Redefining femininity: Call and response as gendered features in African-American discourse

Multilingua ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-437
Author(s):  
Joanna Pawelczyk
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Call And Response

scholarly journals Call-and-Response: An Ancient Linguistic Device Surfaces in Usher's "Love in This Club"

Elements ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Keegan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Call And Response ◽  
Salient Features

The call-and-response, originating from African tribal rituals, has become part of the foundation of modern African-American culture. This article explores the significance of call-and-response in Usher's "Love in This Club" and relates salient features of the music to the club culture that underlies it. "Club hip-hop" emerges as firmly rooted in the use of call-and-response. The rituals of the club are likewise mirrored in the style of the music, which at times can bear the importance of sacred ceremony.

How Not to Introduce Blues Prosody:

Poetics Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-681
Author(s):  
Michael Skansgaard
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
West African ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Call And Response ◽  
Sterling Brown ◽  
Response Patterning ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Iambic Pentameter

This article delivers a two-pronged intervention into blues prosody. First, it argues that scholars have repeatedly misidentified the metrical organization of blues poems by Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. The dominant approach to these poems has sought to explain their rhythms with models of alternating stress, including both classical foot prosody and the beat prosody of Derek Attridge. The article shows that the systematic organization of blues structures originates in West African call-and-response patterning (not alternating stress), and is better explained by models of syntax and musical phrasing. Second, it argues that these misclassifications — far from being esoteric matters of taxonomy — lie at the heart of African American aesthetics and identity politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Whereas literary blues verse has long been oversimplified with conventional metrics like “free verse,” “accentual verse,” and “iambic pentameter,” the article suggests that its rhythms arise instead from a rich and complex vernacular style that cannot be explained by the constraints of Anglo-American versification.

Rock ’n Roll Dance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Malnig
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Rhythm And Blues ◽  
Call And Response ◽  
Rock N Roll ◽  
The Uk

Rock ’n roll dance was a major American dance form that became prominent in the 1950s and soon thereafter spread to the UK. The dance was performed to a new musical style that was a combination of country, gospel, and rhythm and blues, and was associated with both black and white musicians, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bill Haley. Rock ’n roll dance was also a cultural phenomenon that galvanised a large, primarily white, youth culture. The dances themselves, which were disseminated nationally through the modern invention of television, were mostly of African-American origin and displayed a new configuration of body movement involving pelvic and hip rotations, greater use of the arms and torso, and call and response patterns. The Twist was one of the most iconic solo dances of the era, while popular line dances included the Madison, Stroll, and Hand Jive.

Jazz Dancing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Flanders Crosby ◽  
Wendy Oliver
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
Call And Response ◽  
The Many ◽  
Modern Era

Jazz dancing is an important modern art form that developed in tandem with jazz music between the 1910s and 1940s in America. Emanating from African-American folk and vernacular practices of the early 20th century, jazz dancing reflects the evolving freedoms of modern African-Americans as well as the racial tensions of the modern era in which it was created. Indeed, jazz dance displays the complexity and exuberance of modern American culture and history. The many manifestations of jazz dancing range in style from vernacular to theatrical and embrace, to varying degrees, fundamental movement qualities such as a weighted release into gravity, rhythmic complexity, propulsive rhythms, a dynamic spine, call and response, a conversational approach to accompanying rhythms, and attention to syncopation and musicality.

Black Jazz in the Digital Age

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Tate
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Keynote Address ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Personal Essay ◽  
Call And Response ◽  
Destination Point

Originally presented as a keynote address at the 2006 Guelph Jazz Festival and Colloquium, this personal essay explores the author’s past and present in jazz and asks important questions about jazz’s future as a relevant Black music. Exactly what information did African American genius, living under American apartheid, bring to the formation of jazz that jazz is losing or has lost access to today? Even more pointedly, what will jazz lose if it loses contact, loses the call and response conversation it used to enjoy with Black working class humanity and that group's racialized self-consciousness and ritualized cultural practices? There is, of course, further the question of whether we err on the side of novelty by thinking of jazz in teleological, futurological terms, of thinking of jazz as in need of a newer post-modern post-Black destination point.

The Hearing Aid Effect in African American and Caucasian Males as Perceived by Female Judges of the Same Race

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Davis ◽  
Rhonda Jackson ◽  
Tina Smith ◽  
William Cooper
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Hearing Aids ◽  
Undergraduate Education ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Semantic Differential ◽  
Semantic Differential Scale ◽  
Education Majors ◽  
Female Undergraduate ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Males And Females

Prior studies have proven the existence of the "hearing aid effect" when photographs of Caucasian males and females wearing a body aid, a post-auricular aid (behind-the-ear), or no hearing aid were judged by lay persons and professionals. This study was performed to determine if African American and Caucasian males, judged by female members of their own race, were likely to be judged in a similar manner on the basis of appearance, personality, assertiveness, and achievement. Sixty female undergraduate education majors (30 African American; 30 Caucasian) used a semantic differential scale to rate slides of preteen African American and Caucasian males, with and without hearing aids. The results of this study showed that female African American and Caucasian judges rated males of their respective races differently. The hearing aid effect was predominant among the Caucasian judges across the dimensions of appearance, personality, assertiveness, and achievement. In contrast, the African American judges only exhibited a hearing aid effect on the appearance dimension.

Final Consonant Deletion in African American Children Speaking Black English

1993 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Moran
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black English ◽  
African American Children ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Minimal Pairs ◽  
Speech Evaluation ◽  
American Children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether African American children who delete final consonants mark the presence of those consonants in a manner that might be overlooked in a typical speech evaluation. Using elicited sentences from 10 African American children from 4 to 9 years of age, two studies were conducted. First, vowel length was determined for minimal pairs in which final consonants were deleted. Second, listeners who identified final consonant deletions in the speech of the children were provided training in narrow transcription and reviewed the elicited sentences a second time. Results indicated that the children produced longer vowels preceding "deleted" voiced final consonants, and listeners perceived fewer deletions following training in narrow transcription. The results suggest that these children had knowledge of the final consonants perceived to be deleted. Implications for assessment and intervention are discussed.

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