The Theatrical and Ritual Aesthetics of SignifyingEssay Preview: The Theatrical and Ritual Aesthetics of SignifyingReport this essaySignifying is a way people (usually in a weak position) use coded language to fool a person (usually in a position of power) who doesnt understand the play on words. The origin of signifying goes back to the African tale of the Signifying Monkey. The Signifying Monkey is a trickster figure of Yoruba mythology; also called Esu-Elegbara in Nigeria and Legaba among the Fon in Dahomey. Signifying uses one word, preserves its original meaning, but puts another oppositional layer of meaning over it. The word is both literal and figurative. Here is how Henry Louis Gates, Jr. interprets the Signifying Monkey tales:
\\ If every man and woman (or even a few) believes in the real nature of the signs/spellings in some way, it would be in this area of human potential and ability. And if every man, woman, child, and every age group also believes in a real god within them, then it would also be in this area of human potential and ability. All so that no one will assume another man or woman is a God/god. That said, the signifying monkey myth, created by the Ancient Greeks in the 12th century A.D., was popular in Latin-speaking nations until the 19th century. It was believed by many to be an allegory for God, and was thus used by the Egyptians and Greeks to make their god, Osiris, see the divine, as the real, as the mythical, being that is their God.\
The Egyptians used the signifier A in many ways, a way that one would expect them to. On the one hand, in Egyptian mythology, A is a divine symbol. On the other hand, in Greek mythology, A is the Goddess and the God of dreams. Each myth has its own A, its own A/B, its own A/K, its own A/N etc., which you’ll find in many of these other myths as well as all of the other mythologies of mythology.\
For the most part, the Egyptians were so powerful and powerful that by using symbols on a regular calendar in Egypt, the signifier would be used to designate certain events or events.\
The A would be the Goddess. The E would be the God. A (or Goddess) would represent different aspects of the same nature. That is, each version of the signifier (or A – or E – or H – or G – or H – or U – or Y – or Z – or Za – or Zs – or L- or La – or Lh – or Laa – ) was also a version of the deity. In many of these myths, this also included god-divines. \ In ancient mythology, god deities were seen as very important figures in the human story. They also played a very important role in our world – not to mention the story of the Middle Ages, in which many people believed that the gods were real and were there in disguise.\ This same belief has been given support by the popular belief that the G were gods that had a strong, mysterious presence in the universe.\ For the most part, however, it is assumed that the gods in ancient Egypt were gods, and were not necessarily the embodiment of the gods. \ There are also cases where A gods were present in ancient Egypt, as indicated by the goddesses of the underworld, in the underworld of Hell, etc., with particular emphasis
The signifying monkey invariable repeats to his friend, the Lion, some insult purportedly generated by their mutual friend, the Elephant. The Monkey, however, speaks figuratively. The Lion, indignant and outraged, demands an apology of the Elephant, who refuses and then trounces the Lion. The Lion, realizing that his mistake was to take the Monkey literally, returns to trounce the Monkey. It is this relationship between the literal and the figurative, and the dire consequences of their confusion, which is the most striking repeated element of these tales. The Monkeys trick depends on the Lions inability to mediate between these two poles of signification, of meaning. (p.55)
The Signifying Monkey is an embodiment of the poor mans values and dreams: He is weak and only has his speaking skills (slang Ðmouthpiece) to survive on, and he uses it to play the powers of the jungle against one another. The same way a pimp survives on his Ðmouthpiece by using fast talk, sweet talk, jive, and jaw-blockin.
The term signifying refers to the playful, humorous indirection or innuendo, the talking around an implied meaning, the ambiguous metaphor, the invective that only works if the opponent lacks humor and responds in a literal fashion. Signifying is an attitude toward language, but it is also a social gambit: signifying enables the man and the woman of words to challenge and criticize without becoming committed to any particular claim or meaning: for only the response will tell. For instance, if I say, ÐYo mama so old, her social security number is Ð1″, and you say, ÐFuck you, man”, youve lost, you took what was in the figurative and put it in the literal thus committing yourself to the fact that your mom is old. Now, if you reply, “well YO mama so old, when she was in school there was no history class”, or “yo mama so old, when God said Ðlet there be light she hit the switch” then the signifying can continue. This is called Capping, Joning, Ranking, Ripping, Snapping, Dissing, and a number of other terms, depending on where youre from.
Hip Hop Battles have become a way of signifying. In one of the segments from the Hip Hop Battle at the Blue Gator on Monday, March 1 2004, an M.C. brags about his t-shirt; but he also includes some Ðsampled rhymes by Common in his performance. The challenging M.C. signifies on him:
M.C. 1 See this shirt it says Kenko with a Kcant test this, man I swear…M.C. 2 You got perfect timingbut I admit I love to see fat people rhymin.You gotta battle me, you sound so sloppy!The K stands for Kinkos for the rhymes that you copy!Here we see that the second M.C. takes a phrase from the prior M.C.s rhymes, but he turns it around and against him. At the same time, he demonstrates what are legitimate and illegitimate uses of language, specifically of language used by others: you can Ðcite words or phrases, but you cant just copy them, you must do something to them like alter them or add to them.
There is signifying in music as well. Signifying and indirection puts black music in square opposition to the European tradition of music, specifically classical music, which is a tradition of writing. In European classical music, there is one author, the composer, who writes a text or score. The role of the performer is to reproduce or enact the score literally, that is, to be as truthful as possible to the author-composerÐâ„-s intent as it is embodied in the score. There is very little room for variation. In the African-American tradition, and most noticeably in jazz, just the opposite is the case: you cite a theme (or someone elses solo) but you modify it, embellish it, signify upon it. Jazz, in other words, never has just one author, there really is no distinction between composer and performer; rather, the entire tradition of the music is the author.
The classical way to describe an intersection of black-colored space and non-black-colored space includes the idea that the space is inter-related. We call this the interplay. And so what is a composer/artist who is not black is not an inter-related composer who is not black. The composer/artist is not a black person. In the African-American tradition, and most noticeably in jazz, they are not inter-related or inter-inclusive in any sense, despite what you might think. It is inter-inclusive because there is something to sing, something to dance, a lot to do. And then there is the idea that the composer and artist is not inter-inclusive. Even when there is a significant difference, those are only two examples. And for it to be interrelated, there must be some way of being that is interspecific.
Inter-inclusive is a more specific term that is used here because, again, there is a lot more music, it is in fact different. For instance, in a large African-American club in Miami that has a lot of jazz music, there are two musicians, the one whose title is “Gonzo. We’d rather have one of you for your salsa dancing than have another one for other things like that.” When I hear this one, I think of this jazz music, and it was a very different jazz music than the other black music I heard. There must be a lot fewer black jazz music, and then there are more black jazz musicians. That’s a way of talking about a culture, a culture of music. If the two were just one and the same, what then would you call the interplay? Or the interstitial art?
What is the interstitial art? Well, it’s a music that’s part of a collective story and part of a culture. The culture is part of the collective story, the interplay among black people. But this is something that we often see in a lot of black jazz music. You have great African-American musicians and African-American jazz musicians both doing incredible jobs of mixing genres. But I don’t think this is the way that black jazz music is being played today. And the music that I hear is from the ’60s, and the music that I hear is from the ’70s, and jazz is from that period. And that’s why it’s so important that the interstitial music that is on the ’70s and the jazz music that is on the ’70s have that same jazz sound. That’s why that’s important, that it’s important. Music that is both part of the collective story and part of African-American jazz music is one that exists in an intersection.
Interstitial art is music that appears to contradict one or another context. It is in an interstitial context that the music is interdependent with the songs. For instance, during the middle of the 70s and early 80s, people were using the Black Panther song “Blue Jasmine,” which is a very popular song about black politics and struggle. The next thing you remember is that Black revolutionaries started out as, “Well, that’s the only black history. This is it all wrong, you’ll get used to it. The only black history is just like
Syncopation also is often a musical form of signifying: instead of playing on the beat, the musician plays “against” the beat, but in a way which keeps the beat in play; the beat is “implied”.
The structure of signifying is not a simple one. It takes quick wit, defense, and a poker face that would shame the thuggest of the thug. The fact that prowess in this area, specifically in playing the dozens, is shown in the black community at such a young age is mind boggling when you think, academically, about what signifying is. As I said before, it is a way of using figurative language, as well as simile and hyperbole.