If my work is faithfully to reflect the aesthetic tradition of Afro-American culture, it must make conscious use of the characteristics of its art forms and translate them into print: antiphony, the group nature of art, its functionality, its improvisational nature, its relationship to audience performance, the critical voice which upholds tradition and communal values and which also provides occasion for an individual to transcend and/or defy group restrictions.

We use the word differently, but clearly do we see that the old sense leads commonsensically to the new, and the antiphony thus set off between the two enriches the word for us today.

He shows that "throughout the centuries of slavery and long after emancipation their song style, with its over-riding antiphony, its group nature, its pervasive functionality, its improvisational character, and its strong relationship in performance to dance and bodily movement and expression, remained closer to the musical styles of West Africa and the Afro-American music of the West Indies and South America than to the musical style of Western Europe.