“Excuse me,” I said to the DC Metro customer service agent after hopping off the airport shuttle bus. “I’ve just arrived from Ireland and I need to get to Corcoran Street. Which is the best route to take?”
He took a few minutes to type my exact destination into his computer. “You could take the train to McPherson Square and it’s a 20-minute walk, or the train to Shaw-Howard University and it’s a 13-minute walk. But I don’t know if you would be safe there,” he advised. “That’s where all the jazz clubs are…”
I am in Washington DC for three weeks to explore the African roots of jazz and blues, and to learn more about the African-American experience at large so that I can understand jazz and blues at a deeper level. As a professional jazz vocalist and educator, I don’t feel I know enough about the conditions which led to the formation of this music, or about the experiences of African-American musicians in their homeland; or about jazz as part of a wider cultural movement. I have a lot to learn.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture is my first port of call. A strikingly beautiful brown building next to the American History Museum and close to the Washington Monument on the National Mall, it did not exist when I was a student on the BA in jazz performance at Newpark Music Centre in Dublin from 2006-2010. In fact, it is the newest of the Smithsonian institutions, opened in 2016 by then president Barack Obama.
So why is a Tipperary woman in DC researching the roots of jazz and blues, and the African-American experience? This is something I am trying to fully understand myself. When I saw the movie Ray and heard the music of Ray Charles for the first time in 2005, I simply knew I had to pursue this music and become a musician. The music had touched my soul in such a deeply profound and mysterious way that I knew to ignore it would be to turn my back on my life’s purpose.
Soulful singing
I have a sense that it is connected to a certain soulful quality in the singing. I feel I am responding to the sound of a wounded human’s voice emerging from the inner depths of their soul when everything else has been taken away. While Ray Charles himself was not enslaved, he learned how to sing from the community around him, and this style of singing was passed down from one generation to the next with its roots in the transatlantic slave trade.
“Their singing… [was] always in tears, in so much that one captain threatened one of the women with a flogging, because the mournfulness of her song was too painful for his feelings,” wrote William Corbett in 1806.
It could be related to the fact that, as an Irish woman, I empathise with the plight of the African-American because Irish people, my ancestors, were colonised and brutalised for hundreds of years. Perhaps, deep in my DNA I recognise a certain emotional quality when I hear singing from the African diaspora and it is something I cannot ignore.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass said: “The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.”
Following his visit to Ireland in the 1840s, and upon hearing traditional Irish singing (what later became known as sean-nós), Douglass remarked: “I have never heard any songs like those anywhere since I left slavery, except when in Ireland. There I heard the same wailing notes, and was much affected by them. It was during the Famine of 1845-46… nowhere outside of dear old Ireland, have I heard sounds so mournful.”
The museum offers a rich insight into the experience of enslaved African Americans during the era of slavery (1514-1866); their lives embedded in the sugar, tobacco and rice trade.
“I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
For how could we do without sugar and rum?
Especially sugar, so needful we see;
What, give up our desserts, our coffee, and tea!”
William Cowper 1788
It was horrifying to learn about the “fancy girl” trade prevalent in the 1800s, when young women were purchased for sexual exploitation; and to hear that enslaved black women were used for modern gynaecology experiments.
Seeing Emmett Till’s original casket at the museum was particularly moving. Till was the 14-year-old African-American visiting Mississippi from Chicago who was kidnapped and murdered in 1955 after allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till, insisted that his funeral would be open casket, so that the world could bear witness to the shocking brutality and the extent of the violence inflicted upon her son. I was awestruck by Mahalia Jackson’s recording of Amazing Grace, featured as part of the exhibit. Never before had I heard such glorious, soulful, otherworldly singing.
Racial inequalities
Visitors to the NMAAHC can also learn about the Road to Emancipation and the challenges that followed leading to the Civil Rights movement, as well as the racial inequalities that linger today. But ultimately, this is a story of resilience and strength where black excellence is celebrated.
I would recommend visiting in person and tasting the scrumptious fried chicken, candied yams and collard greens at the Sweet Home Café. But the museum website also offers a wealth of resources for online learning.
I spent three days at the American Folklife Centre at the Library of Congress and quickly realised that I would need a lot more than three weeks to conduct my research. It was exciting to be in a room that housed such a fascinating selection of books, from Sources of Irish Traditional Music by Aloys Fleischmann, to the Child ballad collection to Slave Songs of the US, The Power of Black Music and so much more. At least I managed to compile a reading list that will keep me going over the coming months and years!
Since coming to DC, where streets are named after jazz greats such as Duke Ellington (a DC native) and street murals honour singers like Shirley Horn and Marvin Gaye, I’ve experienced black music as part of the cultural fabric of the United States. Getting to visit the Lincoln Memorial ,where the March on Washington took place was special. This was where a quarter of a million people gathered on August 28th, 1963, to demand civil rights and where Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech.
Knowing that black musicians of the time, people like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Billy Taylor, Max Roach and so many others, were using their voice and ultimately their art as a means of social protest was deeply inspiring. It was a reminder of the power of music, the power of song, the power of people standing up for what they believe in, and that quote I adore: “It’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times…” (Nina Simone).
It also brings about a greater appreciation for contemporary jazz artists like Esperanza Spalding and Cécile McLorin Salvant who are visionary in their approach and who continue to advocate for social justice through their work.
As I walk back to my Airbnb on leafy Corcoran Street, passing the White House, I notice a plaque stating:
“In 1792 American, English, Scottish, and Irish labourers and craftsmen, along with enslaved African-Americans who were hired out by their owners, worked alongside each other for the next eight years to build the White House.”
Perhaps it’s not so strange after all for a Tipperary woman to be in DC exploring the roots of jazz and blues. Maybe it’s just like reconnecting with some long-lost cousins or old friends…
I wish to express my gratitude to Arts Council Ireland for supporting my research through the Agility Award 2022.
Edel Meade is an award-winning vocalist, composer, performing artist and educator working in the field of jazz, folk and contemporary music. Her solo album, Brigids and Patricias, explores what it means to be a woman in 21st-century Ireland and follows on from her debut jazz album, Blue Fantasia in 2017.
Meade was selected for the Fulbright-Creative Ireland Professional Fellowship Award 2022-2023 and will travel to Berkeley, California, in January to explore the intersection between jazz and traditional Irish music and song at the California Jazz Conservatory, culminating in a world premiere live concert performance in collaboration with Bay Area musicians in May 2023.
