art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

Second line is a form of street dancing distinct
to New Orleans that grew out of traditional
African American parades. A “second line” refers
to the people who follow a procession, but is
also used to refer to the entire event—a jazz
funeral, a Mardi Gras parade—or to the
distinctive syncopated rhythm of the music
associated with these events.
case study: xavier university of louisiana 59
New Orleans is probably the most African-retentive city in the
United States. You can see it across the board. When somebody asks
me to describe this city I say that New Orleans is a polyrhythmic
culture unlike any other. Just as polyrhythms are composed of
multiple rhythms simultaneously, New Orleans culture is composed
of this polyrhythmic thing.
New Orleans is the only city in the United States where you can
have absolute diversity and complete unity simultaneously, and it
is not a contradiction. Example, if I go to a second line, there can be
a thousand people in the street, they’re all doing their own thing,
absolute diversity, and they’re all dancing on the exact beat. Complete
unity. That’s what I think this community is about, that’s [a uniquely]
African thing. And it’s an improvisational thing.
I’ve traveled all over this world and a great many places, and yet
here, you can get musicians, writers, dancers, poets in the same room
talking about ideas and understanding what the others are saying
without competition. That doesn’t happen anywhere else.
But again, it’s the village; everybody in the village contributes
what they contribute. Gumbo, you each put in the pot what you can
bring. I think that’s why this place is so unique. I think if we could
transpose that into what we call the educational system, we could
revolutionize what is called an education. But because it’s not a part
of the traditional European pedagogy, it’s very difficult for people
to come to grips with it.
richard Every year, I present a film to my students called Black Notions
from White America. It presents the minstrel, presents the mammy,
the pickaninny, the coon . . . and I get kids to recognize those images,
and then to think about what are those images today in society.
That’s how I get them to start looking at the symbolism and start
relating them to how they have bought into someone else’s reality.
It’s not your reality, but you embrace it as yours.
And that’s really a problem [in] teenage life. Teenage artists are
driven toward those images, but then when it comes down to them
buying into what they’re trying to do and the language they’re
trying to create, you know, their originality and that kind of thing,
then you get them to see that they don’t want to conform to those
images, and likenesses, they want to create their own.
[Eminem is] the Elvis Presley of today. One thing, though, man,
is that we don’t have a way of presenting that kind of information to
challenge the kid. You know if you’re going to take those stereotypes,
make a positive statement, that’s one thing. But if you’re going to
reinforce those stereotypes to destroy the community, then that’s