Sound, voice, and spirit: teaching in the black music vernacular.

The study of African-American music and culture flourished during the twentieth century. Its varied approaches and perspectives earned its inclusion as a vibrant area of interest in the study of American music as well as its respectability in the academy. Prior to the 1960s, the bulk of studies on black music focused on field recording collections ranging from worksongs and spirituals to the ruralblues and addressed questions regarding its continued connections to an African past. (1) As such, scholars often characterized African-American music in terms of selected features that were, by varying degrees, present or absent in Western European music. For example, syncopation, a term derived from the discussion of European classical music, was most commonly used by music educators to underscore a salient feature of black music characterized by a preponderance of "off beat" feels or the layering/juxtaposition of various melorhythmic pulses in comparison to Western-derived music.

By the 1960s, a cadre of scholars emerged, who unlike their predecessors, incorporated a sociocultural perspective that revealed the lived experiences and voices of the African-American community. They were, for the most part, native scholars or cultural insiders, ranging in profession from artists to music historians, who led the way for a "broader and more objective interpretation to the study of African-American history and culture" (Burnim and Maultsby with Oehler 2006, 19). These scholars included Black Arts Movement literary giant Leroi Jones (also known as Amiri Baraka) and his work Blues People (1963), music historian Eileen Southern and her work The Music of Black Americans: A History ([1971] 1997), and composer-vernacular music theorist Olly Wilson (1974, 1983), whose writings proved germane to the discussion of this article, teaching in the black music vernacular. While it still remained that scholars defined African-American music in quantitative terms, Wilson (1983) presented a rereading of black music in terms of its "conceptual approaches to music making" in lieu of a list of its overarching musical traits. Of importance to a pedagogical model for teaching in the black music vernacular that I propose is one of Wilson's characterizations of African-American music practice: its "heterogeneous sound ideal." Unlike the discussion of this concept as an approach by which sound consists of a juxtaposition of musical timbres, I contend that a "heterogeneous sound ideal" is not merely viewed as a conceptual approach to music making but rather it is foundational to a philosophy of music making among black musicians in general as will be discussed in this article.

While scholars of black music do find that the presence of call and response and the use of the AAB song form are ubiquitous to African-American music, the mere absence of either has led some to erroneous assertions that a song may not be, for instance, a blues. An example of this allegation is Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues," which many critics have argued is not a blues in the formal sense due to its lack of an AAB song structure, an issue to which I will return later in the article. But using a black music vernacular approach in defining African-derived music undoubtedly eschews conventional understanding of musical sound, form, structure, and written note interpretation, as well as related pedagogies. As one scholar of black history and music points out, black vernacular music, for example, American jazz, regardless of a music score, is a "performer's art" rather than a "composer's art" (Levine 1989, 8). When jazz pianist-composer Mary Lou Williams was asked how she learned black music vernacular styles like ragtime and jazz in general, she further supported the importance of the oral tradition over privileging the written note or composer's voice:

My mother taught me all that. The spiritual and ragtime that I play, she taught me. Much different than the ragtime that [Scott] Joplin wrote. See he studied European music that kind of changed it. The ragtime that I played was the "Real McCoy" that was created in America ... because it wasn't taught out of a book. Joplin studied and jazz cannot be taught out of a book. (Mary Lou Williams 1990)

Hence, the source of the African-American music tradition undoubtedly flows out of an oral tradition. Moreover, knowledge of and interpretation of a black music vernacular emanates from its culture bearers, whom I identify here as "sage philosophers."

This article seeks to introduce to some and reacquaint others with what I have teased out of musical renderings from "the sages" in ascertaining a way to teach via a black music vernacular. As such, it introduces a philosophy by which to comprehend the interdependent relationship of sound, voice, and spirit as a pedagogical model for comprehending the black music vernacular. But first, I will briefly discuss two incidents that led me to (re) consider the importance of a black music vernacular approach.

Several years ago, a prominent critic of African-American cultural productions presented a lecture at my university on the blues, probing what is and is not a blues. As I listened to his talk, I closely followed his discussion of the blues as AAB--a form codified in the written tradition by W. C. Handy (1912)--and how, according to his analysis, "Crazy Blues" as performed by Mamie Smith was not a blues. During the question-and-answer segment of his presentation, a friend and colleague of mine, Charles E. Moore, queried the speaker, "what do you mean that 'Crazy Blues' is not technically a blues?" The prominent scholar responded, "because it is not in the AAB form. It is really a vaudeville-type song." Of course, Moore continued to probe the cultural critic about his determination that "Crazy Blues" is not a blues simply based on the absence of the AAB form in spite of the manner in which Mamie Smith performed the song, which was undoubtedly steeped in blues nuances and laced with blue notes transforming song type and transcending form. Such argument is analogous to the performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by its writers and original performers Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in 1971 followed by Aretha Franklin's rendition of it. There is no doubt among music critics and Franklin's fans alike that her version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" performed a year later in a gospel style, transformed Simon and Garfunkel's folk rock ballad into a soul ballad, thus blurring the line between genre and form, merely because of Franklin's style of performance. (2)

Recalling my years of growing up in the black musical vernacular of the deep South, I simply learned how black listeners and artists recognized, distinguished, and revered musicians and singers for their "timbral or sound signatures," which in essence derive their sound from a blues-oriented sound, surpassing any notion of form (see Jackson 2002). In Early Downhome Blues ([1977] 1994), Jeff Titon further notes how blues singers define blues beyond form. He notes that "when most blues singers are asked, 'what is the blues?' [they] do not respond with a structural definition; instead, they usually reply that blues is 'a feelin.' Bluesman Leonard 'Baby Doo' Catson expressed it eloquently: 'Blues is a sound. It's not all the time the thing that rhymes; it's a feeling that a sound would put you into'" (quoted in Titon, 78).

The second path to my investigation of a black music vernacular emerges from my research on hip hop or rap music defined as "a musical form that makes use of rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular, which is recited or loosely chanted over a musical soundtrack" (Keyes 2002, 1). I was once approached by a music historian who concluded that rap music could not be considered music because its text did not consist of a sequence of tempered pitches, rather spoken or speech-like text. For this music historian, music is defined by having a melody, harmony, and rhythm. But from the perspectives of hip hop MCs, melody or varied pitches are definitely present. According to Geneva Smitherman, a scholar of Black Vernacular English (BVE), the "use of voice rhythm and vocal inflections" is what rap musicians define as melodic qualities (Smitherman 2986, 134). Hence, it is not surprising that MCs interpret their art not as "talking but ... [creating] a melody in itself" (Bambaataa 1986) and "rhythmic chanting" (Melle Mel 1986).

What is of further significance about the melodic or intoned text employed by hip hop MCs is the use of "street vernacular" and the manner by which to decode rap's inventive use of language properly. In grappling with the element of vernacularism in hip hop, one will find extensive use of certain speech devices prevalent among speakers of BVE: signification, indirection/direction or double entendre, metaphor, exaggerated language, repetition, formulaic expression, expletives, boasting, and mimicry. (3) Black literary theorists also explored the devices and their relation of the black vernacular (spoken) tradition to the African-American literary tradition. Here, I am referring to the work of Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988), and Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (1984) by Houston A. Baker Jr. Baker's work examines how "the blues voice and its economic undertones are both central to ... and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling [a narrative]," whereas Gates "identifies a theory of criticism that is inscribed within the black vernacular tradition and that in turn informs the shape of Afro-American literary tradition" (Baker 1984, Gates 1988). Gates's study on signification explored moments of self-reflexiveness in African-American literature and the concept of intertextuality by which black texts speak to and signify upon one another (Gates 1988, xxi; Smith 2006, 1305).

Gates's work in particular influenced studies on black music including Ingrid Monson's modification of intertextuality as intermusical relationships, a metalanguage by which "musicians talk and think about communicating in music" (Monson 1996, 128). Accordingly, intermusicality takes place when one jazz musician signifies upon familiar melodic fragments during improvisatory moments, for example, Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts." "Salt Peanuts" is signified upon when one musician within an ensemble initiates the song by playing an identifiable motive of "Salt Peanuts." This musical statement fuels repeated responses of the snippet similar to a musical round by other musicians within the ensemble. Monson recalls that when playing a recording of "Princess" during an interview with its composer, jazz drummer Ralph Peterson, there was a passage in which pianist Geri Allen and bassist Essiet Okon Essiet, both of whom were also performing on "Princess," began trading ideas that, as Monson remarked to Peterson, sounded like snippets of Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts." Peterson explained:

But you see what happens is, a lot of times when you get into a musical conversation one person in the group will state an idea or the beginning of an idea and another person will complete the idea or their interpretation of the same idea, how they hear it. So the conversation happens in fragments and comes from different parts, different voices. (quoted in Monson 1996, 78)

Another work that was inspired by Gates's thesis of signification is The Power of Black Music (1995) by Samuel Floyd Jr. Floyd's study, informed by Sterling Stuckey's work Slave Culture (1987) and the notion of the ring shout as a foundation and preserver of African-American musical and dance practices manifesting themselves in a tripartite model of Dance, Drum, and Song, also incorporated Gates's theory on signifying, which Samuel Floyd found provides "keys to the interpretation of black vernacular culture" (1995, 7). In elaborating further on Gates's discussion of signifying via the Yoruba trickster Esu and its transformation in the United States among African Americans as the Signifying Monkey, Floyd notes that Esu "will stand for discourse on African American 'texts' and the Signifying Monkey for the rhetorical strategies by which we read African American musical genres" (7).

In search of a black music vernacular theory, Charles E. Moore posits the importance of "sage philosophy" as a "song text" of popular wisdom or saying from within sub-Saharan African and African diaspora communities. Popular wisdom circulates in the form of "wise statements, common-place statements, foolish statements [or] alternative statements which would be a response to counter all statements" (Moore 2000, 174). In noting the distinction between "Folk sage" and "Sage philosopher," Moore contends that the former is

   versed in common culture, beliefs and customs. He or she does not
   ask critical questions or observe contradictions. The Folk sage is
   identifiable by the inability to have personal opinions. The Sage
   philosopher is equally versed in the views and values of society,
   however the person must make critical assessments and ...
   scrutinize rationally. The Sage philosopher is able to isolate the
   beliefs of the community from his/her own evaluation,
   rationalization, and criticism. (2000, 174)

Sage philosophers are found in various segments of the black community--those who may or may not be formally trained but who are endowed with certain creative accomplishments or who have attained high prestige or stature for certain innate gifts acknowledged by the community. I further posit that sage philosophers may also be cultural outsiders who are respected by the cultural group studied for their rigorous command of the vernacular language by which they adequately and comfortably engage with members of that cultural group. In turn, the cultural group recognizes these sages for their ability to impart knowledge about, for instance, black musical practices and cultural knowledge to the outside masses. Examples of these sages include Bill Evans, Johnny Otis, Robert Farris Thompson, Michael McDonald, and Tina Marie, just to name a few.

As I explore Moore's concept of sagacity in determining a black music vernacular approach to teaching African-American music, sage philosophers interrogate, "scrutinize rationally," past Western-generated music theoretical concepts when applied to black music and when necessary replace them with appropriate realizations that can only be made possible and elucidated by, in this case, a cultural insider. As the African musicologist-composer-master drummer and sage philosopher Meki Nzewi (1997, 26) asserts "the culture-bearer is the accomplished traditional or neo-traditional (popular and contemporary musical developments) music practitioner who knows and practices music without the modern training or orientation to articulate the theories and processes of his/her culturally rationalised musical experiences and products."

In applying the principle of sagacity to aural observations, sage music philosopher Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones) warned that one cannot superimpose a Western concept of sound production and use this grafted concept as a criterion for evaluating musical sound that clearly arises from an African (American) conceptual base:

For a Westerner to say the Wagnerian tenor's voice is "better" than the African singer's or the blues singer's is analogous to a non-Western disparaging Beethoven's Ninth Symphony because it wasn't improvised. [Hence] ... the tendency of white jazz musicians to play "softer" or with "cleaner, rounder tones" than their Negro counterparts is, I think, an insistence on the same Western artifact. Thus, an alto saxophonist like Paul Desmond, who is white, produces a sound on his instrument that can almost be called legitimate, or classical, and the finest Negro alto saxophonist, Charlie Parker, produced a sound on the same instrument that was called by some "raucous and uncultivated." But Parker's sound was meant to be both those adjectives. Again, reference determines value. Parker also would literally imitate the human voice with his own cries, swoops, squawks, and slurs. (Jones [1963] 1999, 30)

In further defining the uniqueness of sound to personal or timbral signatures, legendary tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins reminds us that "the only thing that nobody can steal from you is your sound: sound alone is important" (quoted in Miller 1995, 159).

Whereas Western music theorists single out rhythmic acuity as an overwhelming marker of African-derived music, the concept of rhythm translates among sage philosophers as a "quality of motion" in which "rhythm" is not perceived as "disembodied from sound" (Nzewi 1997, 32). Thus, within African and African diasporic traditions, rhythm correlates with speech and is adopted in the pedagogy and performance of percussion-based repertories within these traditions; the foundation of tonal-motioned speech is this melorhythmic principle. Additionally, sound choices or preference by which black musicians design or create musical sound "grow out of the intonations and rhythmic onomatopoeias of speech" (Bebey [1969] 1975, 120). When pointing out the relationship of intoned speech and its impact on the emulation of distinct speech patterns, language style, and their impact on this melorhythmic principle, sage music philosopher Jalal Shariff explains that

The drum is an extension of the human voice. It is used to communicate. But you must know the language too. Many times when there are dancers involved, the music will change, it tells the dancers how to do the steps, when to move, when to stop.... When you travel in Africa from ethnic group to ethnic group ... let's say Nigeria among the Yoruba, they have a very tonal way of saying "hello." There is a lot of variation in tone. So many of their instruments ... talking drums ... they sound just the way they talk. In Senegal, among the Wolof [as well as] the people of the Mande culture ... they speak very fast.... So you can see there is a direct connection to the spoken language and what is being played on the drums. (Exploring the World of Music 1998)

In a previous work, I discussed the melorhythmic principle in relationship to the origins of the blues piano style of boogie-woogie and how sounds from the local environment provided the impetus for its musical content, most notably the ostinato bass figure, which so distinguishes boogie-woogie (see Keyes 2003). Roughly around the 1890s, many black male southern migrants were in search of work as an alternative to the sharecropping peonage system. One popular choice of making a living was in the timber, levee, and turpentine industries along banks of southern rivers. A major mode of transportation was by way of the freight train by which its boxcars could be conveniently converted into sleeping quarters while parked along the banks of the rivers. Near these stopover places along the riverbanks were barrelhouses or honky-tonks where one could find an upright piano that served as a means of entertainment. "More important, since the train was also a major source of travel for those who worked along the riverbanks, the shuffle beat or dotted eighth-note pattern, as a common signature bass pattern heard in boogie-woogie, is no doubt an onomatopoeic translation of the choo-choo sounds or [steam] engine rhythms of a train" as frequently heard near the tracks (Keyes 2003, 114). As black vernacular music theorist-composer Earl L. Stewart further explains, the use of "rolls, trills, rapidly repeated notes, extemporized runs, and sharply punctuated chords ... [were used to] represent whistles, honks, bells, chimes, and other musical onomatopoeia that reflected sounds common to their environments" (Stewart 1998, 52-52). Further evidence of boogie-woogie-styled piano players whose music emulated train sounds are Wesley Wallace's "Number 29," which depicts his train ride from Nashville to New Orleans, and Edwin "Buster" Picken's "Sante Fe," whose use of a "rolling bass line ... embellished by a series of chiming chords in the treble, [is] reminiscent of a train bell" (Silvester 1988, 28).

In briefly touching upon "voice" and how it is perceived as "having something unique to say" or "something to exclaim" or "something to bring to the mix," I turn to sage philosopher trumpeter-composer-visionary Miles Davis as a vivid example. Although voice could be conflated with sound, that is, having a unique sound on one's instrument, voice in this context also has much to do with the integration of one's unique sound within the context of ensemble playing. In explaining the concept behind the makeup of his sextet for his classic LP, Milestones (1958), Davis sought to move into another musical direction beyond bebop to hard bop, described by its blues-oriented sensibility. Moving away from playing "real fast notes and chord changes ... fast, up in the upper register," which typified bebop playing, Davis recalls wanting to "cut the notes down" to hear sounds within "the middle and lower registers" and desired to be musically "freer, more modal, more African or Eastern, and less Western" (Davis 1990, 219-220). In search of this sound, Davis speaks quite candidly about musicians of his sextet possessing their own voices, especially with the layering of his trumpet alongside the alto saxophone sound of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley and the middle to lower registers of the tenor saxophone played by John "Trane" Coltrane. As Miles Davis concluded, "we had to do something suited for what we did best, for our own voices" (Davis 1990, 220). As voice is used here, it is very consistent with black musicians' use of it in a musical context as synonymous with "sound" by which one carves out his or her own personalized manner in performing within a group context. Voice here also becomes synonymous with a "heterogeneous sound ideal," in which personal interpretation creates the necessary pastiche, angularity, and tension-release polarity as opposed to homogeneous linearity in sound and voice quality as in the Western musical sense. Davis (1990, 220-221) sums up the "voice" concept as follows:

   The idea I had for this working sextet was to keep what we already
   had going with Trane, Red [Garland], Joe [Philly Joe Jones], Paul
   ]Chambers], and myself and add the blues voice of Cannonball
   Adderley into this mixture and then to stretch everything out. I
   felt Cannonball's blues-rooted alto sax up against Trane's
   harmonic, chordal way of playing, his more free-form approach would
   create a new kind of feeling, a new kind of sound because
   Coltrane's voice was already going in a new direction.... I felt
   that if we could do it right, the music would have all the tension
   up in it.

Finally, the life force of voice and sound is spirit. Often in the black sacred context, one associates "spirit" with the manifestation of an intangible being or presence which is often felt, experienced, or made known through its ability to act upon or ability to speak through a living form. Sage philosopher Marimba Ani (formerly known as Dona Richards) defines spirit as "[t]he creative force that unites all phenomena. It is the source of all energy, motion, cause and effect. As it becomes denser, it manifests itself as matter" (1994, xxviii). It is the meaningful level of existence. When describing the presence of a spirit as perceived by participants in black musical performances, they make use of such vernacular expressions as "being in the moment" or "in the zone," referring to a spiritual moment, be it in a sacred or secular context. Teresa L. Reed notes in her study The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music (2003) that in the West African worldview there is little distinction between sacred and secular, for "music is intrinsically spiritual, the sacred intrinsically musical, and both music and the divine [spirit] permeate every imaginable part of life" (5). Elaborating further about the juxtaposition of spirit and spiritual, black music vernacular styles that are not specific to sacred or religious contexts such as the church, for example, still maintain a spiritual essence, enabling their audiences (as well as the performers) to transcend their "ordinary" or everyday selves, thus blurring the sacred-secular dichotomy to achieve a spiritual moment or an altered (spiritual) state of being. In recalling directives to his listening audience, funkster George Clinton of Parliament uses funk--which he once defined as a "sped-up version of the blues"--as a healing balm for those who need to transition from a lower state to a higher state as heard in "P-Funk":

   W-E-F-U-N-K. Now this is what I want ya' to do. If you got faults,
   defects or shortcomings you know like arthritis, rheumatism, or
   migraines, whatever part of the body it is, I want you to lay it on
   your radio. Let the vibes flow through. Funk not only moves it can
   remove, dig? The desired effect is what you get when you improve
   your interplanetary funkmanship. ([1975], released in 1976) (4)

In hip hop culture, spirituality is subtle, thus less obvious. Spirituality and hip hop appear to represent polar opposites because the latter is stigmatized by its hypermasculine and secularized culture that exploits expletives and that, to the average observer, would seem devoid of anything spiritual. But in a previous work, I investigated how an element of hip hop culture--rap music--and artists of the gangsta rap substyle in particular speculate about the afterlife using the crossroads metaphor by posing epistemological questions about death, especially about those "homies" whose lives were struck down in drive-by shootings. Although the concept of a crossroads is ubiquitous to African-derived beliefs and peculiar to blues lyrics as with Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues," it is mostly perceived in hip hop music as an imaginary location of where life ends and death begins. For example, in the song "I'll Be Missing You" (1987), which is set to the tune of The Police's "Every Breath You Take" (1983), Sean "P. Diddy" Combs (formerly known as Puff Daddy) eulogizes the untimely death of his dear friend and artist-colleague, The Notorious B.I.G. In so doing, he invites Faith Evans, the estranged wife of The Notorious B.I.G., to sing a verse from the spiritual "I'll Fly Away." While performing a verse from "I'll Fly Away," she is seen in the video version pointing toward the sky, indicating B.I.G.'s resting place is in heaven. Additionally, viewers see the cast as dressed in white, a sign of respect and sanctity for their dearly beloved in spite of The Notorious B.I.G.'s reputation as a former drug dealer and womanizer, as portrayed in the media. Similarly, "Tha Crossroads," performed by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, begins with a women's chorus singing the spiritual "Mary Don't You Weep" (Martha Don't You Mourn)" before saluting those deceased love ones, including their mentor Eazy-E, rap mogul and founder of NWA, who died surprisingly of AIDS. In the music video version of "Tha Crossroads," one can see the face of Eazy-E against a blue sky, symbolizing his ascension to heaven. More important, "the use of the spirituals dignifies the memory of these hip-hop artists, bringing the sacred to where many only see secularism" (Keyes 2002, 220).

While it is certainly not unusual for artists to use songs from sacred sources to create popular song material--Ray Charles was known for doing so, for instance--many are unaware of other dimensions of spirituality in hip hop as discerned by sage philosophers of African-American performance traditions. A vivid example of "spirit as a creative force, which unites all phenomena" (Ani 2994, xxviii) is my observation of a phenomenon in hip hop called freestyle rap, the spontaneous creation of rhyme from off the top of the dome (head). Freestyle or freestylin' is often done in the streets or in outdoor secular contexts, such as neighborhood parks, where observers form a circle around the dueling freestylin' emcees. This type of event in hip hop culture that takes place within a circle is referred to as a cipher, sometimes spelled cypher. In the documentary Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme ([2000] 2004), sages as mere observers of allied black vernacular forms and practitioners of freestyle rap make several references to the spiritual quality of freestylin' that I found quite striking. For example, jazz musician-historian Eluard Butt II describes freestyle as spiritual in these terms: "Freestyle ... where you just respond to the impulse has to be the most spiritual, right? Because you don't have no idea of what you're going to say next from something that's not directed. This is what most creative expression does. It's so spiritual. We don't need a book. We don't need an explanation, we are musicians, we are artisans, we are poets" (Freestyle [2000] 2004).

Freestyle virtuoso Supernatural, who rarely loses a freestyle battle (competition), concurs with Burt by equating this practice to a level of "creativity" that he deems is the closest energy to God. Moreover, Toni Blackman of Freestyle Union focuses on the cypher as a symbol of unity, infinity, or a metaphor for the completion of thought. "When everybody's focusing on what they should be focusing on" says Blackman, "it's the next level of spirituality" (Freestyle [2000] 2004).

In a final examination of Ani's definition of spirit "as ... creative force, which unites all phenomena ... the source of all energy, motion, cause and effect" (1994, xxviii), I am reminded of what one master musician and producer of black music stated to an audience about its "ancient source," referring to its historical origins in West and Central Africa (Duke 2005). While several scholars of black music research have extensively discussed this concept, practitioners or performers of contemporary black musical styles whose backgrounds may not include a scholarly or formal training in the study of African-derived music nevertheless intrigue me. In contrast to those with academic training, these sages derive their commentary about black musical performances from direct associations with artists with whom they perform, either within the diaspora or directly from African traditions.

One such sage philosopher is George Duke. While attending a festival of African-American music in which George Duke was one of its keynote presenters, I enjoyed the manner in which he used vernacularisms in his discussion about black music based on one of Duke Ellington's compositions, titled "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing." Through the use of word alteration, George Duke signified on Ellington's song title as "It ain't got that swing if it ain't got that thang." For if one attempts to perform African-American music without knowledge of its aesthetic source or neglects to interpret it or render it through an African prism then, says George Duke, "it don't mean a thang, for there is a spirit that connects through this music. That's the keyword, connection. There's a connection of what came before and what is going on right now," resulting from the movement of African peoples across the Atlantic and its impact on the making and shaping of African diasporic arts in the Western Hemisphere (Duke 2005).

The above discussion is not simply meant to alter one's pedagogical approach to teaching African-American music. Rather, this article stands as one approach to teaching in the black music vernacular, and, as such, serves as a preface to other discussions along or beyond this trajectory. Notwithstanding, the tripartite model of sound, voice, and spirit brings about pedagogical possibilities across musical genres and styles of African-derived music of the Western Hemisphere and the significance of sagacity in comprehending a black music vernacular theory.

DISCOGRAPHY

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Tha crossroads. E 1999 eternal. Ruthless Records BoooooDHSE (1995)- Compact disc.

Parliament. P-Funk (wants to get funked up). Mothership connection. Casablanca LP 7022 (1975, released 1976). LP.

Puff Daddy. I'll be missing you. No way out. Bad Boy Booooo39QD (1997). Compact disc.

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(1.) A discussion about the varied approaches and perspectives on the study of African-American music is beyond this scope of this paper. However, for a summation on the intellectual history of African-American music scholarship, please refer to Burnim, Maultsby with Oehler (2006, 7-32).

(2.) My italics indicating Lawrence Levine's previous points about black music as a performer's art.

(3.) For further information on Black Vernacular English (BVE) please refer to Labov (1972); Smitherman ([1977] 1986, 1994), Mitchell-Kernan (1981), and Baugh (1983).

(4.) Also refer to Vernon Reid's interview with George Clinton in Vibe magazine, in which Clinton discusses the similarities between the blues and funk (Reid 1993, 45).

CHERYL L. KEYES is a composer-arranger, pianist-flutist-vocalist, and associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her book Rap Music and Street Consciousness (University of Illinois Press, 2002) received a Choice award for outstanding academic books in 2004. Her areas of specialty include African-American music, gender, and popular music studies. Keyes has conducted extensive fieldwork on rap and hip hop culture in Mali, West Africa, New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, and London. Her research has been published in journals such as Ethnomusicology, Folklore Forum, Journal of American Folklore, and The World of Music and she has published book chapters, numerous reference articles, and reviews. Keyes' recent research includes a study on the legendary New Orleans piano player Henry "Professor Longhair" Byrd. Currently, she serves as the president of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. chapter (IASPM-US). Additionally, Keyes won a 2009 NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding World Music Album for her debut CD, Let Me Take You There (Keycan Records, 2008).