Secret gods, slave revolts, and Jazz!
We’re pleased to bring you part two of the Blues guru Scott Ainslie’s ‘Coolness’ essays.
Follow along as Scott traces the movement of ‘coolness’ from Africa, to Haiti, to New Orleans, and then to the rest of America.
‘Cool’/‘not cool’ is the quintessential American values dichotomy.
Skip sham cool and learn about the real thing!
-WD James (ed.)
In every community in our nation today–rural or urban; rich or poor; white, latino, oriental, native, or black–one regularly hears an echo of the ancient Yoruban term Itutu (coolness). Something is either designated as cool or not cool. Chill and Chill out are clichés.
How did this happen?
The Yoruba in the New World: Haiti, Trinidad, Cuba, and Brazil
St.-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) was the single largest disembarkation port for slaves in the Caribbean prior to the 1791 slave uprising that sparked the Haitian Revolution. The island was the largest and most important slave market for all French possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
Sub-Saharan African cultures were transplanted by the slave traders into the Caribbean. Many of the most durable of those influences were practices of the Yoruba.
In Haiti, the Yoruba were generally called Anagos. Present-day African-Haitian religious activities give Yoruba rites and beliefs an honored place, and their pantheon of gods includes numerous deities of Yoruban origin.
In Brazil, Yoruba religious activities are called Anago or Shango, and in Cuba, Lucumi.
In much the same way Catholic masses were said in Latin, long after Latin ceased to be a spoken language, many of the sacred chants in Santeria are still said in the Yoruba language even though the language is no longer spoken in the Caribbean.
Saints of Santeria: Masking Catholicism
The adaptability valued by the Yoruba gave their aesthetic ideas and spiritual beliefs a unique ability to find expression in the settings of both the Old World and the New.
Surrounded, enslaved, and controlled by Christian slaveowners, the Yoruba protected and preserved their ancient beliefs by secreting them into the dominant culture as they made their way in the New World.
The Yoruba and their New World ancestors found ways to cross-link the Christian pantheon of Saints approved by the slaveholders with traditional Yoruban deities, protecting their revered traditional beliefs, aesthetics, and spiritual understandings in the West.
The New World Yoruba maintained a spiritual world where traditional beliefs were not subsumed or fused with the dominant religion. Yoruban gods–Ogun, Oshun, Esu, Obatala, and others–were simply masking as Catholic Saints.
From Haiti to New Orleans: French vs. American Slavery
While the differences in the brutality of slavery in French and English colonies were slight, significant differences did develop around the edges. As a matter of law, the French and Americans defined race and identity very differently.
For the French, if you had one drop of French blood; you were French.
For Americans, if you had one drop of black blood; you were Black.
And, unlike the chattel slavery of America (where the education of slaves was feared and outlawed), the French were perfectly happy to exploit the wide range of talents in their slave population.
The French had Black bookkeepers; Black tutors for their children; Black military-style brass marching bands, as well as Black violinists, string players, and the famed piano ‘professors’ and artists.
At the same time, over the course of the 18th Century on American soil, as slavery moved off the coastal plain and to the interior, the range of occupations and training open to slaves dwindled precipitously. As labor-intensive tobacco, cotton, then sugar became the primary crops, diverse slave employments that during coastal development had included blacksmithing, bricklaying, carpentry, furniture building, and the like–shrank to include nothing but brute fieldwork.
By the early 1800s, unsuccessful slave rebellions in America (coupled with the successful slave rebellion in Haiti) had struck fear into the hearts of white slaveholders across the South.
Blacks often wildly outnumbered Whites. In South Carolina, for instance, Whites made up only 20% of the population. Haiti's revolution terrified them.
A string of slave rebellions convinced Whites that bringing slaves from Africa–people who had known and remembered freedom–increased the danger of the domestic rebellions. Their solution was to outlaw the importation of slaves from Africa.
In 1808, Congress abolished the African slave trade, not the slave trade itself. This put a premium on domestically-born slaves and created a further economic incentive for the sexual exploitation of female slaves by their owners, or their owners' sons. Slavery moved from mother to child, irrespective of the father's status. Many slaveholders sold their own children.
A flurry of slave laws were passed following Haiti's freeing. Manumitted slaves had to leave the state. Educating a slave became unlawful. Tight control over Black movement and sundown curfews were put in place all across the South.
In Southern states, simply endeavoring to learn to read could cost a slave their life.
And even today, there are towns in the South known to the black community as 'sundown towns,' where the informal enforcement of sundown curfews continues to create serious risks for black citizens and visitors within their environs after dark.
Haiti and the Louisiana Purchase
In a revolution that took more than a dozen years, former slaves in St. Domingue took over half the island and ejected their French masters. They renamed their new republic Haiti.
On January 1, 1804, Haiti became the first free black republic in the world, the first independent state in the Caribbean, and the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere, following the United States.
But Napoleon had designs on Haiti, hoping to use slave-grown sugar to fund his wars in Europe and development of the Louisiana Territory (that he had reacquired from Spain in 1800).
The unsuccessful attempt to reinstate French control and slavery in Haiti in 1802 costing the lives of many French Marines and a great deal of treasure ended Napoleon’s ambitions in the Western Hemisphere. Badly in need of cash for his European adventures, Napoleon negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with President Thomas Jefferson.
On April 30, 1803, France signed away 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million (at roughly 4 cents/acre). That day–on paper at least–the United States doubled in size.
The bravery and persistence of Haitian revolutionaries coupled with Napoleon's misguided dreams of empire conspired to give America a shot at becoming a land that stretched from sea to shining sea. It also made New Orleans the northernmost non-French Caribbean port.
A Haitian Exodus
With the overthrow of the French, black musicians who had been trained on European instruments–the piano tutors and professors, brass marching band members, and many other educated former slaves–suddenly found themselves without patrons.
During the early years of the 19th Century, many of those musicians abandoned Haiti and migrated to New Orleans.
Still deeply influenced by Yoruba religions and cultural ideas, these European-trained musicians moved into a society with the more restrictive occupational limits of American slavery. Bringing unheard-of talents into both free and slave black communities in New Orleans and its environs, in a rich cross-pollination of African-Caribbean and African-American values.
The immigrant musicians gradually began to fashion a new music that combined African-Caribbean aesthetics, European instruments and training, and African-American style in their new home.
The Birth of Jazz & Coolness
Yoruban ideas flourished and co-evolved with Jazz as it was developing in New Orleans.
The Yoruban penchants for improvising, for determined practice, for the development of personal skill, for restaining one’s emotions, and for carrying oneself with a quiet, regal bearing–all found expression among early Jazz musicians.
Describing the culture and music as ‘cool’ became commonplace as the music exploded in and around New Orleans in 19th century.
Over the course of the 20th Century, with the diaspora of Jazz musicians out of New Orleans to other urban centers across the country–Kansas City, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York, St. Louis–notions of coolness became deeply embedded in American popular culture.
Yoruban ideas remain in plain sight deep within the heart of American music and culture.
Coolness Today: What have we saved and lost?
Recognizing that contemporary ideas of coolness have deep Yoruban roots can be a powerful way of opening up and refining our culture. In the America of today, it seems like only the outer appearance of ‘coolness’ has survived: style without substance.
Much of the spiritual and inspirational nature of the tradition has been lost, leaving just the outer shell or appearance of ‘coolness’–a grim, unflappable, tight-lipped calm that seems to be detached from any moral, civil, spiritual, or personal development.
The traditional preconditions for coolness (Itutu)–inspiration (Ashe) and character (Iwa) seem to have been lost.
What would happen if put them back?
Coolness in the Classroom
Sometimes in educational settings, having framed this fuller notion of coolness, I have asked students to list things that they consider cool.
The list always starts with expensive cars, vacations, clothes, shoes, jewelry, video games, technology, and various forms of bling–things that can be bought (and can be stolen).
But, as the list extends, skills begin to make the list–being good at sports, dancing or singing, painting, drawing, and other material arts. Personal talents show up, and sometimes being a good friend or being kind, as well.
I put each new suggestion on the board.
When the frequency of the students’ contributions slows or stops, I point out that, as they may have noticed, I have quietly separated their suggestions into two different lists:
• clothing–shoes, jackets, etc.
• jewelry
• cars, vehicles
• things that can be purchased
• things that can be stolenOr
• skills & talents
• personality and character traits
• things that can’t be purchased or stolen
• things that require investment of time
• things that require discipline
The question we then ask is why?
Material things that can be bought, broken, stolen, or lost, all fall into what I call External Cool.
Those things that are personally cultivated, that require personal rather than monetary investment, things that–regardless of our economic circumstances, family backgrounds, ethnicity, or creed–are dependent on individual or communal initiative, and are open to us all fall into what I call Internal.
As a class, we discuss Internal and External cool and whether I have put things on the right lists.
We explore the Yoruba background for the idea of coolness with its prerequisite elements of inspiration (Ashe), and character (Iwa), and we look at the traditional spiritual-aesthetic underpinnings of the original idea of coolness.
We assess the movement and survival of these ideas. We puzzle over both the durability–and the erosion–of traditional Yoruban aesthetics. We ask what has been kept and what has been lost. And speculate on why.
This richer notion of Coolness is not just something for the rich kids. The door of the Yoruban frame for Itutu opens wider than economic privilege, gender, race, or class. It makes room for those who do the work, not just those who own the things.
Revitalizing Coolness: Inspiration, Discipline, & Generosity
For centuries, developing an inspired vision, cultivating a high level of personal discipline and strength of character, and employing a willingness to serve others have been the raw materials used to create Itutu.
Turning away from the more simplistic-materialistic definition of what is cool and making a place in coolness for the more challenging, inner qualities prized by the Yoruba may change how we see others. And ourselves.
Creators vs. Consumers
Being generators of our own dreams, masters of our own character, and through self-discipline developing our own work, rather than simply being consumers of the work of others seems a worthy goal.
A weathered fragment of this Yoruban idea still has a toehold in our culture. Children do still fill up the Internal Cool list.
It is for us to point to and honor this deeper notion of coolness. Doing so will reinvigorate its traditional spiritual and experiential underpinnings.
And we may just help make the world we share more deeply cool, fairer, kinder, more compassionate and personally rewarding.
“The Yoruba remain the Yoruba precisely because their culture provides them with ample philosophic means for comprehending, and ultimately transcending, the powers that periodically threaten to dissolve them.
"That their religion and their art withstood the horrors of the Middle Passage and firmly established themselves in the Americas (New York City, Miami, Havana, Matanzas, Recife, Bahia, Rio de Janiero, Port-au-Prince) as the slave trade effected a Yoruba diaspora–reflects the triumph of an inexorable communal will.”
– Flash of the Spirit, p. 16
Learning about this changed me and enriched my world. May it enrich yours. And others. Pass the word.
And be cool,
Scott Ainslie
Check out more of Scott’s analysis of the Blues and addictive personal stories about his decades of researching, preserving, and playing the Blues at BluesNotes.
(Lead image: Toussaint Louverture)
Read Part 1 of this two part series: