A long time coming: Harry Belafonte's glorious music history lesson - history of African American music

Black Issues Book Review, Jan-Feb, 2002 by Jeffrey Stringer

Why didn't The Long Road to Freedom release as planned?

Harry Belafonte: The piece was made possible because of an alliance that RCA had with Reader's Digest magazine. Reader's Digest, back then, had a special relationship with the Record of the Month Club, and it gave special packages to them of RCA classical works and popular works. On some occasions, they decided to step out and support original works that were not immersed in pop culture or the classical form, but came from another place. This work was such an attempt, it took us years to complete, and by the time the work was ready to be released, RCA and Reader's Digest had dissolved their relationship. And neither camp could take on the work as a stand-alone except in some diminished or contained way. So I used what veto power I had to hold onto it, expecting that in the not-too-distant future, like a matter of months or a couple of years, someone else would come along and see the beauty and wisdom of the work. So 30 years later, here we are.

Did you make additional adjustments because of the advances in music technology over the past 30 years?

HB: We used digital technology to remaster the work and remove certain surface noises that were natural at the time the record was made. Because we recorded most of it in a place called Webster Hall, which was one of those acoustically perfect structures, there was, from time to time, voluminous sound pouring in from the streets, and you could pick up some of these intrusions on the tape. We felt very disturbed with these modern sounds, horns and whatnot, seeping through in the middle of this rich music of the past. So we were able to remove those sounds and put out a fairly clean version. But from a musical point of view, nothing was disturbed. Everything is as it was.

I imagine the selection process was both exhilarating and frustrating. When you chose the repertoire, what were your criteria?

HB: Of course, your observations are absolutely correct. We had to find some way to narrow this enormous volume of work covering the history of a people over a couple of centuries into some form that would give the listener at least an appetite to want to hear more and know more. We decided to go chronologically, looking at the milestones in black history from the African shores where slavery started to the turn of the century and the threshold of modern technology. What we did was to start with the African period of silence, as I call it, when slaves were not permitted to speak or sing or dance or to have any voice until they began to use the voice of their masters. We then went on to plantation songs, women's songs, and through the Civil War. We kept all the music that had never seen the light of day, except through what Alan Lomax and some other field recorders had done during the 1930s. Then we decided to get great musicologists like Leonard De Paur and have them use their knowledge of black music to transcribe the music of the past into notation, retaining the integrity of the harmony that came from past voicings.

What did De Paur contribute to the project?

HB: We had previously decided that we could not take the technology into the field and get what we wanted; it would be better to bring the field to the technology so we could have control. And when Mr. De Paur discovered that some things eluded him musically--which was hard to believe, given the depth of his own musical knowledge and creativity--we just went down to, for instance, the Georgia Sea Islands and brought up Bessie Jones and various local choirs. And so much of the slave sound had been unmolested and had been retained throughout the century that we had it almost in unabridged form. What he did was to add those nuances, which "enhanced" the music without disturbing the integrity of its origin.

What piece of history, musical or otherwise, came as the biggest surprise to you while you were researching the project?

HB: What I really did not realize until this project was the inordinate extent to which the African-ness of the culture resonates throughout black music, despite all of the cultural containments that have been put upon the black populous. It is a remarkable phenomenon among a group of people who were so overwhelmed by other societies, who have for so long appeared contained from having any relationship to their roots. You have to understand that when a people are contained and kept from speaking any language until they can speak the master's tongue, you become a voiceless creature. You didn't learn grammar; you had to stumble your way through learning a way to communicate with the master that was acceptable and non-threatening. And one of the things in the process was to submit to his religious beliefs. So Christianity became central to an African slave's existence. And through this mechanism of Christianity, they could exploit the continuance of slavery. And despite all that oppression, Africa still dominated not only the black voice, but I would say all of American culture, as well. Rock `n' roll is black, African expression. If it wasn't for Chuck Berry and the blues, I wonder what we'd be singing.