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 For his latest book, “On Highway 61: Music, Race and the
Evolution of Cultural Freedom,” McNally twice drove every mile
of U.S. Route 61, the legendary Mississippi River road, to
document the influence of black music on white America.
McNally spoke to Reuters about the music and the “freedom
principle” underlying more than a century of American
experience.
Q: What is the common thread in your writing on American
counterculture, and now the influence of black music?
A: I came of age in the '60s, a remarkable era. In this
book I started with the question, “What are the deeper roots of
the '60s?” The most powerful force that drove people to ask the
questions challenging the dominant paradigm, from capitalism to
the rules about sex, to the environment, in significant part
derived from this 120-year relationship between white people and
black music.
I started with Thoreau. If you're interested in divergent
viewpoints in American history, he's the place to start. The
basis for his entire point of view about challenging American
standard thought, socially, was about slavery and
African-American culture. It was about reacting to the fact that
an enormous number of people in America were not free.
Q: How would you describe the "freedom principle?"
A: The ‘60s was an explosion of the freedom principle. It
has its roots in Thoreau, in Huckleberry Finn and in black
music. Thoreau, his message was autonomy for the individual and
making up your mind.
Q: How does black music embody that?
A: They were the least free. White people have been
listening to black people make music going back to plantation
culture, to banjo music played by slaves. It was what black
people had at hand to communicate with.
By the 1890s, you had segregation so fierce and racism so
profound that simply being a black musician singing a song is
almost a statement of challenge. Just to exist was a pursuit of
freedom.
Through the 20th century you've got white people first listening
to white imitations of black music. Most white people were not
out there listening to Duke Ellington or Cab Calloway or Count
Basie.
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The bop musicians, they were the first ones to articulate their art
as not being entertainment, but as simply being art. That's
revolutionary. They espoused their own freedom as musicians.
Music is almost inherently subversive. You get it in ways that
aren't necessarily intellectual. Go all the way up to rock 'n' roll,
the perfect fusion of black and white influences. Rock 'n' roll had
this liberating influence on people, not just because of the lyrics,
but because of the power, and the rhythm, it made you want to dance.
Q: How is it that this all leads in your book to Bob Dylan?
A: In his memoir, he talks about growing up in Minnesota at
one end of the river, listening on the radio to black music in
coming up from Arkansas. He is the shining example of all the
streams of the book coming together, of folk music and black music,
of the liberation principle, and of the connection to Highway 61,
which was 50 miles from his house. He gets all of that.
Q: The Mississippi River is as prominent in your book as
Highway 61. What did you learn on your travels?
A: The river and the road, they're one and the same. The
Middle West from almost the time people lived there was seen as this
place of conservative unwillingness to make a lot of changes. And
yet in the middle there is a gigantic, incredible, powerful river.
That critical trio of music, ragtime, blues and jazz, that erupted,
it's really one of the most amazing moments of creativity in
American history. These people that had nothing, that had only been
out of slavery for 30 years, they create this music that's dominated
American music ever since. And they created it by the river.
(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Nick Zieminski)
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Talk: Black music, white culture and a legendary U.S.
highway
