Professor Paul Carter Harrison led listeners into the "blues matrix" through the plays of Montgomery Fellow August Wilson yesterday afternoon in a speech titled "August Wilson's Blues Poetics."
Through an analysis of the relationship of Wilson's theater and the blues in African-American culture, Harrison examined the similarities between the techniques of Wilson and those of both blues artists and traditional Christian preachers.
Wilson's "poetic language transforms the familiar to mythic ... by borrowing from the expressive poetry of blues and of black church oratory," Harrison said.
According to Harrison, the blues is not a commentary on suffering, and listeners should not focus upon the lyrics. Audiences that focus on the lyrics have not entered the "blues matrix," part of the complex ethos that shapes African-American perceptions, Harrison said.
"The blues is not really a melodramatic commentary," Harrison said, and emphasized that "much is lost to the listener who concentrates on the description of suffering."
Instead, Harrison said, blues "are born out of the need to record and restate ... issues in life," and although the music tends to sound sad, this is a result of the "angularity of vocal pitch" and the particular combination of sharps and flats in the music.
By focusing on the more subtle disruptions of natural rhythms through syncopation and the onomatopoeic intonations reminiscent of West African speech patterns, listeners will hear the blues, Harrison said.
The black preacher is the "expressive center" of the African-American culture, who must become a spokesperson for the entire community, Harrison said. He must be a master of the call and response technique, a pattern paralleled in both blues music and Wilson's plays.
Harrison cited several dialogues from Wilson's plays written in the call and response form, including some from "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."
Harrison, quoting Wilson's play, said African-Americans, like the freed slaves, are "isolated, cut off from memory, having forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces."
Yet Harrison said native African religions still shape blues poetry and influences writers such as Wilson.
According to Harrison, the blues singer, the preacher and August Wilson are "resonating for the entire community."
The techniques of both blues and church oratory are reflected in Wilson's poetry, Harrison said. These techniques, including call and response, counter rifts and vamps, transmute the ordinary experiences of African-Americans to a metaphysical level.
The blues, however, unlike the black preacher, can speak for the community without the restraint of traditional Christian morals, Harrison said. Thus the blue singers become "cultural rebels who carry the word." He pointed to several quotations that express the rowdiness and hedonism of the blues.
Professor Harrison is currently the College's playwright in residence and a faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago. Harrison is also a well-known New York writer, playwright, producer and director -- he has published works such as "Top Hat," "The Great Mac Daddy" and multi-media drama, including "The Death of Boogie Woogie" and "The Tabernacle."
Harrison has also written several essays on the African American experience and Diaspora, and he will play an important role in the up-coming National Black Theater Summit at Dartmouth.
The lecture was part of a six-part series called "Making the Real World Breathe: The Theater of August Wilson."
