Soul Discovery

African American music has, since I can remember, been a deep source of fascination for me. Growing up white, somewhere other than America, well before pay TV and online distractions, my greatest teacher and conduit to the outside world was television, and inevitably American culture. I would go so far as to say that in those formative years, in that short period when a child’s soul is at its most absorbent, I fully expected life outside my modest suburban front door would be nothing less than what I saw on television, and nothing could compete with the ever popular kids show Sesame Street.

The sidewalk. Trash cans. Fire escapes hanging from brick tenements. Jim Henson’s mesmerising frenetic characters. I knew they weren’t real, but I suppose the beauty of this stage of life is that you’re open to all possibly. There were real characters however that appealed above all. Black people. They fascinated me. Exactly why wouldn’t be realised until much later on, but I knew I had a stumbled across something magical when jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis made a guest appearance. In a classic Sesame Street ‘down on the corner’ setting, Wynton, surrounded by adoringly engrossed Muppets, made his trumpet literally talk, pronounce the neigh of a horse, the blare of a elephant, just truly magnificent sounds out of this bent piece of brass tubing. Who are these amazing looking people that make these magical sounds and can do all these wonderful things?

My love of black America has since those days slowly compounded. Jazz, blues, soul music dominated my listening hours. Then when music video came about - Stevie Wonder on the Soul Train programme. The dance floor moved as one to ‘Superstition” in the most wonderful exhibition of effortless rhythm I have ever seen to this day. It was like a religious vision, like a glimpse of a heaven, a most splendid afterlife where the dance floor never empties, the music plays on and the deepest sense of soul is endlessly expressed. The music, the dancing, the smiles on their faces, all just pure soul. Captivating to say the least.

I’ve since read greedily about the evolution of black music in early 20th century America. I’ve read of the ordeal over half a million newly enslaved Africans endured in their sea journey to the new world. Even in the midst of what must have seemed a living hell with chronic disease, unending physical abuse and heartless cruelty, there survived an ember of the African soul or spirit in their song. It echoed through the transport ships, the plantations. It migrated from its roots as a mutation of Gospel and Rhythm and Blues from the rich plains of the Mississippi delta to Chicago, Memphis and beyond. It bent and shifted at the whim of whoever strummed and hollered it, galvanising an almost primal connection to those who most needed it most. In later years Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard all lent their hand to its formation. Mohammad Ali even bought an entourage of soul musicians with him for internal strength in his epic clash with George Forman in Africa.

What element of this soul power do I identify with? I’ve a general knowledge of its Christian interpretation. I’ve attempted Aristotle and theories like Animism. I like some Buddhist ideas like there being no permanent self, but its all a bit fashionable now. Are we merely clutching at ephemeral concepts in denial of the fact that human life is void of meaning? Is that which we celebrate as the positive aspects in life all just artifice and mindless escapism? One explanation has recently appealed however. There’s chapter on Soul in Australian Biologist Jeremy Griffith’s larger thesis on Human Nature. He says we have an instinctive memory of our soul from a time when we were cooperative loving and selfless, and indeed it was a real and wonderful state, but we’ve since lost our way. In summary, he states that once we can understand our dark side, defend our neglect and destruction of the world of our soul, can we return to it with understanding, and bring love to earth. This explanation, the more I digest it, has offered infinite expansion to my much loved idea of the soul of man, and that’s just the beginning it seems!