higher ground: stevie wonder, aretha franklin, curtis mayfield, and the rise and fall of american...

Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall ofAmerican Soul by Craig WernerReview by: Andrew FloryNotes, Second Series, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Mar., 2005), pp. 752-754Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4487448 .

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752 NOTES, March 2005

important article in the volume is Steiner's two-part study of Herrmann's score for Psycho-a study which has been excerpted several times in other publications but has never been reprinted in its entirety until now. Steiner, a well-established composer in his own right (his scores for episodes of the original Twilight Zone and Star Trek tele- vision series are cult favorites), chose to pursue a Ph.D. at the time and absorbed the techniques of musicology. Combined with his practical experience, he broke new ground with this analysis, uniquely reveal- ing how one consummate composer viewed another, and laid the foundations for fu-

ture writers on film music by producing a high quality study. Thirty years after its publication, it is still essential reading for anyone with an interest in film music.

The commentaries, interviews, and analy- ses make this reprint of Film Music Notebook indispensable for any library whose patrons express an interest in film music. Kudos to the Film Music Society for expanding their mission by making this historic and important publication available once again.

BOB KOSOVSKY Music Division, The New York Public Library

for the Performing Arts

AMERICAN MUSIC

Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul. By Craig Werner. NY- Crown Publishers, 2004. [xii, 337 p. ISBN 0-609-60993-9. $24.00.] Bibliography, discography, index.

Craig Werner's new book Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis May- field, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul is the latest offering from a familiar voice in the criticism of African American musical idioms. While his two previous books on the subject, A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race, and the Soul of America (New York: Plume, 1998) and Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), deal with more wide-ranging issues of race and its re- lation to African American musical idioms, Higher Ground focuses exclusively on soul music as a means to disseminate what Werner terms a unified secular "gospel vision." Werner achieves this by weaving narrative and analysis of the lives and music of three of the most important practitioners of soul music. Higher Ground emphasizes the connections between the personal, political, and activist leanings of these three artists, the messages contained in their music, and the faith instilled in all of them in their most formidable years as children reared in the quietly segregated North.

Higher Ground simultaneously traces the careers of Franklin, Mayfield, and Wonder through an introduction and five chapters. Although the book proceeds in a linear manner through time, Werner conve-

niently combines common themes from the lives and music of the three performers despite their occasional historical incon- gruity. Chapter 2, "Keep on Pushing: The Soul of the Freedom Movement," focuses on Wonder, Franklin, and Mayfield becom- ing self-sufficient musicians who strove for the financial and creative independence that was necessary to promulgate a some- times radical message, even though each of these artists experienced this particular struggle at slightly different times. Simi- larly, chapter 3, " 'Spirit in the Dark': Music and the Powers of Blackness," chronicles the breakthrough of all three artists as musical auteurs: Franklin in 1967 with her move to Atlantic Records, Wonder in 1971 with his new Motown contract, and May- field in 1970 with the formation of his own Curtom record label.

One of the most compelling aspects of this book, and what perhaps allows these three artists to represent soul music so ef- fectively as a whole, is the way in which their careers align in the mid-1970s. Chapter 4, " 'Songs in the Key of Life': The Gospel Vision in Changing Times," concen- trates on the years between 1973 and 1976, a time in which the careers of Mayfield and Franklin experienced a decline and Wonder released his last great album after



Book Reviews 753

a near fatal accident. Finally, chapter 5, " 'Who's Zoomin' Who?': Megastars, Monu- ments, Elders," tracks the difficult experi- ences shared by Franklin, Mayfield, and Wonder during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, when their pointed messages seemed to be less relevant in a culture where rhythm and blues was morphing into the more placid quiet storm genre, and hip-hop emerged as the best platform to disseminate radical social commentary.

At the outset of the book Werner writes only briefly about the decision to pair these artists. In spite of the obvious connections between Franklin, Mayfield, and Wonder, the type of distinctive "gospel vision" that the book claims is common among these three, and what necessitates their stories being discussed in the same book, is at times debatable. Werner's greatest argu- ment for dealing with these musicians in the same study is the unique window in time in which African Americans from the North had an opportunity to "preach" their gospel vision to an interested white audi- ence. Similarly, the association between this music and the political energy of the African American freedom movement gives the messages of the three a similar charac- ter. Nevertheless, the implication throughout the book that these three artists crossed over from gospel to pop musical styles in an effort to spread their vision to a wider audi- ence is not substantiated.

The most pressing issue addressed in the book is the nature of Werner's "gospel vision" itself. Mayfield, Wonder, and Franklin were three artists whose music was deeply political in nature, and whose message re- flected many of the pressing issues that faced the African American community during a roughly fifteen-year period between 1961 and 1976. Only by realizing that Werner is describing a fascinating process of secular spirituality-a type of worldly "gospel"-can one reconcile the distance between these artists promoting positive virtues, such as peace or compas- sion, and the idea that Franklin, Wonder, and Mayfield were, in fact, delivering the word of God as a divine force. Throughout the book Werner contrasts this "gospel vision" with what he calls a "blues impulse" in African American popular music. The dis- tinction between these two modes of pre- sentation is crucial for Werner; a blues-

based outpouring reflects the need for survival while a gospel message preaches redemption.

The music of Aretha Franklin, especially the commercial gospel recordings of her early years on the Atlantic label, offers the strongest, most compelling faith-oriented music that is discussed in the book. Franklin's undeniably strong connection to the African American church due to the mission of her father C. L. Franklin, perhaps the most famous African American preacher of his day, imbues her music with undeniable gospel music authority. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Franklin's music is secular, and in spite of her strong connection to Christianity her repertoire offers little social commentary in comparison to the work of Mayfield and Wonder. Werner is most concerned with the portion of Franklin's music that has an outwardly womanist stance. Yet, it seems that the deeply personal nature of a large portion of Franklin's most famous music, although it sounds like gospel, eschews the "gospel vision" exhibiting instead a more passion- ate "blues impulse."

It is perhaps ironic that Wonder and Mayfield, not the daughter-of-the-church Franklin, offer the greatest examples of Werner's secular "gospel vision." Werner successfully traces the political and activist causes of both of these musicians and shows how these strong beliefs pervade the majority of Mayfield's output and the music of Wonder after he was given free reign by Motown in 1971. Wonder's often buoyant lyrics, and his uncanny ability to turn any public statement into a metaphysical sermon, are very successfully interpreted through the lens of the "gospel vision," giv- ing order to what may otherwise be seen as an unfocused general message. But Werner's model works best in interpreting Mayfield's work, along with his low-key public persona. The activist messages that un- derlie so much of Mayfield's work throughout his thirty-year career clearly extol a strong sense of secular spirituality based on an ideology that is strongly informed by the African American freedom movement.

Higher Ground is a welcome addition to the literature of works on rhythm and blues that exhibit a true critical stance. He has explored one of the most complex issues surrounding this repertoire: the nature of



754 NOTES, March 2005

the spirituality that provides much of the social and contextual underpinnings of African American popular idioms in post- war America. This study considers northern rhythm and blues as a central force in black life in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, contrary to the stereotype of this music as substantively inferior to its southern coun- terpart. Readers who are familiar with the central arguments of such diverse books as Samuel Floyd's The Power of Black Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), books that view northern rhythm and blues in this manner, will find Werner's stance refresh- ing. Werner has a deep grasp of the issues that surround the music of this time and place, and any student of African American music will find this book unique and thought provoking.

ANDREW FLORY

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. By Michael Broyles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. [387 p. ISBN 0-300-10045-0. $40.00.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.

Michael Broyles's history of mavericks in American music attempts to document a paradox: a tradition of tradition-defying musicians in America. To do this, Broyles calls upon his considerable narrative skills and his experience with social histories of music; he has previously written Music of the Highest Class: Elitism and Populism in Ante- bellum Boston (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), and edited the journals of Lowell Mason's year in Europe (A Yankee Musician in Europe: The 1837 Journals of Lowell Mason [Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990]).

A brief introductory chapter sets out Broyles's focus and plan for the book: "this book is not about mavericks themselves; it is about the maverick tradition. It is about American society's long-standing fascina- tion with the figure of the maverick, what that means about the place of music in American culture and what that tells us about American society" (p. 2, emphasis in

original). After this introduction, Broyles sets out with a series of chapters that profile various American composers who, for one reason or another, have stood outside the musical mainstream of their times. Part 1 of the book, "Pioneers," contains chapters on William Billings and Anthony Philip Heinrich, both composers who often get short-changed in music histories, even histories of American music. The source mate- rials used in these chapters are extremely valuable resources, and it is also useful to have brief, thoroughly-researched bio- graphical portraits of these important early American musicians. Both of these chapters have a strong focus on the relationship of the composers to their communities, and the tensions that arose as a result of their insistence on following their own personal vision.

Part 2 of the book, "New Concepts and Forces in American Culture," begins with a chapter on Charles Ives and Leo Ornstein, which resembles the two chapters on Billings and Heinrich. From there, how- ever, the reader might be forgiven for won- dering where the mavericks had gone, for in the next two chapters, Broyles takes a considerable detour. In order to set up the material on twentieth-century music in the second half of the book, he devotes a chapter (" 'Prologue to the Annual Tragedy' ") to demonstrating how isolated American music was from the modernist revolution happening in the other arts (both in Europe and America) in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The following chapter, "The Community of the Ultramoderns," returns to the mavericks, profiling Edgard Varese, Carl Ruggles, Charles Seeger, and Henry Cowell briefly, but its real focus is on the development of self-organizing societies of musicians. Two such organizations, the International Com- posers' Guild and the League of Com- posers, the conflicts and tensions between them, and their effect on the American concert scene and the American public's acceptance of modern music in the 1920s, are the primary material of this chapter.

After setting the scene in these two chapters, the third large section of the book, "After the War," returns to the topic of mavericks. This section includes a chapter on what Broyles terms "The Serial Wars," and the debate over who was more margin-



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