Subtitles and A Job Well Done...Cruz's Culture on the Margins

I found it interesting that after so much work in the introduction spelling out exactly what Culture on the Margins would not be, that Jon Cruz chose the subtitle: The Black Spiritual and The Rise of American Cultural Interpretation. I feel like instead of the word "and" these two ideas should have been reversed, with the word "through" replacing "and."  I really did appreciate how Cruz outlined his book-he was very up front that this would not be a comprehensive or chronological analysis of the rise of the black spiritual, but instead a look at "black song making" as an " intersection" and "cultural site" to study "the vicissitudes of cultural appropriation" (11).  He succeeds, on many levels, and yet the title still caught me as somewhat of a misnomer.  At the conclusion Cruz blurs the lines between ethnosympathy and cultural interpretation.  He can do this because we have gone through (with adequate hand holding through some of the "knottier" historical roots) the complex historical background that allow us (the reader) to see the cultural amnesia that has affected scholarship on the topic of black spirituals.  I especially appreciated that Cruz allows for moments of reflection on just how gorgeous the humanizing voice of music can articulate "the dreams and dreads that overpower language and gives visions and aspirations a voice" nudging "the world into suppleness" and yet he maintains his purpose on focusing on HOW authenticity enters on the historical horizon as "idea and quest."  This is no romanticized look at how black spirituals were studied.  Cruz emphasizes how times this music was seized by the users, leaving the makers to wonder where they role was in the bigger picture of having their voice heard, and not their voice through an outsider's interpretation, but their inner voice that Douglass emphasized should be prioritzed.

Looking forward to class discussion tomorrow!
-Krystal Sweitzer