African American Oral Traditions in Louisiana
By Mona Lisa Saloy
Since Africans were transported as slaves to America, Black Americans
have nurtured and created a dynamic culture within a climate of intense
racial, social, and economic exploitation and injustice. They developed
kinship networks, religious beliefs, and families infused with their values
and race knowledge. This rich expressive culture articulates their deepest
feelings, aspirations, and wishes.
In both urban and rural communities, Black Americans have maintained a
lively and widespread verbal art tradition in spite of urbanization, industrial
growth, education, and mass communications. This has been possible
because Blacks--for their own survival and sanity--formed a separate
culture within the dominant culture, one which remains predominantly oral.
In New Orleans, as in other urban centers where Blacks live apart yet as a
part of the larger city, stories, songs, and other kinds of folklore continue to
develop. The wealth of oral lore includes many traditional forms such as
children's sidewalk and jump rope rhymes, handclap songs, and rap, as
well as toasts and tales recited by adults. Although each genre has its own
concerns and norms, all represent a unique cultural response to a difficult
historical and economic climate.
Storytelling has always been important in African-American culture. In
Africa, people sang or chanted long oral narratives concerning gods,
heroes, and demons. In Louisiana, adults spin their own heroic tales about
characters ranging from Marie Laveau to Stackolee. These tales are often
known, sung and recited by everyone in the community, with each person
adding his or her own versions. Because these songs or stories are not
written, the words vary among versions, but the basic content remains
essentially the same.
Ahmos Zu-Bolton's storytelling is one example of Louisiana's rich Black
oral tradition. Zu-Bolton inherited his storytelling honestly, growing up in a
front-porch storytelling arena and learning to tell stories from his family in
the small rural town of DeRidder, Louisiana. He was especially influenced
by the "lies" told by his father, who competed with Zu-Bolton's uncles to be
the biggest "teacher" in their front porch storytelling sessions.
At home, his illiterate great-grandmother, Mama Easter, fashioned tall
tales. She also kept family history alive with her stories about the family's
ancestors, including one about the origin of Zu-Bolton's name. An ancestor
who had escaped from a Mississippi plantation was branded with the
German owners' name so that people would know who owned him if he
escaped again. Some of Ahmos' people during Reconstruction "decided to
keep the name Zu-Bolton in his honor because they were really proud that
he was man enough and arrogant enough and freedom lovin' enough to try
to snatch his own liberty and not wait for someone else's emancipation."
Today, Zu-Bolton's storytelling reflects his front porch introduction to the
tradition. He has enjoyed a successful writing career while holding onto his
oral roots.
Toasting, a modern and primarily urban form of Black oral lore, has its
roots in older traditions like signifying and playing the dozens. A toast is a
lengthy, recited narrative or poem describing a series of exploits by a
central character. Focusing on the main character's heroic acts and
exercises of wit, the toast presents values through actions.
Toast characters include recognizable and popular figures like Shine,
Stackolee and the Signifying Monkey. Many are Black entrepreneurs
pursuing the American Dream and its promise of plenty for those who can
achieve entry into mainstream American society--an entry which in reality
is denied them. Willing to grab or take their success into their own hands,
these characters announce their intentions to survive in style, which can
mean "heroic masculinity" or conspicuous consumption.
Toasts are commonly recited on street corners, front porches, prisons, or
wherever men and groups of Blacks get together. In the performance of a
toast, the "toaster" seems to become the toast character or "big man" and
to take on his "style". Listeners can celebrate their existence through
identifying with the success of the hero, whose actions stand in contrast to
the reality of their own oppressed circumstances.
The toast is heroic because the chief character will accept death in the
face of danger and therefore subjugates himself or herself to the group. In
fighting to the point of death or the possibility of dying, the hero ennobles
the group.
For Arthur Pfister, New Orleans poet and grand voice in the toast tradition,
hearing or performing the winning ways of the central character becomes
as creative a release as Black music. Growing up in the Sixth Ward, he
learned toasts from old Black men--chocolate to vanilla--sitting together for
days on the steps or front porch or standing near a lamp post.
Pfister affectionately recalls many of the "bull sessions" that became
performer-audience events in the community, with one or more participants
reciting heroic tales such as "Shine and the Titanic" or the hilarious antics
of "The Signifying Monkey." These boasting narrative tales of bad guys
who confront and vanquish any adversary instantly and guiltlessly are not
drinking speeches but adventures of Black verbal prowess. In the toast, a
mix of the dozens and rapping, the power of "talk" overcomes all conflicts
in society.
Unlike the typical neighborhood toaster, Arthur Pfister is a working
professional, an educator, published novelist, and poet. His performances
include his own New Orleans version of the traditional toast "Shine and the
Titanic" along with other completely original toasts such as "The Ballad of
Billy Bob" and its X-rated counterpart "The Ballad of Nigger Bob."
Although toasting is primarily an unwritten literary tradition, many toasters
today work from written texts. The ability to improvise is highly valued,
though, and performers can adapt their toasts to different audiences.
Creative tradition-bearers like Arthur Pfister continue to contribute to the
development and vitality of the toasting tradition.
The African American tradition of dueling rhymes is evident in many oral
art forms. Toasting, rapping, signifying and playing the dozens are all
demonstrations of verbal skill. Today's rapping is closely related to
toasting, which in turn has much in common with signifying, an
exhibition of aggressive wit and indirect verbal assault on a victim.
Signifying and toasting also share elements of the dozens.
"The Dozens" are an elaborate insult contest. Rather than insulting
an opponent directly, a contestant derides members of the
opponent's family, usually his mother. The dozens has its origins in the
slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves--generally slaves
punished with dismemberment for disobedience--were grouped in lots of a
"cheap dozen" for sale to slave owners. For a Black to be sold as part of
the "dozens" was the lowest blow possible.
In an effort to toughen their hearts against the continual verbal assault
inflicted on them as part of the "dozens," Blacks practiced insulting each
other indirectly by attacking the most sacred "mother" of the other. The
person who loses his "cool" and comes to blows loses the contest. The
person who outwits and out-insults the other while keeping a "cool" head is
the winner. Elements of both signifying and the dozens appear in the
toasts tradition.
This is an excerpt from a longer article by Professor Mona Lisa Saloy
in which she discusses at length children’s folklore in New Orleans
focusing on what she calls sidewalk games which include "sidewalk
songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games”.
The full article first appeared in the 1990 Louisiana Folklife Festival
booklet. Mona Lisa Saloy is a poet and currently Assistant Professor
of English and director of Creative Writing at Dillard University in New
Orleans, and is (ABD) completing her dissertation on Black Beat Poet
Bob Kaufman for the Ph.D. at Louisiana State University in Baton
Rouge.