Another Black Man with a Trumpet: John Blanke and Big Questions about Black History
Black men with trumpets have often become icons. They altered perceptions of how their people were seen by those geographically, temporally or culturally distant. They made history in the sense defined by the masterly Professor Maulana Karenga in Introduction to Black Studies. Karenga wrote that “African or Black history ... is the struggle and record of Africans in the process of Africanizing the world, i.e., shaping their world in their own image and interests.” Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong have changed scholarly perceptions of African Americans. They also Africanised or Afro-Americanised their world. The big question is: Did John Blanke, the Renaissance era trumpeter depicted on the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll, do something similar for sixteenth century Black Britons or Black English?
On 12 August 2011, Dr David Starkey appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight programme. In an extraordinary outburst, he equated Black British culture with Jamaican gangsterism. In his own words:
[A] substantial section of the Chavs ... have become Black. The Whites have become Black; a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion and Black and White, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican Patois that’s been intruded in England and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.
When the story appeared on the web, many online readers added their own comments supporting Dr Starkey.
By contrast, I have long taught that Black History professionals should marshal historical data to challenge anti-Black perceptions, including those held by Dr Starkey and his online cheerleaders. Other Black History professionals share this view. What they and I disagree upon is: Which historical stories should we prioritise to challenge anti-Black perceptions?
Some professionals believe the core of Black History should be the stories of Black historical figures that appeared from time to time in European History. Black British History, for example, contains the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ from Roman times, to the likes of Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, William Cuffay, Ira Aldridge, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Leslie Hutchinson and Claudia Jones.
In my opinion, some of these individuals remain great inspirations who would bring credit to the history of any people. However, I feel that racists could easily dismiss these figures as mere exceptions. They could counter claim that these individuals do not prove how great Black people can be in their own right, but only how great a Black individual can be when acculturated in a European or a British setting. Moreover, many people of Anglo-Saxon-Jutish heritage who cheerlead for Dr Starkey see Black British History as a clumsy politically-correct construct by social justice warriors begging acceptance into the Great and Mighty Heritage of British History. Could John Blanke, a Black man with a trumpet, change my position on this question? Read on.
Others believe the core of Black History should be the achievements of the African Americans. This includes the struggle against slavery, the creation of jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, the transformation of sport and athletics, the civil rights struggle, and African American contributions to style, fashion and popular culture, i.e. how they made these things crazy, sexy and cool.
In support of this position, I grew up in 1970s and 1980s Britain in the days before Black people were regular fixtures on British television. Monochrome films were still broadcast and, if they contained African American actors and actresses, they were slaves, butlers, maids, and jungle savages. However, a 1985 documentary called Catching a Snake challenged these negative portrayals. Featuring Wynton Marsalis, a Black man with a trumpet, this was the first time I saw a Black man on British television who was scholarly, articulate and brilliant. Unlike previous trumpeters who addressed their critics just with their horns, Marsalis could beat them with logical argument and intellectual rigour as well. Moreover, Marsalis led a movement of Black jazz heroes, called the Neo Classical School, that were, like him, scholarly, articulate and brilliant.
Louis Armstrong was another brilliant Black man with a trumpet. Rising to prominence in the mid 1920s, his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles set the standard for the New Orleans and Chicago Schools of Jazzmen. He was a great pacesetter for Black style, even today. His greeting of “What you say?” has become “Weh yu a seh?” in the Caribbean. His mumbo-jumbo handshaking routine is still as hip as ever. Nor should we forget his huge influence on Black men’s fashion.
How did he change outsider’s perceptions of African Americans? Ken Burns directed a documentary on Jazz called The True Welcome which gave a powerful example:
On the evening of October 12th 1931, Louis Armstrong opened a three-day-run at the Hotel Driscoll in Austin, Texas. Among those who paid 75 cents to get in that night was a freshman at the University of Texas named Charlie Black. He knew nothing of jazz, had never even heard of Armstrong, he just knew there were likely to be lots of girls to dance with. Then Armstrong began to play. “He played mostly with his eyes closed letting flow from that inner space of music things that had never before existed. He was the first genius I had ever seen. It is impossible to overstate the significance of a 16 year old Southern boy seeing genius from the first time in a Black person. We literally never saw a Black then in any but a service capacity. Louis opened my eyes wide and put to me a choice: Blacks, the saying went, were ‘all right in their place’ but what was the place of such a man and of the people from which he sprung?” (Charlie Black).
The voice over continued:
Charlie Black went on to become Professor Charles L. Black, a distinguished teacher of Constitutional Law at Yale. In 1954, he helped provide the answer to the question Louis Armstrong’s music had first posed for him. He volunteered for the team of lawyers, Black and White, who finally persuaded the Supreme Court in the case of Brown vs Board of Education that segregated school children on the basis of race or colour was not constitutional.
Dizzy Gillespie, another Black man with a trumpet, created Modern Jazz in the early 1940s. He led a now legendary series of jam sessions at the Henry Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem where this new art form took shape. A revolutionary music, Modern Jazz was technically brilliant, representing the highest levels of musicianship ever reached. His performances involved long, daring improvisations over complex chord changes, played at breakneck speed. Gillespies’ music won respect for the high intellectual calibre of African Americans. As an underground movement, Modern Jazz evolved into Cool Jazz in 1948, Hard Bop in 1955, and the Avant-Garde by 1960. Miles Davis, yet another Black man with a trumpet, led the music through these artistic revolutions. His Kind of Blue recording of 1959 is amongst the glories of twentieth century art.
However, in my opinion and without belittling these cultural achievements, one cannot challenge the racist view that Black people are inferior to other races by pointing out these examples. The reason why is these achievements, important though they are, only happened after Black people encountered European culture and not before. People want to know what Black people were about before their contact with Europe.
I believe that one can only challenge the idea of Black inferiority by showing the achievements of Black people within pre European influenced African societies. This shows what Black people were capable of in all African settings. In this way, and in no other, can we determine what the core of Black History and heritage really is. I can assure the reader that it amounts to considerably more than Jamaican gangsterism.
Furthermore, I regard all other Black History, i.e. Black historical figures in British, European, American and Asian history, as PERIPHERAL history. While peripheral history is important and has a key place, CORE history is even more important and should take priority over peripheral history. Can John Blanke, a Black man with a trumpet, change my position on this matter?
Onyeka’s exquisite Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England contains the following information about John Blanke: “In ... the London Exchequer Accounts, there are references to Blanke receiving the gift of an expensive ‘violet cloth’ or gown with a ‘bonnet and hat ... against his marriage’ ... It was unusual for the National Treasury to pay for wedding gifts for their employees.” This raises the questions: Why was Blanke so valued? Did Blanke write the music performed by the trumpeters on the Westminster Tournament Roll? Onyeka suggests that Blanke may have come from a Moorish Iberian background. Did he bring Moorish Iberian musical elements to England?
Other questions for future research concern the Black Britons or Black English that Blanke symbolically represented: Did these Africans consciously see themselves and each other as a common unit? Can historians legitimately use phrases such as ‘Black Britons’ or ‘Black English’ to describe these people, or were they merely English or British people who just happened to be Black?
I conclude this paper with two points. Firstly, Professor Maulana Karenga suggests that for Africans to make history, they must shape the world around them in African images and interests. Onyeka suggests that the Renaissance era Blacks in England accomplished this. They may have “intruded”, to use Dr Starkey’s word, Moorish Iberian cultural elements “in England”.
Secondly, history, according to Professor Karenga, is a collective and not an individual endeavour. An individual’s biography is only important to history to the extent that the individual represents a collective of people consciously sharing a common identity. Future research will determine whether or not this was true of John Blanke and the Black Britons or Black English that he has symbolically come to represent.
Bibliography Mike Alexander (director), Catching a Snake, US, television programme, 1985 Ken Burns (director), Jazz: Episode 4, The True Welcome, US, television series, 2001 Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies, 4th Edition, US, University of Sankore, 2010, p.66 Onyeka, Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, UK, Narrative Eye and The Circle with a Dot, 2014, p.209 Robin Walker, The Black Musical Tradition AND Early Black Literature, UK, Reklaw Education Limited, 2015, pp.29-32 Robin Walker, Siaf Millar & Saran Keita, Everyday Life in an Early West African Empire, UK, Jacinth Martin’s SIVEN Publishing, 2013, pp.1-2, 4-6