From a new book by Imani Perry, A History of the Black National Anthem
“By asserting the cross-cultural and multigenre and style collage of black formalist rituals, I, like [Ralph] Ellison, am disagreeing with a good deal of African American studies criticism. A distinction has sometimes been made by such critics that treats art (or behaviors) deemed vernacular or โfolk’ as the only truly authentic forms of black expression, while the classical (e.g., European concert music) is simply seen as a mimicry of European cultural forms. That distinction is largely erroneous.โ (page 11, as passed on by Kingsley Clarke)