In “Black Bodies in Pain and Ecstasy: Terror, Subjectivity, and the Nature of Black Religion”, Anthony Pinn writes, “art, in the words of Houston Baker, is ‘a product and producer in an unceasing struggle for black liberation. To be ‘art’, the product had to be expressivity or performance designed to free minds and bodies of a subjugated people.’ In short, art is symbolic of the struggle against status as objects of history, an expression of a desire to be subjects or shapers of history.” (85).
Thinking about this complex subjectivity from Pinn and how the “religious impulse” has been put in conversation with Alvin Ailey’s “blood memory” made me think more on authenticity when it comes to performances that involve religion, such as from the group presentation on Islam in Black films on February 21st.
According to Christopher Johnson, Yoruba “is particularly popular with African-Americans who find it offers a spiritual path and a deep sense of cultural belonging” and this has been seen and explored throughout this course and one I’ve seen outside of taking this course. In Session 18 on March 7th, the second questions from both the presentation on Beyoncé and the discussion board asked about Yoruba-inspired religion and it made me wonder more on this authenticity as it relates to not only Beyoncé, but Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston, and Barbara Ann Teer. It is known that Dunham had a voodoo initiation, but for the others, there isn’t much information besides the fact that they did research, traveled, and may have been in community to get an in-depth perspective and understanding. Though all of them did some sort of research and Dunham had this initiation done, is the blood memory that Alvin Ailey mentioned enough for authenticity? Or is the art, Pinn mentions, enough?
Henry Louis Gates writes, “Black writers, like critics of black literature, learn to write by reading literature, especially the canonical texts of the Western tradition[…]But black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use” (352 ). The same can be said about Black performers and art. In fact, Teer studied and graduated from the University of Illinois and then went on to study in Europe . Upon coming back to the U.S, and going to New York, was when she decided to get involved in Blackness and separating herself from the white establishments. Though Teer learned Western-style of dances, there was something missing. Blackness and her life’s work after leaving Broadway shows this “free minds and bodies of a subjugated people”.
Furthermore, thinking of how Paul C. Taylor, author of Black Is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics, mentioned “assembly, not birth” when talking about Blackness. Putting what Pinn and Baker said about art and what Gates said when talking about Black writers, relates to this authenticity of Yoruba-inspired religions because Black people have brought what they know when they were stolen and taken to the Americas, but used them in different ways. To add on, families pass these traditions and skills down to the next generation, and if they don’t, there is still some component of tradition that evolves.
In this part of the video, Chief Dr. Yinke Otolorin, a representative of the Ooni of Ifé , or the spiritual head of the Yoruba, talks about the African diaspora returning to their roots. This makes me wonder when African countries like Ghana and then those from the Yoruba-religion, such as this Ooni of Ife invites people from the diaspora, can this counter authenticity?
Janet Jackson’s “Made for Now” was released August 2018. This relates to the blood memory and what we’ve learned about Blackness being assembled because Jackson takes from different parts of the African diaspora such as Yoruba-inspired dance and religion.