"Sowing seeds of future devastation": Figures of Musical Circulation and Violence in Martin Delany's "Blake; or, the Huts of America"

In this paper I examine the relationship between the circulation of antebellum African American music and insurrectionary violence through a close reading of Martin Delany’s Blake; or, the Huts of America (1859; 1861-62).... [ view full abstract ]

In this paper I examine the relationship between the circulation of antebellum African American music and insurrectionary violence through a close reading of Martin Delany’s Blake; or, the Huts of America (1859; 1861-62). While many critics have commented on the novel’s hemispheric revolutionary ambitions few have discussed the circulation of hymns and minstrel songs that suffuse and help structure his project. I argue that representations of musical performance are essential to the circum-Atlantic uprising that Delany imagines. Through his novel he reclaims antebellum African American music from the discourse of sentimentalism showing how songs could function in the register of a Gramscian philosophy of praxis that helped disseminate ideas about revolutionary violence. Thus rather than conveying a sense of interiority music became a vehicle for insurrection. I focus specifically on how Delany develops his conception of song circulation as integral to developing a productive climate of violence. Scenes featuring the performance and circulation of songs dramatically channel the experience of enslavement toward revolutionary ends while also convey how such performances might undo power structures through the amplification of fear. I discuss three key moments from the text that exhibit this relationship between musical performance and radical violence and a place this depiction in the historical context of the antislavery discourse of the 1850s.