To Sing Against Singing: Constraint and Liberation in the Spirituals of Roland Hayes
The tenor Roland Hayes came to international fame in the Harlem Renaissance, but the obscurity that followed his success reveals the catch-22 that confronted him and many of his contemporaries. Hayes’s career was plagued by the choice between, on the one hand, assimilating black music to narrations...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
2021
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| In: |
Political theology
Year: 2021, Volume: 22, Issue: 6, Pages: 475-492 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Hayes, Roland 1887-1977
/ Cone, James H. 1938-2018
/ Harlem Renaissance
/ Religious song
/ Liberation
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| IxTheo Classification: | CG Christianity and Politics KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history KBQ North America RD Hymnology |
| Further subjects: | B
James Cone
B Constraint B Harlem Renaissance B Spirituals B Roland Hayes B Eschatology B Liberation |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The tenor Roland Hayes came to international fame in the Harlem Renaissance, but the obscurity that followed his success reveals the catch-22 that confronted him and many of his contemporaries. Hayes’s career was plagued by the choice between, on the one hand, assimilating black music to narrations of primitivity and authenticity and, on the other, subscribing to projects of black music’s transformation under the tutelage of Western form. The first part of this article traces the tangled discourse on the meaning and significance of the spirituals from Frederick Douglass to the Harlem Renaissance. The second examines how this context shaped Hayes’s career and its reception. The third turns to James Cone to articulate a constructive theological reading of divine liberation in the spirituals. Here, the essay argues that the spirituals’ theology must be heard both within the songs’ historical complexity and as witness to a different understanding of history itself. |
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| ISSN: | 1743-1719 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Political theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2020.1855843 |