IMITATION

  The Negro, the world over, is famous as a mimic. But this in no way damages his standing as an original. Mimicry is an art in itself. If it is not, then all art must fall by the same blow that strikes it down. When sculpture, painting, acting, dancing, literature neither reflect nor suggest anything in nature or human experience we turn away with a dull wonder in our hearts at why the thing was done. Moreover, the contention that the Negro imitates from a feeling of inferiority is incorrect. He mimics for the love of it. The group of Negroes who slavishly imitate is small. The average Negro glories in his ways. The highly educated Negro is the same. The self-despisement lies in a middle class who scorns to do or be anything Negro. “That’s just like a Nigger” is the most terrible rebuke one can lay upon this kind. He wears drab clothing, sits through a boresome church service, pretends to have no interest in the community, holds beauty contests, and otherwise apes all the mediocrities of the white brother. The truly cultured Negro scorns him, and the Negro “farthest down” is too busy “spreading his junk” in his own way to see or care. He likes his own things best. Even the group who are not Negroes but belong to the “sixth race,” buy such records as “Shake Dat Thing” and “Tight Lak Dat.”15 They really enjoy hearing a good bible-beater preach, but wild horses could drag no such admission from them. Their ready-made expression is: “We done got away from all that now.” Some refuse to countenance Negro music on the grounds that it is niggerism, and for that reason should be done away with. Roland Hayes was thoroughly denounced for singing spirituals until he was accepted by white audiences.16 Langston Hughes is not considered a poet by this group because he writes of the man in the ditch, who is more numerous and real among us than any other.

  But, this group aside, let us say that the art of mimicry is better developed in the Negro than in other racial groups. He does it as the mocking-bird does it, for the love of it, and not because he wishes to be like the one imitated. I saw a group of small Negro boys imitating a cat defecating and the subsequent toilet of the cat. It was very realistic, and they enjoyed it as much as if they had been imitating a coronation ceremony. The dances are full of imitations of various animals. The buzzard lope, walking the dog, the pig’s hind legs, holding the mule, elephant squat, pigeon’s wing, falling off the log, seabord (imitation of an engine starting), and the like.

  ABSENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF PRIVACY

  It is said that Negroes keep nothing secret, that they have no reserve. This ought not to seem strange when one considers that we are an outdoor people accustomed to communal life. Add this to all-permeating drama and you have the explanation.

  There is no privacy in an African village. Loves, fights, possessions are, to misquote Woodrow Wilson, “Open disagreements openly arrived at.”17 The community is given the benefit of a good fight as well as a good wedding. An audience is a necessary part of any drama. We merely go with nature rather than against it.

  Discord is more natural than accord. If we accept the doctrine of the survival of the fittest there are more fighting honors than there are honors for other achievements. Humanity places premiums on all things necessary to its well-being, and a valiant and good fighter is valuable in any community. So why hide the light under a bushel?18 Moreover, intimidation is a recognised part of warfare the world over, and threats certainly must be listed under that head. So that a great threatener must certainly be considered an aid to the fighting machine. So then if a man or woman is a facile hurler of threats, why should he or she not show their wares to the community? Hence the holding of all quarrels and fights in the open. One relieves one’s pent-up anger and at the same time earns laurels in intimidation. Besides, one does the community a service. There is nothing so exhilarating as watching well-matched opponents go into action. The entire world likes action, for that matter. Hence prize-fighters become millionaires.

  Likewise love-making is a biological necessity the world over and an art among Negroes. So that a man or woman who is proficient sees no reason why the fact should not be moot. He swaggers. She struts hippily about. Songs are built on the power to charm beneath the bed-clothes. Here again we have individuals striving to excel in what the community considers an art. Then if all of his world is seeking a great lover, why should he not speak right out loud?

  It is all in a view-point. Love-making and fighting in all their branches are high arts, other things are arts among other groups where they brag about their proficiency just as brazenly as we do about these things that others consider matters for conversation behind closed doors. At any rate, the white man is despised by Negroes as a very poor fighter individually and a very poor lover. One Negro, speaking of white men, said, “White folks is alright when dey gits in de bank and on de law bench, but dey sho kin lie about wimmen folks.”

  I pressed him to explain. “Well you see, white mens makes out they marries wimmen to look at they eyes, and they know they gits em for just what us gits em for. ’Nother thing, white mens say they goes clear round de world and wins all de wimmen folks away from they men folks. Dat’s a lie too. They don’t win nothin, they buys em. Now de way I figgers it, if a woman don’t want me enough to be wid me, ’thout I got to pay her, she kin rock right on, but these here white men don’t know what to do wid a woman when they gits her—dat’s how come they gives they wimmen so much. They got to. Us wimmen works just as hard as us does an come home an sleep wid us every night. They own wouldn’t do it and its de mens fault. Dese white men done fooled theyself bout dese wimmen.

  “Now me, I keeps me some wimmens all de time. Dat’s whut dey wuz put here for—us mens to use. Dat’s right now, Miss. Y’all wuz put here so us mens could have some pleasure. Course I don’t run round like heap uh men folks. But if my ole lady go way from me and stay more’n two weeks, I got to git me somebody, aint I?”

  THE JOOK

  Jook is the word for a Negro pleasure house. It may mean a bawdy house. It may mean the house set apart on public works where the men and women dance, drink and gamble. Often it is a combination of all these.

  In past generations the music was furnished by “boxes,” another word for guitars. One guitar was enough for a dance; to have two was considered excellent. Where two were playing one man played the lead and the other seconded him. The first player was “picking” and the second was “framming,” that is, playing chords while the lead carried the melody by dextrous finger work. Sometimes a third player was added, and he played a tom-tom effect on the low strings. Believe it or not, this is excellent dance music.

  Pianos soon came to take the place of the boxes, and now player-pianos and victrolas are in all of the Jooks.

  Musically speaking, the Jook is the most important place in America. For in its smelly, shoddy confines has been born the secular music known as blues, and on blues has been founded jazz. The singing and playing in the true Negro style is called “jooking.”

  The songs grow by incremental repetition as they travel from mouth to mouth and from Jook to Jook for years before they reach outside ears. Hence the great variety of subject-matter in each song.

  The Negro dances circulated over the world were also conceived inside the Jooks. They too make the round of Jooks and public works before going into the outside world.

  In this respect it is interesting to mention the Black Bottom. I have read several false accounts of its origin and name. One writer claimed that it got its name from the black sticky mud on the bottom of the Mississippi river. Other equally absurd statements gummed the press. Now the dance really originated in the Jook section of Nashville, Tennessee, around Fourth Avenue. This is a tough neighborhood known as Black Bottom—hence the name.

  The Charleston is perhaps forty years old, and was danced up and down the Atlantic seaboard from North Carolina to Key West, Florida.

  The Negro social dance is slow and sensuous. The idea in the Jook is to gain sensation, and not so much exercise. So that just enough foot movement is added to keep the dancers on the floor. A tremendous sex stimulation is gained from this. But who is trying to avoid it? The man, the woman, the time and the place have met. Rather, little intimate names are indulged in to heap fire on fire.

  These too have spread to all the world.

  The Negro theatre, as built up by the Negro, is based on Jook situations, with women, gambling, fighting, drinking. Shows like “Dixie to Broadway” are only Negro in cast, and could just as well have come from pre-Soviet Russia.19

  Another interesting thing—Negro shows before being tampered with did not specialise in octoroon chorus girls.20 The girl who could hoist a Jook song from her belly and lam it against the front door of the theatre was the lead, even if she were as black as the hinges of hell. The question was “Can she jook?” She must also have a good belly wobble, and her hips must, to quote a popular work song, “Shake like jelly all over and be so broad, Lawd, Lawd, and be so broad.” So that the bleached chorus is the result of a white demand and not the Negro’s.

  The woman in the Jook may be nappy headed and black, but if she is a good lover she gets there just the same. A favorite Jook song of the past has this to say:

  SINGER: It aint good looks dat takes you through dis world.

  AUDIENCE: What is it, good mama?

  SINGER: Elgin movements in your hips

  Twenty years guarantee.21

  And it always brought down the house too.

  Oh de white gal rides in a Cadillac,

  De yaller gal rides de same,

  Black gal rides in a rusty Ford

  But she gits dere just de same.

  The sort of woman her men idealise is the type that can put forth in the theatre. The art-creating Negro prefers a not too thin woman who can shake like jelly all over as she dances and sings, and that is the type he put forth on the stage. She has been banished by the white producer and the Negro who takes his cue from the white.

  Of course a black woman is never the wife of the upper class Negro in the North.22 This state of affairs does not obtain in the South, however. I have noted numerous cases where the wife was considerably darker than the husband. People of some substance, too.

  This scornful attitude towards black women receives mouth sanction by the mud-sills.23

  Even on the works and in the Jooks the black man sings disparagingly of black women. They say that she is evil. That she sleeps with her fists doubled up and ready for action. All over they are making a little drama of waking up a yaller wife and a black one.24

  A man is lying beside his yaller wife and wakes her up. She says to him, “Darling, do you know what I was dreaming when you woke me up?” He says, “No honey, what was you dreaming?” She says, “I dreamt I had done cooked you a big, fine dinner and we was setting down to eat out de same plate and I was setting on yo’ lap jus huggin you and kissin you and you was so sweet.”

  Wake up a black woman, and before you kin git any sense into her she be done up and lammed you over the head four or five times. When you git her quiet she’ll say, “Nigger, know whut I was dreamin when you woke me up?”

  You say, “No honey, what was you dreamin?” She says, “I dreamt you shook yo’ rusty fist under my nose and I split yo’ head open wid a axe.”

  But in spite of disparaging fictitious drama, in real life the black girl is drawing on his account at the commissary.25 Down in the Cypress Swamp as he swings his axe he chants:

  Dat ole black gal, she keep on grumblin,

  New pair shoes, new pair shoes,

  I’m goint to buy her shoes and stockings

  Slippers too, slippers too.

  Then adds aside: “Blacker de berry, sweeter de juice.”

  To be sure, the black gal is still in power, men are still cutting and shooting their way to her pillow. To the queen of the Jook!

  Speaking of the influence of the Jook, I noted that Mae West in “Sex” had much more flavor of the turpentine quarters than she did of the white bawd.26 I know that the piece she played on the piano is a very old Jook composition. “Honey let yo’ drawers hang low” had been played and sung in every Jook in the South for at least thirty-five years.27 It has always puzzled me why she thought it likely to be played in a Canadian bawdy house.

  Speaking of the use of Negro material by white performers, it is astonishing that so many are trying it, and I have never seen one yet entirely realistic. They often have all the elements of the song, dance, or expression, but they are misplaced or distorted by the accent falling on the wrong element. Every one seems to think that the Negro is easily imitated when nothing is further from the truth. Without exception I wonder why the black-face comedians are black-face; it is a puzzle—good comedians, but darn poor niggers. Gershwin and the other “Negro” rhapsodists come under this same axe.28 Just about as Negro as caviar or Ann Pennington’s athletic Black Bottom.29 When the Negroes who knew the Black Bottom in its cradle saw the Broadway version they asked each other, “Is you learnt dat new Black Bottom yet?” Proof that it was not their dance.

  And God only knows what the world has suffered from the white damsels who try to sing blues.

  The Negroes themselves have sinned also in this respect. In spite of the goings up and down on the earth, from the original Fisk Jubilee Singers down to the present, there has been no genuine presentation of Negro songs to white audiences.30 The spirituals that have been sung around the world are Negroid to be sure, but so full of musicians’ tricks that Negro congregations are highly entertained when they hear their old songs so changed. They never use the new style songs, and these are never heard unless perchance some daughter or son has been off to college and returns with one of the old songs with its face lifted, so to speak.

  I am of the opinion that this trick style of delivery was originated by the Fisk Singers; Tuskegee and Hampton followed suit and have helped spread this misconception of Negro spirituals. This Glee Club style has gone on so long and become so fixed among concert singers that it is considered quite authentic. But I say again, that not one concert singer in the world is singing the songs as the Negro song-makers sing them.

  If anyone wishes to prove the truth of this let him step into some unfashionable Negro church and hear for himself.

  To those who want to institute the Negro theatre, let me say it is already established. It is lacking in wealth, so it is not seen in the high places. A creature with a white head and Negro feet struts the Metropolitan boards. The real Negro theatre is in the Jooks and the cabarets. Self-conscious individuals may turn away the eye and say, “Let us search elsewhere for our dramatic art.” Let em search. They certainly won’t find it. Butter Beans and Susie, Bo-Jangles and Snake Hips are the only performers of the real Negro school it has ever been my pleasure to behold in New York.31

  DIALECT

  If we are to believe the majority of writers of Negro dialect and the burnt-cork artists, Negro speech is a weird thing, full of “ams” and “Ises.”32 Fortunately we don’t have to believe them. We may go directly to the Negro and let him speak for himself.

  I know that I run the risk of being damned as an infidel for declaring that nowhere can be found the Negro who asks “am it?” nor yet his brother who announces “Ise uh gwinter.” He exists only for a certain type of writers and performers.

  Very few Negroes, educated or not, use a clear clipped “I.” It verges more or less upon “Ah.” I think the lip form is responsible for this to a great extent. By experiment the reader will find that a sharp “I” is very much easier with a thin taut lip than with a full soft lip. Like tightening violin strings.

  If one listens closely one will note too that a word is slurred in one position in the sentence but clearly pronounced in another. This is particularly true of the pronouns. A pronoun as a subject is likely to be clearly enunciated, but slurred as an object. For example: “You better not let me ketch yuh.”

  There is a tendency in some localities to add the “h” to “it” and pronounce it “hit.” Probably a vestige of old English. In some localities “if” is “ef.”

  In story telling “so” is universally the connective. It is used even as an introductory word, at the very beginning of a story. In religious expression “and” is used. The trend in stories is to state conclusions; in religion, to enumerate.

  I am mentioning only the most general rules in dialect because there are so many quirks that belong only to certain localities that nothing less than a volume would be adequate.

  Conversions and Visions

  The vision is a very definite part of Negro religion. It almost always accompanies conversion. It always accompanies the call to preach.

  In the conversion the vision is sought. The individual goes forth into waste places and by fasting and prayer induces the vision. The place of retirement chosen is one most likely to have some emotional effect upon the seeker. The cemetery, to a people who fear the dead, is a most suggestive place to gain visions. The dense swamps with the possibility of bodily mishaps is another favorite.

  Three days is the traditional period for seeking the vision. Usually the seeker is successful, but now and then he fails. Most seekers “come through religion” during revival meetings, but a number come after the meeting has closed.

  Certain conversion visions have become traditional, but all sorts of variations are interpolated in the general framework of the convention, from the exceedingly frivolous to the most solemn. One may go to a dismal swamp, the other to the privy house. The imagination of one may carry him to the last judgement and the rimbones of nothing, the vision of another may hobble him at washing collard greens.1 But in each case there is an unwillingness to believe—to accept the great good fortune too quickly. So God is asked for proof. One man told me that he refused to believe that he had truly been saved and said: “Now, Lord, if you have really saved my soul, I ask you to move a certain star from left to right.” And the star shot across the heavens from the left hand to the right. But still he wouldn’t believe. So he asked for the sun to shout and the sun shouted. He still didn’t believe. So he asked for one more sign. But God had grown impatient with his doubtings and told him sharply that if he didn’t believe without further proof that He’d send his soul to hell. So he ran forth from his hiding and proclaimed a new-found savior.