[Applause]
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Good evening.
If you have your Bibles...
[Laughter]
[Laughing]
Okay.
So let me begin by
thanking the people
who have made this event possible.
Derris Carter, Maria McWhirter,
Morgan El Davis,
Claudia Morales,
and Michelle L. Glymph.
Likewise gratitude to people from
near and far, known and unknown,
who decided to spend their
Thursday evenings with me.
The outline of my talk
will occur in two parts.
An introduction to my research
and an examination of
Marvin Gaye from the
third chapter of my book.
To that end,
I have started the custom
that for any kind of talk I give,
I dedicate it to people foremost
in my mind at that moment.
So for tonight,
I want to dedicate this occasion
to the Librarian of Congress,
Doctor Carla Hayden.
[Applause]
The introduction.
If I told you that
the life of Marvin Gaye
conversed with the
work of Sigmund Freud,
you would likely wonder
who conferred my PhD to me.
Yet somehow the intersections
of psychoanalysis,
namely its conception
of melancholy,
genius and black life,
seemed a germane ground for me
to launch and later
publish my work,
"Stay Black and Die: On
Melancholy and Genius."
For what it's worth to,
you'll see black slides.
That's on purpose.
The starting point for such
a combination is a bit of theory
on the origins of
Freudian melancholy,
then a pivot to genius before
unpacking black life through the
guise of the blues.
That said, let's begin.
In Freud's 1917 treatise,
Mourning and Melancholia,
he suggests that the psychic
loss of the loved object,
the mother, or "some abstraction"
such as one's country,
liberty and ideal, and so on,
constitutes melancholy.
In turn, the one experiencing
this lost desires
to harm while
simultaneously becoming
what he calls the lost object.
Stay Black and Die
initiates itself by
taking seriously that idea and
then extending it to ponder.
Given the gravity of love and loss,
what insights might emerge of this
feminine/maternal figure is black?
Most especially since the
inception of psychoanalysis
in late 19th century Europe,
signified that Freud was not
speaking to me. Thus, if the black
feminine/maternal is "lost",
this project finds her in and
through performances of
excellence, which I call genius,
that implicate both
her and her child.
The idea of genius is itself
complicated due to its etymology
and its outward presentation.
On the one hand,
classical Latin suggests that
a genius is, "A male
spirit of a family
existing in the head of the family
and subsequently in the divine
or spiritual part
of each individual."
The ending of the word has a
base ultimately related to that
of generic to beget,
and a syntactical link
to the word genital.
The term reads one sided
and that the gender
component elides femininity,
i.e. throughout culture,
psychoanalytic and otherwise.
Masculinity is the
privileged site of intellect.
Numerous thinkers provide a
counterpoint to these provocations,
particularly those engaged
in black feminist thought.
And for what it's worth,
I also want to acknowledge
one of my mentors who's here,
Mary Helen Washington.
In a passage on the
genius of Billie Holiday,
Farah Jasmine Griffin theorizes,
"Black women were thought to be
incapable of possessing genius.
All persons of African descent
were thought to be unfit for
advanced intellectual endeavor.
Black women in particular
were body, feeling,
emotion, and sexuality.
By genius, I mean the special
quality of mind and aptitudes
that some individuals have
innately for specific tasks or
kinds of work. Artistic success
in this form requires talent,
intelligence, and discipline."
Griffin shifts the
paradigm by his story
citing a tradition of black women
creatives unlocated in certain
dominant narratives of knowledge
and aesthetic production.
She also exerts pressure
on how black women have been
regarded over time, reimagining
the measure of their aptitude
through genius possession.
Rachel M. Harper equally exposes
such acuity when she asserts
that genius is
emblematic of black cool.
"We black artists turn our loss,
our heartache into art.
We give it life.
So it then exists
beyond our own bodies,
our own selves, becoming
timeless and universal.
What, in the end,
is more cool than that?
We look at those artists.
So she's talking
about Toni Morrison,
James Baldwin, John Coltrane,
Richard Pryor and
Jean-Michel Basquiat.
As we look upon our
mothers during childbirth,
we don't want them to suffer in
order to bring us into the world,
but we are damn happy to be alive."
Harper divorces the act of birth
from the constructs of gender
as well one testifies to how
the very body that begets someone
can induce the possibility
for the begotten
to perform that same act in turn.
Psychoanalytically this is
called identification.
"The expression of their
being something in common
which may signify love."
This exemplifies the intervention
of, Stay Black and Die.
To be clear, I do not approach
the category of the black
feminine/maternal through
the guise of romance.
By looking at this persona as a
composite figure in traditional
and non-traditional manners,
the book charts how
ordinary or better still,
melancholic beginnings
have spectacular ends.
When considering genius,
I akin to Dionne Brand
and am not enthralled by
doing or for that matter,
praising the Black Spectacular,
even as I affirm and to an
extent have gratitude for certain
outbursts of these expressions.
This is because we too
easily remain enamored with
the output while harboring
border for the origin.
Stay Black and Die
then claims genius
and its excesses as the simplicity
of Frederick Douglass
ability to read
Ralph Ellison's
internalization of a riddle,
Octavia Butler's
protagonist harvesting a rifle,
and Kendrick Lamar's
desire to soar.
All these performances are enabled
by the black feminine/maternal.
In this way, I believe
Freud to highlight
something like genius
when he writes.
"All such states such as joy,
exaltation or triumph,
which give us the
normal model for mania,
depend on the same
economic conditions.
All such situations are
characterized by high spirits,
by the signs of discharge,
of joyful emotion,
and by increased readiness
for all kinds of action,
in just the same way as in mania,
and in complete contrast
to the depression
and inhibition of melancholia."
By giving primacy to
black studies in the work,
this work on race in
psychoanalysis,
my methodology imposes
Freud's enunciation,
and what Albert Murray
calls the blues idiom.
"Negroes invented the blues.
Europeans invented psychoanalysis.
You invent what you need."
The blues as such is
depression, melancholia.
Blues as music is a way
of making an aesthetic
statement with sound.
Conventional Americans think
Negroes are crying when they're
singing the blues. They're not.
They're getting ready
to have a good time.
Set differently.
Instead of utilizing secondary
sources to explain Freud
and then read that criticism
to evidence blackness,
the subjects of this project
are Freud's interlocutors.
As a form of expression
and interpretation
and black thought writ large,
genius is a response to an
a performance in excess of
one's melancholy.
Genius, not mania, is a
vestige of melancholy
that is at once reducible
and irreducible to the mother.
Therefore, Stay Black
and Die chronicles
the black feminine/maternal
no longer as an object lost,
but a subject found.
One. Do you hear what I hear?
On a first listen of
Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man,
the instrumental frenzy that is
the introductory bars,
the snare and cymbals,
the violins, the xylophone,
the piano,
the percussive and the stringed.
Fully aware that there are
lyrics but equally unaware as to
what they might be,
the brain commences its
own fashioning of rewind.
If not for the ability
to Google the lyrics
or the record companies
publication of the liner notes,
audio files would be
left in the dark.
When the tenor Gaye begins
singing on the record,
it sounds like he enunciates
'I come up apart, baby,
but now I'm cool. I
didn't make it, sugar.
Playing by the rules.'
A lyric search ensues,
post listening for clarification
only to show that he
actually confesses.
I come up hard, baby.
But is it improper to admit a
personal and theoretical desire
for what I thought I
saw through hearing
and in lieu of what
was song written?
This ear puzzle invoked his
ambient listening illumines the
aims of this moment,
but seems amiss,
as if going in one
ear and out the other,
coming up hard as opposed to coming
apart or even I come a-part baby.
Sonically appears to stage
Gaye's desire to jumble his words,
mindful that the scrambling
is emblematic of his
own upbringing. This is to say,
coming up hard/apart
might convey in no uncertain terms.
"I don't mean to say that I have
already achieved these things
or that I have already
reached perfection,
but I focus on this one thing.
Forgetting the past and looking
forward to what lies ahead.
I press on to reach the end
of the race and receive
the heavenly prize."
One notes to affinity
for forgetting
the past and looking forward
when acknowledging that Gaye had
a hand in suppressing the words
Troubled Man for roughly a
decade after its recording.
"Strangely, the lyrics didn't
appear on the sleeve as they had
on what's going on.
In fact, it wasn't until 1982
when he left Motown to join CBS
that Marvin reprinted
the lyrics on the album.
Why? This is Marvin speaking.
I respect poetry,
Gaye answered.
And I try to write it subtly,
but lyrics really aren't poems.
Printing them like poems
can make them seem silly.
Besides, I like the idea of
everyone guessing
at what I'm thinking.
I like mystery.
This search to know with
relative ease regarding what
Gaye sings, offers the listener
an opportunity to be haunted
by his compositional
and aesthetic decisions.
These opening remarks mean to
highlight how practitioners
in the black aesthetic tradition
are perhaps always never capable
of talking to the
otherworldly or the dead,
and that such a correspondence is
wholly communal, dare
one say reparational.
In effect, this practice
of speaking with the dead
often means to edify the living.
I call this, [Inaudible]
This new term riffs on
the words glossolalia,
which connote speaking in
tongues as the outpouring of the
spirit on the day of Pentecost
in the book of acts
in the New Testament.
And ironically enough,
this Sunday is Pentecost.
So perhaps this was serendipitous
for me to be here.
The aim of this new
word is to situate
how hyper normal communication,
whether through word or song,
manifests as an act
of the everyday ghost.
So to this chronicle of what
happens when one receives an
invitation to partake in such
a communicative endeavor
contriving double man.
Excuse me. Trouble man
as precisely such a call.
Therefore, this Gaye's life and
his penning and performance of
this song for a film of the same
name have its complement in a
work of theory, namely
Hortense J. Spillers,
Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe,
an American grammar book.
And at what cost?
To answer these questions,
one must in fact go to the movies.
Or better still, the
soundtrack to commence
moving down the line.
The Birth of Marvin Gaye
provides a window into how
one begins to glimpse
his melancholy and genius.
This is part two.
Marvin Peniz Gaye, Jr. was born
at Freedmen's Hospital
in Washington, D.C.,
on April 2nd, 1939,
a Sunday the same day
of the week he died.
In the same city exactly
one week later,
the great black contralto,
Marian Anderson,
barred from singing at
Constitution Hall by the Daughters
of the American Revolution,
would perform at
the Lincoln Memorial
before 75,000 spectators
on Easter morning.
I felt a kinship to Mr. Anderson,
just as I'd always feel a great
kinship with Miss Mahalia Jackson.
My father himself had a great
voice and the capacity to become
a great singer.
Early on, I realized,
largely through dreams,
that I too was destined to be
such a singer. Marvin had
precise recollections of
childhood dreams, but were
these dreams engendered
while awake or asleep?
Both, he replied, with an
inflection both regal and street.
They were more visions than dreams.
Visions of myself on stage, while
all the world watched and waited
for me to sing something so
stupendous that life as we know
it would forever be altered.
I was brought here
to make a change."
In this brief excerpt
from David Ritz's
Divided Soul: The
Life of Marvin Gaye,
he allows us entree into the
possibility of Gaye's being born
to live a life worth singing,
to acknowledge that a child born
to a named affiliation is birth
under the shelter of a Freedmen's
neonatal nursery.
That what was meant for evil was
turned to good. And the person
in works of Miss Anderson,
the contralto for Mother of Marvin,
that Mahalia Jackson and her
dark soprano timber can be
heard saying to Marvin
instead of Martin Luther,
through the angels of the
black radical tradition.
Tell them about the dream, Marvin,
that music is an inheritance
passed down by the one who
despises you the most, the one
whom you also stunningly become.
That what could have been
a dream deferred does explode
with such force that it troubles
a body to wakefulness.
A sleepwalker is eye opening
inversion at times yet asleep
that a wonderful change could
come over a man whose nostalgia
as a juvenile visionary
enables him to code switch,
conveying to the biographer the
King's English and the hoodies
of the Urban Dictionary
in a single word.
The triumph of Gaye's reverence
for Anderson and Jackson is that
he channels what Hortense
Spillers calls the power of yes
to the female within.
This is concurrent to Marvin
being deemed his father's child.
This is arresting
fully cognizant of the
Judeo-Christian
liturgical calendar
is that Anderson's
sunrise surprise on Easter
compels sitting with the
fact that Marvin Gaye,
born a week earlier
on April 2nd, 1939,
makes his own triumphant
entry into the New Jerusalem
that is this nation's
capital on Palm Sunday.
Likewise, enriches chapter in
the beginning, one learns that
"My husband never wanted
Marvin, Mrs. Gaye told me,
and he never liked him.
He used to say that he didn't
think he was really his child.
I told him that was nonsense.
He knew Marvin was his, but for
some reason he didn't love Marvin.
And what's worse, he didn't
want me to love Marvin either.
Marvin wasn't very old
before he understood that.
The tragic triangle was
established at birth,
father and son competing
for mother's love.
Attention that only
grew over the years,
finally exploding in
two angry blasts of gunfire.
The father ending
his son's existence,
that very son being beloved
because he is his namesake.
Portals gaze melancholy
because it conveys an anxiety
over death that will be
accomplished by the father.
It would appear not only
that Gaye's life is paraliturgical,
but also that such a life
becomes the nodal point for
comprehending what it means to
be wanted by the very persons
who will lay and
wait for your descent,
and then voice dissent
regarding such a fall.
Here, I'm interested
in Ritz saying that,
Marvin and his father,
the father and the son are
competing for the mother's love.
And in the ways that he kind
of suggests the kind of trinity.
Right? Father's son, mother's love.
And then, of course, again,
with him entering, being born
on Palm Sunday here in D.C.,
that, you know,
like that triumphant entry
is then the catalyst
before Christ is killed.
And so, of course,
then what comes to mind is
Isaiah 53. There was nothing
beautiful or majestic about his
appearance. Nothing
to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected.
A man of sorrows, acquainted
with the deepest grief.
All of this religious rhetoric
would not be lost on the son.
Father was a pastor.
The church was the homestead.
And father chastises the son
as a means of strict adherence
to his law.
"It wasn't simply
that father beat me,
though that was bad enough.
By the time I was 12,
there wasn't an inch of my body
that hadn't been bruised
and beaten by him.
But father did something
else far worse,
you see he's a man
with a subtle mind.
He understood that if you're
interested in inflicting pain,
prolonging the process
adds to the excitement.
The only way to short circuit
the agony was to provoke him
even more and just
get the beating over with.
When he finally struck me,
I knew children know these things,
that something inside him
was enjoying the whole thing.
I thought I could win
his love through singing,
so I sang my heart out.
I could never please him.
And if it wasn't for mother who
was always there to console me
and praise my singing, I think
I would have been one of those
child suicide cases you
read about in the papers."
Here, Gaye invokes what
psychoanalysis would call
the death drive, casting
himself in the company
with the likes of Richard Wright
and James Baldwin,
and that all three can cite
parental behaviors along the
lines of religiosity and right
as circumventing whatever calling
his existence to meet out graces
it has previously been given.
The Gaye home as church
constructs itself as a site
of a kind of plantation where
disobedience to discipleship
provokes the threat,
promise and manifestation of,
"Specifically externalized
acts of torture and prostration
that we imagine as the peculiar
prevalence of male brutality
and torture inflicted
by other males."
This short circuit incites a
perusal of system of impulses,
most often bodily,
that materialized in the father
who has "popped his
son's flesh open."
One is astonished not only that
Marvin is the pain receptor,
but also that this violence
endows the reader and the listener
with the capacity to reread
what spillers calls
the hieroglyphics of the flesh.
The raising of Marvin's skin is
the earliest musical lesson
for him in discerning and sight
reading the sheet music that is
his body as a composition
"the extended movement
of a specific upheaval,
the ongoing eruption
that arranges every line,
a strain that pressures the
assumption of the equivalence of
personhood and subjectivity."
However, what would appear to
be the Gaye disciplinarians
critical distance as extended from
his hand to the end of his switch,
making contact with his
namesake's corpus
actually pods the manner
of twisted intimacy.
Ritz's second chapter,
Original Sin,
is the name of the chapter,
points to the chaos
inherent in Gaye's natal
community and his defiance of it.
However, it also engenders
what will be understood in
chapter three to be
sexual confusion,
a presumptive nod to Marvin
Gaye's future call for healing.
Might such music be the
resistance of the object
who is Marvin Gaye.
The move to speak about
homebound discipline
as a mode of intimacy, in part,
comes from what is
viewed as a form of rage,
given mother's admission
of familial crime
and the neighbors account
in the biography that,
"Mr. Gaye's violent street was
especially sad and hurtful
because he'd tell me
how his own father,
back in Kentucky would beat
his wife, Mr. Gaye's mother.
He described the blood
and the horror he saw."
The father as the quintessential
product of his environment,
retains a memory of domestic abuse
that finds its enactment
in and throughout
his own household, the church,
the site of both
praise and punishment.
Father perpetuates
an oppressive love that puts
into relief what might
contemporarily be called
giving queer realness.
"A strong sexual ambiguity
surrounding Mr. Gay was
something Ritz noticed
the first time I met him in 1979.
His speech and body language
were soft and overtly feminine.
My father likes to wear
women's clothing.
As you well know, that doesn't
mean he's a homosexual.
In fact, my father was always
known as a ladies man.
There have been periods
where his hair was very long
and curled under, and when
he seemed quite adamant
in showing the world
the girlish side of himself,
that may have been to
further embarrass me.
I find the situation all the
more difficult because,
to tell you the truth, I have
the same fascination with
women's clothes. In my case,
that has nothing to do with
any attraction for men.
Sexually, men don't interest me,
but seeing myself as a woman is
something that intrigues me.
It is also something, I fear.
I indulge myself only at the most
discreet and intimate moments.
After all, indulgence
of the flesh is wicked
no matter what your kick.
The hot stuff is lethal.
I've never been able to stay
away from the hot stuff."
Martin's admission that he, too,
finds intrigue and action in
his father's stylistic pastime
prepares us for the sacramental
on par with communion.
Junior, Marvin Gaye,
Jr., that is,
steps into the avatar that is
his father as Sapphire
as he, "Enacts his old man in drag,
just as his old man becomes
Sapphire in outrageous caricature.
Three.
When Gaye meets Gershwin,
the operatics of trouble men.
The trouble of masculinity marks
Gaye's upbringing as a problem
until he becomes his own man.
He creates a subversive persona
on the record I previously played
in order to be acquainted
with his deeper self.
David Ritz writes Trouble Man
was one of only two albums
where Gaye wrote every song alone.
He lost himself in the mood of
the movie and mood corresponding
to the dark side of his own soul.
The transitions from the lofty
spirituality of what's going on
to the bleak pessimism of
troubled man was astounding,
though no more astounding than the
contradictions in
Marvin's personality.
In it, he identified
with the hero victim,
bringing to the suite
a distinctively, frighteningly
autobiographical voice."
The album as autobiography
troubles the history of the book
and that it redefines anew,
the genius and once conceived
naivete of Olaudah Equiano
and the foresight of Stevie Wonder.
There is such a thing
as a talking book.
If the listener, like Equiano,
takes Trouble Man
and puts her ears to it when
alone, in hopes it would answer
that audible living history
vocalizes so pristinely
that it foreshadows what was
once referred to as the story
of the tribe. Gaye sings himself
into a sound that gives way to
its titular offering of his
divided soul, the gangster and
the preacher's kid, the sexual
healer and the painfully shy guy,
the daughter and the son.
Mama's baby and Papa's maybe.
And here, given what I've
said about these kinds of
contradictions around the fear
of the feminine and this desire
to be masculine,
I'm very much interested in the
fact that Marvin Gaye
in the 70s took up boxing.
At one point, he
tried to be a boxer.
He also tried to walk on
for the Detroit Lions.
So again, he's kind of
straddling these worlds around
the feminine and the masculine
and really trying to work through
what I read as a lot of the trauma
that's happening
from his childhood.
To behold an album
where only one track
holds any form of vocality
becomes the reading
of a grammar book
that transcends category.
Even if the European avant garde
here considers it "innovative."
The singularity of this
Gaye grammar book is found
in its necessity
to have himself fashion,
a complex story about
his persona and his
communion with evil,
the dark side of his own soul,
and his fascination
with the underworld.
Moreover, the provocation of a
talking book reveals something
along the lines of
Spillers grammar book.
However, it may be better to
rename such literature
the American Songbook
based on Gaye's inspiration.
Talking about trouble man,
"this is probably my favorite work,
Marvin told me.
Though he said the same thing
about I Want You.
I was listening to a great deal
of Gershwin at the time,
and I really wanted to
do something great.
I was amazed at my concentration.
It had never been
this intense before."
This admission pushes us
toward our next immediate
inquiry regarding
troubled man and its creation.
What Gershwin was
Marvin Gaye listening to?
I believe Gaye was likely
listening to Porgy and Bess.
More assuredly,
my man is gone now.
in order to reinterpret the
character Serena's scream.
If the scream and the subsequent
ruminations on it becomes the
medium through which
[Inaudible] occasioned itself,
what one yearns for now
is a mode of translation.
Therefore, this translation of a
translation along the lines of
risk and stress privileges us
with the opportunity to taste
Marvin Gaye's archive no different
than how one wears her hat
or sips his tea.
This subsequent interpretation
will be eviscerated beyond utility
into a synonym of culture itself.
My Mans Gone Now
poses a resonant,
performative interjection
for our musings,
because not only does the
aria's premise presuppose
a similitude of
operatic proportions,
but it also presents a manner of
communalism purposed and
proposed by auxiliary characters
and not protagonists.
The libretto of Porgy and Bess
precedent to the aria is that
Serena has lost her
husband, Robbins,
at the hands of Crown during
a crap game in Catfish Row.
But the affect that lends a
necessary reading to our
overarching thematic is that the
wake and funeral being held for
Robbins takes place inside
his and Serena's home,
and that she has invited
albeit explicitly one conceives
the people of Catfish
Row into set home
to carry out a proper sendoff.
That said, My Man's Gone Now
to pivotal to our considerations
because of its call and response.
In listening to the aria,
Serena sings by herself,
and she looks melancholy in
its face and announces that
she lose her man. But the
ensemble noticeably unprovoked,
stands beside and sits with her
in mourning and sings
back what she sings,
only to have her repeated again.
Since I/she lose my/her man.
The remainder of the song occurs
with the ensemble simply
accompanying Serena in the
background until the last
lyrical line, and, for lack
of a better term, the vamp.
The last utterance of
since I Lose My Man,
has an approach that belies
Serena's overall sentimentality.
In a moment of multiple
octave swoon and boom,
so many things up the scale
until she pitches
a high B5 on the lyric
sense. I sung on an A5,
lose now a lyric polly syllable
transitions back to the B5,
then to the A5,
my on the G5, and man in the E5.
Serena, the lyric soprano,
the newfound widow issues
her operatic blues
in the fifth pianistic octave.
All the more interesting is
subsequent to The Scream.
There's a terse musical interlude
where the orchestra plays
as a form of mimicry,
the opening lyrical chords
of the aria instrumentally.
Then it happens.
Their orchestra loses itself,
becoming quasi silent.
In that relative absence,
we find the ensemble
crescendo to its own
collective scream
that finds its operatic conclusion
in Serena screaming a
new and ineffable B5.
She does not enunciate lyrics.
She simply screams.
With an orchestral thud,
pronouncing the arias finality,
I find it not so coincidental that
in my own dalliances
in classical training.
One of my instructors said that
singing operatically
is a process in
learning the proper way to scream.
One believes Gaye to
have been listening to
My Man's Gone Now as
the muse for trouble man,
because he engages in aesthetic
sampling from the aria,
an orchestral arrangement that
often mimics the form and frame
in which he sings the A, B
skeleton of verses
and the terse-- Terse, excuse me,
makeshift chorus.
The dynamic quality.
But just as similar is the fact
that Marvin himself screams.
He has this moment of
clarity that I might add,
has rhetorically become
pop cultural go to,
"There's only three things
that's for sure.
Taxes, death and trouble.
This I know, baby,
this I know, sugar.
And then he sings I won't
let it sweat me, babe.
Which is followed by a
brief orchestral interlude of
quasi silence, where the
instruments layer themselves
upon themselves,
gaining in volume.
They're heard in a
steady procession.
And then Marvin swings
got me singing, Yeah, yeah.
This instance of the Gaye scream
realizing the nuances
of the human voice is stupefying
because it is basically the only
instance in Trouble Man when
Marvin sings from his chest voice,
often called a belt because
the rest of the song is
predominantly sung in his head
voice or better yet, his falsetto.
So in light of this argument
around this fear of the feminine
and this kind of wrestling
with the masculine,
some of what I'm interested in
is if Marvin Gaye was listening
to Gershwin, in particular,
Porgy and Bess's
My Man's Gone Now,
how he would have
interpolated or sampled
that in Trouble Man.
So what's also interesting about,
what I think are the harmonics
that he's listening to,
inclusive of him singing
the beginning of Trouble Man in
the falsetto is that he could also
very easily have been thinking
about Summertime.
So there are a couple of
different moments in the opera
where that kind of
harmonic register
could have been interpolated
or sampled by Marvin Gaye.
In Stefano Hani and
Fred Milton's work
The Undercommons: Fugitive
Planning and Black Study,
the account for the peculiar moment
that epitomizes Gaye's falsetto.
Seven.
"But blackness still has work to do
to discover the rerouting encoded
in the work of art,
and the anachoreographic
reset of a shoulder
and the quiet extremities
that animate a range
of social chromaticisms
and especially in the mutations
that drive mute,
labored, musicked speech
as it moves between an
incapacity for reasoned
or meaningful self-generated
utterance that is,
on the one hand, supposed
and, on the other hand, imposed,
and a critical
predisposition to steal away.
In those mutations that are always
also a regendering
or transgendering
as in Al Green's errant falsetto
or Big Maybelle's bass,
which is not, but nothing
other than basic growl.
And in between that impropriety
of speech that approaches
animality and a tendency
towards expropriation,
that approaches
criminality lies blackness,
lies the black thing that cuts
the regulative government force
of the understanding,
and even of those understandings
of blackness to which black
people are given since fugitivity
escapes, even the fugitive."
Cognizant of the necessity
of the microphone
for amplification,
the voice simultaneously produces
and breaks apart from the--
Breaks apart from--
Excuse me,
the reducible limit
its is which nature
is placing on it as manifested,
whether in a crescendo
or in culmination
through the stream.
This requires understanding the
mechanics of the voice
in such an oral endeavor.
"When viewed through a
stroboscope in our modal voice,
the vocal folds are seen to
make contact with each other
completely during each vibration,
closing the gap between them fully.
If just for a very short time,
this closure cuts
off the escaping air.
When the air pressure in the
trachea rises as a result,
the folds are blown apart.
In falsetto, however, when
the vocal folds are blown open,
a permanent oval orifice
is left in the middle between
the edges of the two folds,
through which a certain volume
of air escapes continuously
as long as phonation continues.
So what this basically means
is that as I'm talking to you,
my vocal cords
are moving like this.
But when I sing in falsetto,
my vocal cords go like this.
And I'm interested in that
movement of his voice in that song,
especially because he begins
Trouble Man like this.
And when he screams,
he ends up like this.
Marvin scream of yeah is the
modal structure of his vocal flesh
coming together as preceded
by the corporeal falsity of his
twin chords coming apart.
The oval and the masculine
interior are what Jacques Derrida
refers to as "an internal
pocket larger than the whole,"
and the outcome of a division
and of an abounding that remains
singular as it is limitless.
By coming up hard/apart,
Gaye affirmed Spillers reading
of the black autobiographical
tradition in that.
The project of liberation
for African Americans
has an urgency in two
passionate motivations
that are twinned,
one, to break apart,
to rupture violently the laws of
American behavior that make
such syntax possible, and two, to
introduce a new semantic field/fold
more appropriate to his/her
own historic movement.
Marvin falsetto is the rendering
of the indescribable because,
like Serena, one
notes perplexity in that
personification of a Troubled Man,
and that the Troubled Man in that
Marvin Gaye could be calling out
the haphazard sovereign
or hegemony writ large.
Although one reasons that Gaye
is in fact the trouble man,
he divorces the listener from
that notion when he calls the
troubled man out, stating,
"don't get in my way."
Yet the clarion call for the
Troubled Man remains
thought provoking and that a
weird dissociation does occur.
Marvin, like Serena,
converses with someone for the
song's entirety,
but if one passes out,
I come up hard/apart, baby.
Could it be that Marvin
is singing to his boyhood,
the manchild in the never
Promised Land that is the sphere
of dominant cultural masculinity?
Or could it be that the
aforementioned fugitive planners
are on to something when
they invoke re gendering,
or transgender via the falsetto?
If Marvin as son becomes the child,
his father never but
then again, always wanted.
Then when the songs dialogue
names Baby and Sugar,
perhaps Gaye is situating
his voice as an intimate
rendezvous through soundscape
with and as the "woman"
he earlier conceived as
a point of intrigue.
This is Marvin saying yes to the
power of female within as his
very own self. This is Marvin's
rendition of Mary J. Blige's
Love No Limit as an inmate
in solitary confinement.
This is Gaye's spousing Edward
Gleason's notion of consent
to not be a single being.
This is Michel Foucault.
Did he ever read?
Did he ever listen to Marvin Gaye
or read George Gershwin's opera?
As a witness in the great
cloud of black studies
in that "We will be
astonished. No doubt.
that we were capable of
identifying such a strange
kinship between what for
a long time was dreaded,
like a scream, and what for a
long time was considered a song."
But the story does not end here.
In other words,
I would be remiss,
given that this is Black Music
Month to highlight another
moment of close listening of one
of Marvin Gaye's contemporaries.
And this story begins,
as most do, with a memory.
When I first moved south
to do my doctoral work,
literally the first weekend,
my aunt Willa Carlton,
who was celebrating
a birthday tomorrow,
so I wanted to shout her out.
A rather well-known piano
teacher in town took me to
an event for people of her ilk
a play in for instructors,
a makeshift piano recital of sorts.
The occasion provided members
of the Piano Teacher's Guild
an opportunity to come together
a handful of Sundays throughout
the year to celebrate their mutual
joy of that percussive instrument.
Nevertheless, that
singular occasion elicits
my contemplation now
around the classical tradition,
melancholy and genius
in black culture and media.
At one point during the recital,
an older woman, tall in stature
yet somehow unassuming,
stepped to the keyboard.
My aunt leaned over to me and
said something to the effect of
this woman always attends these.
She stopped teaching some years
ago due to early onset dementia,
but whenever she comes,
she plays a whole piece by heart.
I reply with my
usual sentiment. Hmm.
But I was more interested in seeing
what was about to pull off
on the piano stool,
and so she began to play.
[Music]
I gasped.
I've heard this song before.
Maybe not in its entirety, maybe,
but certainly on those
infomercials for the Time-Life
box set of classical
music standards.
I gasped. Did anyone
else hear that?
What I heard? I gasped.
How did I miss something so
obvious that now confuses my ear?
I gasped. Did he do
what I think he did?
And why didn't no one
ever tell me? I gasped.
I sang a song for you
for my capstone in high school.
Some years later, I sang it
again at a friend's wedding.
And there is evidence.
The first time I remember hearing
this song was on the TV show
Gideon's Crossing,
when it started playing at the
end of an episode as actor
Russell Hornsby started crying
for what I do not recall.
No doubt the song played in
spaces where I was present,
but I remember this specific
sonic event because my mother
had a visceral reaction
to the song choice.
When I asked her who it was,
she said it was Donny Hathaway.
Soon after that, I purchased
the Donny Hathaway collection
on an antiquated contraption
commonly known as a CD.
[Laughter]
Nevertheless, this occurrence
compelled me to do my work.
The rigour invested in
Marvin Gaye through
close listening provides me entree
to think more acutely about
black listening practices,
more specifically,
how black people rethink the
classical tradition to narrate
their melancholy as acts of genius.
In my forthcoming book,
Be Real Black For Me,
about the matter of Roberta Flack,
Flack shares that when
she recorded her debut album
First Take, "Executive said come
to New York and we want you
to just go into the studio.
How many songs do you know?
I said about 600 songs.
Of course, that included
all of the classical music,
all the Bach, the Chopin.
And they said, well,
we'd like for you to do some.
We'll just set you up.
We went in, I recorded 40 songs.
The 10 or 11 songs that are on
that album were from that session,
and they called
that album First Take,
because I did them
in like one take."
End quote.
Is it possible that
Johann Sebastian or Fredrik
influence how she executes
The First time Ever I Saw Your Face
or Ballad of the Sad Young Men?
In like manner, though,
these Donny Hathaway
musings are a part of a
larger project in my head,
the darkness and atonality
of a song for you
seems a broader concern for him.
In an interview referencing
Stravinsky, he states,
"He uses the timpanis
like a primitive person
would use the timpanis.
That was one of the things
that Coltrane added to music,
from studying people like Ravel,
who had written symphonies,
who had exhausted music to the
point of just writing chords
that were atonal and didn't have
any harmony at all, just
colors, clusters."
Nevertheless, all this
information provokes from me
the question of who
Hathaway's you is.
Partly because [Inaudible]
number three which song for you
samples was set to a poem where
the first stanza reads
"Oh, love, as long as love you can,
Oh love as long as love you may
The time will come,
the time will come.
When you will stand
at the grave and mourn."
Perhaps the realization
like Troubled Man,
but unlike Freud,
is that Hathaway is speaking,
singing to me to prove that I
have been let in on his secret.
This is akin to Gaye speculatively
interpolating My Man's Gone Now,
and forcing me to reckon with
the sameness and difference
between apart and up hard.
In conclusion, this snapshot of
melancholy and genius exhibits
what I deem staying black and
dying as revealed through the
black, feminine/maternal
and manifold iterations.
At the same time,
it also brings to mind my own
formulation of what the
colloquialism means.
When I, as young children,
are prone to do entreated
of my parents, I need X.
My mother almost always responded.
All you need to do
is stay black and die.
[Laughter]
As relayed by my mother,
the aphorism problematize
melancholy because it conflates
racial preservation
love with death loss
as a necessity on par with
Langston Hughes, who suggests.
Work? I don't have to work.
I don't have to do nothing but eat,
drink, stay black and die.
Therefore, perhaps when one is
encouraged to stay black and die,
that admonition gestures not only
to a form of affective labor,
but something that
we might call life.
Thank you.
[Applause]
>> Morgan Davis: Doctor Durham.
How about another round
of applause for that?
[Applause]
So I kind of want to go
back to Marian Anderson
and her connection with
Marvin Gaye and potentially
a connection there between the
concept you introduced briefly
that we could talk about for hours.
[Inaudible] Can you talk to us
a little bit more about that?
>> I. Augustus Durham: Yes. So
some of what I'm interested in
with him saying that he has kinship
with Marian Anderson
and Mahalia Jackson,
is that in writings
about Troubled Man,
it suggests that it has
a kind of gospfied
feel in some of the chords.
And at the same time,
for me, the falsetto is a register
of singing that is most often,
you know, kind of
read through a certain
kind of a operatic sound
or kind of sonic quality.
So when he says,
I had a kind of kinship with
Marian Anderson
and Mahalia Jackson,
to me, Troubled Man is almost
kind of like the blending of
both of those things at once.
So that the falsetto seems
to me a kind of homage,
perhaps, to Marian Anderson,
among other people.
And then that kind
of gospel sound that,
that screaming of, yeah,
that happens is kind of
like that gospel guttural kind
of thing that he would have
known just based on having
grown up in the church and singing.
But also, I think,
just the fact that he was,
you know, singing in Motown.
I mean, I think what's also
interesting, as I think about
the question of Marian Anderson,
is that and this is
something that I have learned
from one of my other mentors,
Mark Anthony Neal,
is that there's a way
that Marvin Gaye is
what I'd call an archival singer.
And what I mean by that is that
he's listening quite broadly to
a lot of different things in order
to kind of draw on inspiration.
So one of the things
he was also listening to
in this period,
so this is the period where
Motown has left Detroit
and has moved to L.A.
And in part because they
want to start making films.
So if you think about,
like, mahogany, for example.
Marvin Gaye is there in 1972.
I believe it's 1972.
And so he's listening
to, like, Beethoven.
He's listening to a lot of
classical composers. Because
the other thing that's happening
in this moment is that he is
noticing that a lot
of his contemporaries,
like Isaac Hayes, Donny Hathaway,
are also composing
film soundtracks.
So one of the reasons why he
even is even thinking about
Troubled Man and composing it is
because he sees other
contemporaries doing that. So
he's listening to the classical.
He's listening to his, you
know, his contemporaries.
But also there's a period
in Marvin Gaye's career
where he seems to have
a kind of interesting investment
in, like, again, the
American Songbook.
So he's listening to,
like, Frank Sinatra, right?
So to me, as I think
about him as a kind of
archival singer, it would
make sense that he was
likely listening to opera.
Right? And certainly
Marian Anderson,
but also listening to,
to Mahalia Jackson and others,
on top of whatever
he's listening to and,
and through Motown. Right.
The last thing I'll say
about Marian Anderson and the
influence that I think is also
important and maybe also kind of
plays into the
[Inaudible], is that,
at Motown, they had this
kind of preoccupation
with how the musicians
sounded while they sang.
And what I mean by that is
that sometimes and Marvin Gaye
says this, they would pitch his
music too high so that it would
sound like he was screaming,
but really, in order to kind
of simulate him begging.
Right. And so Lamont Dozier,
there's an interview with Lamont
Dozier basically says he would
slide into his falsetto in order
to hit the notes that were
too high for him. But it's
not only just that
this is happening
to male performers.
There's an interview that
Gladys Knight does.
Gladys Knight is also saying
they would pitch my music
way too high. Right?
So I would say Gladys Knight.
When I think about
Levi Stubbs in the Four Tops,
if you listen to the song like
Bernadette, he is screaming.
It is very, very-- it's
way too high for him, right?
So in those ways,
I also see the influence of
Marian Anderson,
because in some ways,
given how music producers
are pitching his music,
the falsetto is his way out.
It's his way to be able to
sing music that's too high.
And so again, I'm thinking he
must have been listening to
a broad range of music and
again, to the frame to say
he had a kinship with Mahalia
Jackson and Mary Anderson.
It feels like to me that
manifests in his voice.
>> Morgan Davis: Thank
you for that. Yeah.
I can see those connections.
Speaking of more connections.
So Troubled Man, and this
operatic influence that
he borrows from Gershwin,
and thinking about
how the score is sparse
when you're actually listening
to it throughout the movie.
Can you talk a little bit
about some of the operatic
influences from Gershwin
that you're actually hearing
in the score without words?
>> I. Augustus Durham: So what's
interesting about Troubled Man
is that, as Morgan was saying,
when you listen to the album,
it's quite empty.
There's a lot of silences
and for the most part,
the only song where
there's actually
full singing is Troubled Man,
which happens really at the
beginning of the album.
There are like a couple of
kind of musical interludes, right?
For me, I think for a while
I was thinking maybe
there's, like, Rhapsody
in Blue somewhere.
Like in there. I don't think that--
I don't think that
really-- I think it really is
is Porgy and Bess. And
I think that also because,
like I said, if I'm listening to
Troubled Man and hearing
what I think are the harmonics
and my man's going now,
certainly there is a way that
summertime also seems to have
a similar kind of
harmonic register.
There are a couple of other
moments in the opera two,
that have that.
But I think for me,
like the fact that he was
listening to Gershwin
and listening to Beethoven,
so that in a lot of ways
this is if and again,
I think my My Man's Gone Now
really bears this out.
As I was saying,
there's a moment when the
orchestra drops out and
there's complete silence.
It feels like he is kind of
getting influenced about the
silences that are happening in
Troubled Man by way of Gershwin
and some of what I think is
happening in Porgy and Bess.
But again, for a while I
was trying to figure out,
like, should I be thinking more
broadly about Gershwin?
Like, you know,
is there some Gershwin that
I haven't listened to that maybe.
But to me it just
seemed also resonant,
given that with me writing about
Marvin Gaye's masculinity
and certainly writing
about his childhood,
that my man's got
going now felt totally
appropriate to think about,
in part because, as I said,
it seems like Serena is having--
In fact, there's a
moment in the Aria,
where she says,
old man sorrow.
She actually calls
out old man sorrow,
which seemed to me to be rather
germane to what I
was interested in.
So again, I think
it's Porgy and Bess.
I know for sure it's
My Man's Gone Now.
I think there may be, there's
some Summertime there,
but again, I think that he's
listening to so many broad,
such a broad archive that I
think it really does manifest
in Troubled Man, among
other things that are
happening on that soundtrack.
>> Morgan Davis:
Absolutely, absolutely.
I want to come back to that.
But I also would like to touch
on this idea of melancholy
and full disclosure,
I am not a Freudian scholar,
so I did my best.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Am I? No. I'm just--
>> Morgan Davis:
A lot closer to me.
So Freud's discourse
on melancholy seems to operate
around this idea of a lost
object, a person, an idea.
We've sort of talked
about this relationship,
this kinship with Marian Anderson,
with Mahalia Jackson.
And the way that melancholia
spins out in your work,
to me, it reads sort
of as the object,
as the black feminine maternal.
Which, for the purposes
of this question,
I'm connecting to those women.
But also juxtaposing this loss
against an absent or sort of
constantly in flux
black patrilineal object.
The more I read, the more
those two objects seem
to become increasingly
inextricable.
Can you give us some more
insight into how you intended
for the black feminine maternal
to operate in dialogue with the
black patrilineal object,
either wholly absent or
perpetually in flux?
I'm thinking particularly of
the chapters read Frederick
and of course, man Marvin.
This is from his book
Stay Black and Die,
which we're talking about.
Please indulge us.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Yes, that's a great question.
I mean, not to get too
deeply into kind of like
the theoretical weeds.
Some of what I'm interested in
is the idea that oftentimes
when we think about genius,
it's only ever rendered
through the masculine.
So it is the man.
And even, as I said, at the level
of the etymology of the word,
one of the etymological references
is the male of the family.
And so there's a lot
of work, you know,
coming out of like, you know,
classical theory
around humors and,
you know, your body giving
off these, like, vapors,
you know, this kind
of thing, right?
But then also, there's a lot of
work around notions of like,
the womb, you know,
that the woman can carry genius,
but can never be genius.
And so for me, what was
interesting in these figures
and again, what I think
the moment of him saying,
Mahalia Jackson, Mary Anderson
as kin is interesting to me
is that in a lot of ways,
oftentimes we think that
when these men perform genius,
they're performing it,
and it's a mark of
their self-making.
And so for me, I'm much more
interested in like, actually,
if we peel back the layers to see
what was Marvin Gaye listening to?
Or, you know, in the case
of Frederick Douglass,
what do we do with the rumor
that he gives around his mother.
For what it's worth,
there's a rumor that
Frederick Douglass shares where
he says, in this part of Maryland,
where I was growing up,
my mother was the only slave
who knew how to read.
And so from there,
he basically suggests.
So any love of letters that I
have is from disabled genius,
who was my mother.
I'm very much interested in
peeling back the layers of one's
self-making, to actually find
the origin or the beginning of
how that kind of
making comes to be,
in order to kind of remove the
notion of like this one man
as an individual being, right?
And so I think what Freud kind
of does in these moments is he
does help to give some frames
for what I'm thinking about.
But of course, at the same time
we recognize that again,
as I said in the paper.
You know, Freud is not
talking to me, right?
Freud is thinking
in a certain kind of,
you know, bourgeois
European moment.
Right? And at the same time,
what's also interesting is that
simultaneous to Freud writing,
the slave trade is
still happening, right?
There there are these
moments where a real,
on the ground understanding
of his theories would be
the understanding
of the black person.
Right. So for me,
I'm kind of trying to think
through literature,
through culture,
through media. What happens when
I peel back the layers of these
men and their performances
and actually begin to find
who kind of give them,
who kind of profess to them
what might be called genius.
What's interesting
about your moment
around Frederick Douglass is
that Douglass kind of does an
interesting thing in the chapter
where I write about him,
and that the mother is also
kind of in gender flux.
So basically what happens is
that there's a moment in his
second autobiography where he
talks about how he was flipping
through an almanac, and he
sees a picture of a pharaoh.
For what it's worth,
Douglass's mother dies
when he's quite young,
around eight years old.
And he says, when my mother died,
it was if it was the
death of a stranger.
She would walk 12 miles one way
to see him at night
and put him to sleep,
and then he wouldn't see
her again. So she again dies
when he's about eight years old.
And so his recollections of her are
quite hazy, for what it's worth.
Nevertheless, as an adult,
he's flipping through this
almanac and he sees a picture
of an Egyptian pharaoh,
and he says, that's my mother.
My mother looks like
this Pharaoh.
Again, with the understanding that
he's saying, I really only saw
my mother at night. She
would come put me to sleep.
You know, again, he's probably no
more than 2 or 3 years old. Right?
But he sees this picture
of the Pharaoh and says
that Pharaoh looks like my mom.
I'm interested in that.
I'm interested in Douglass saying,
I have a hazy recollection of my
mother. But if I were to say
she looked like someone, she would
look like this Pharaoh, right?
And of course, this
is interesting because
he's saying my mother
looks like this man, right?
At the same time, there's
another moment where
he's talking about this fight,
where he's fighting
for his freedom,
and he says that the slave master
was a snake and I was a cat.
To me, what's interesting
is that given the kind of
Egyptology that we know,
cats are very important to Egypt.
Right? So on the one hand,
that kind of feline feminine
figure of the cat is Douglas.
At the same time that he also can
read his lineage
through the Pharaoh.
Right? So even for Douglass,
the mother is a kind of flux space,
even around certain kinds
of gender constructs.
And again, I'm interested in like,
how do we arrive at these
notions of genius,
where we might be able to chart
it through the black feminine,
through the maternal, right,
and see that in some ways,
the making of these men
who we read as genius,
actually is indebted
to these women.
Right. And so I think
that in those ways,
you know, the Marvin Gaye
certainly is playing with that
because the father is the father,
you know, this kind of patriarch,
but also his cross-dressing.
Right. So that kind of
flux is going on too, right?
And even for what it's worth,
even he says, my father
was a great singer,
and I always sang my
heart out to please him.
Right. So even there, like
that kind of gender flux,
that kind of gender, anxiety
is even existent there, right?
But again, I'm kind
of trying to chart how
these men are working through that,
but also trying to chart how we
might reconceptualize genius
to see that it might begin with
the feminine or the maternal.
>> Morgan Davis:
Thank you for that.
That was one of the
things that kind of
seemed to keep coming back to me,
was trying to track the object
that was the black feminine
throughout the book. So that
really kind of helped to give
some context to it.
In terms of genius,
so genius and blackness were
qualifying genius in this context.
What to you is black genius?
Why the necessity to other this
brand of genius from other types?
I can think of a billion reasons,
but I'm curious about yours.
>> I. Augustus Durham: That is a
great question, in part because
I don't know the answer.
I have been thinking a lot about
what black genius might be.
In another moment, I referenced,
perhaps again, serendipitous
to thinking about
Donny Hathaway. There's a live
album that Donny Hathaway has
where he's about to cover
a song by Stevie Wonder,
and he says, from the
black pool of genius.
>> Morgan Davis:
Yes. Go on. Go on.
>> I. Augustus Durham: Yeah. I
have been thinking a lot about,
maybe, if that is
what I'm getting at.
Like that there's a black pool,
and in that black pool,
there's genius, right?
I think one of the reasons
that I have anxiety about
qualifying black genius is
because I think I worry about,
for lack of a better term,
I think I worry about it
becoming trademarked.
And what I mean by
that is that, like,
if I tell you this is black genius,
then every time you see it,
you'll be like, oh, yes, that's it.
And I'm worried about I'm
wary of that because I think
that it would mean that my work
is kind of rendered obsolete,
in part because I'm saying
whereas I'm totally
grateful for Frederick Douglass
writing three autobiographies.
That gratitude doesn't negate
the fact that I'm also
totally invested in
the fact that he says,
my mother knew how to read.
My mother, that the germ of that
rumor is the beginning
of whatever we might call
Frederick Douglass genius.
Right? And so even that germ
is not something that we would
typically render genius.
You know, being able to read.
You know, in the case of even
someone like Ralph Ellison.
You know, for me, in the chapter,
the genius is by way of a riddle.
Right? And so I think one of the
reasons why I'm wary of saying
this is black genius is because
I think that certainly in
the society we live in now,
it can kind of get trademarked
and we can then say,
oh, that's-- Okay. Yeah.
And the other things that
might be genius would then be
thrown by the wayside because
it has to have a look, or it doesn't
have a sound. And so I think
when Donny Hathaway says
the black pool of genius,
I think that that's what I've
been sitting with a lot more
as a possibility for what I might
mean when I think about genius.
I think the other thing, too,
about genius that also may be,
makes me wary of kind of
giving it the definition is
because the idea itself is
coming out of a certain kind of
European enlightenment thinking.
Right? And so--
Yeah. So...
[Laughing]
So then in those ways, you know,
we may not think of, say,
slaves sewing rice into
their hair as a genius act.
Right? Because it doesn't
have the look of what we
oftentimes understand
genius to be. Right?
Again, Frederick Douglass mother
being able to read and again,
the fact that he's not even sure if
she could read, but the fact that
he says it was a rumor,
I heard that my mother was the
only one who could read. Right.
So I think in those ways
I try to be careful about it.
But I think also in the
work. I'm trying to say,
like, what happens if we look at
the ordinary thing as a genius act
in order to make the possibility
of what it is more capacious.
Right? That we could open up
possibilities for what
genius might be if we think no
longer about the spectacular,
but maybe think about the ordinary.
>> Morgan Davis: So with
that being said, this idea of
of trademarking around this
idea and being cautious of it,
I think many of Marvin Gaye's fans
would consider him to be genius.
So would you say that
he's an example of that?
And are there moments in your work?
Because I want to get to
the book. Are there moments
in that chapter
that you can pull out
that exemplify that
without limiting it to,
this is the single dimension
in which black genius exists?
>> I. Augustus Durham: Yeah,
that's also a great question.
I mean, I think that in some ways--
So there's another time where
the etymology of genius suggests
that it's like the spirit or
like the zeitgeist.
Right? And so for me,
I think one of the reasons why
I would make the claim that
Marvin Gaye is a genius is because
especially if I'm thinking about
what's going on in the early 70s
around like, music at that moment,
that in some ways,
Marvin Gaye is kind of tapping
into the spirit of the moment.
Because, again,
Isaac Hayes is producing shaft.
Donny Hathaway is producing
comeback Charleston Blue, right?
So there's something going on
around the spirit of the moment.
Right. That would suggest that,
you know, it's not just that
Marvin Gaye is tapping in,
but Isaac Hayes is tapping in.
You know, Minnie
Riperton is tapping in.
A lot of people are tapping
into the spirit of the moment.
Right? And so I think
that in those ways,
it's not to reduce him and say,
oh, no, he couldn't be genius.
I mean, he could be.
And in my book, he is, right.
But again, it's also to say
that, like what was going on
culturally in the moment that
would make all these people be
so invested in. You know,
even Donny Hathaway,
at one point, as I mentioned,
him talking about,
you know, Stravinsky and Ravel.
You know, he's saying, I've
been listening to all this music
and I think I want
to write a symphony.
And I believe he calls
the symphony life,
Right. So there is something--
Roberta Flack,
you know, like who is also
someone who is very much
interested, you know, and I
say that about Roberta Flack
and Donny Hathaway
because in some ways,
again, this is a moment of like,
genius in the spirit.
You know, I'm very interested in,
like Howard music
department.
You know, Donny Hathaway
comes out of that department.
Roberta Flack. Jessye Norman.
Richard Smallwood.
Like, what's going on at
Howard music department?
>> Morgan Davis:
What's in the--
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Right. Right. You know.
So again, like that, it might
be something like the spirit.
Right. That there's
something that's inhabiting
these spaces where people
are getting inspiration,
influence that, you know, that
might compel them to do these
works that we would
consider genius. Right.
And so, again, I
think in some ways,
it is a move from like away
from like the individual.
Right. Which again, I think
is like, kind of a mode of
that kind of enlightenment thinking
to think more broadly about.
Like, you know, what's
happening among people
at these moments.
So again, you know.
Marvin Gaye, you know,
even if you want to say that
Motown is genius at that moment.
Right? Because so much is being
produced out of Motown.
You know, they're
about to make films.
They're moving to
California. Right.
All these things are
happening at once.
So I would say in those ways,
yes, he is a genius.
But I would also say that maybe
that genius is happening
because there's something
going on in the air.
>> Morgan Davis: I like this idea.
I like that you give life
to these ideas of like,
the spirit and in the air.
And it also makes me think,
with Howard University,
the Marian Anderson connection
for the Easter Sunday
performance ended up happening
on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial. Originally,
that whole concert series was
sponsored by Howard University
and was supposed to happen
at DAR Constitution Hall.
And then folks at
Howard, folks around D.C.
got together, pooled the money,
and now we have that
watershed performance
that we all associate with her.
So I think you may
be on to something.
>> I. Augustus Durham: Thanks.
>> Morgan Davis: I know I
don't have a lot more time,
and I have so many
questions for you.
I want to talk about the titles
of the chapters of the book.
This is the book, by the way.
You all need to run to get it.
It is so fabulous.
The titles of the chapters
of the book feel like wordplay,
which is laced throughout the text,
which I absolutely enjoyed.
But they also seem to
suggest a type of duality and
perhaps tension, which
has come up when we're
discussing the black feminine,
when we're discussing
this idea of genius.
The chapter titles, by the way.
Color, blackness, read, Frederick,
travel, Ralph, man,
Marvin, woman, man, love,
Kendrick, study and us.
Particularly in the
chapters man and woman,
this sense of duality and
tension feels heightened
and it calls to mind
Hortense J. Spillers
particular brand of
duality, body and flesh.
Can you share with us
the intentionality
behind this choice and what
was left unsaid with the choice?
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Of the chapter titles?
>> Yes.
>> Yes.
So there's kind of a pragmatic
answer and a theoretical answer.
So I'll provide both.
Pragmatically, the
chapter titles are sparse
because the writing is dense.
So I kind of wanted
to play on, you know,
very sparse chapter titles to
prepare you for what will be
dense writing for the most part.
And so it's just, you know,
a word, a dash and then the name.
So the second half of the chapters
are the names of the
people that the chapters are about.
That's the pragmatic reason.
The theoretical reason was at
one point I was thinking about,
how the word before the dash
so color, read, travel, man,
woman, love, study might be
what brings about the melancholy.
Such that on the other side,
we see like that melancholy
turns into that genius
of the named person.
And so, you know,
again, in the case of,
say, Frederick Douglass, you know,
I call the chapter Read Frederick,
because on the one hand,
he's saying that, you know,
my love of letters is because
of this rumor I heard about
my mother being able to read.
But then there's another moment
where Frederick Douglass says,
now that I know how to read,
that I have literacy,
I know all the ills of slavery.
So I wouldn't wish that among--
I think he said something like,
I wouldn't wish it
on the meanest reptile.
Right. So the ability to read is
both a sight of the melancholy
for him. Right. And the
sight of the genius for him.
Right. The same thing I would
say about all the other people.
You know, again, in the case
of, say, Marvin Gaye. Man. Right.
You know that that trouble man
is a moment where he can kind of
narrate his childhood, right?
Or what I'm envisioning is a
narration of a childhood at the
same time that in
order to narrate it,
one must have to
relive that trauma.
Right. So that kind of thing.
I did a book event last year,
and my conversation partner
said something to me that
I never thought about,
but I think also maybe
an interesting way to
answer this question.
He said to me that in his mind,
to your point about
what's missing was that by
not listing their last names,
I leave open the possibility
that the woman that I reference
can fill in the last name.
I was blown away by that idea.
Konohi Nishikawa at
Princeton University.
I was like, oh, I never--
You know, like, I never thought
about it that way. So, you know,
for him, he's like,
you know, man, Marvin,
you know that maybe his
last name could then be
Jackson or Anderson, right?
I just never thought about that.
Right. So I think
that in those ways,
you know, you're
writing the book and
kind of have this tunnel vision,
but then it gets out into the world
and people see things
that you don't see.
So when he offered that, I said,
oh, that's a complete different
way for me to think about how
I might see the chapter titles.
And one that I think is really,
not to be too on the nose, genius.
Right? Right.
To think about that, to
think about that as an idea.
But, yeah, you know, partly,
you know, for the
sake of being sparse,
but also kind of really think
about melancholy and genius
and how that might manifest.
The other thing, too,
for what it's worth,
is it also each of the words before
the dash could be nouns or verbs.
You know, although woman is not
necessarily a noun or a verb.
You know, again, like in some ways,
you know, I'm thinking about
in that chapter, you know what
it means to be womanish. Right.
So in those ways,
also, you know,
before the dash is like, you know,
the noun of color
and to color, you know,
read and to read.
But yeah, that was how I
thought about the chapters
and again, as I've
talked to people about it,
more ideas emerge for what
might be there that I didn't see.
>> Morgan Davis:
Thank you for that.
How are we doing on time?
Okay, then let's
plug you, shall we?
So towards the end of the talk,
we got to hear a little bit about
how your work intersects
with Donny Hathaway,
Roberta Flack. What else do you
have coming up where we can
enjoy more from your brilliance?
>> I. Augustus Durham:
So I'm currently
writing a book about Roberta Flack.
It's called Be Real Black For
Me, which is a reference to
her record with Donny Hathaway.
The impetus for the project is,
there was a documentary in 2015
called Killing Me Softly.
It was done by the, in the UK.
And there's a moment
in the documentary where
they're interviewing
Dionne Warwick,
and she makes this move that
sat with me for a long time and
really kind of became the germ
of the project.
She says something to the effect of
Roberta has a clear, haunting
and soothing voice.
Aretha makes you sweat.
Roberta makes you think.
I've been very
intrigued by that idea
of Roberta Flack voice
making one think,
but also Aretha's voice
making one sweat.
Right? And, you know, in some ways,
these works, although
they are separate,
are in conversation,
in part because,
there was another documentary
about Roberta Flack,
the PBS like
American Master series.
And throughout the documentary,
her former drummer keeps saying
Roberta Flack was a genius, but
no one knew what to do with her.
I'm very much--
I mean, again, it's
all on the nose,
but I'm very much
intrigued by that.
And so Be Real Black
For Me is thinking about
Roberta Flack and as a kind of--
The shape of the chapters is,
I'm thinking through
her first four albums.
So first take chapter two,
Quiet Fire and Killing Me Softly.
What's interesting
about Roberta Flack,
and this is something
I've talked to my mentor,
Mary Helen
Washington about, is that,
in terms of her public persona,
what we know most about
her is really her music.
And so in some ways, I have
gone about trying to fill in
what we may or may
not know about her.
And so part of what I'm
trying to do is think about it
kind of in the vein of Audre
Lorde as a kind of bio lithography,
where I'm kind of
trying to draw out
things that are known,
things that I can kind of
speculate on based on the music,
that are helpful
to me writing that project.
I'm in the throes
of writing it now.
The manuscript is due next summer,
so I am writing it.
But yeah. Be right back for me
about the matter of Roberta Flack.
The Donny Hathaway is a part of
another project that's
still yet undetermined.
But in that chapter, as I said,
in the talk, I'm thinking
about how he listens.
He grew up in Saint
Louis, Missouri,
and there's a lot of kind of
anecdotal evidence that says,
you know, at like 8 or 9 years old,
he could play Handel's Messiah.
And kind of, combing the archives
at the Moorland-Spingarn at Howard.
There's all of this
interesting data that says
things like, he was
so far advanced in the
music department that
professors were like,
we really can't teach you.
Like, you're really advanced.
And so he would actually end up
helping his classmates.
Part of what I'm trying to think
through with that chapter is,
again, that kind of genius thing
that's happening at Howard.
But also thinking about
it's kind of a parallel story.
So on the one hand,
Donny Hathaway,
people like that coming out of
Howard and are doing music
that is not technically
the Howard University of Music
Department's curriculum.
And what I mean by that
is there are all these
kind of interesting
stories that are told.
Richard Smallwood tells
one too, where he says,
you know, when we would be
in the music rooms practicing,
we would be playing like
gospel or the blues or jazz,
and they would have someone
standing at the door of the room,
because if a security guard
walked past and heard them,
they could get
kicked out of school.
So I'm interested in like, the
classical and the vernacular.
You know, what does it mean for
Donny Hathaway to write a song
for you and interpret [Inaudible]?
And again, for what it's worth,
he's also saying, like,
I was listening to Stravinsky.
I was listening to Ravel.
You know, he's playing
Handel's Messiah.
You know that kind of thing.
Again, Roberta Flack is also
listening to Bach and Chopin.
He references Coltrane
listening to Ravel.
You know, Charles Mingus is
listening to classical music,
you know? Mary Lou Williams,
it's kind of like a broad, right?
A broad conversation around
the classical and vernacular.
But some of the entry points of
that, too, is also thinking about
and here again, kind of
trying to work through
these parallel structures.
Marian Anderson again emerges.
When Marian Anderson was touring
in Germany and singing leader,
there are all of these newspaper
articles that say when she sang,
people were like, is she German?
She really mastered
the leader in such a way.
She and other black opera
singers mastered leader
in such a way that people
were like, you know.
So in some ways,
this notion of like mastery
of the classical tradition,
you know what it means that
Donny Hathaway is listening
to all these things and
reinterpreting it through the lens
of, say, R and B and soul music
is really interesting to me. And
also how that kind of transfers
into the modern moment.
So, for example,
if you listen to Alicia Keys's
You Don't Know My Name,
there's a flourish right before,
♪ Ooh, you don't know my name. ♪
That's Chopin, right?
There's a song by Invo
called Love You Crazy,
where they sample
Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
Right. So, you know,
Janelle Monet has a moment
where she samples, I believe
Debussy's Clair de Lune.
Right. So, what's going on?
The spirit. What is it about R
and B music at a certain moment
where, like, all
these people are, like,
reinterpreting classical music.
Right? What's it telling us about
the classical and the vernacular?
So that's another project
that I have in mind.
So as you can see,
like in the book,
I'm very much interested in sound.
In this next project,
I'm kind of running with sound
and running with music,
which is why I was saying
I'm kind of interested in these
close listening exercises where,
you know, in some ways I'm also
I'm not just kind of plumbing
their archives,
but also plumbing my own.
So as I was saying in the paper,
you know, I'm in Durham,
North Carolina,
randomly at a teacher's play in.
The woman goes in plays.
Again, I know I've
heard [Inaudible] before.
Right? She plays and
gets to that first.
I'm like, no one has
written about this?
Like, oh my goodness.
Like, has anyone else
paid attention to this?
Right? So again, it's like
not only just plumbing
Hathaway's archive,
but also knowing that,
like, if not for my parents
playing him in the house,
I would not have even known
that that flourish was his, right?
So again, it's kind of like
that kind of in and out,
the biomythography, you know,
the kind of autobiography.
So those are the next projects
that I'm working on.
>> Morgan Davis: I
so enjoy your brain
and the connections
that you're able to
make between these,
what society would have us
believe are disparate ideas.
So your work, I think, is really
crucial for lots of reasons.
But I'd also like to mention
your background is,
you have an undergraduate
in architecture, right?
>> I. Augustus Durham: I thought
I was going to be an architect.
>> Morgan Davis: Yeah. Your work is
just so definitely
interdisciplinary.
And I think as someone who gets
to work with music research a lot
is a real treat getting to read
the way that you put this
together and getting to hear, just
the way all of this is ticking.
So thank you for spending
time with us and sharing your
wonderful, brilliant thoughts.
And now I'll stop hogging you
so others can ask you questions.
[Applause]
>> So I have the mic in case
somebody wants to ask a question.
There you go.
>> You talked
about Marvin's--
I'll quote his later work,
but where does his early
part of his career come in.
You know, stubborn kind of fella.
And hitchhike and it's
such a different vibe.
>> I. Augustus
Durham: I don't really
write about that in the chapter.
But that is kind of
integral to the story.
So in terms of thinking
about the late work,
this album happens after what's
going on, which is the total shift.
Right? So...
And there are a couple of other
things that happen. So again,
as we think about the
spirit of the moment.
So, you know, he's kind of
writing and singing pop music.
So stubborn kind of fella,
hitchhike,
that kind of thing.
The Vietnam War happens.
He also joins the
Air Force and leaves.
Right. So he has some
semblance of understanding of,
like, serving in the army,
in the armed services.
But it's interesting because
basically when
he's in the Air Force,
he feigns like he goes crazy.
So they're like, get out of here.
Right. And so what's interesting
about the Troubled Man--
Right.
So it's interesting about
the Troubled Man moment
is again, it comes
after what's going on.
But there are a couple of
things happening. So again,
it's like the soundtracks
are happening all at once.
There's all this kind of
interesting social stuff going on.
And Stevie Wonder is
using different technology
to make his music.
So he's using the mog. M-O-G.
And so, kind of, again,
the spirit of Motown.
But Marvin Gaye is watching
this and thinking like,
oh, like, I think I can,
I think I can do that,
right? And so in some ways,
what's going on really is the
thing that sets up the latter
half of his career because
he really is more interested in,
I mean, what then would be
concept albums, right?
And I would say even though,
certainly near the
end of his career,
we get like say,
let's get it on and I want you
which again our pop.
They're concept albums.
I mean certainly they're of a
different ilk than what's going on
in Troubled Man.
They, you know,
the early part of his career is
not as important
to me only because,
I'm more interested in what happens
in that moment of the shift,
the moment that he moves
to California and he records
on this album and again,
he's listening to Gershwin,
in those moments in L.A.
But yeah, you know,
certainly, you know, those,
those early years are important
because those early years also
are the moments where,
again, he's really learning
how to manipulate the falsetto.
Right? So he's learning how to
change his voice because again,
those early years, he's singing
way out of his range.
So as you mentioned,
stubborn kind of fella.
That little pre-chorus
where he goes,
[Singing]
It's a little too
high for him, right?
So again, like he's already
learning how to change the voice
in those early years that
I think manifests later
in something like Troubled Man.
So I don't write
about it, but yeah.
>> Anybody else.
>> And Megan mentioned
about his voice,
regarding the background
vocals that he would do.
How did he come up
with that concept?
>> I. Augustus Durham:
The background vocals--
>> Right.
>> I. Augustus Durham: So this
also was interesting by him.
So like, say on I want you,
he's recording like hundreds
of voice background. Right.
Again, these are moments
where he almost is kind of
trying to think of
the voice as a chorus.
Right. And I think again,
because he's listening to people
like Bach, he's listening
to people like Beethoven.
He's, you know,
he's thinking in a kind of
symphonic register, right?
But again, there are other
people too. So like, say,
there's a short interlude
on Inner Visions
where before Golden Lady.
That's kind of has
like a choral register.
So that's what I'm saying.
Like at Motown,
in the moment of a kind of
spirit thing that's happening,
like, everyone is kind of thinking,
you know, again,
Donny Hathaway is like,
I think I want to make symphonies.
So, yeah, you know, he's thinking
a lot about layering.
And of course, there's
a way that that kind of
recording prowess then
makes legible someone like
Michael Jackson and the
kind of intensity of,
like, him recording,
you know, like, say, want to be
starting something, right?
He's doing all these
layered background vocals,
you know, harmonizing,
that kind of thing.
So he really kind
of does innovate,
that kind of thing. Even
though again, on Troubled Man,
the music is very, very sparse.
So again, it's very much,
it's much in these ways
in terms of the symphonic.
It's a lot more orchestral.
You know, again, Troubled
Man is really the only song
on the album where he's singing
for an extended period of time.
But yeah, like, he's
thinking a lot more
about these kinds of,
I'd say like, big sounds,
like kind of symphonic,
you know, choral register,
in this moment, you know.
>> It was really struck by
when you said the practice of
black listening. And I really
appreciated how you invited us
into a listening process with you
through the course of your talk.
And I wondered if you could
say a little more about that.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Thank you.
Yeah. You know, I think, you know,
in the same way that I would say,
you know, Marvin Gaye
is an archival singer.
I think that, in many ways, black
people are archival listeners.
Right? And so, you know,
this manifests in a
number of different ways.
A perfect example is,
let's talk about Marvin Gaye.
You know, when Robin Thicke
records Blurred Lines,
I'm like, I think one of the
reasons why it really is because
people are like,
oh, got to give it up.
Right. Right. Right.
[Laughter]
Hence the suit.
Right. Right. Right. Right.
Right. It's like,
you know, it's like.
Yeah, we can hear it.
We know, you know.
You know, perhaps, you know,
I think although he won
Ed Sheeran's-- Ed Sheeran,
whatever that song is,
I don't remember it,
but, you know, and let's get on.
I mean, again, people are like,
we can hear even if it's not
that you're directly sampling it
or interpolating it.
You have definitely
been influenced.
Right. But I think the other
thing about black listening
practice is so interesting to me
and this is a conversation
I've had before with people,
just as someone who sang
is that-- And this is
maybe more generally
a listening practice, but I'll say
it's a black listening practice
only because of the Apollo.
I'm always interested
in people who don't,
who cannot hear tones, who if you
were to get up on the Apollo stage
and sing Whitney Houston wrong,
they know it. Immediately.
Like they know that
is not how the song goes.
Even if it is the case, right?
Or the pain comes out.
Just get off the stage.
Right, Sandman? Right,
Right, right. It's a very--
It's a very elaborate spectacle.
Right. But that there is something
about the listening practice
that, you know, again,
I may not be able to sing
the Whitney Houston to you,
but because I know how it sounds,
when you get up on stage
and you sing it wrong,
I know that it's wrong.
Right. And so, you know, again,
as I'm thinking about
black listening practices,
that's something too,
that's also intriguing to me,
which is why I'm saying
with the Donny Hathaway,
it's so well done, right?
It's so subtle what he does.
What's also interesting about
that is that a song for you
is actually a cover.
The man's--
It was originally written
by a white artist,
Leon-- Leon Russell.
Go listen to Leon Russell and
then go listen to Donny Hathaway
and you'll see like it--
>> They're both so good.
>> I. Augustus Durham: Right,
right. I mean, or, you know,
again, even as I'm talking about
Roberta Flack, you know,
Roberta Flack or Nina Simone,
you know, like, so much of their
discography is covers, right?
So, you know, a song like
First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
is a cover. No one knows
who sang the original.
I mean. Right? Right. You
know, like, she took the--
Even if we take someone like,
Aretha Franklin's Respect,
you know, which was
recorded by Otis Redding.
You do not know.
You don't think about this?
>> Nobody come to see you.
>> I. Augustus Durham: Right?
Or, you know, even--
Right. Or even, Aretha Franklin
in A Natural Woman.
Right. You know,
Carole King sings that.
[Laughter]
You know, she reads the material
benefits of the cover. Right?
But like, when you think
about A Natural Woman,
you're like, that is
Aretha Franklin's song.
Right. And of course,
I would say,
you know, it comes full circle
when Carole King gets the
Kennedy Center honor and
Aretha Franklin sings it to her.
Right? Where she's like,
it is your song.
[Laughter]
They think it really is yours.
Right. So, yeah, once I think
about blacklisting practices,
you know, again, I'm
interested in in that
kind of both end. Right.
Where it's like, somehow, you know.
Roberta Flack is
covering Bob Dylan.
You know, she's
covering Suzanne Collins.
Exactly. Right. Right.
You know, where you wouldn't know,
you wouldn't know that
Bob Dylan sang it first.
Right. You know,
again Nina Simone and again,
even as I'm thinking about
that kind of classical register.
Nina Simone's Little Girl Blue
borrows from Good King Wenceslas.
Right? Again, like all these
moments where you're like,
oh, yeah. Like, they're listening
in such interesting ways.
And oftentimes playing music
that we actually know,
like, I mean, it is really
the American songbook,
right? And we wouldn't
even know who sang it first.
Right. I'm very intrigued by that.
Right. So I think,
yeah, you know, that
the listening practice
is both, you know,
how they're interpreting and
how they're reimagining,
but also that people listen,
and even if they don't have
the acumen to sing it well, they
do know what good singing is.
Or they know that
you're not singing it right.
Right, right, right.
And so you gotta
get off stage.
>> Here's another question.
>> Well, more so than a question,
I'd like permission to share.
And it has to do with Marvin Gaye.
The day that he died,
at that time,
I was-- Melvin Lindsey who
created a quiet storm.
I was his weekend filling host.
And I remember being in the car
coming from the event because
I was working at WHR,
Howard University.
A Jew, you know.
>> You know.
>> Yeah. You know, we know.
And I was just recalling that
because we were sitting here
talking about the
intricacies of Marvin.
And I remember being in the cab
because I didn't
have Uber back then,
and I heard that he had passed.
And I remember calling Jesse Fox,
who was the program director.
And what we did is we just
opened up the music library
from seven to midnight
that night on the Quiet Storm.
We just played his music,
and it was so ironic
because it was April Fool's Day.
And it was--
>> I. Augustus Durham:
That's what's--
>> Day before his birthday.
Yeah. That day he even turned 45.
>> Right. And I remember that
because people were
just so heartbroken.
Yeah. I mean, and what
you said about I want you--
What I really liked about it once,
you know, let everything go.
That was a song.
If you think about the song,
most of it did not rhyme.
If you listen to the words,
it was just him
talking straight from the heart.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
You see that too
on the album Here, My Dear
>> Yeah. Right. Right, right.
Well, that was a whole other--
He say he did that.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Whole other thing.
Right. But yeah, Here, My Dear,
to a lot of music doesn't.
>> Thank you for allowing
me not to ask a question.
[Laughing]
>> I. Augustus Durham:
No, but yeah, you know,
but I do write about that.
You know, again, like that
kind of, the cruel irony.
You know, he's born April 2nd,
1939 and dies April 1st, 1984.
Right. You know that he
would have literally just
celebrated his
birthday the next day.
And again, it's April Fool's Day.
>> Go ahead.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Again. Yeah. Because
I would imagine
people thought it was a joke.
Right. And in the manner in
which, yeah, like, you know,
which is probably also why now
people don't do
April Fool's jokes anymore.
Right. I mean--
>> Morgan Davis: My birthday
is on April Fool’s day. They do.
>> I. Augustus Durham:
Oh, they do. I'm sorry.
[Laughing]
>> Well, I think we have
had a wonderful evening.
And please give them
a big round of applause.
[Applause]
Thank you so much.
[Applause]