BLACK COMIC PERFORMANCE
IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
A Comparison of the Comedy of
Richard Pryor and Paul Keens-Douglas
LARRY G. COLEMAN
Howard
Univeristy
The performance of comedy before an audience is essentially a
form of human communication. While it entertains, it also
communicates a variety of messages, some obvious and some
subtle. It functions as a vehicle of phatic communion among
members of a particular social or cultural group. For groups
such as Barbadians and Trinidadians or black Americans
engaged in humorous verbal exchange or comic storytelling
the humor can reinforce group solidarity, provide a context for
the development of verbal and social skills, and even provide a
means of coping with various adverse social and political
circumstances. According to Cummings (1980), &dquo;It was because of our boundless appreciation of comedy and our
uncanny ability to laugh at ourselves that we [black people]
were able to turn our own human frailties and the host of
negative experiences we’ve had into positive strong characteristic features.&dquo;
This article argues that the humor that is contained in the
narratives and monologues written and performed by blacks in
JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 15 No. 1,
@ 1984 Sage Publications, Inc.
September
1984 67-78
67
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different parts of the African diaspora is uniquely similar,
reflecting a common black cultural aesthetic and communicative base. Specifically, it argues that the comic narratives of
Trinidadian storyteller Paul Keens-Douglas and Afro-American comedian Richard Pryor contain several structural similarities and that these similarities result from a common
African influence on the culture and the communication
behavior of black people throughout the African diaspora. The
discussion will include an analysis of key segments from
narratives written and performed by Keens-Douglas and
Pryor. The narratives will be examined in terms of three
specific dimensions: (1) character type, (2) tonal semantics, and
(3) the concept of &dquo;indirection&dquo; and &dquo;innuendo.&dquo;
One method of analyzing the narrative comic performances
of comedians is to examine the language and the behavior of
the characters they bring to the stage. A straight-forward
literary analysis of their narrative texts would consider the
symbolic significance of language and character. A more
folkloristic analysis would view these characters and the
language from structural and cultural perspectives showing
how they stand in relation to various social and cultural norms.
In one sociologist’s view the typical characters we find in
literature, various forms of media, and real-life social situations represent different orientations within a given social
group (Klapp, 1962). According to Klapp (1962), these types
emerge from a specific social or cultural group, they are in turn
viewed by the group as being &dquo;heroic,&dquo; &dquo;villainous,&dquo; or
&dquo;foolish,&dquo; they represent a specific patterned and stylized form
of behavior, and they can influence behavior within a group
that produces or adopts them. What is also interesting about
this notion of &dquo;typical&dquo; behavior and &dquo;types&dquo; is that some
examples continue to recur in the literature, art, drama, and
folklore of specific cultural groups. This supports the Jungian
concept of &dquo;archetypes,&dquo; which are part of the myth and the
world view of a given group of human beings (Jung, 1959). Carl
Jung argues that these archetypes reside in the &dquo;collective
unconscious&dquo; mind of humankind and serve a very definite
psychological function for the group.
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69
archetype of
the trickster is
extremely prominent in
African folklore and, according
Levine (1977) and Van
Sertima (1980), continued (during the period of American
Negro captivity) to serve an important, psychologically healing, and revolutionary function for black captives. While the
trickster type was prominent in Afro-American folklore since
the eighteenth century, it continued into the nineteenthcentury minstrel shows and into twentieth-century comic
performance. Vaudevillian teams such as &dquo;Pigmeat Markham
and Shorty&dquo; and &dquo;Butterbeans and Susie&dquo; portrayed the
trickster manipulator on stage. Actor Spencer Williams and
comedians Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor have portrayed this
The
to
television and in films.
Pryor’s portraits of Mudbone and the &dquo;Bicentennial Nigger&dquo;
(which will be discussed below) seem to be more aligned with
the black American slave’s heroic portrait of the &dquo;revolutionary trickster&dquo; who is intelligent and who is also a survivor.
Pryor’s Mudbone is &dquo;tough.&dquo; In &dquo;Mudbone Intro&dquo; on Pryor’s
album Is it Something I Said (1975), he is described as a
small-town country storyteller, a &dquo;survivor&dquo; and an &dquo;old man.&dquo;
The narrator goes on to say &dquo;you don’t get to be old being no
it’s a lotta young wise men deader than a mother
fool,
fucker.&dquo; In two of the narratives chronicling the adventures of
Mudbone, he is presented as a combination of the classical
&dquo;badman&dquo; or &dquo;bad nigger&dquo; of folk history and real life and the
&dquo;high John the Conqueror&dquo; type &dquo;trickster.&dquo;
In the &dquo;Mudbone Intro&dquo; episode Mudbone the trickster
emerges hiding behind a &dquo;mask of accommodation.&dquo; When he
is insulted and smacked by a racist white slave-mistress type he
seeks revenge by cutting a hole in the outhouse toilet seat that is
large enough so she will fall in. He then waits for this &dquo;big fat
collard green eatin’ bitch to go to the bathroom,&dquo; and listens
for a splash. Immediately he leaves Tupelo, Mississippi,
driving a tractor headed for Peoria, Illinois. For Pryor and for
his audience Mudbone is a hero and, like his name, he is a
symbol of endurance, toughness, wisdom, and ingenuity.
Similiarly heroic, villainous, and foolish character types
figure prominently in the narratives of Caribbean comic
character type
on
...
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70
performers such as Paul Keens-Douglas, who has created
characters that include Sugar George, a virtuoso steel pan
musician; Old Fletch, a strict school headmaster; and Tanti
Merle, a tough no-nonsense elderly Trinidadian woman. Like
Pryor in the Mudbone stories, Keens-Douglas often uses the
dramatic monologue and the narrative voice of an &dquo;elderly,&dquo;
&dquo;wise,&dquo; and &dquo;folksy&dquo; character, who Victor Questel calls
a
&dquo;matriarchal figure&dquo; (see Keens-Douglas, 1976: 6). This narrator is, like Tanti Merle, strong and highly opinionated. She is
a &dquo;philosopher,&dquo; a &dquo;teacher,&dquo; and a &dquo;mother&dquo; to the young
children with whom she interacts.
At times she can be overbearing, as in the narrative titled
&dquo;Passport&dquo; (Keens-Douglas, 1976). Remarkably like Pryor’s
Mudbone, Keens-Douglas’s narrator in &dquo;Dark Nite People&dquo; is
a storyteller. She knows the folklore, folk beliefs, and myths of
various Caribbean islands. In this story she invokes the likes of
La Diabless (a spirit with one cloven hoof); Mama Malade (a
spirit who died in childbirth); Loupgarou (a skinless, flying,
blood-sucking spirit); and Socouyant (Loupgarou’s female
counterpart) from Trinidad. The evil spirits from other islands
include Baccouman (a genie type from Guyana); Steel Donkey
(a Barbadian folk-spirit); and Rolling Calf (a Jamaican folkspirit). All of these evil spirits are assembled by the storyteller
to frighten the wits out of the child in the story. Without a
doubt the deceptive ploy of the storyteller works enough to
frighten the young child into going upstairs to bed.
In another narrative titled &dquo;Passport&dquo; (Keens-Douglas,
1976: p. 19-24) the elderly matriarch is not deceptive but she is
direct and somewhat overbearing. Keens-Douglas (1976: 19)
describes her as some &dquo;old aunt&dquo; or some &dquo;mother&dquo; or some
&dquo;old sister&dquo; &dquo;always giving advice&dquo; to a youngster going away
for the first time.
Yu have yu passport?
Yu sure yu have it safe?
Wha’ ’bout de ticket? You’re
sure
it’s the
right
day today?
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71
Look, Me eh tink yu stupid.
I know you could read English, but remember the
say flight 362
leavin’ eleven be at the airport by ten.
Yu better leave here by eight.
Yes leave eight to reach for ten.
man
.................................
Is wha’ ? is not taxi takin’ yu? is who? Gavin?
In dat car dat look like ah accident?
I wouldn’t drive with he if yu pay me,
Yu never see dat man drive? ha, Lord.
Ah don’t know how he get dat license,
Ah sure is buy he buy it.
Why yu don’t call Battoo or Bacchus?
I know is plenty money but you gon reach.
Nevah depend on nobody boy.
This older,
recurs
wiser, and sometimes overbearing character
throughout Keens-Douglas’s narratives and is also
present in several of the comic dialect poems of Louise Bennett.
Such characters represent a point of view and an aspect of black
folklore and culture that we find continually in the work of
black American comedians such as Moms Mabley, Eddie
Murphy, and Richard Pryor. They represent heroic orientations and heroic traditions because of their native intelligence
and durability. As Pryor says of Mudbone, &dquo;You don’t get to be
old being no fool.&dquo;
TONAL SEMANTICS
Aside from the similarities in their use of certain prominent
heroic character &dquo;types,&dquo; Pryor and Keens-Douglas are similar
with respect to the use of tonality and what Geneva Smitherman (1977) calls &dquo;tonal semantics&dquo; in their performances. She
defines tonal semantics as the use of &dquo;voice rhythm, and vocal
inflection to convey meaning in black communication.&dquo; She
suggests that this tonal emphasis can be traced to the tonality
of various West African languages. One aspect of tonal
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72
semantics, according to Smitherman, is the concept of &dquo;talk-sing-
ing.&dquo;
Generally, talk-singing has been defined in the literature as
the introduction of songlike characteristics into a text that is
basically considered to be composed of talk. The most obvious
examples of talk-singing occur in the sermons of &dquo;traditional
black preachers&dquo; (Daniel and Smitherman, 1976). Talk-singing
also occurs in secular forms of black communication, such as
poetry, popular music, and black comic performance. KeensDouglas’s and Pryor’s narratives contain numerous examples
of tonal semantics, such as talk-singing and intonational
contouring, in which there is a specific use of stress and pitch in
pronouncing words in the black style (Smitherman, 1977).
This blending of the spoken word and the musical style of
delivery is evident in Pryor’s (1975) portrayal of the black
preacher in &dquo;Our Text for Today.&dquo; He says that black
preachers know God personally:
I first met Godt in 1922.I was walkin’ downnnn the
street. I don’t believe ya heard me. I was walkin’
downnnn the street. I was not runnin’. I was waaaaaalkinnn
[my emphasis].
Thus it is because Pryor often mimics the traditional black
preacher, a figure who often employs the talk-singing feature in
sermons, that we find him using this feature of black discourse.
An example of intonational contouring occurs in this same
monologue, when &dquo;God&dquo; is pronounced with a &dquo;t&dquo;―&dquo;Godt.&dquo; In
general, however, Pryor employs other tonal semantic features, such as changes in pitch to indicate attitude change and
the use of different vocal inflections and rhythms to differentiate characters (Stanback, 1980).
This use of pitch and inflection to indicate different characters may be found in any of Pryor’s performances where
there are several human, animal, or insect characters. In one
example, Pryor (1975) depicts an argument between two lovers
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73
in which he shifts pitch and voice inflection in order to portray
the woman. Later in the same piece he shifts again to portray a
rather condescending dog who reprimands the male character
for not feeding him. Pryor literally becomes each of his
characters, reflecting their personalities and their emotional
states through his voice pitch, rhythm, and vocal inflection.
characters and to reveal their attitudes and emotional states.
Tonal semantics has played a significant role in Pryor’s
portrayal (with spine-chilling accuracy) of the wino character,
the junkie, the preacher, the devil in the film The Exorcist, the
black and white police team, Cool Breeze, Bertha, a dog, a fly
buzzing away from pony manure, two cheetahs in conversation, two deer in conversation, Mudbone, Jim Brown, Leon
Spinks, a voodoo lady, and dozens more.
It is this unique ability to use voice and tone to get inside the
character that presents us with another similarity between
Pryor and Keens-Douglas. In &dquo;In De Square,&dquo; the Trinidadian
comedian portrays a series of characters in deep conversation
about religion at Woodford Square in Trinidad. Like Pryor,
Keens-Douglas uses rhythm and pitch to differentiate these
characters and to reval their attitudes and emotional states.
This dimension of black communication is also used in KeensDouglas’s versions of &dquo;Tanti at de Oval,&dquo; &dquo;Fish,&dquo; and &dquo;Dark
Nite People.&dquo; In &dquo;Dark Nite People,&dquo; variations in rhythm,
vocal inflection, and pitch are used only once to indicate
character change. Instead, these tonal elements, along with
singsong, sound-stretching techniques, are used to intensify the
moods of mystery and fantasy and to add to the horrifying
character of the monologue:
De nite daaaark chile
Ah hear a mooooaaaainin in de trees.
De nite as black as Mary backside
An yu want to go outside?
Is what happen to yu chile
Like yu want spirit take yu
Like Lucas little girl chile
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74
One nite she hear ah moooanin
Like ah baby baawlin in de wind
An is gone she gone
Mama Malade take she ....
Ah little old lady bout three foot tall,
Baaawlin like a chile and moooanin like de wind,
One minute she up de road
De next, she quite down town....
An [Johnson] see dis pretty, pretty, pretty laady
With long dress down she toe....
De lady smile, Johnson tip he hat an’ pass,
Half mile up de road....
Johnson see de saaaame laady again [Keens-Douglas, 1975:
24-25; my emphasis].
Similarly, in Keens-Douglas’s &dquo;Passport&dquo; (1976: 19) several
examples of talk-singing and intonational contouring function
to place emphasis on particular points of advice given by the
comedian’s matriarchal character, who argues, &dquo;If he [your
father] had listen to me dat would ah neeevah happen&dquo; and
&dquo;when yu reach late ya aint staaand a chaaance&dquo; (my emphasis).
INDIRECTION AND INNUENDO
From the agonistic game of &dquo;playing the dozen&dquo; to the
folktale &dquo;signifying monkey&dquo; to East African ritual styles of
praise poetry, scholars have interpreted indirection and innuendo as important black communication concepts. Smitherman (1977: 99) considers indirection and circumlocutionary
rhetoric to be a part of African discourse strategy. Ethel Albert
(1964), in her study of the speech training of the Burundi in
East Africa, proves that indirection assumes an important
Burundi speaking behavior. Smitherman (1977) and MitchellKernan (1972) discuss signifying as a method of using indirection in verbal insult.
Indirection and circumlocution are manifest in comic performance through the use of innuendo and irony and they are
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75
present in the works of Pryor and Keens-Douglas. Clearly,
Pryor’s (1976) &dquo;Bicentenniel Nigger&dquo; minstrel character is not
being straightforward when he speaks about the fact that black
humor began on the slave ships to America:
Ise sooo happy cause I been here 200 years.... I’m just thrilled
be here.... I used to live to be a hundred and fifty. Now I dies
of high blood pressure by the time I’m fifty-two.... That thrills
me to death. [chuckle] They brought me over here on a boat.
There was 400 of us come over [chuckles and snorts], 360 of us
died on the way over here [chuckle] I just love that ... it just
thrills me to death.... You white folks are just sooo good to us.
We got over here and another twenty of us died from disease
split us all up.... I dont know what I’m gonna do if I don’t
get 200 more years of this [silence]. Y’all probably done forgot
about it [with a threatening voice] but I ain’t gon never forget.
to
...
...
Pryor’s &dquo;darky entertainer minstrel&dquo; character shuffles
through this monologue only to conclude it with a &dquo;revolutionary&dquo; twist. The piece is filled with innuendo. In another
ironical twist in a Pryor-produced film Bustin’ Loose, the film
character he portrays manipulates a judge out of sending him
to jail. In typical Brer Rabbit trickster fashion, he begs the
judge to send him to jail for attempted robbery rather than
parole him into the hands of a rather stoic and unfeeling parole
officer. In the film the ploy works, just as it did in the Uncle
Remus tale.
Keens-Douglas (1975: 27-28) gives us several brilliant and
funny examples of innuendo in &dquo;Dark Nite People,&dquo; when his
adult narrator, after frightening the wits out of the young child
who wants to go out, continually suggests that he go outside
anyway:
of course don’t mind me
If you want to go out
You could go out yu know
...
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76
Yu
goin’ to bed?
But, yu not goin out again?
Since when yu want light to go
Lord chile dont be foolish eh!
Yu
upstairs?
frighten? Who frighten yu?
Additionally, in &dquo;Passport&dquo; (Keens-Douglas, 1976: 20-22)
domineering but lovable &dquo;old aunt&dquo; type in the story uses
indirection and innuendo in her attempt to manipulate the
the
young man’s behavior. Her use of innuendo borders on the
signifying, insulting kind and if she were not so concerned and
so lovable at the end of the story we would consider her
insulting. Hers are loaded questions:
When yu go start dressin’ ?
Don’t tell me is so yu goin’ on de plane,
No, ah don’t believe it,
How yu mean is only Jamaica yu goin’?
Where de nice suit yu have?
De one yu wear to Webster funeral.
How yu mean dat too colonial?
Is dat yu find to put on?
De least yu could do is wear ah decent shoe.
Dat slipper yu have on you bom with it?
where yu money?
In yu wallet? is yu mad or what?
All yu money in yu wallet? Boy never carry all
yu money in one place
De amount ah pickpocket dey have in dis country
Is a cryin’ shame ...
...
...
The piece continues to use several additional loaded questions,
but in the end the listener is made aware of the true personality
of this &dquo;domineering&dquo; woman:
Who say ah
cryin’ ?
Look, hurry up
an
clear out, yu hear?
Something in me eye [p. 24].
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77
CONCLUSION
Jamaican poet and comedienne Louise Bennett
said:
(1979)
has
Most of the time when we laugh it is so that we may not weep ...
and that [she] can’t think of any other race that has suffered as
much as the Negro has all over the world that could behave as
the Negro does.... to behave as we do, to laugh at the things we
do.
What is significant about this comparison of two black
comic performers who speak and write in the nonstandard
dialect of their own people is that their comedy and their
techniques are similar because they share common roots, a
common center, similar culture, similar experiences, and a
similar method of chronicling all of this.
REFERENCES
ALBERT, E. M. (1964) "Rhetoric, logic and poetics in Burundi culture patterning of
speech behavior." Amer. Anthropologist 66 (October): 34-54.
BENNETT, L. (1979) Anancy and Miss Lou. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s
Bookstore, Ltd.
CUMMINGS, M. (1980) "The comedy of Moms Mabley." Presented at the annual
convention of the Speech Communication Association, November.
---and J. DANIEL (1980) "Scholarly literature on the black idiom," in B. E.
Williams and O. L. Taylor (eds.) Working Papers: International Conference on
Black Communication, Bellagio, Italy, 1979. New York: Rockefeller Foundation.
DANIEL, J. L. and G. SMITHERMAN (1976) "How I got over: communication
dynamics in the black community." Q. J. of Speech 62 (February): 26-39.
JUNG, C. (1959) Four Archetypes (R.F.O. Hull, trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press.
KEENS-DOUGLAS, P. (1976) Tim-Tim: The Dialect Poetry of Paul Keens-Douglas.
Port of Spain, Trinidad: College Press.
———(1975) When Moon Shine. Port of Spain, Trinidad: College Press.
KLAPP, O. (1962) Heroes, Villains, and Fools. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
LEVINE, L. (1977) Black Culture and Black Consciousness. New York: Oxford
University Press.
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McPHERSON, J. A. (1975) "The
new comic style of Richard Pryor." New York
Magazine (April 27): 265-314.
MITCHELL-KERNAN, C. (1972) "Signifying and marking: two Afro-American
speech acts," in J. J. Gumperz and D. Humes (eds.) Directions in Sociolinguistics:
The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
NAZEL, J. (1981) Richard Pryor: The Man Behind the Laughter. Los Angeles:
Holloway House.
QUESTEL, V. (1975) "Introduction," in P. Keens-Douglas, When Moon Shine. Port
of Spain, Trinidad: College Press.
PRYOR, R. (1976) Bicentenial Nigger. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Records.
———(1975) Is It Something I Said? Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Records.
———(1974) That Nigger’s Crazy (recorded live, Don Cornelius’ Soul Tram Club,
San Francisco, California). New York: Stax.
SMITHERMAN, G. (1977) Talkin’ and Testifyin’. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
STANBACK, M. H. (1980) "Features of black language are communication in
Richard Pryor’s monologues." Presented at the annual convention of the Speech
Times
Communication Association, New York.
VAN SERTIMA, I. (1981) "The trickster as revolutionary hero." Sagala: A J. of Art
and Ideas 2, 1: 4-6.
Larry G. Coleman is Graduate Assistant Professor at the School of Communication at Howard University. He taught at Indiana University, the
University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Texas at Austin. His research
mterests are m the psychology of humor, persuasion, and the affects of the mass
media.
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