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“Folklore is the science of the people,” said Kemoko Sano, the former choreographer of Les Ballets Africains of Guinea and now a resident in New York. He offered this rationale for his use of folklore fieldwork to inform his dance arrangements, explaining that the daily cultural practice of a people is to interpret and mitigate the world according to their accumulated experience, knowledge, and wisdom. I am reminded of his words when considering two new works in African American cultural studies that are helpful in looking at contemporary African American culture in its community context: Onwuchekwa Jemie’s edition titled Yo’ Mama: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes & Children’s Rhymes from Urban Black America (Temple University Press, 2004), and Elizabeth Fine’s Soul Stepping: African American Step Shows (University of Illinois Press, 2003). In my research and presentations of traditional immigrant artists in New York City and in Westchester County, I have not focused enough on the heart and soul of what is unique about America — the creativity and resourcefulness of its citizens of African descent. The mainstreaming of jazz into a classical form and the adoption of black speech and humor into commercial media seemed at odds with the focus on the traditional folklore and music of immigrant ethnic artists that folklorists are drawn to. But to echo Louis Armstrong’s observation that “all music is folk music,” we can conclude that all culture is folk culture, if we see it as a dynamic, interpretive, and creative process grounded in its particular roots. Jemie, a Nigerian and professor of African American literature at Howard University, has compiled more than two hundred pages of black verbal lore, collected mainly in New York and Philadelphia by student researchers from 1969 to 1973. This study has long been in the making. Jemie explains that after assembling this work, he laid it aside. Finally, thirty years later, he has published his results. The study includes ninety pages of analysis grouped into thematic categories, including “hyperbole” (exaggerated and usually derogatory comments); “inversion” (when bad means both really bad and good at the same time); “obscenity” (the many examples speak for themselves); forms of performance such as rap, boasts, and “signifying”; and such topics as the process of learning, and performance style. Jemie notes parallels to verbal culture in Nigeria and other parts of Africa but stops short of attributing causal relationships, preferring to recognize the particular tenacity and genius of the African American cultural sensibility in its own right. Nevertheless, his perspective on this subject is fresh because he is an outsider who through language relates African American verbal lore to its underlying cultural routes in Africa and to the subversion of racism, colonialism, and exploitation. In a particularly succinct analysis, he describes the practice of verbal denigration of another’s mother in the “dozens” (hence, the book’s title) as a male coming-of-age ritual. This serves the dual purpose, Jemie writes, of asserting independence and of mitigating the pain of seeing the dominant society’s fundamental abuse of the African American family and its women in particular. Ultimately, Jemie notes the role of humor and the verbal shock of obscenity in the formation of community folklore. The ability to dish out and withstand derision, satire, and parody is a marker of cultural unity in its own right. In addition to his own comparisons with African verbal lore and practice, Jemie also make ample reference to African American writers and their use of and commentary on the vernacular tradition of black urban America. Foremost among those cited is Langston Hughes, the subject of some of Jemie’s earlier publications. Elizabeth Fine, of Virginia Tech, is more narrowly focused on African American stepping, a practice that originated on black college campuses and is still found mainly in academic settings. Having attended the step shows of “Greeks” (fraternal societies) at her institution, she researched the history of stepping within the fraternities and sororities, which are well documented in the Howard University archives, a source for many of the photos in the book. From there, she widened her view to other institutions. Fine presents a well-researched narrative about the history of stepping. Although she discusses at length the role of this practice in building group cohesion and discipline, she does not venture very far beyond the academic setting to seek out the historical and community roots of stepping. When discussing the considerable political implications of stepping and related symbolic and verbal practices, she settles for a chronicle of published opinions of African American writers, speakers and scholars, falling short of attempting much of her own analysis. In the final chapter, she quotes two African American graduate students, whose contradictory statements on stepping are held as emblematic of the symbolic internal dichotomy of the practice. They argue, although stepping may enhance group unity and morale, it may also have the negative effect of impeding integration and encouraging negative stereotypes among students. Rightly, Fine notes the development of these arts within the context of societies whose membership extends for life and has played an important role in members’ professional and personal advancement. Despite some problematic aspects, Fine has assembled a thorough study with ample references that will help the researcher, the applied folklorist, or the merely curious to come to a better understanding of stepping. The verbal and gestured expressions of black culture are the product of their folk roots, and they inform African American youth in particular; no folklorist working in this field can or should disregard them. Jemie and Fine offer useful resources that help us to see folklore as a dynamic cultural process and a current manifestation of a people’s creative reaction to the otherwise destructive forces or history.

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