Preachin' the Blues
Bessie Smith's Secular Religion and Alice Walker's The Color Purple
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4546909 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas F Marvin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 411 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African American Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1062-4783 • E-ISSN: 1945-6182 |
| Publisher | Penn State Press (Project Muse) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3041977 |
| OpenAlex | W43256170 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
A singer known as Avery sweeps through Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, bestowing her favors and her scorn capriciously, giving voice to voiceless, power to powerless, and money to poor. She transforms life of Celie, novel's protagonist, through a conversion of type advocated by Bessie Smith in her song Preachin' Blues. Shug, like Bessie Smith, forges a strong bond with her audiences and gives voice to of blues in order to bring relief to less articulate sufferers. But more importantly, she encourages Celie and other opporessed women in novel to express themselves and stand up for their rights. Shug Avery also crosses social boundaries that often restricted women of her society, making possible gender role reversals that bring about book's happy ending. Just as Bessie Smith did in Preachin' Shug Avery promises her followers a new relationship between individual and world, one based on an understanding of holiness of all living things and spiritual power of spoken word. Considering Shug Avery in context of West African beliefs as they are expressed in of Bessie Smith will shed new light on Celie's metamorphosis from a passive victim to a confident woman. Understandably, most critics have focused on Celie's metamorphosis and have discussed Shug's role as a who causes a powerful reaction.(1) Those who consider novel a fairy tale describe Shug as a fairy godmother who arrives disguised as a wicked witch (Walsh 94). Although fairy-tale readings are more convincing than those given by critics who try to force novel into a realistic mold and then complain when it won't fit, these readings, by stressing European form of story, tend to divert attention from its African-American content.(2) Some psychoanalytic critics refer to Shug as a nurse and a mother-imago (Ross 76, 79), or a mother surrogate for Celie (Proudfit 24), and others suggest that Shug functions as a role-model (e.g., Kelly, Water-Dawson). Delores Williams, as part of her project to use the works of black women writers ... to assess theological and ethical significance of black women's social and religious experience, cites Shug as an example of catalyst and moral-agent model (88). All of these approaches illuminate important aspects of Shug's role in novel, but even Williams and Kelly, who are interested in Celie's religious transformation, do not consider African origins of Shug's theology. Both Bessie Smith and Shug Avery can be considered children, or followers, of Legba, a West African spirit closely associated with musicians, who opens door to spiritual world and provides opportunities for social and psychological growth of individual.(3) Although it is relatively easy to identify African features which survive in African-American music, it is more difficult to trace influence of African beliefs about spiritual power of music. However, controversy over supposedly evil influence of and jazz suggests that African beliefs remained strong even after most African Ameircans had adopted Christianity. Since white man's religion confined spiritual power of music to churches and regarded secular music as dangerous and often sinful, spiritual power of African-derived secular music was condemned as work of devil. If we keep African beliefs about music in mind as we consider statements of musicians and lyrics of their songs, we should better understand how and jazz came to be considered evil by some and holy by others. Underneath borrowed English phrases, sustains a fundamentally African world view. When Bessie Smith sang, Good morning Blues, Blues how do you do? she was describing an encounter with an orisha in human form, and her song is meant to amplify power of her personal nommo, or word, to meet challenge posed by this force
Alice (programming language · Art · Art history · Blues · Theology · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2015 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |