Speaker Invites Students to Explore Culture
Keiko Wells, a scholar and folklorist from Ritsmueikan University in Kyoto, Japan, was the chief speaker for the Department of English Speakers Series 2008 on Wednesday Sept. 3. She is visiting the United States for two weeks and was asked by the department head to present her recent work, What I See in America through the Study of Black Spirituals, said Wells.
Wells became interested in American culture at a young age.
“I really liked cowboys,” Wells said.
As she continued her education she found a passion for American folklore with particular attention to black spirituals. Black Spirituals are songs sung by African-Americans, not to be confused with gospel music. Black spirituals are songs most commonly sung by black slaves during and prior to the Civil War era.
Wells told the group of students and teachers on Wednesday that she can’t understand deep southern accents and would require an assistant to help her communicate.
“I can’t understand them, can you?” Wells said.
When asked how she can be interested in a genre that she can’t understand, Wells would said that it is the power behind the words. Wells said she enjoys to listen to the music and to read the words because she has found them to be very inspirational.
This inspiration is what helped Wells to begin the work that she is doing currently and has done in the recent past. She said she is translating these black spirituals into Japanese so that people from her native country can learn more of American culture and hopefully enjoy these songs on the same level that she does. She says there is a lot of confusion pertaining to black spirituals in Japan.
“Many people in my country think that ‘Amazing Grace’ was written by a black man, when it was really written by a White Englishman (John Newton),” Wells said.
She then said many Japanese don’t understand there is a difference in the songs based on region and time. Many songs during the civil war were sung by slaves about obtaining freedom, however after that period many songs were jubilant.
Wells said she commenced her publications by researching through a sociological/historical approach by reading many anthologies that contain lyrics to the songs that black Americans sang. She also took a musical approach in her research by listening to the most dated black spirituals.
Wells highlighted two men that helped to preserve Black Spirituals and the culture within them, George White and William Frances Allen.
White is known for taking black spirituals and refining and rearranging them to make them more marketable. He formed a choir with eight of his Black students in the early 1900s called the Fisk Jubilee Singers. This group became world-renowned and was most famous for singing a famous black spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
Allen is noted for being a member of the Freed Man’s Aid Commission and published one of the most important black spiritual anthologies in history called “Slave Songs.” His goal was to integrate these Black Spirituals into Western American culture by expressing the powerful lyrics that he collected and published, Wells said.
Wells credits these men with modern culture having access to black spirituals today. She said they understood the importance of understanding this culture and the depth and meaning behind these songs. By translating these songs into Japanese, Wells said she hopes to bring an understanding of American life to her native people and to connect two very different cultures.
Wells went on to discuss some of the meanings behind the songs. One example she gave was that in many songs the singer refers to himself as sinner. The word “sinner” gives the song depth by evoking fear that “runs through their body like blood and covers the universe-it is their identity,” Wells said.
This fear is oftentimes related to the slave life that many of the singers lead, she said, a life that for many was filled with abuse. Many slaves were taught prejudiced ideas from the time of their birth, being isolated from the outside world, they learned to hate themselves, she said. These songs, these black spirituals, helped the African-American slaves to cope with the conditions they lived in. Wells said the relationship to song to the conditions in which the slaves lived, asking why someone would sing when their life was in danger. The answer, she said, is reflected in the resilience of the human soul, which has motivated her to continue sharing black spiritual culture. Because of the experiences the slaves had, she said, their music is richer.
“The values of anyone who survived this pain is extremely valuable,” she said.
Wells was one of many speakers to come that will be presenting during the Department of English Speakers Series this year on campus. This series was developed to promote arts and humanities in students’, as well as the publics’, lives. The series features a variety of speakers ranging from folklorist Wells, to creative writer Brandon Schrand, to some of USU’s own faculty.
–beck.turner@aggiemail.usu.edu