Revolution Televised.pdf

What You See Is What You Get 57
VCR- and CD-filled era, black radio plays a huge role in shaping black
taste and opinion.
Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues
African American culture is rooted in an oral tradition.
Ben Sidran, Black Talk
The African oral traditions of storytelling, the passing of myths,
and music were used by slaves as a means of navigating the hostile
environment of slavery. Music was used in work songs, as a means
of subversion and escape, and as a mode of expressing the horror
of their circumstances. As Amiri Baraka explains in Blues People,
African American music developed from
the most salient characteristic of African, or at least West African,
music . . . a type of song in which there is a leader and a chorus; the
leading lines of the song sung by a single voice, the leader’s, alternating
with a refrain sung by the “chorus.” 4
This was reflected in the early call-and-response structure of slave
work songs, blues, and gospel. Cultural legacy and historical necessity
continue to make oral tradition a crucial component of African
American society and cultural production, across changing times
and technologies.
In The Death of Rhythm and Blues, African American music
and cultural critic Nelson George discusses the development of
the African American oral tradition and describes the role of black
radio and the deejay as central to this evolution. In post–World
War II America, black radio stations became an arena for community
announcements and black business advertisements and a platform
for black independent music. The 1950s saw the emergence
of the black personality deejays, “inheritors of the oral tradition.” 5
These deejays embraced the role of the leader in the call-andresponse
structure. The African American audience is positioned as
the chorus or respondents, interpellated by the news and the styles
and personalities of the deejays. Al Benson, a Chicago deejay, was
considered a forerunner of this style and one of the first deejays to
avoid passing or sounding white on radio. His “black everyman’s
style” influenced deejays across America. The commercial success