The Perils and Pleasures of "White" Invocations of the "Big Black Lady Inside

The desire to sing someone else's song is always so hopelessly contaminated in relations of power " (Razack, personal communication, 1998).This discussion is situated within my work as a practitioner in the field of community music, informal singing practices among adults, and integrated arts education.The following is an exploration of some of the tensions that arise when Black musicality is invoked by dominant social groups as a way to get people singing together.For example, in my recent study on some of the pedagogical practices that some singing teachers use in order to bring adults who are anxious about singing into singing practices, one practitioner remarked that she sometimes instructs people to call upon the "big Black lady inside."In this sense, the invocation of Black musicality is assumed to be an attempt to encourage people, most often white people, to go beyond their own anxiety and self-censure.By invoking the "big Black lady inside" to invite adults to sing, I argue that such a term invokes an "Other" which is ultimately based in stereotypes.These have a historical genealogy in popular cultural images and narratives of the "big Black woman Gospel singer," the "Mammy," and so on, which positions the Black body (especially the female body) as innately musical.Stereotypes are persistent constructions that objectify the "Other," but they are also always based in actual histories.In the context of a North American society that is built upon the terrible histories of racism, a blurring of discourses about singing becomes highly problematic.It is these histories and socially constituted discourses that have shaped the musical practices of all Western music educators, no less strongly than the histories and discourses of Eurocentric musical practices.This complexity makes the practice of invoking the "big Black lady inside" fraught with danger.Without question, the musical practices of African Americans have proven a powerful and ubiquitous presence and have influenced contemporary musical practices within North America and beyond.American "Black" culture has in many ways become synonymous with "soulful music," to the point that non-Blacks will often assume that every Black person they meet is musically skilled and musically active.Thus, "Blackness" has become a signifier of innate musicality, especially rhythm and expressivity.\In tum, ideas of the innately musical Black body rely upon notions of "soulfulness," sensuality, sexuality, and emotionality.Set against notions of propriety and respectability, these same qualities can easily be positioned (and often are positioned) as lack of restraint and abandon of reason, control, and civility-in short, degenerate.Marian Anderson's 1939 Easter concert provides a profound example of the exception that proves this theory.2Her presence as a classical singer posed a dilemma for White supremacists since her form of musicality reflected European elite musical practices-a form that many white Americans associated with "Whiteness," propriety and bourgeois respectability.I suggest her politically transformative moment would not have occurred if she had excelled as a Blues singer or another genre associated with Blackness.It was her association with "Whiteness" that caused the racial panic among the DAR.My use of the term "White" here comes from Razack's theory of "Whiteness" and "White" space that uses "White" as a symbolic "colour of domination" (1998, pp.11-16).J While Blackness is almost exclusively about racia1ization and its effects, "Whiteness," in its symbolic sense, is not solely based on race, but is also equally about class, sexuality, gender, age and so on."Whiteness" represents an organizing term signifying an interlocked system of hierarchies and relations of power among categories of people, concepts, sets of beliefs and practices.Each hierarchy requires the participation of all the other hierarchies to prop it up.For instance, sexism (based on a gender hierarchy) could not continue without

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