I've uploaded an article from 1993. You can download it at Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/128441180/The_United_States_of_the_Blues_On_the_Crossing_of_African_and_European_Cultures_in_the_20th_Century
Title Full Citation, Abstract, Contents, and Introduction below.
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Full Citation
The United States of the Blues: On the Crossing of African and European Cultures in the 20th Century. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, 16(4), 401-438, 1993. DOI: 10.1016/1061-7361(93)90016-K.
Abstract
European-American racism has used African America as a screen on which to project repressed emotion, particularly sex and aggression. One aspect of this projection is that whites are attracted to black music as a means of expressing aspects of themselves they cannot adequately express through music from European roots. Thus twentieth century expressive culture in the United States has been dominated by an evolving socio-cultural system in which blacks create musical forms and whites imitate them. It happened first with jazz, and then with rock and roll. The sexual revolution and the recent floresence of blacks in television and movies suggests that white America has had some success in using black American expressive forms to cure its affective ills. The emergence of rap, from African America, and minimalism, from European America, indicates that this system is at a point where it is ready to leave Western expressive culture behind as history moves to the next millennium.
Contents
1. Introduction 402
2. Patterns in Black and White 402
3. The Socio-Cultural System of North American Cultural Crossing 408
3.1 The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism 409
3.2 Tertium Quid: The Artist and Negative European Identity 411
3.3 Transformed from Africa, the Blues 413
4. Crossing in the Twentieth Century: Blues Train to the Future 415
4.1 The Blues: "Trouble In Mind" 416
4.2 Jazz: "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" 417
4.3 Rock: "Roll Over Beethoven" 419
4.4 Rap: "U Can't Touch This" 421
4.5 The Pattern So Far: "Freedom Over Me" 424
5. The Post-Western Future 426
Notes 428
Acknowledgements 434
References 434
Introduction
It is generally assumed, without question, that the United States of America is a Western nation, that it's culture is derived from Europe, as opposed to the various cultures of Asia, the Near East, and North Africa. There may be some differences from Europe, things which ever-anxious Americans can claim as their own, but the dominant character is European. In matters of intellectual and scientific culture this is largely true. Despite the birth of modern democracy in the American Revolution, I think we need to concede the point in political matters as well. Modern democracy may first have flowered in North America, but it has deep roots in Europe.
When we turn to expressive culture matters are quite different. In some expressive domains, literature, architecture, and perhaps even painting, the European influences dominate. But in other domains the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have had a profound, even a dominating, influence. Sport is one such arena (Ashe, 1988, cf. Early, 1989, pp. 115-195, 208-214). Religion is another. With its dramatic conversions, speaking in tongues, vigorous song, and theatrical preaching, the fundamentalist strain of American religion took the impress of African America almost two centuries ago (cf. Bloom, 1992, pp. 48, 238; Philips, 1990, p. 231, Williamson, 1984, p. 38). Throughout the nineteenth century minstrel shows carried the African influence in comedy, song, and dance (Chase, 1966, pp. 259-300, Crouch, 1976, Handy, 1941). This influence came to full flower in American popular music of the twentieth century, where the African-American element drives the train. Whether or not that influence has been so profound that we should remove the United States from the honor roll of Western nations is not clear to me - though I think it a reasonable possibility.
As I see it, this is the situation: The United States is a multicultural society.1 While the citizens all function within a single economic and political system, the cultural system is plural. That cultural pluralism is part of a social dynamic which generates cultural crossing in the expressive domain. Through the course of this century European Americans have been continually remaking their expressive culture according to African-American models. There is nothing in the national identity of the United States which is more important than this African making and European remaking (cf. Morrison, 1992).
The goal of this essay is to explore the way African and European cultural elements have interacted in the twentieth century United States. While, as I've indicated, that interaction extends beyond music, that is where the interaction has been most fruitful. That is where I'll concentrate my attention - though at the end I'll turn this magician's hat of an argument upside down and start pulling out some more general conceptual rabbits. To establish a sense of the cultural difference between black and white America I begin by comparing jazz and classical music. Then I move on to consider the psycho-cultural engine which drives the interaction and cultural interchange between European and African America. After that we examine the track that engine has traveled during this century. The essay ends by arguing that this train has already taken us into the beginnings of a post-Western world.
