[Ads-l] Off topic: _Soul Brothers_ redux

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Wed Mar 30 21:43:45 UTC 2016


x writes: ""soul music = music to soothe the savage breast", really?  the
implicit racism running through these threads is really off-putting. "

It was "soul music" in the earlier sense of church music, that was said to
be "music to soothe the savage breast", and "soothe the savage breast" is a
quotation from a 17th century play.

GAT

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:09 PM, x <
0000053c1ce4c7f7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> "soul music = music to soothe the savage breast", really?  the implicit
> racism running through these threads is really off-putting.  makes me
> wonder how many of you are trying to make america great again.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Mar 29, 2016, at 4:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > The album, _Soul Brothers_, c1958, has been re-released in high
> definition:
> > 192 kHz @ 24 bit.
> >
> > The modest degree of relevance is that Jon and I concur that the title of
> > this album is the earliest instance of the expression, _soul + [NP]_ with
> > *specific* reference to something relevant or peculiar to Black America -
> > as opposed to "soul brother" = blood brother, dear friend; "soul music" =
> > church music, music to soothe the savage breast - to appear in print that
> > either of us is aware of. Indeed, AFAIK, this album-title is the source
> of
> > it.
> >
> > _Soul sister_ goes back only to 1960 in Google Books:
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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