Daniel Black’s novel Isaac’s Song is a vividly and intimately told multi-generational epic.
Kiese Laymon wrote of the book:
“Isaac’s Song continues the tradition of Daniel Black making absolute beauty out of the so-called unspeakable. Here, though, the execution and soulful interventions create the most superb writing we’ve read in a long, long time. Daniel Black is a magician”
In his own words, here is Daniel Black’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Isaac’s Song:
Music is the life-blood of black people. We shaped the American musical tradition the day we arrived on slave ships. Negro spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Hip Hop all changed the trajectory of American culture by inserting black voices into national prominence when they were expected to be silent. As a black writer, I am forever enshrouded in music. It colors my consciousness as I create. In fact, my ritual is to play Aretha or Sam Cooke or Luther Vandross or The Mighty Clouds of Joy or the Clark Sisters or Kirk Franklin or Whitney or Gladys or The Isley Brothers or Tracy Chapman as I prepare to enter my creative space. Then, I turn the volume down, close my eyes, and step into the world in which I hope one day to live.
While writing Isaac’s Song, I listened mostly to gospel, especially the 80s/90s black choir greats: Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir, Milton Brunson and The Thompson Community Singers, Ricky Dillard’s New Generation Chorale, and Thomas Whitfield and the Company. Issac’s Song is set during this era. I’d been a young choir director myself during these days, and something about those voices shouting and blending together, at the summit of their ranges, inspires excitement in me and makes me dream a world without discrimination or limitations.
I mention the song “There Is No Failure” by The Thompson Community Singers in Isaac’s Song because the lyrics set my soul free. The song says, “Just have faith and believe. Many blessings you will receive, for there is no failure, no failure, in God.” When I hear this song, I immediately step beyond American racism, homophobia, and misogyny and imagine a world where no one is ashamed of who they are. The song is high-spirited, upbeat, quick-paced and begs hearers to rejoice about the potential of a spirit-led nation where God sits on the throne. When I hit writer’s block, I play this song, and within minutes, words and ideas flood my consciousness.
Ricky Dillard’s “Things Will Work Out For Me” inspires me like few songs ever have. I close my teary eyes as the choir belts, “Your troubles and trials only come to make you strong! I reckon that the present sufferings can’t be compared to His glory in you.” This song digs me out of a hole when I’ve over-critiqued my work. Most of my novels were almost deleted—completely—at some point in the process. I have the tendency to edit as I write—a bad idea, I’m sure—but it’s my way. And sometimes that method makes me think I’m in the wrong profession. Yet this song gets me back to center every time and convinces me that, usually, what I’ve written is the seed of something pretty good.
My favorite song of all time is Walter Hawkins’s “Changed”. I first heard it when I was around 13 years old, and I’ve never cried like I cried that day. The jazz chords in this song mesmerized my limited, rural musical sensibilities and encouraged me to study musical traditions outside of the few I knew. But it was the lyrics that killed me: “A wonderful change has come over me. He changed my life and now I’m free.” It was freedom I’d longed for as a child: the freedom to be me, to be artistic, creative, sensitive, beautiful without others’ objection. This song suggested that if I could trust God, I could have that freedom. It was a fragile, dangerous promise, but it held the possibility of my liberty, so I was willing to try it. I discovered eventually that I didn’t need to change, but the song makes me dream, so it’s my personal mantra.
The genius of Thomas Whitfield was that he created chorale parts so original, so unusual, that his music hypnotized black church audiences. He never composed songs with traditional harmonic structures. He loved dissonances and close harmonies that had to be sung correctly or else they clashed. I love his musical precision, his willingness to distort traditional chords, his insistence that God is in the unusual. When I hear his classic creations such as “Oh How I Love Jesus” and “Hallelujah Anyhow”, I shake my head and get encouraged. His songs make me press through difficult writing passages and cause me to believe that, somehow, disparate parts of my story will come together magically in the end.
Music is the healing balm I use when my soul gets tired. It massages my mind and convinces me to stay in the battle for righteousness and nonconformity.
Daniel Black is an author and professor of African American studies at Clark Atlanta University. His books include The Coming, Perfect Peace and They Tell Me of a Home. He is the winner of the Distinguished Writer Award from the Middle-Atlantic Writer’s Association and has been nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Ernest J. Gaines Award,and the Georgia Author of the Year Award. He was raised in Blackwell, Arkansas, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.