Jon Cruz points out that what he tries to do is “to stay on the sociological edges of black music, not in the center of it” (203). What he says reminds me of Arnold Krupat’s The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon published in 1989 in which Krupat argues that Native American literature should be placed in relation to an “cosmopolitan” literary canon. Both critics read the cultures on the margin or in the margin and define and (re)-discover the voices (music in Cruz’s case) against the grain. I like how Cruz puts, “Artifacts sit in silence. Even when imbued with glory, when severed from life, they are at best obituaries. They become meaningful only when they are redefined by being rejoined with, and serve as accounts for, the lives of particular individuals and groups” (204-5). In my opinion, what he says could be utilized to understand the development of ethnic or women’s studies as well as bridge a conversation with what Gerald Vizenor terms survivance, an active sense of presence.
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