Spiritual songs helped deliver African Americans from political oppression and developed the blues style as a retaliation to this treatment. The blues applied to the Northern Irish situation due to both marginalized groups using pathos to define their identity. Specific references to blues songs and musicians in Cal include the working song “Take this Hammer” and Muddy Waters.
Image: Muddy Waters preforms at a club [1]
An example of Cal tying his own identity to the position of African Americans could be found while Cal was singing a traditional working song while cutting wood. Cal begins to sing a part of “Take this Hammer”. He sings, “Take this hamm-er, carry it to the cap-tain.” [2]. Here he directly compares his own position to that of a black laborer. By singing this song while doing labor for the sake of his father, he is reinforcing his subject position of being his father’s son. He is also reinforcing the position of Irish Catholics as the “hewers of wood and the drawers of water” [2]. This, coming from a priest teaching in a school, shows how embedded and widespread these sentiments are in Northern Irish society; he is reinforcing the notion that Irish Catholics are to Protestants as blacks are to whites in traditional America. This could allow for Catholics to feel justified in their violence towards Protestants.
“If he asks you was I runnin’
Tell him I was flyin’
If he asks you was I laughin’
Tell him I was cryin'”
Video: Leadbelly preforms “Take this Hammer”, as sung by Cal [3]. Lyrics
While observing Marcella in the library on page 14, Cal checks out a Muddy Waters tape. “Her gestures, the way she raised and rested the rim of her cup on her lip before sipping, every movement of her face hypnotized him. He chose a blues tape of Muddy Waters and went up to the counter and waited.” [2] Muddy Waters had a focus on the plight of the working man and created music that those marginalized by society could relate to. Muddy Waters was predominantly known for moving blues music from the deep South to Chicago in the United States. This theme of displacement is significant in both African American culture and Northern Irish Catholic culture, allowing for this sort of diffusion.
Video: Muddy Waters Blues Band singing Work Song which captures the essence of black soul music [4]
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Citations
[1] McKinley Morganfield. Digital image. Virginia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web.
[2] MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983. Print.[3] Take This Hammer. Perf. Leadbelly. Mrskikaurin, 2013. Youtube.
[4] Work Song. Perf. Muddy Waters Blues Band. Isaac Jug Montoya, 2012. YouTube.