. Participants ( N = 131) were cluster-randomized to a single session of blues-based stigma songwriting or a control group. Experimental participants completed the Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness Inventory (ISMI) at posttest only while control participants completed the ISMI at pretest only. Although there were tendencies for the experimental group to have slightly lower mean self-stigma scores on the alienation, stereotype, discrimination, and resistance subscales as well as total self-stigma, there was no significant between-group difference. Mental health stigma is an important recovery-oriented construct and blues-based songwriting may constitute an empowering and engaging way to address this challenging topic. As educational interventions for stigma can lead to increases in self-stigma for adults with mental health conditions, larger treatment doses may be necessary to reduce it. Implications for clinical practice, limitations, and suggestions for future inquiry are provided.

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"Where Is the Love?": Racial Violence, Racial Healing, and Blues Communities

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

Motion and the Noise

Motion and the Noise

Rethinking youth violence and healing

Blues-based stigma songwriting with adults on an acute mental health inpatient unit: A cluster-randomized trial and reflection

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