“Salt Peanuts” *

Abstract

In this poem, I theorize a bebop methodology: an approach to research in communities of African descent that is simultaneously creative, improvisational, and spontaneous while reflecting dexterity, virtuosity, and brilliance. Research methods should be informed by the communities they’re intended to serve. As both the observer and the observed, I understand Diasporan Black communities as being modern colonies suffering economic, social, political, and cultural oppression. However, these homeplaces, as hooks calls them, are not without genius, beauty, and pockets of self-determining autonomy. Bebop emerged as a radical, transformative aesthetic during World War II. Through their instruments, men like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie channeled the soul-sounds of people longing to be free. A bebop methodology reverberates with the forward-leaning, socially just bent in the “Ninth Moment” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2006) of qualitative research. This work is about the poetics of research, the poetics of struggle, and the politics of hope.