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Alvin Ailey's Rocka My Soul

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Rocka My Soul, as performed by Alvin Ailey

Dance movements are very synchronous throughout the entire performance. Dancers move gracefully but with the force and energy, their faces express pride and joy.
There are minimal preps (fans and chairs at the beginning) and no decoration except a large circle of light projected on the back wall. Dancers are all dressed-up in elegant garments from 19th c.

The overall mood of music and choreography is quite cheerful and optimistic. It feels like a big celebration.

Cone would view this performance as a triumph of African-American people, the final termination of suffering and pain. It is also a reunion of the black people, their return from the world of separation and loneliness.
The community …show more content…

The routinely hiding of inner problems and presenting to the outer world another persona, “And you know I smile to keep from crying/That’s to keep public from knowing/Just what I have on my mind”. Cone points out that black music is not about artistic creation for its own sake, it dealing with immediate reality, with actual “feeling and thinking of an African people”. Thus the blues is not an abstract music, but music that directly rooted in lives of African-American community. Despite there are no explicit religious references, the spirituality is not hidden from the blues. It shines through those “daily worries” of a man that we hear in the songs.
“The blues are “secular spirituals.” They are secular in the sense that they confine their attention solely to the immediate and affirm the bodily expression of black soul, including its sexual manifestations. They are spirituals because they are impelled by the same search for the truth of black experience” …show more content…

At the beginning we see artist in the chains, sitting silent, but nevertheless he can affect on the other guy. This is the strength within the individual, invisible but powerful, that goes beyond the limits of physical body. The song is the words of the sovereign, who has an absolute knowledge and understanding of the self. His DNA is a priceless possession, that didn’t come easily.
Cone talks about existential “I” that is the characteristic of the spirituals. That “ “I” in black slave religion was born in the context of the brokenness of black existence. It was an affirmation of the self in a situation where the decision to be was thrust upon the slaves” (61). The concepts of somebodiness and personhood are epitomized in this song. The artist offers to the listener the piece of himself, his invaluable identity, that is why the song might sound raw and aggressive, but at the same time personal and very

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