ORAL PRESENTATION: MUSIC IN BELOVED



Word count: 2377

ORAL PRESENTATION: MUSIC IN BELOVED

(Red parts indicate where music needs to be played or refers to passages that have been handed out to the class ahead of time)

Toni Morrison’s Beloved sings of the plight of African American slaves, beats to the syncopation of the hearts of the characters, and finds harmony in the world of dissonance in the post-slavery community. Beloved is beyond a work of literature, because it is not only a story that is meant to be read, but a song that is meant to be heard. The infusion of text and music creates a deeper understanding of the history and culture of the African American slaves. Morrison does not use the traditional Western "pyramid" form of storytelling (with rising action, climax, denouement) but rather musically entwines the oral tradition with her written text.

Morrison’s use of ‘literary music’ in Beloved provides a sense of historical context as well as an idea of the genuine culture of African American slaves. Like Sethe and Paul D, slaves were stripped of their names, identity, family, food, and freedom. They were not, however, robbed of their culture, folklore, and memories, which became the main focus of the songs that they sung.

Music was of great importance to slaves, because it was a form of liberation and escape. Slaves could find comfort in hopeful melodies, seek shelter in steady rhythms, and express suppressed emotions in lyrics (play “Sometimes”).

Music helped unload the heavy burdens of slaves; what was too painful to hold in their hearts was poured out into melody. In passage 1, Sethe recalls the few facts she remembers about her mother. Along with other men and women, she remembers singing and dancing together. It is said that they “shift shapes and become something other. Some unchained, demanding other whose feet knew her pulse better than she did.” Here, music is used to transform and temporarily unbind the people from the chains of enslavement.

Music also acts as a common language between slaves. Sethe cannot recall the words or the language she spoke before her life at Sweet Home. She does, however, vividly remember the singing and dancing. This is because when Africans first arrived in America, they did not necessarily share the same beliefs, traditions, or even language. What they did have in common was the importance of music in their African cultures, which eventually helped break the language barrier.

The overall structure and style of Beloved reveals another important aspect of African American culture. The story is not told in a sequential plot, but rather in fragments with varied repetitions of scenes. Despite the fragmented nature of the plot, the fragments structure and lend melody to the novel by shaping it circularly. “The tiny shock of recognition we receive with each recurrent motif is akin to the pleasure we derive from identifying familiar phrases in a complex jazz performance,” says Cheryl Hall in “Beyond the "literary habit": oral tradition and jazz in 'Beloved.' The beginning of part I, part II, and part III all return to the setting of 124. The circular pattern can be seen from a broader scope, as the novel starts out with the word ‘Beloved’, the very title of the book’, and ends with the word ‘Beloved’. Like jazz music, the plot never follows a linear path; to me, Beloved feels like a story being told orally. With this technique Morrison adds to the storytelling, singing nature of African American history preservation, passing her insight down to following generations.

After slavery was abolished, the horrors of slavery were not passed down, but were pushed into a tobacco tin and locked up. It was a subject that no one wanted to remember. I believe that through the oral tradition and the circular style of Beloved, Morrison brings the truth behind slavery out into the open. Slavery had been largely unspoken of, but Morrison boldly addresses slavery’s untold tale through this novel, despite the level of discomfort and pain that comes with it.

Nonetheless, I did not feel that the circle was complete at the end of Beloved. To satisfyingly end the story would imply that it was finished. This lack of closure indicates the gaps in African American history. As in music where pauses and silence have an essential role, so here incompletion speaks volumes: “Ella…listened for the holes—the things fugitives did not say; the question they did not ask. Listened too for the unnamed, unmentioned people left behind (p.108 ) The history of the slaves will never be complete.

In Jazz music, too, there is no definitive ending, or ‘happily ever after’. As Morrison said in an interview with Kay Bonetti in 1983, “There’s always something tasty in your mouth when you hear blues, there’s always something left over with jazz. You’re never satisfied, you’re always a little hungry."

Morrison applies the techniques and styles of jazz to further connect Beloved to the oral and musical traditions of African American slaves. Jazz was developed among black Americans when traditional African music was influenced by the European music that dominated America. Jazz is a combination of African rhythm and expression and European harmonic techniques. Rhythm is the most important aspect of jazz. In Beloved, the rhythm, created by the repetition of certain words, acts as a steady pulse that brings the story to life. In passage 2 (pg. 7) the rhythm can be heard when read aloud: “Then something. The plash of water, the sigh of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty.” The repetition of “rolling” is also onomatopoetic. The tongue makes a circular motion from the back of the mouth to the front, emphasizing Sethe’s stream of consciousness, a stylistic technique Morrison employs. Sethe’s reflections on the past lead from one thought to another in a continuous flow until she returns to reality to find Paul D standing in front of her. I find this situation ironic, because as Sethe reflects on the events of her past, Paul D, a man who Sethe has not seen for eighteen years, comes to see her. I believe that this ironic situation shows the result of trying to keep over 200 years of slavery under wraps. Sethe, a former slave trying to lead a normal life, is haunted by the ghost of her dead baby and visited by a man from her past. The irony shows that there really is no escaping or ignoring the past.

Passage 3 is another example of repetition used to create rhythm. Here Stamp Paid confronts Paul D and the passage is choppy, and rhythmic. “He didn’t know if it was bad whisky, night in the cellar, pig fever, iron bits, smiling roosters, fired feet, laughing dead men, hissing grass, rain, apple blossoms, neck jewelry, Judy in the slaughterhouse, Halle in the butter, ghost-white stairs, chokecherry trees, cameo pins, aspens, Paul A’s face, sausage or the loss of a red, red heart. Tell me something, Stamp. Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger supposed to take? Tell me. How much? All he can, said Stamp Paid, All he can. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?” (p. 277) Each phrase strikes a two-beat rhythm and imitates the carrying Paul D’s load. The repetition of the question ‘Why?’ is not just a question Paul D asks, but a question that still circles about African American slavery. The chapter ends, leaving the question ‘Why?’ unanswered, because in reality, there is no logical answer behind why the African Americans had to endure so much through American history.

The arrangement of words and diction is used to create rhythm as well. In Passage 4 (p.37), Beloved and Denver have just been described using the simile “merry as kittens.” Beloved dances while Denver provides music. “A little two-step, two-step, make-a-new-step, slide, slide, and strut on down.” The happy diction used in this line creates a light-hearted mood, and it is one of the few cheerful moments in the novel. Both the sound and rhythm of the words support this tone. The plosive sounds in “two-step” remind me of the tapping of a foot on the floor during a dance. The long /i/ sounds in “slide, slide” onomatopoetically imitate the long movement the legs make in a stride. Morrison used the sounds of words to provide the music for Beloved’s dance without explicitly having music in the text.

In jazz music, the most prominent type of rhythm is polyrhythm, which is the simultaneous beating of two different rhythms. Here is 3 against 2 polyrhythm (The Groove music). The principles of polyrhythm are used in passage 5 (pg 254) where the voices of Beloved, Denver, and Sethe, each producing their own distinct beat, merge as one polyrhythm. The structure here is one chorus broken down into smaller verses, like verses of a song. The fragmented nature of this passage, along with the polyrhythmic beat, shows the unity, yet differentiation of the three characters.

Another musical element from jazz is the jam session when several musicians come together for a series of improvised solo performances, featuring a number of recognizable "riffs." The soloists play off the performances that came before theirs, incorporating certain elements of those performances into their own, but with variations that highlight their own instruments’ capabilities. In Part Two Morrison does what jazz artists do in music, but with words. The opening lines "Beloved, she my daughter. She mine" (200); "Beloved is my sister. I swallowed her blood right along with my mother's milk" (205); "I am Beloved and she is mine" (211, 214) show this variation of a theme with each character emphasizing her own take. Sethe explains and seeks forgiveness; Denver focuses on self-preservation and her rediscovered sister; Beloved deals with loss, identification, and the rediscovery of a mother figure. When the voices are integrated after Beloved's second solo performance, the same variations are revisited, this time in call-and-response fashion where a soloist or instrumentalist sings or plays a line, and a group of vocalists or musicians respond. Sethe and Beloved begin: "Tell me the truth. Didn't you come from the other side? / Yes. I was on the other side. / You came back because of me? / Yes" (passage 5 p.254). Denver and Beloved are then paired: "She said you wouldn't hurt me. / She hurt me. / I will protect you. / I want her face. / Don't love her too much. / I am loving her too much." The three voices are then brought together in an urgent polyphony: "Beloved / You are my sister / You are my daughter / You are my face; you are me...I have your milk / I have your smile / I will take care of you...You are mine / You are mine / You are mine" The musicality of the passage is the emphasis in chords on the word “mine”-- one of the most frequently repeated words in the novel. In passage 6 (p 255-256) when the ladies of the village go to 124 to exorcise Beloved, one woman leads in prayer, and the other women call out in agreement “Yes, yes, yes, oh yes. Hear me. Hear me. Do it, Maker, do it. Yes.” I find it fascinating how this call and response technique in music is also the tradition of African-American church congregations. This use of call-and-response once again gives the novel historical and musical context.

In addition to using musical techniques, Toni Morrison includes actual songs in the novel that are significant to the history and culture of African Americans. Songs play a crucial role in the story. Beloved hums a song, making Sethe come to believe that Beloved is a reincarnation of her daughter. Amy Denver sings a song to soothe Sethe before she gives birth to a baby. Paul D sings songs with his inmates while he is chained in prison. The passage that describes this horrifying flashback is musical in its style and structure. Morrison uses anaphora in the lines, “They sang it out…They sang the women they knew…They sang of bosses and masters and misses…They sang lovingly” to give the passage a pulsating rhythm, culminating in the escape of Paul D and his fellow inmates. Personification of Life and Death is used in the line “Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on.” The captive slaves hate death for not coming soon enough and life for giving them false hope. It is the songs that they sing that provide unity and even a means to escape. Another song, “Down by the Riverside,” (play) is never directly sung by a character, but is spoken by Baby Suggs as advice to Sethe. In passage 7 (101) Baby Suggs said, “Lay ‘em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of ‘em down. Down by the Riverside. Sword and shield. Don’t study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield”. The line repeated through the novel is “Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside” or variations of it. The song is an African American slave song, and the lyrics come from the Bible: Isaiah 2:4 reads “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” The song seems to me to serve as an anthem for African Americans. It calls for African Americans to unload their burdens and lay down their anger towards their oppressors so they can live a life of peace.

Paul Whiteman has written that jazz is "`not the thing said, but the manner of saying it.” Beloved is a novel that uses music contextually, stylistically, and structurally to portray the undying African American culture and spirit. Morrison blurs the line between text and music. I think it is the fusion of these two components, rarely combined in a literary work, that causes this novel to transcend literature and time.

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