ABSTRACT
In a carefully staged presentation at Howard University, Lyndon Johnson could declaim “We shall overcome!” and get away with it. High among these self-encapsulating categories is the Western bias toward literacy as a paradigm for understanding or misunderstanding the broad blast of human communication. Less frequently noted as an obstacle to the understanding of Black oral creativity is the Western bias toward logocentrism. There is, in fact, a greater degree of self-consciousness and awareness at play in the musical-language laboratory of Black expression than is usually admitted. The rise of articulate philosophical expression among modern Black musicians reflects the increasing availability of African cultural thought. The assurance of the new verbal expression from African American musicians—exampled in the poem “Separation” by saxophonist Oliver Lake, who chants it to his own compositions—suggests that the feeling of unequal cultural competition is coming to an end.
