{"id":192,"date":"2012-02-21T20:26:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T20:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=192"},"modified":"2015-04-30T15:29:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:29:57","slug":"why-less-than-six-degrees-separate-jeremy-lin-from-the-carolina-chocolate-drops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Why (Less Than) Six Degrees Separate Jeremy Lin from the Carolina Chocolate Drops"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRacism for me has always appeared to me to be first and foremost a system, largely supported by material and economic conditions at work in a field of social traditions. Thus, though racism is always made manifest through individuals\u2019 decisions, actions, words, and feelings, when we have the luxury of looking at it with the longer view (and we don\u2019t, always), usually I don\u2019t see much point in blaming people personally, black or white, for their feelings or even for their specific actions \u2013 as long as they remain this side of the criminal. These are not what stabilize the system. These are not what promote and reproduce the system. These are not the points where the most lasting changes can be introduced to alter the system.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Samuel F. Delany, \u201cRacism and Science Fiction (1999)\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of said points, of course, are scored by hitting, bouncing, throwing, catching, or just lugging around a ball. Delany doesn\u2019t mention such things in his typically brilliant essay. (He\u2019s got slipperier fish to fry<\/a>.) And why should he when there have been generations of historians, journalists, pundits and preachers to re-emphasize the importance of sports in transfiguring parochial attitudes about race?\u00a0 Indeed, sport seems to be the only <\/em>arena where race gets thrashed out and openly examined in ways barely imaginable in other public or even private contexts.<\/p>\n

Much as I love sports, I wish it weren\u2019t so. Not every person-of-color is a multi-purpose athlete as Jackie Robinson was. Nor can they all guide tennis balls where they want to with as much fury or precision as Arthur Ashe and the Williams sisters. And only Jim Brown was, or could ever be, Jim Brown. Yet the American people, whatever their ethnicity, religion or status, feel the most comfortable (or, worse, are only<\/em> comfortable) freely talking about or identifying with other cultures when those others \u2013 or, if you prefer, \u201cOthers\u201d \u2013 are playing games in front of spectators. In such relatively relaxed environs, people are encouraged, even empowered to think differently than they usually do \u2013 and, sometimes, say things they shouldn\u2019t. Perceptions can be altered. People are a different matter.<\/p>\n

This brings us \u2013 as does everything else in life lately \u2013 to Jeremy Lin. Everybody\u2019s so tied up in knots about the Lin phenomenon that they\u2019re torn between wishing the whole thing was winding down and hoping it never does. When the Knicks lose, the furor subsides a bit. But whatever happens for the team from here on, the incredulity of a Taiwanese-American Ivy Leaguer emerging from the NBA\u2019s Negative Zone as a fearless, effervescent point guard will resound far beyond what\u2019s left of this truncated pro basketball season. Sports journalists insist on looking in their own bailiwick for precedents. They\u2019re left babbling Tim Tebow\u2019s name and shrugging at how unwieldy the alignment looks. They should look instead to Elvis Presley in 1956 or the Beatles in late 1963 to early 1964. Forget content or context. This is a cultural phenomenon so overpowering that busybodies and spoilsports far outside the arena are compelled to stare, gush and poke at its surfaces to get at Some Larger Truth. Thus you get otherwise intelligent observers saying stuff they shouldn\u2019t while others flail and thrash for whatever aligns with their politics.<\/p>\n

At least the sportswriters (as opposed to the “news analysts”) \u00a0understand that Lin\u2019s game hasn\u2019t yet arrived at the exalted place that would totally justify the hype —\u00a0 though they also know that when he does get less careless with the basketball, it\u2019s likely you aint seen nothing yet!<\/p>\n

But let that be. Let\u2019s get back to Elvis. I am in no way suggesting that Lin represents anything as transformative as Presley\u2019s impact on global culture. (At least, not yet.) But I do think that the excitement generated by both Presley\u2019s breakout and Lin\u2019s share the same wellspring and the name for that source is spelled C-R-O-S-S-O-V-E-R. Any time someone busts loose from constraints collectively, intrinsically and artificially imposed upon their cultural origins, the onlookers are susceptible to rapture, or at least giddiness. Suddenly, all such constraints seem little more than shaggy-dog jokes that haven\u2019t been told yet. Possibilities are expanded. Imaginations are aroused. And the resulting blowback can change far more than pop culture. Or so you\u2019d like to think. As I implied earlier, the more things change, etc etc.<\/p>\n

Put another way, as Bill Rhoden\u2019s column in Monday\u2019s New York Times attests<\/a>, the stereotypes against Asian Americans contradicted by Lin\u2019s success can only make one more aware than usual of those that persist against African Americans. Implicit in Rhoden\u2019s column is a yearning to somehow share in whatever pride Asians are feeling towards Lin e.g. \u201cWhere\u2019s our Jeremy Lin?\u201d or \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t Victor Cruz arouse the same fervor? After all, he, too, came out of nowhere\u2026\u201d And so on, so forth.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: It may no longer do African Americans any good to look in sports for equivalents to Jeremy Lin\u2019s impact; at least, not until a brother comes along in hockey who\u2019s got Bobby Orr\u2019s demon speed and Wayne Gretsky\u2019s cobra stroke. If you really want to look for black equivalents \u2013 and for that matter, comparable excitement over renewed possibilities \u2013 go elsewhere in the culture. I have a candidate, four in fact, for African American Jeremy Lin surrogates bearing a somewhat similar amalgam of dynamism and nerdiness. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you\u2026the Carolina Chocolate Drops<\/a>!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe what?<\/em>\u201d I asked my North Carolina-born wife a year ago when she first mentioned this confab of African American string players who\u2019ve been around and about since 2005. In that time, they\u2019ve appeared on festival stages with the likes of Taj Mahal, made a cameo appearance in Denzel Washington\u2019s period drama, The Great Debaters<\/em> (2007), played the Grand Ole Opry and even won a Grammy a couple years back. Most listeners casually apply the Bluegrass label to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, But it\u2019s hard to place any cozy marketing niche to a group whose repertoire ranges all over the classic blues-and-folk repertoire; from square dance calls to field hollers; from Ethel Waters to Blu Cantrell, whose \u201cHit \u2018Em Up Style\u201d has been re-energized by the Chocolate Drops\u2019 \u201cacoustic, hip-hop version.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last Saturday afternoon, the group, which started as a trio but has morphed into a quartet, gave a free concert at the Library of Congress. They were genuinely jazzed to be playing at the home of the American Folklife Centerand the feeling from the standing-room-only house was altogether mutual. Original members Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens are now aligned with by Leyla McCalla on cello and Hubby Jenkins on everything, including banjo, guitar and fiddle. Flemons and Giddens likewise can play different instruments, but the charismatic Giddens is clearly the top fiddler and vocalist while Flemons gets to handle most of the percussive (“bones,” anyone?) and other rogue elements, including the \u201cquill\u201d, a traditional panpipe though whose tubes he does everything except recite the Gettysburg Address (and only because he hasn\u2019t yet tried to.)<\/p>\n

The musical numbers were bridged by historic vignettes; references to legendary music archivist Alan Lomax and novelist-folklorist-troublemaker Zora Neale Hurston came under discussion as did origins of some of the more obscure music. The setting was intimate, but the sounds were grand and all-encompassing. And as with the very best folk musicians, they made the old sound brand new; the context, to those who don\u2019t expect young black folks (especially those, like Jenkins, who wear dreads) to play banjo \u2013 which, as the Chocolate Drops will be happy to inform you, is roughly as African in origin as they are. The audience\u2019s racial composition appeared on causal glance slightly more Caucasian than not. But the excitement generated by the Chocolate Drops\u2019 two-hour recital was palpable and, every once in a while, exploded, especially when Giddens assumed belting duties on \u201cI\u2019m Nobody\u2019s Mama Now\u201d and the aforementioned \u201cHit \u2018Em Up Style.\u201d<\/p>\n

These guys may not get prime-time Grammy duties \u2013 and it\u2019s a mystery as to when, if ever, a Saturday Night Live <\/em>guest shot will be tossed in their general direction. That\u2019s so not who they are anyway (I suppose). But if they ever did get in the mainstream\u2019s sight line, I feel certain that for every person bewildered or turned off by what they do, there will be at least ten or twenty others who will feel a charge similar to what\u2019s been happening at Madison Square Garden since Super Bowl week. In a way, I hope it doesn\u2019t happen if only because it will spare these smart, sexy people from dumb, pompous palaver, along with the attendant nervousness over what to call them or their music. New language or at least different versions of the same language always emerge from discovering that cultures can do things you never imagined they could. Some dumb, presumptuous things have already been said about Jeremy Lin \u2013 and one can think of similarly uninformed or misguided assumptions emerging about the Carolina Chocolate Drops.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, why go through all this trouble to end up watching what one says? \u00a0I\u2019d rather just watch. Wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cRacism for me has always appeared to me to be first and foremost a system, largely supported by material and economic conditions at work in a field of social traditions. Thus, though racism is always made manifest through individuals\u2019 decisions, actions, words, and feelings, when we have the luxury of looking at it with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jazz-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}