After reading Stoever’s introduction on the sonic color line and the listening ear, I think I’ve furthered my understanding of Douglass’s piece, particularly the ending. I thought it was odd when Douglass mentioned Northerners using song as a way to prove a slave’s contentment/happiness, and this was mainly because the white Northerners would have more access to language and be able to literally understand the lyrics, as opposed to Douglass and other enslaved people who may or may not understand what the words were actually saying. But after discussing the listening ear, this made a lot more sense. The white Northerners were not hearing the same things that the enslaved people were, they were accustomed to hearing song as a release of joy, not pain. White Northerners’ cultural context of the acoustic environment made it so that the enslaved people’s pain couldn’t be found in their singing, while Douglass’s listening ear gave him access to the deep rooted sadness of the songs he and other enslaved people sang despite not always understanding what the lyrics meant. It’s strange to use Stoever’s book, published 171 years after Douglass’s narrative, to contextualize what Douglass was discussing, but this is only further proof for Stoever’s claim of sound’s presence in racism and racial dynamics.
“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs… The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness.”
This particular quote made me think of the king in Calvino’s story, and how the meaning of the conversations around him was lost to him. Douglass is not analogous to the king, except for the fact that he could not understand the lyrics of the songs he sang. For me, these two quotes show the power of language in communicating emotion without needing meaning. Douglass says it himself, whenever he heard the songs, he would be filled with a sadness, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the lyrics, but the feeling that is conveyed through the sounds the enslaved people produced. For Douglass, his listening ear provided him with enough context to access the true meanings of the songs he sang.
Question: what about songs made it accessible to enslaved people to express their sadness?
