James Weldon Johnson and the 'poor white musician'

A lesson on the art of 'reading for filth'

James Weldon Johnson

One of my many pleasures in working on my book project, Memory, History, and the Echoes of Diaspora, has been reading the work of James Weldon Johnson. Johnson figures throughout, but most prominently in the fifth chapter of the manuscript, as well as in my digital humanities project, Singing the Nation Into Being, an experiment near and dear to my heart. Singing the Nation is a small collection of performances and mashups of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as “The Black National Anthem,” uploaded to YouTube.

Johnson was a renaissance man: lawyer, scholar, principal, novelist, poet, songwriter, diplomat, first African American Executive Secretary for the NAACP, essayist, and so much more.

One of my favorite pieces of writing is a short editorial response to a letter from a reader of The Globe. Johnson’s editorial appeared in The New York Age on September 23, 1915. In the letter a “poor white musician,” Eugene De Bueris, laments the fate of white musicians playing ragtime, who face stiff competition from “Negro ‘so called’ musicians.’” Black musicians (or ‘so called’), he complains, seem to be preferred over white musicians who have “spent well nigh a fortune—aside from numerous years of painstaking study” to play ragtime “better than the Negro” (617). Johnson notes that the letter writer circles around an unspoken assertion—that Negro players were preferred because they were untrained, and therefore, cheaper, than white musicians. The only path left for the “poor white musician,” De Bueris avers, is to “blacken his face to make a livelihood or starve” (618). Really, sir?!

Johnson’s reply, I imagine, began with an elegant, “Tuh,” before proceeding to read the man’s lamentation for filth.

You can almost hear the “first of all” in his voice here:

“Since ragtime music has swept the world and become universally known as American music, there have been attempts to rob the Negro of the credit of originating it; but this is in accord with an old habit of the white race; as soon as anything is recognized as great, they set about to claim credit for it. In this manner they have attempted to rob the Negro of the credit of originating the plantation stories and songs. We all remember how after the Russo-Japanese war attempts were made to classify the Japanese as white. In the same way, scholars have “doubted” that the Zulus were real Negroes. Had Jack Johnson continued as champion, somebody would have tried to prove that he was not a real Negro.”

Johnson then lists a number of white appropriations in letters, music, art, the sciences, even religion, before noting, “The truth is the pure white race has not originated a single one of the great, fundamental intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilizations” (619).

My imagination runs wild as I picture poor Mr. Eugene shrinking with each riposte. At the very least, there is a tiny violin soundtracking his lament. But Johnson’s message is clear: Black people created the art form, and are the preferred musicians not only because they are skillful but also because they infuse the music with “a certain abandon” (620). Today, we call that soul. That soul is knowledge, it is history, it is art. It conveys experiences and meanings. It is language embedded and transmitted—difficult to simulate, impossible to capture (“often imitated, never duplicated”). Here, I am also circling back to my engagement with ephemera as knowledge (see Singing the Nation).

Yet, Johnson cautions, Black musicians cannot continue only on this “natural gift,” this soul with which they imbue the art. Painstaking study is still required. Why? “The white musician feels his competition, and that means that they will stop at nothing to put him out of business” (620).

On the surface, Johnson’s advice to improve and develop oneself is measured and wise. To protect the art handed down by our unsung ancestors, requires labor and constant vigilance. But what does it mean to create art in the context of knowing it is always ripe for appropriation? What does it mean to have that knowledge of the steal-ability of one’s art co-exist alongside the creation of the art itself?

Johnson’s advice calls for us to make “slight sacrifices” and to put in the work to continue to hold Black art forms close to the creators. The letter from De Bueris is not only about artistry, it is also about the economics that undergird racist notions of (white) artistic skill and merit and (Black) technical deficiency—and still persist not only in the arena or music, performance, and art.