The Signifying Griot: Oscar Brown, Jr.

My introduction to the great Oscar Brown, Jr., who died on Sunday morning at the age 78, came as a teen watching his PBS series From JumpStreet. What I appreciated about the series was that it gave me a historical context for the gospel quintets and hard bop jazz that my father spent his Sunday afternoons with.

The next time I confronted Oscar Brown, Jr. was while sitting in a graduate seminar on literary theory—STRUGGLING with Skip Gate’s The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Theory (1988). It was literally Brown’s recording of “Signifying Monkey” from his 1960 recording Sin and Soul, that help me find real world implications for Gates’ post-structuralist theory. Brown helped me better understand the mantra: “make it plain”, something that Brown did throughout his career often providing great jazz instrumentals with lyrics that resonated more powerfully outside of hard-core jazz realms. His lyrics to Miles Davis’s “All Blues” and Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue”—the latter of which I first heard Abbey Lincoln sing on her brilliant Abbey is Blue recording—are perhaps the most well known. Lincoln’s rendition of Brown’s “Strong Man” from That’s Him remains my favorite Lincoln song.

Oscar Brown, Jr., like Amiri Baraka, the late Eileen Southern, and Katherine Dunham were/are vitals connections to the culture we made—the genius of our everyday realities writ large on the screen, the dance floor and the written and spoken word. With the passing of Oscar Brown, Jr. yet another in a generation of griots have passed and that legacy will have to be maintained by the likes of Portia Maultsby, Guthrie Ramsey, Jr, and all those who love and take THIS culture seriously.

Also check out Professor Kim's tribute to the great Oscar Brown, Jr.