Background Information
The first part of this section explores the two main texts for this unit, Mumbo Jumbo and TURF dancing. Both texts are unconventional, one a deconstruction of the "novel," and the other, a dance form. For this reason, I've provided a justification for their use in the English classroom with some background information. You will also need a basic understanding of these texts to understand how they support the essential questions.
The second section explores the four essential questions for the unit and provides background information, textual examples, and suggestions for the classroom when applicable. It is intended to provide a guide for the teacher but not necessarily be frontloaded to students.
As I write about each concept and text I constantly refer back to dance. When thinking about this unit as a whole, I felt the need to narrow my cultural focus. The title of our seminar, "The Big Easy: Literary New Orleans and Intangible Heritage," challenged me as an English teacher to think beyond written text when exploring culture. Instead, I chose dance as an intangible cultural heritage to study both because it is fun and because it is rarely viewed as a text in high school English curricula. Intangible heritage is defined by UNESCO as "traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants," 4 this may include oral histories, festive events, and specific knowledge held by a group of people. The intangible heritage of African influences on American dance is embodied in both Mumbo Jumbo and TURF dancing. Studying culture, diaspora, and resilience will hopefully make the connections to intangible heritage accessible and interesting to my students.
Texts
Mumbo Jumbo
Mumbo Jumbo (1972) by Ishmael Reed is about the spread of the "Jes Grew" virus from New Orleans through the rest of the country. Jes Grew is an embodiment of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and I would argue as a dance form, polyrhythmic movement. The Monotheistic organization, The Wallflower Order, attempts to eradicate Jes Grew as it spreads across the country and threatens Atonist (white supremist) control over the nation.
The novel is written in an unconventional manner. Immediately one notices missing quotation marks, images used as text rather than illustrations of text and a storyline that does not match the triangular plot diagram English teachers are far too familiar with. Joe Weixlmann notes that Reed's writing style "moves to a variety of Jazz and Blues rhythms" 5 which adds to the unconventional style of his writing. Reed himself remarked in 1978 that he believed the "novel" is soon to be an outdated term, a genre imposed on "us," instead he referred to his writings as "works." 6
Reed's deconstruction of the "Novel" will pose a challenge in the classroom. I will teach this curriculum unit in my 9 th grade English class and I don't think they are ready to read the work in its entirety. Instead, I will use short passages that focus mainly on the Jes Grew pandemic. A concern is that by choosing short passages I may alter the story that Reed tells into one of my own. I do agree that students will not get a full picture of Mumbo Jumbo but at the same time, that is okay. I will fill in the necessary information students will need to make meaning of the text. What is most important to me is that they feel success as readers and are able to make connections to culture, diaspora, and resilience.
Jes Grew embodies all three of our concepts for this unit. It personifies many of the intangible influences of African culture in America such as attitudes towards polyrhythmic movement and "rep rev." It is also an excellent example of resilience. Reed writes in the prologue of Mumbo Jumbo that, "Actually Jes Grew was an anti-plague. Some plagues caused the body to waste away; Jes Grew enlivened the host." 7 Thus Jes Grew fosters positive transformation in the face of adversity.
TURF Dancing
TURF stands for Take Up Room on the Floor and originated in Oakland, California. It draws from hip-hop dance and break dancing in particular but also has specific differences that make it unique. Like breakdancing, it often includes two dancers battling it out in the center of a cipher, or circle, of observers who declare one dancer the victor of that round. TURF dancers also organize themselves into crews or groups often formed through friends, family, and school. It also includes "breaks" in the dance, a common practice in Africanist performance, which Thomas DeFrantz describes as, "an unexpected, uncontrollable space. It is where an instant beat is interrupted by a flash of contradictory rhythmic ideas." 8 In TURF dancing, as in breakdancing, "breaks" manifest as physical feats of the body and are often the highlight of one's dance. Unlike break dancing, TURF dancing is designed to tell a story anywhere from conquering one's opponent to mourning the dead. Jeriel Bay, founder of The Architeckz TURF dancing crew states, "It's like miming with a rhythm, telling a story, expressing a story in your head for people to see visually. How can I tell a story if I couldn't speak? I'll show you in my moves." 9 Like Jes Grew, TURFing is a physical manifestation of storytelling without words. In Mumbo Jumbo, Jes Grew is seeking it's text in the written form. The same can be said for TURF dancing which seeks a different kind of "tangible" text through YouTube videos.
Susan Leigh Foster coined the term "regroove" to describe the revisions of traditional dance forms by young people. These dance forms are not relegated to prestigious dance schools or troupes and are not confined by the need for perfect repetition. In nightclubs, community centers, workshops, and particularly on YouTube young people are showing and sharing these new dance forms. Although TURFing has not hit the mainstream, several YouTube videos have gone viral. For example, there are now young people in France who use TURF dancing to tell stories about where they come from and how they respond to adversity. In essence, these young people are communicating with one another across the internet, with few words and outside of the international media that tends to dictate this conversation.
In Oakland, TURFing responds to the specific needs of youth as they take inspiration from media, community, and their own experiences to tell their story. As implied in the name, Take Up Room on the Floor, young people are claiming space to tell their story. This is particularly evident in the "Rest In Peace" series of YouTube videos produced by YAK films featuring the TURF Feinz. The YouTube video, "RIP RichD" 1 0 highlights the relationship between street violence, institutionalized racism, and death of young black men. It begins with a young man behind a police car on an East Oakland street corner. As the police car passes, the young man breaks into dance. The night before the video was filmed, one of the dancers brothers was shot and killed on the same street corner. Instead of retaliating with more violence he called his friends to come together to "shoot" this video, which has now gone viral. Although the majority of TURF videos are of battles shot on cellphones, the TURF Feinz "RIP" series highlights an important relationship to the "deep time" of African influences on American dance and the process of mourning in particular.
Like the TURF Feinz RIP series, jazz funerals of New Orleans are a time for mourners and revelers to celebrate the death of loved ones through dance. Jazz funerals are parades that break in to what is known as the more celebratory "second line." In the 1990's, with the growing "crack wars" of the city Roach observed that the traditional Jazz funeral was revised for a younger generation burying their peers, "The traditional ritual was taken apart and rebuilt to serve the more pressing needs of a threatened generation." 1 1 Although drunkenness, nudity, and crack bags nailed to trees along the parade route marked these events, the young people were still exhibiting resiliency. In the face of incredibly adversity and oppression, they found ways to adapt, and survive as a community (although not always as individuals).
The relationship to death is particularly important in New Orleans as well as parts of Oakland. Cornel West writes of New Orleans shortly after the floods of Hurricane Katrina that, "when you live so close to death…you live more intensely." 1 2 Perhaps this is why New Orleans produces such a rich cultural geography unlike most of America. Cornel West extends his statement to the Jazz era long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit, "Charlie Parker would have killed somebody if he had not blown his horn. The history of black people in America is one of unbelievable resilience in the face of crushing white supremacist powers." 1 3 Like Charlie Parker, there is an urgency and necessity in the performance of TURF dancers in Oakland. Their dances are an expression of their resilience in the face of oppression, violence, and death.
This unit is inspired by TURF dancing because it is local to my community; however I encourage other teachers interested in this unit to explore and use local practices from their own region. Find out what young people are doing, how they are expressing themselves, and bring it into the classroom.
What Influences Help Shape Cultural Attitudes and Beliefs?
Students will ultimately explore a cultural practice of their own that informs their own resiliency. In order to effectively do this, we need to come to a common definition of culture as a class. One definition of culture is, "the specialized behavioral patterns, understandings, adaptations, and social systems that summarize a group of people's learned behavior" 1 4 or more simply put, it is the learned behavior of a group of people. What is important for my students to know is that culture is learned and that it consists of specific traits, "a trait may be an object, a technique, a belief, or an attitude" 1 5. For example, a drum, a dance move, a belief in one god, or an assumption that polyrhythmic movement is superior are all examples of culture.
This unit will specifically look at the cultural attitudes and beliefs that inform dance in the United States. In particular, we will focus on the influences African Diaspora traditions on dance. Brenda Dixon Gottschild notes European attitudes towards dance when she cites ballet for which an erect torso is important, "The straight, uninflected torso indicates elegance or royality and acts as absolute monarch, dominating the dancing body" 1 6 which is in conflict with African attitudes toward dance, "Africanist dance idioms show a democratic equality of body parts. The spine is just one of many possible movement centers; it rarely remains static. The Africanist dancing body is polycentric." 1 7 Gottschild implies here that political structures and societal beliefs also influence attitudes towards dance aesthetics.
In Mumbo Jumbo the Wallflower Order, a European secret society that now operates in the United States, is called upon to end the Jes Grew virus. "But the Wallflower Order had no choice…. Only they could defend the cherished traditions of the West against Jes Grew." 1 8 In an attempt to hold on to Western values, the Wallflower Order is summoned to destroy this dance and to control the influences that help shape cultural attitudes and beliefs. They want to keep the monarchy and domination over people as described by Gottschild. They are afraid of the more democratic and polyrhythmic movement of Jes Grew. In the classroom, students can explore both the Wallflower Order and Jes Grew as metaphors. We will discuss whom or what might be the modern day Wallflower Order and Jes Grew and how they influence our cultural attitudes. In particular, students should understand that there are always forces that influence cultural attitudes and beliefs and there are always people that challenge this status quo.
As a class, we will look at TURF dancing as a metaphor for Jes Grew and an opposition to the status quo. Like Jes Grew, TURF dancing is heavily influenced by "Africanist dance idioms" as described by Gottschild. The more TURF dancers can use their various body parts in complex ways, the more they are prized for their abilities. TURF dance "battles" are an excellent example of this. The goal of the battle is not so much about physically dominating one's opponent; the point of a battle is to use one's body in increasingly complex ways to contort, isolate, and tell a story through movement. The winner of a battle is the dancer that can most successfully negotiate these complex movements. As a class we will explore the influences that lead to specific attitudes and beliefs about TURF dancing and how these are similar and different from Jes Grew. In particular we will look at the origins of both dance forms, their viral nature, and what they do for their "host."
One of the greatest influences African cultural forms have had on America is the process in which something is done. "Africanism shapes processes or the way that something is done, not simply the product or the fact that it is done." 1 9 Keeping this in mind, we don't need to look for "African" dance moves in TURF dancing but rather, we can explore the process of African dance, polycentric movement, and how that has influenced TURF dancing. The study of "process" and other intangible heritages allows us to expand the way we record and see history in ways that are more complex. This is not true of just the African Diaspora, but all cultures that have contributed to American culture.
How has the African Diaspora influenced America?
Gottschild claims that "all texts are intertexts," 2 0 by this she means that all cultural forms are intermixed, particularly in the United States. This is just as true of Southern cuisine as it is of American Ballet. However, Gottschild argues that African and European practices have had the greatest influence on American culture. Joe Roach pushed this idea even further in our seminar when he stated that African cultural forms are not the minority influence but rather the majority in our society. 2 1 New Orleans Jazz, Chicago Blues, New York break dancing and Louisiana Gumbo are all examples of the African influences on mainstream American culture.
The majority of my students are members of the African Diaspora and so there is an immediate relevance for these students; however, I believe that studying the Diaspora is relevant for all students. In particular, hip-hop is now a world-wide phenomenon and people of every background are using it to respond to their own cultures, backgrounds and worlds.
I chose to focus on the African presence in American culture because its significance is often ignored. Gottschild writes, "Although we do not need to and cannot reduce the intertextuality of the African American/ European American equation to a laundry list of sources and influences, we desperately need to cut through the convoluted web of racism that denies the acknowledgment of the Africanist presence of the whole." 2 2 Holidays such as African-American history month or multi-cultural celebrations in our school, while well intentioned and necessary in the past, often compartmentalize and reduce the cultural intermixing of the United States to sporadic contributions. At the same time, we can extract pieces of a whole, such as the Africanist influence on attitudes towards dance aesthetics, to understand how they influence the whole. This changes the assumption that all American culture is based on European culture unless it comes from somewhere else, to all American culture is a mixture of influences from a variety of sources.
It is important for all students to understand the ways in which African cultural practices have shaped what it means to be an American. When thinking of my student population, both multi-generational Americans and newly arrived immigrants, I want them to be able to grasp this knowledge, "The African-European paradigm is the bottom line of American culture that greets and grounds every newly arrived immigrant, regardless of ethnicity and political, social, religious, or economic persuasion." 2 3 By unveiling this dynamic, all students will be able to more consciously claim their relationship to this paradigm rather than having it dictated for them (as it often is by media, community, education, etc…). Elizabeth Martinez argues that people of color in America, "spend too much time understanding our lives in relation to whiteness." 2 4 One goal of this project is to flip this idea and understand our lives in relationship to blackness.
Ishmael Reed sees African influences as the center of American culture through the character of Jes Grew, in Mumbo Jumbo. It is important to note that Jes Grew originates in New Orleans's Congo Square, the meeting place of enslaved Africans. Congo Square was a site of commerce and trade, where people of African descent could sell their goods on their "day off" from enslavement and make their own money. But it was more than that; Congo Square became a meeting place where people could freely practice their traditional cultures through dance, music, food, and mix them to create something new, as Reed writes in his preface to the novel, "The foolish Wallflower Order hadn't learned a damned thing. They thought that by fumigating the Place Congo in the 1890's when people were doing the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Counjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo that this would put an end to it." 2 5 Reed makes a very clear relationship between African dance forms and Jes Grew. In the preface of his novel he clearly establishes that the spreading African influence on American culture is what threatens the Wallflower Order and the traditional power structure of the United States.
TURF dancing is not as inherently political as Mumbo Jumbo however class can still use the novel as a model to make their own connections to the African Diasporic presence in TURF dancing. One possibility is to create a "family tree" for TURF dancing, researching and determining major influences for the dance form. The polycentric body and process for creating dance can then become branches on the "family tree."
Although not based on TURF dancing, David LaChapelle's movie Rize documents another hip-hop dance form, Krump from Compton, California. In the film, he creates a montage of West African dancers and Krump dancers from Compton to highlight the similarity between their styles. It is clear from this montage that the young Krump dancers were repeating a dance form based on West African dance aesthetics (even though they may have not been consciously aware of this connection). Showing this movie might help students make connections to TURF dancing as well.
LaChapelle also highlights revisions made to this dance form as a response to the specific challenges young people face in Compton. In another montage, images of the Rhodney King riots, Watts riots, and police brutality are combined with Krump dancing. LaChapelle makes evident that Crump dancing is a revision of a very old practice. Not only is this dance form an artistic observation of the time period, it is also a means to express emotion, grapple with oppression, and create something positive. In essence, these young dancers were exhibiting resiliency.
What does it mean to be resilient?
Resilience is "a set of qualities that foster a process of successful adaptation and transformation despite risk and adversity." 2 6 It is often thought of as the ability to adapt and persist in the face of adversity. The danger with this definition is that resilience may be interpreted as stagnate when in fact it is an on-going process, "a more meaningful conception views resilience not as a fixed attribute, but as vulnerabilities or protective mechanisms that modify the individual's response to risk situations and operate at turning points during his or her life." 2 7 Most people are resilient most of the time, and this is certainly true of my students. The majority of them have found ways to successfully adapt to risk situations, but being teenagers, they often play with this line. Students will need to explore situations in which they feel they exhibit resiliency and situations in which they struggle with being resilient. Providing the opportunity for students to explore their own resiliency will help them with the final project, and more importantly with their lives.
Jes Grew is a resilient character. Although the Wallflower order tried to eradicate it in the 1890's, it came back more powerful than before. As a class, we can explore how Jes Grew changed in response to it's near annihilation by the Wallflower order. This is also a good opportunity to explore Jes Grew as a metaphor for resilience in the face of racism. In particular, we can brainstorm and discuss real examples of times when people have used culture to be resilient.
How does culture support the resilience of people and community?
The TURF Feinz video, "R.I.P 211" 2 8 starts like many others, a group of kids on an East Oakland corner, already suspects for being together, already feared by mainstream America who may only know the stereotypes of young, urban, black men. What may surprise the uninformed viewer are their smiles and the clear affection in their greetings. The group is on a mission that we are soon made aware of; an abandoned apartment graffitied with messages to a dead friend. Framed by doorways the young men dance alone against the eerie backlight of a floor lamp, their bodies fading in and out almost ghostlike. If you scroll down your computer screen, you will notice a short message, "Rest In Peace Kenneth "211" Ross, gunned down by the police," he was only 18 years old, the video made a few weeks after his birthday. His friends, powerless in one sense against the police, find a way to use their skills to honor and grieve the death of their friend. The RIP series of videos are an excellent example of how culture can support the resilience of people and communities.
In our seminar, Joe Roach introduced the African concept of "repetition with the possibility of revision," 2 9 or "rep 'n rev," the idea that cultural art forms are repeated and yet revised as needed by each artist, generation, community, etc… The value set on revision allows for the performer to respond to the context of their physical environment, socio-political environment and time period. The RIP series is a part of the African and African Diasporic tradition of mourning death through dance and music. In class, we will explore rep 'n rev as a synonym for resilience. As made evident through the RIP series, Mumbo Jumbo and the documentary Rize, the "revision" in rep 'n rev is often in response to risk situations and turning points experienced in a racist society. The TURF Feinz in Oakland, Jes Grew across the nation, and Krump dancers in Compton used "rep 'n rev" to respond to risk situations and modify the violent nature of these events into performance.
After studying the ways in which Jes Grew and TURF dancers use culture to influence their own resilience, students will identify a cultural practice of their own that supports their resilience. This will be the final assessment for the unit in which students can demonstrate what they learned and practice these new ideas in a way that is personally meaningful and not dictated by me as the teacher.
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