'For the Song was Given Me': Abbey Lincoln Conjures a More Wholly Earth

Abstract:

Inspired by Abbey Lincoln’s 1998 album Wholly Earth and taking its title from a lyric in her composition “Learning How to Listen” on that recording, this presentation places Lincoln’s career and life in the context of what Kameelah Martin calls “conjure feminism,” a holistic, matrilineal knowledge tradition cultivated by Black American women rooted in Afro-Atlantic spirituality. Contextualizing Lincoln’s work in this way continues Martin’s work in recovering erased matrifocal histories of Afro-Atlantic life in the United States and offers new perspectives on jazz music as part of Afro-Atlantic spiritual traditions of conjure/hoodoo. I recast recent scholarship on Mary Lou Williams in this light and align it with current examples, such as Teri Lyne Carrington’s advocacy and pedagogical work at Berklee College’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

I also place the womanist ecology Lincoln invokes in Wholly Earth in the context of “fugitive science” (Rusert 2017), adding that Lincoln’s “pedagogies of listening” are not just for appreciating and performing music, but rather are part of conjure feminism’s caretaking and worldmaking traditions. Following the poetics of Lincoln’s lyric, I foreground the compassionate and empathetic stewardship inherent in her approach, emphasizing ideals of communal care over the phallocentric individualism that typifies much of jazz history. In support I offer up Ana Maria Ochoa’s critique of Steven Feld’s acoustemology, suggesting that Ochoa’s “acoustic multinaturalism” better reflects the adaptive attentiveness to the natural and spiritual realms that Lincoln promotes on Wholly Earth. I draw on other examples of this attentiveness, including from Indigenous and Afro-indigenous artists such as Mali Obomsawin (Abenaki Odanak), Matana Roberts, and Sumi Tonooka. In conclusion I pose questions about the ethical implications of applying Lincoln’s pedagogies of listening asking “if we are stewards of our ancestors’ songs, how do we care for them and those who sing them? And what kinds of listening might we need for others’ songs?”

Bio:

Dr. Mark Lomanno is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Trained as an ethnomusicologist, jazz historian, and pianist, they specialize in holistic and interdisciplinary approaches to music that incorporate ethnography, historiography, performance practice, and music theory, as well as embodied perception, environmental humanities and sustainability studies, and improvisation studies. Geographically, Lomanno’s ethnographic, performance, and scholarly work are based in the Afro-Atlantic world, especially in the Canary Islands. Lomanno’s publications include chapters in two recent edited volumes (Intimate Entanglements: Vulnerability in the Ethnography of Performance and Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath of Crisis). In Summer 2024 a volume they co-edited with Daniel Fischlin, titled The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Co-Creative Worldmaking, will be published in Temple University Press’s Insubordinate Spaces series. Lomanno also maintains the blog “Rhythm of Study” (rhythmofstudy.com), a public forum celebrating jazz musicians’ work in the arts, academia, and community activism.