By Mark Anthony Neal | with thanks to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Thursday, March 21, 2013.
Amiri
Baraka once wrote that Black music, “to retain its freshness, its
originality, its specific expression of its own history and contemporary
reality in each generation creates a “new music.” This was yet another
articulation of what Baraka once called the “changing same”—the thing
that links Black expressive culture to a commitment to innovation, while
remaining wedded to the traditions that birthed it. No one understood
that better than Nikki Giovanni, when she went into the studio more
than 40 years ago to record Truth is On Its Way.
At
the time, Giovanni was one of the most visible and provocative poets of
the Black Arts Movement—Baraka, Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti), Sonia
Sanchez and the late Henry Dumas are some of the others. The Black Arts
Movement was premised on the idea of an art “for the people,” thus many
of the movement’s artists sought to make an explicit connection to folk
up on the boulevard (you can’t be on the boulevard if you don’t talk
like you from the boulevard). For Giovanni though, it wasn’t just about
the folk up in the club on Saturday night, but also the folk in the pews
on Sunday morning.
I was five years old when my mother walked into the house with a copy of Truth is On the Way.
I’ve listened to the recording hundreds of times since then; indeed
Giovanni’s cadences are incorporated in the rhythms of my own writing
style. At the time I didn’t fully understand the genius of Giovanni’s
vision—she was blatantly trying to bring the profane in conversation
with the sacred, two decades before Kirk Franklin and later Kanye West
would bring ghetto theodicy to the top of the pop charts. Truth is On Its Way
features recordings of some of Giovanni’s signature poems, mashed over
classic gospel recordings performed by the New York Community Choir
(under the direction of Benny Diggs).
Truth is On Its Way
opens with the classic “Peace Be Still,” written by the late Reverend
James Cleveland. The song’s narrative is based on the idea of Jesus
calming the sea during a storm (“the wind and the waves shall obey my
will/ Peace be still!) and this was the perfect allegory perhaps for
communities that were literally under siege during the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements. Giovanni sought to make such a connection
explicit as midway through the song she breaks into her poem “Great Pax Whitey”
taking aim at American hegemony: “and America was born/where war became
peace and genocide patriotism/and honor is a happy slave/cause all
God’s ‘chillen’ need rhythm.”
On
the track “Second Rapp Poem” Giovanni pays tribute to the “real talk”
activism of H. Rap Brown (the now incarcerated Jamil Al-Amin): “they
ain’t never gonna get Rapp/he’s a note, turned himself into a million
songs/Listen to Aretha call his name.”
And it was Ms. Franklin who inspired the album’s most poignant moment, via Giovanni’s “Poem for Aretha.”
As the lead vocalist of the New York Community Choir mournfully sings
“Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” Giovanni gives praise to the woman
who is, arguably, the most important and popular Black women artist
ever. Written at the height of Franklin’s fame, Giovanni places Franklin
within the context of great Black music (“pushed every Black singer
into Blackness”) and the tragic lives of her artistic foremothers
(“Aretha doesn’t have to re-live Billie Holiday’s life/doesn’t have to
re-live Dinah Washington’s death”). The gravity of Giovanni’s poem is so
clear forty-years later, as we've witnessed the slow demise and death
of Whitney Houston.
Though
Gil-Scott Heron and The Last Poets are often credited as the
“god-fathers” of hip-hop, Giovanni, who recorded five albums in the
1970s, doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her influence. It’s a track
like “Ego Tripping,” the only track on Truth is On Its Way
not backed by Gospel music (though no less spirtual), that one hears
the impact that Giovanni had on the poetic sensibilities of the hip-hop
generation—the song is the very essence of an old-school rap boast (“the
filings from my finger nails are semi-precious jewels”).
“Ego Tripping” was eventually featured in an episode of A Different World, performed by the women in the cast and remixed by Blackalicious on their disc Nia (2000).
And it’s clear that hip-hop’s poet laureate Rakim Allah must have been
thinking about Giovanni’s line “I turned myself into my self and was
Jesus” when he wrote “My name is Rakim Allah / And R & A stands for
'Ra' / Switch it around / But still comes out 'R'" on his classic “My
Melody.” It’s about time we give Nikki Giovanni her due as a god-parent
of hip-hop.
Earlier Version Originally Published @ Black Voices/AOL (2005).
Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking For Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities
(New York University Press). He is professor of Black Popular Culture
in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke
University and the host of the Weekly Webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.