The Double Passage: Köle Anlatısında Sesin İcrası

Yıl 2016, Sayı: 6, 52 - 60, 21.04.2016

Giuseppe Sofo

https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.336537

Öz

Makale, milyonlarca Afrikalının, özgürlükten Amerika’ya
ve Amerika’dan özgürlüğe giden “köle yolu”nu (double passage) betimler. Makalede, köle anlatısında ve özellikle
sergilenen köle anlatısında (tiyatro ve müzik) sesin rolüne odaklanarak anlamın
oluşturulmasında ve köle anlatısındaki özgürlük savaşında sesin önemi ele
alınacaktır. Eğer köleler özgürlüklerinin yazı aracılığıyla yok olduğunu
görmüşlerse düşüncelerini açıklama hakkı kazanmaları ve özgürlüklerini elde
etmeleri, çoğu zaman söylenen söz ve müzik aracılığıyla olmuştur. Dion
Boucicault'nun The Octoroon; or Life in Louisiana (1861) başlıklı
melodramı, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka'nın Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant
(1967) başlıklı oyunu, Hannibal Lokumbe'nin African Portraits (1990)
başlıklı oratoryosu, Ouladah Equiano'nun The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African, Written by Himself (1789), Frederick Douglass'ın Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
(1845) başlıklı eserleri, Octavia Butler'ın Kindred (1979) başlıklı
romanı ve Clarence Major'ın The Slave Trade: View from the Middle Passage
(1994) başlıklı şiiri çalışmanın bütüncesini oluşturmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Ses, köle anlatısı, sergileme, Afrika, Afrikan-Amerikan edebiyatı, middle passage, köle yolu

The Double Passage: Performing Sound in Slave Narrative

Öz

The article
describes the “double passage” of millions of African people from freedom to
America, and from America to freedom. Focusing on the role of sound in slave
narrative, and in particular in slave narrative for performance (drama and
music), the article will try to reach an understanding of the importance of
sound in the construction of meaning, and in the fight for freedom in slave
narrative. If slaves have in fact seen their freedom vanish through writing, it
is often through the spoken word and through music that they have acquired a
right to speak out and obtain freedom. The corpus analyzed includes Dion
Boucicault's melodrama The Octoroon; or Life in Louisiana (1861), LeRoi
Jones/Amiri Baraka's play Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant (1967), and
Hannibal Lokumbe's oratorio African Portraits (1990), as well as Ouladah
Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of
the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
(1789), Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), Octavia Butler's novel Kindred
(1979), and Clarence Major's poem The Slave Trade: View from the Middle
Passage (1994).

Anahtar Kelimeler

Sound, slave narrative, performance, Africa, African-American literature, middle passage, double passage

Kaynakça

• Baraka, A. (2009). Diggin' New York. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
• Boucicault, D. (1861). The Octoroon; or Life in Louisiana.
• Butler, O. (1979). Kindred. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Douglass, F. (1995 [1845]). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York, NY: Dover.
• Equiano, O. (2004 [1789]). The Interesting Narrative and the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. In V. Carretta (Ed.), Unchained Voices: an Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (pp. 185-318). Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.
• Fuller, M. (1845, June 10). Review of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”. New York Daily Tribune. In N. Baym, R. S. Levine (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature (8th ed., vol. B: 1820-1865, p. 778). New York, NY-London: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Goss, L., and Barnes, M. E. (Eds.) (1989). Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster-Touchstone.
• Hurston, Z. N. (1978 [1937]). Their Eyes Were Watching God. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
• Jones, L. (1978 [1967]). Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant. In Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History and Other Plays (pp. 132-150). New York, NY: William Morrow.
• Lokumbe, H. (1996 [1990]). African Portraits. [CD] Hamburg: Teldec.
• Mackey, N. (1995). Other: From Noun to Verb. In K. Gabbard (Ed.). Jazz among the Discourses (pp. 76-99). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Major, C. (1994). The Slave Trade: View From the Middle Passage. African Review, 28 (1).
• Pittman, E. (2010) Historical Memory and Embodied Politics as Public Interventions in Amiri Baraka’s “Slave Ship”. Prefix, 1 (1), pp. 33-43.
• White, S., and White, G. (2005). The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.