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     Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1482 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
I heard Caryl Phillips talking about this one this morning on the BBC. Anybody read it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A comic genius lost under his blackface - Reviewed by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Sunday, September 25, 2005 Dancing in the Dark By Caryl Phillips KNOPF; 214 PAGES; $23.95 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a little-known fact that for a time at the start of the 20th century, the most successful entertainer in the English-speaking world was an African American man named Bert Williams. An exorbitantly talented actor, mime, singer and dancer, Williams sold out halls from Los Angeles to London, put on the first all-black production on Broadway and made piles of money. If in some ways Williams was a prototype of black capitalist empowerment, of the sort fabulously realized today by Diddy and Oprah Winfrey, in others he embodied the direst effects of racism. From 1896 until his death in 1922, he performed with his skin blackened by burnt cork; most of his characters were variations of grinning ape. Caryl Phillip's new novel, "Dancing in the Dark," seeks to animate Williams' remarkable life. It begins with his early days on the saloon stages of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, where he and his great partner George Walker first learn "to obliterate their true selves" to please their mostly white audiences. It follows their joint careers through the tremendous success of plays like "In Dahomey," on to Williams' last days as a solo performer with Zeigfeld's Follies. It also exhibits what tragically befell the two on the occasions when they tried to present more enlightened images of blackness. When Williams dares to make a movie in which he appeared without his face corked, playing a character other than the pitiable darkie, the audience members at the premiere were so displeased that they rioted in the theater. Punctuated with excerpts from plays they wrote and newspaper reports from the time, the novel illuminates the historical context in which Williams and Walker worked, and the critical and commercial pressures they endured. More impressively, Phillips is also convincing in imagining the impact of these performers' very public personas on their private lives. The partners are opposite in almost every way, George as brash and impetuous as Bert is forbearing and stoic, George as philandering as Bert is chaste. The complex dynamics at work in their respective marriages, Bert's to Lottie Williams and George's to Ada Overton Walker -- a formidable performer in her own right -- are rendered with tender care. How closely these peoples' inner narratives matched those of their fictional incarnations is impossible to know, but the overlapping portraits of Bert, George, Ada and "Mother" (as Bert came to call his mate in their sexless marriage) are here as believable as they are heartbreaking. The relationship that is the true centerpiece of the novel, though, is Bert's relationship to himself -- or more precisely, his relationship with the black-faced caricature he becomes in front of his dressing-room mirror each night. Accordingly, "Dancing in the Dark's" most affecting passages are those that feature the ever-dignified Bert alone, before his mirror or walking the streets of Harlem late at night, confronting the demons that made him, in W.C. Fields' words, "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew." One of the virtues of this novel, befitting the diasporic concerns of its author, is that it presents Williams' life not simply as a story about being black in America, but also as the immigrant's story it is. America, imagined in Bert's West Indian youth as the place for self-invention, presented him, quite literally in his case, with but one role to play: "nigger." Unlike lighter-complexioned new arrivals "whose identities appeared to breathe free" in the air of the turn-of-the-century United States, all that the Bahamian Williams could become in his adopted land was a caricatured version of what his skin color represented to whites. Phillips possesses a rare talent for drawing full and fleshy characters with economical simplicity, and he does not disappoint here. It must be said that some of his more experimental techniques in "Dancing in the Dark" -- especially the occasional shifting of narrator from omniscient third person to various of his characters -- at times seem overwrought and don't always come off perfectly. Yet overall, the novel can't be called anything but a success. The world it creates is vivid, the themes it raises poignant, the questions it prompts precisely the ones it should. Near the end of the book, there is a scene in which Bert remembers a fraught encounter with a group of African American civic leaders who beseech him to use his great talents for purposes other than "[approximating] the white man's idea of a nigger." The resonance of this exchange in the present is plain. Prominent members of the Bill Cosby generation are often heard today chastising gangster rappers as latter-day minstrels, peddling negative stereotypes for white consumption. For all the progress we have made, the questions that dogged Bert have by no means disappeared. Just this year, the gifted comic Dave Chappelle went into self-imposed hiatus reportedly out of concern that his comedy was reinforcing harmful notions of blackness, rather than contesting them. Bert Williams' place in the cultural history of the United States is essential for the stark relief in which it places some of our most persistent dilemmas about race, entertainment and identity in our national life. We owe thanks to Caryl Phillips for bringing a new generation to Williams' story -- and for adding another terrific novel to his catalog in the process. Berkeley writer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a contributor to "Ethnicity, Class and Nationalism: Caribbean and Extra-Caribbean Dimensions" (Lexington Books). Page F - 1 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/25/RVGPHEOKMH1.DTL | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 435 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, Hot DAMN! I come back to all of these posts about books...books that sounds real good to me too, I might add!! *big smile* Now THIS is more to my liking. I'm gonna have to check this one out! | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2654 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hi Thumper. Between fussin and cussin, I am currently reading "Dancing in the Dark, and finding it very interesting. LOL | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 127 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
There are better reviews available than this one by Joshua Jelly-Shapiro, whose knowledge of black history includes: Oprah, Diddy, Bill Cosby and Dave Chappelle, but little else. Dancing in the Dark received 9 reviews. What I seek from a review of historical fiction is context and understanding. Unfortunately, we (the readers of African American literature) often get reviewers who sound like their knowledge of the subject extends no further than the covers of the book they're reviewing. The subject of minstrelsey has been approached clear-eyed and intelligently by many intellectuals. In addition to 2 essays by Ralph Ellison, James Weldon Johnson (in Along This Way and Black Manhattan) gives an insider's account of Will Marion Cook, Bob Cole, Bert Willams, George Walker, and other musicians and performers who frequented the Marshall Hotel. Mel Watkins' book (On the Real Side) contains at least 15-20 pages on minstrelsey (which includes many references to Williams) and excellent recent books like Richard Crawford's "America's Musical Life: A History" (2001) explore the history of this period in American musical history. This is an area of American musical history I have not studied, but I intend to use Caryl Phillips' novel as an opportunity to at least read from the books I just mentioned. "In Dahomey," "Clorindy, or The Origins of the Cakewalk," and other musical productions with provocative titles may seem to indicate that they're minstrel shows, but are not and actually belong to the black musical theater. For that matter, Al Jolson and composer Harold Arlen wanted to buy the rights to Dubose Heyward's "Porgy" and stage it as a musical for white performers in blackface. Knowing this, George Gershwin wrote it into his will that Porgy and Bess could only be performed by a black cast. Here's an excerpt from Margaret Busby's review in the Independent: In Dancing in the Dark, Phillips shows himself a master of bluff and double-bluff. He sends us thoughtfully back to James Baldwin's reminder that "the world tends to trap and immobilize you in the role you play", to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952); and to the 19th-century poem "The Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, librettist of In Dahomey: "We wear the mask that grins and lies,/ It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- /This debt we pay to human guile;/ With torn and bleeding hearts we smile". http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article309591.ece This is from another thoughtful review by Catherine Taylor, also in The Independent: The composite reveries of Williams, Walker, their long-suffering, resilient wives, Lottie and Ada, and Williams's gentle, anguished father infuse the novel with an all-pervasive melancholy. Walker is depicted as a genial optimist, a womaniser with a taste for "late-night, secondhand love" - yet equipped with a vision which attempted to move beyond the dismaying, time-warped trajectory of the minstrel mask to pioneer the advancement of racial equality in the theatre. Williams appears passive, asexual, introspective; for him the disguise of the corkface seemed simultaneously both a release and a prison, and finally an incongruous blurring of personas: "a face that was put in place in the last century but that, in this new century, no longer makes much sense to either white or coloured". This is a tragic story with not a word wasted, raised to an elegiac level by Phillips's supple, controlled prose. http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article310463.ece Here's an excerpt from a more critical review by Brooke Allen in the NY Times: Williams's sexual life, as Phillips has imagined and inferred it, may be an effective metaphor for the unmanning of Williams's entire race, but it is also yet another onslaught upon his so often assaulted dignity. We feel that the real Williams, were he alive to read some of the material here, might be as outraged by the thoughts and feelings Phillips has put into his head as he was by the stage personality imposed on him by the expectations of the white theatergoing public. The characters might also be offended by the banal and overheated language with which Phillips expresses such thoughts. For example: "She looks closely at his hands, for she knows that gentle hands that are afraid of loss are the only hands for her." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/books/review/02allen.html?ex=1105938000&en=5e4 87fbe901ca0b2&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1 | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1489 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: |
Steve: It took you three days to come up with that? I expect more from somebody trying to show me up, like maybe one's own cogent dissertation. Hard to do when your lips move while you're reading, though. Keep up the good googling. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2667 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Ignore Haydenchris' paranoia, Steve. And you're right. I liked the reviews you posted much better inasmuch as I am currently reading this book. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1490 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
By the way Cynique, you have really been brave and hung in there after your loss. It is inspiring. Though I've belted you and flayed you you're a better--er, whatever you are--than I am, Gunga Cynique! | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2669 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Chrishayden. What the heck are you talking about? Did you forget to take your lithium again this morning????? For sure! | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1493 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/people/12810454.htm | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 128 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Here's my final post on the topic of Dancing in the Dark. These are the 9 reviews: http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/dancing_in_the_dark/ The Margaret Busby review has the obviously African American point of view; the San Francisco Chronicle review by Joshua Jelly-Shapiro is factually inaccurate. Also, read the copy in blue to the right of the Reviewsofbooks.com Web page. It reads, "As a light-skinned Caribbean immigrant, Williams donned blackface to play Negro stereotypes on stage, and to huge success." That's misleading, but it may not be factually incorrect, depending on how you parse the sentence. Anybody can copy a bad review off the Internet. So what? | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1494 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Let me ask you another question, Steve-O. Have you read the book yourself? | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 129 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
I just got the book in the mail today and read 30 pages of it, O Chris-to Redemptor. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1509 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Then when you are finished you can give us your own review--at the present time you actually do not know which of the reviews comes closest. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2690 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I'm moving right along with "Dancing in the Dark", too, Steve. Apart from all the other aspects of this book which I will probably comment on later I, personally, find Phillips' prose stunning. It flows. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 131 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Dear Cynique, I always appreciate and respect your opinon (as well as those of Soul Sister, Crystal, and many other highly-literate individuals who post on this board). Although I have not quite finished the novel I have to say that based on "The Nature of Blood" (the only other Caryl Phillips novel I've had the pleasure of reading) I consider him among the first rank of current writers, however, quite frankly, I'm not so sure about my feelings on this particular book. So let's talk about it. Can we at least agree about the author's use of "irony" in depicting the upstanding Bahamian father as a veritable personifaction of the razor-wielding "Zip Coon" stereotype of the antebellum minstrel period? (so torn was he between a defense of his son and his own conflicted feelings about the degrading stereotypes his son chose to portray?) You may not be familiar with "Coming Through Slaughter," Michael Ondaatje's atmospheric novel about pioneering turn-of-the-century jazz musician Buddy Bolden, but I feel that it is certainly a possible inspiration for the barbershop scene in "Dancing in the Dark," a novel which is similarly part documentary, part fiction, and essentially a spiritual exegesis of a tragic personality. I would situate this fictional work -- quasi-biographical, a meditation on opression and perhaps a literature of outrage -- within the confines of the "Novel of Memory" as outilined by Charles (R.) Johnson in "Being & Race: Black Writers Since 1970." My first observation is that the point of view is completely unreliable. Well, I mean it begins with a third-person omniscient point of view, a modern voice which speaks about the past in the present tense and contemptuously dismisses racial stereotypes in italics: "native," "jungle," etc. But by the end of the novel (particularly around the time that George Walker suffers a stroke) we get various "imagined" first-person points of view from Bert, Aida, and other characters, which sometimes appear to be embellishments on short quotes from various "news" sources. The question I have is how much of it is accurate and believable? Capeesh? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2772 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Steve, I read this book cold turkey, and came to it with no prior knowledge of the author and just a smidgen of knowledge about the subject. My inclination was to accept it at face-value in the hope of just enjoying it, but I ended up taking some of it with a grain of salt. I was impressed with the author's command of words but in the end, not totally fulfilled by the book's lack of depth. There was something awry in the book but I couldn't put my finger on it until your observations struck a note. Whether the author took literary license in telling this story, I certainly can't say but Bert Williams, like Jack Johnson was a product of his times and he led the kind of life that lent itself well to a fictional treatment. How could the author resist "romaticizing" this story? Bert Williams' double life was emblematic of the double consciouness dilemma that black people had to cope with and this provided a ready-made source for the conflict that a novel calls for. I need to go back over the book with a new set of eyes. I kinda started rushing through it because I wanted to finish it. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 134 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Cynique, Well said. Let me just correct something I said in my previous post. Not an important point perhaps, but I meant to say that in the first 30 or so pages the narrator dismisses the racial sterotypes of the era as expressed in quotation marks, not in italics. Well, if you notice on page 31 the word primitive, which itself is very often a racial stereotype, is italicized, perhaps in recognition of "primitivism" as an international artistic style, independent of race (think of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, a "pagan" ballet in which the dancers danced in an intentionally "ungraceful" manner). I'm somewhat familiar with this era of the black musical theater through its music. Take for instance the following lyric from the supposedly hideous all-black theatrical production In Dahomey. In your opinion, is there anything in this lyric which could be construed as "race pride?" I believe there is. Swing along chillun, swing along de lane, Lif yo' head and yo' heels mighty high, Swing along chillun, 'taint a-goin' to rain, Sun's as red as de rose in de sky. Come along Mandy, come along Sue, White fo'ks a-watchin' an' seein' what you do, White fo'ks jealous when you'se walkin' two by two, So swing along chillun, swing along. (sung by chorus, music and lyrics by Will Marion Cook) | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2776 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
"White fo'ks jealous when you'se walkin' two by two, So swing along chillun, swing along." Implicit in this verse is the idea that in spite of everything, blacks still had the power to miff white folks by snubbing them, preferring instead, the company of each other. There's as much smugness as there is pride in this verse. LOL | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 137 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thank you Cynique. Hey let's forget about this novel! Btw, I've read about three books since this one. Right now I'm reading Emily Raboteau's "The Professor's Daughter" -- a first novel but a really beautiful one with shades of Danzy Senna's "Caucasia," although the main character is not "passing" or anything like that. Hey I don't know if you're a White Sox fan or not but I've been watching the Angels/White Sox series and I just have to remark on the dramatic difference in managerial styles between Mike Scioscia and Ozzie Guillen (or at least their personalities). Have you been checking that out? It's like night and day. Okay, the other night the White Sox batter AJ Pryzinski clearly struck out in the 9th inning which should have sent the game into extra innings, but the umpire blew the call. But did Scioscia get out there and go nuts and humiliate the umpire for his obviously incompetent call? No, he just sat on his lard @ss and shook his head. Then tonight, the White Sox runner was clearly picked off first base and again, all Scioscia could do was to shake his head. It just seems to me that if the guy had gone crazy the other night, they might have thought twice about f'king with him again. I'm sure he's a good manager just to have gotten his team this far (and I actually saw the man play when he was with the Dodgers) but if you compare him to Ozzie Guillen who in one of the earlier games was cursing at the umpire from the dugout . . . I know it scared me just to watch it on TV! I would not want to mess with that guy! Are you a White Sox fan? The lyrics I quoted are part of an analysis (including musical notation) of Will Marion Cook's "Swing Along" -- one of the songs from "In Dahomey" -- which is included in Richard Crawford's book, "America's Musical Life." The number discussed in the text is an adaptation for solo voice and piano, published in 1912 (the song was originally sung in the 1903 Broadway show by a chorus). It's certainly possible that those lyrics were not part of the original show. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2782 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Well, Steve, the White Sox have a history of what we around Chicago call "winning ugly." There also seems to be a reverse curse at play here because all of the flukes are in our favor. We made it to the play-offs when Boston's star infielder flubbed an easy out. As for Ozzie, his explosive Latin temperament is what has fired up his team all season and he certainly exploits the tactic of getting a future call in his favor by bitching about a present one. All of us fans were disappointed that the Sox weren't going to be matched up against The Yankees because the Angels and their shifting identities are so blah and a Chicago White Sox/New York Yankees series would've been a baseball classic! | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 138 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
My dear Cynique, I believe you're talking about the Tony Graffanino error in game 2 of the ALDS (?), but don't forget what a beautiful job El Duque did with no outs and the bases loaded in game 4 of the Sox's sweep of Boston! You know, I first heard about Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez in a great book written before he had even defected -- NPR correspondent Andrei Codrescu's "Ay, Cuba: A Socioerotic Journey," written on the eve of the Pope's visit to the island nation in 1998. I love Codrescu, I've probably read about 5 or 6 of his books. Anyway, yeah, I can understand the psychological need for AL teams to be Yankee-killers on the way to the pennant as well as the White Sox "curse," i.e. the Black Sox scandal of 1917, second only to the Red Sox's "Curse of the Bambino." But tonight is Game 5 and we shall see what we shall see! Would you say that the Angels' batters have been in a slump? I mean Vlad Guerrero is a bad dude but it just hasn't been happening for some reason (I used used to watch his infielder brother Wilton in Dodgers' Grapefruit League "A" ball). Tonight I believe it's Jose Contreras pitching for the Angels (I forget who it'll be for the Sox), but the A's also have that guy Oswalt who is also a bad dude. Yeah, I'd like to see a White Sox /Houston series, that would be a good match-up. I'd be up for a last hurrah for the Rocket man! PS I'm past the halfway point in Emily Raboteau's novel. It's good. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2785 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Heads up, Steve! Jose Contreras pitches FOR the White Sox! Which is all academic since the Sox have taken it all, and in an "away" game, at that. And although I think you'll get your wish about the Astros, sox fans would love to turn the world series in to a battle in the heart land, by going up against the St Louis Cardinals. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1540 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Well, isn't that just special? If we are all finished with our little coffee clatch, perhaps we can get down to beeswax. Steve, you certainly are an expert on minstrelsy, as well as events that occurred before you was even thought of. I believe you owe us a review. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2822 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Steve and I completed our discussion on "Dancing in the Dark," so go talk to yourself, Haydenchris. If Steve felt inclined to accomodate you with a review, seems like he would have posted one by now. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1546 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Cynique: We don't need you to Ralph Bunche our discussion. Steve: Where's the review, man? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2851 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
And Steve and I didn't need your snide remark about our baseball discussion, Chrishayden. You're really having a problem with Steve ignoring you, aren't you? | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1549 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hey granny. Who started this thread? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2852 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Who cares who started it? It's who ends it, sonny boy. And I wish Steve would wind things up by telling you to go take a flying leap. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1550 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Sneak: If wishes were horses beggars would ride. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2857 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Well, Chrissy, is that why your wish to be the cock of the walk never came true? Fly away little yellow bird. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1553 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Cynique: Enough mindless love patter. How is your First Church of Cynique project coming? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2868 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Quite well, thank you. And be advised that hypocrits like you are not welcome. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1555 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Now Cynique: You had promised that I could be the head Deacon. I got my pink suit and diamond rings all ready. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2874 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Ain't no deacons in my church. Just gurus, like me. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1556 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
Gurus? Or GNUS? (haw haw haw) | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2875 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
You inspire me to utter "EU" with a scowl. Or is it EMU? Probably the latter since you always have your head in the sand. And that's a good place for it, I might add. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 154 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
And finally an intelligent review which pulls no punches. The reviewer is Quinn Eli, who, last I heard was professor of English literature at Bryn Mawr. The third book, "Dancing in the Dark" (Knopf, $23.95, 224 pages), by West Indian-born novelist and critic Caryl Phillips, is an artistic "re-imagining" of the life of Bert Williams. http://newsobserver.com/lifestyles/arts_entertainment/story/2784036p-9223698c.ht ml Does it shock anyone that an African American scholar should hold literarure to high standards? Not me. And Btw, this is the same man who reviewed David Anthony Durham's latest novel (review posted below in "Pride of Cathage" thread). | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2935 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I don't agree with Quinn Eli's comments, Steve. I thought that since Caryl Phillips' book was really an ode to Bert Williams, his lofty prose was acceptable especially since it wasn't ponderous. His style of writing was like a prism, showing the many facets of Williams through the eyes of those around him and I didn't find this particularly distracting maybe because I have this Zen mentality. In a recent interview, Phillips also explains that there was very little material to draw from when compiling this account of William's life because he left behind no letters or personal papers and had no living friends or close relatives who could share reminscences with the author. Phillips only had public record to refer to, and he was left with no choice but to conjure up a 2-dimensional image of the complicated man once described as by comedian W. C. Fields as the funniest man he'd ever seen. And also the saddest. Obviously I've re-evaluated "Dancing in the Dark" after giving it more thought, and although I wouldn't give it 5 stars, I would give it 3-and-a-half. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 155 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Okay Cynique, I respect your opinion, although, I generally agree with the reviewer's overall opinion. The first thing I noticed was the title. "Dancing in the Dark" is the MOST famous show tune by the songwriting team of Dietz and Schwartz (for example, Miles Davis recorded many Dietz/Schwartz tunes, like "Alone Together," "I See Your Face Before Me," " You and the Night and the Music," etc.) So my expectation was that it would have something to do with Bert Williams since he was one of the first black performers to appear on Broadway, however it has NOTHING to do with him, since it was recorded in the 1930s, almost a full decade after he had passed in 1922. See, it's a symbolic title, like Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark," or Sonny Rollins' "Playing in the Yard," which is a reference to Charlie "Yardbird" Parker. So in my opinion, it's just typical of Phillips' misrepresentation of a culture which he appears not to have sufficiently immersed himself in. Take the vulgar scene in which Aida Overton Walker tells him to whip it out and get some of this, minstrel boy. And his response was slink away and quietly sob. That DID NOT happen, I would bet any amount of money. So what is its purpose? Well, it seems to me like the author is just using Bert Williams to exorcise his own demons about racism. It's just my opinion that whoever this person is that he's describing, it's not Bert Williams. Caryl Phillips does a NUMBER on Bert Williams. Bert Williams supposedly read Charles Darwin, Thomas Paine, Arthur Schopenhauer, Oscar Wilde, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Johann von Goethe, and Mark Twain. Did you get a sense that this person in the novel could possibly have read any of this stuff? Honestly, I didn't. Some other points are that: The real genius of the early black musical theater was Will Marion Cook, who was like the Du Bois of American music, having studied (like Du Bois) at the Hochschule in Berlin with Joseph Joachim, the greatest violinist in the world. Brahms composed concertos specifically for Joachim. So just because Caryl Phillips reduces the early black musical theater to something shameful does not mean that I have to jump on the bandwagon. Duke Ellington called Will Marion Cook "Father Cook," his musical father. Look, in "Democracy Matters," Cornel West talks about going around to the public schools and teaching the "prophetic history of black music." It might be a good idea because I admire Cornel West, however, would that be a selective history? In other words, would it include: Will Marion Cook, Bert Williams, James Reese Europe, Jelly Roll Morton, et al, or just Mahalia Jackson, Gil Scott Heron, Chuck D and KRS-One, et al? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2939 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Well, we have to consider what Caryl Phillips set out to do, Steve. Being a black man from the Carribean and the same age as Bert Williams was when he died, Phillips identified with Williams and wanted to commemorate the man whose story resonated with him. I don't think Phillips' intent was to write a definitive work about Williams, otherwise he wouldn't have used the novel format. The book is, what it is. As for the the title, I thought it was applicable because Williams was certainly "dancing in the dark", literally and figuratively. And since when do book titles taken from songs or poems have to be relevant to the era these verses was written in? Do you think Jame Jones' blood and guts war novel "From Here To Eternity" had anything to do with Yale's university's famous Whiffenpoof song, the piece from which this line was taken??? | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 156 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
You seemed to like it a lot more than I did, so I won't push it, but I did agree with your earlier comment on the "Is Anybody Reading?" thread that you didn't know what to believe. I think that's actually an important point. I guess you already picked up on the connection between the 1914 riot at the Brooklyn movie theater and the riots in various parts of the country one year later following the first showings of Birth of a Nation -- obviously a film in which the most provocative "black" roles (racist and temptress) were played by white actors in greasepaint. However, it's not really the same thing. Anyway, to change the subject, I remember you mentioned reading the biography of Canada Lee, so I'm curious what you think of this reviewer's opinion (Oh, I checked and he doesn't appear to be on that college's faculty now, but it appears that he taught English there, but not as a professor). Here's the review again - postitive I would say - of Becoming Something by Mona Z. Smith: http://www.triangle.com/books/bookreview/story/2783940p-9223698c.html | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 157 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Correction: I said "racist" but I meant "rapist." | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 158 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Cynique, Just want to clear up a few points, hope this doesn't unravel your thread(s). There was supposedly a "riot" in a Brooklyn movie theater in 1914 during a showing of the Hollywood movie in which Bert Williams appeared "out of character," i.e. without the burnt cork minstrel mask which was his trademark. The problem was not that a NYC theater audience became enraged to see a black performer without the "cork" mask in 1914. Look, James Reese Europe's 125-piece all-black syncopated "Clef Club" Orchestra had already played Carnegie Hall 3 times by then: first in 1912, and then again in 1913 and 1914. And they sure as hell did NOT wear burnt-cork masks. Bert Williams chose to wear the minstrel mask way beyond the date when minstrel bufoonery had passed its prime. By the way, the Clef Club was located directly across the street from the Marshall Hotel on West 53rd Street. According to James Weldon Johnson (Black Manhattan, p. 118) this area became the center of black Manhattan by 1900 and remained so until the second decade of the 20th Century (despite the novel's omniscient West Indian narrator's claims -- about Harlem's idealized black past -- to the contrary). | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 159 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
My other observation is about what appears to be a "quote" from Bert Williams on page 121, upon returning from England: "You must admit that there's food for thought, not necessarily bitter, in the fact that in London I may sit in open lodge with a premier of Great Britian, and be entertained in the home of a distinguished novelist, while here in the United States, which fought four years for a certain principle, I am often treated with an air of condescension by the gentleman who sweeps out my dressing room . . . " Here's my interpretation, and you may correct me if I'm misstating something. The racist condescension he describes affected all black Americans, from the man and woman on the street to the highest-paid entertainer, which he apparently was. I just disagree about the first part of his statement because for nearly 50 years before Booker T. Washington's famous 1912 dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt, black musical artists had been performing at the White House. The following is off the Internet: Beginning with James Buchanan’s administration in the 1850s, black entertainers have held a prime spot among White House performers. Their contribution to the musical history of the White House has been a rich and generally little known segment of American cultural life. A performance by Thomas Greene Bethune, "Blind Tom" created a sensation in 1859. Although blind and mentally retarded, he possessed extraordinary musical gifts and is said to have played like Beethoven, Gottschalk and Mozart. In 1878, diva Marie ("Selika") Williams appears to have been the earliest black artist to present a musical program at the White House. The Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced the "spiritual" as an American art form and came to the White House as part of a tour in 1882 that raised funds to benefit Fisk University. They became the first black choir to perform at the White House and their performance of "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," moved President Chester Arthur to tears. Another great performer was Sissieretta Jones (Black Patti), the daughter of a former slave, who sang opera arias and ballads for the Harrisons in 1892. A sensational vocalist, Jones received rave reviews and fame in a career that included performances at the White House for the Harrisons, McKinleys and Theodore Roosevelts. Black entertainers in the 19th century established a grand tradition of performance that evolved to embrace every variety of music–from opera to gospel and from jazz to symphonic. Just a correction to the above. "Blind Tom" was not "retarded," he was a savant who performed Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. He's the probable model for the character "Blind d'Arnault" in Willa Cather's "My Antonia" pub. 1910, and he did perform in Red Cloud (her Nebraska hometown) while she lived there. And Btw, "My Antonia" was one of Zora Neale Hurston's 6 favorite novels, although, as one might imagine, a 21st Century biographer of Hurston would be under a lot of pressure not to include a fact like that. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2948 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
"Unravel my threads"? Come on, Steverino, you're the one apparently frustrated because Phillips didn't write a perfect book. As I said, I don't think the liberties the author took or the improvised conversations take away from the tragic irony of the double identity which turned Williams' into a tortured soul. To me, that was the gist of "Dancing in the Dark" which, if you may recall, I didn't give a 5-star rating. And I might add that since nobody else knows anything to the contrary, who can say how inaccurate the words were that Phillips had Williams utter. You would have us think that everytime Williams opened his mouth, he mounted a soap box and made an infallible statment to be carved in stone for the benefit of posterity. LOL! Anyway, I have no problem with any of your other observations. They seem reasonable enough. As for Canada Lee's, biography, it was an interesting account of a man and his times. It was non fiction and based upon fairly accurate sources. The review you referred me to pointed out things that didn't especially bother me when I was reading what I felt was a fairly comprehensive work. Obviously people come to books about real-life persons with different expectations and these expectations are influenced by what one previously knew about the subject. Last year, in reading the latest Sammy Davies biography by I forget who, I found it lacking in spite of the fact that this book received accolades. But Sammy Davis was of my era and I remember everything about what was going on during his hey day, a lot of which the author got wrong or omitted. Sooo what can I say? | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 160 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thanks Cynique, I don't remember what rating you gave the book, but I can tell from what you think I'm saying that I'm not making my opinion clear, which is my fault. I think you're correct in saying that Phillips succeeds in presenting Williams as a tortured soul, however, I frankly don't care that much about Bert Williams. What I object to is what I feel is his misrepresentation of the whole musical culture of "the Ragtime Era" -- which is what the first 2 decades of the twentieth century were -- as "racist." Even a Michael Eric Dyson, no great fan of jazz, has written eloquently about this era as just the opposite -- as a breaking down of cultural boundaries and a threat to the status quo (see also "Mumbo Jumbo"). For a Will Marion Cook, it was a great success for African Americans to finally appear on Broadway and bring down the house in black-written and composed musicals (see When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis). This trend was to be continued a decade later in the Harlem Renaissance. With the black musical production called "In Dahomey," Cook wanted to embrace black cultural roots and African American forms of language and expression, albeit with a completely original form of music that was harmonically advanced but drew upon syncopated rhythms (related to, but without some of the formal elements of Scott Joplin's brand of Ragtime -- Maple Leaf Rag was published in the same year, 1903, as In Dahomey. Jazz had not yet been invented yet, but it too, was first influenced by Ragtime before the blues.) So I think the author is misinterpreting when he implies that the tune called "Kinky" from that show is "racist." Bob Cole, James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson on the other hand were writing and performing music which was not very much different from what whites were doing (and in addition they were also composing for white musical theater productions). | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2955 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I now get what your beef is, Steve. All I can say is that maybe Caryl Phillips made his book a character study of a man not a history of a musical genre because he did care about Bert Williams and but didn't care that much about the Ragtime era. In any case, I am not qualified to know what was on Phillips' mind, and I'm done with defending him. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 161 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
That's one part of my "beef," Cynique, but like the following reviewer in the Toronto Globe and Mail, I disagree that Phillips "cares" very much for Bert Williams based on his portrayal of the man. Everybody sees it differently I guess. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 162 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
The footlights remain dimmed By ANDRE ALEXIS Saturday, October 29, 2005 Dancing in the Dark By Caryl Phillips Knopf Canada 215 pages, $33.95 Dancing in the Dark is a mediocre book by a talented writer. It fails, ultimately, as a novel and as fictionalized biography, but it still manages to demonstrate some of Caryl Phillips's skill. Dancing in the Dark is the story of Bert Williams, one of vaudeville's most successful performers. Along with his partner, George Walker, Bert Williams led a musical company that toured the United States and Britain at the turn of the last century. Williams himself was a respected singer, clown and . . . well, "coon." He was the first black comedian to put on blackface and assume the persona of the ignorant negro, a stereotype that was a deep part of the white American imagination. There is real potential in this material. The early days of vaudeville are, in themselves, fascinating. Though novels rarely do the theatre justice, the lives of vaudevillians usually make for vivid reading. (W. C. Field's memoirs come to mind). And then, of course, the life and work of black vaudevillians is so seldom examined that one looks forward to almost anything about them. Phillips is a fine dramatic writer. His radio plays are subtle and surprising and he successfully adapted V. S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur for the big screen. But here he shows little feel for theatrical lives, and little enthusiasm for vaudeville. Dancing in the Dark is undramatic in another way as well. The novel broken into a prologue, three "acts" and an epilogue, but there is little build-up of tension from section to section, and there's not much of an overarching narrative. Time passes, the characters grow older and then die. In fact, characterization is one of the weakest aspects of the novel. Phillips's Williams is monochromatic, morose and inward from the beginning of the novel until the end. The novel's epigram is a quote from Williams: "Nobody in America knows my real name and, if I can prevent it, nobody ever will." And he is depicted as a man who has difficulty communicating much of anything. Phillips's Bert Williams spends a good deal of his time in a bar called Metheney's, drinking and brooding. What does he brood about? Little in particular, but much in general: his act, his relationship to his partner, his feelings, such as they are, for the woman he has married, and his feelings for his father. What he might have been like on stage, his great talent as a performer, Phillips is unable to vividly communicate. He mentions that Williams is admired by his contemporaries, but gives us very little to go on. The other characters suffer a similar tarnishing. George Walker is depicted as a man who wishes to elevate the race with his art, who wants to do more than play to the white audiences' prejudices. But his political thoughts (or such thoughts as Phillips gives him) are not sophisticated, striking or subtle, and his politics are overshadowed by his lust for women. The women change more and in more interesting ways, but they're not given as much time and attention as the men. Williams's wife, Lottie, is a frustrated housewife who settles (or seems to settle) into the role of surrogate mother and friend of her man. She misses the sexual life she gives up in marrying Williams, a man who is not interested in sex, but she learns to bear her want. George Walker's wife, Aida Overton Walker, was a strong woman, an influential choreographer, and she took her husband's place on stage when he was too ill to go on. But here she is cast in the role of tolerant wife, a woman who understands and forgives her husband's tomcatting. Her talents are alluded to but, again, not convincingly conveyed. Phillips uses sexuality and the sex drive as an indicator of vitality. A cliche. Worse, he uses libido as an indicator of racial propriety as well. Bert Williams, the man who performs in blackface, the false negro, is depicted as a man who lacks vitality, who has no sexual drive, who is apart from life. (He is not, mercifully, depicted as gay, though unfortunately, that suggestion, another cliche, is there.) George Walker, though he routinely betrays his wife, though he has a wild and public affair with a redheaded white woman, is the one who is politically conscious, who wants to do something for his race. In other words, Walker is vital, sexual and a good black man, while Williams is inward-looking, sexless and a false one: an outsider. An outsider who, in this narrative, is treated with a touch of contempt that feels authorial. (It was difficult not to wonder why Phillips chose to write about Bert Williams at all, since he graces George Walker with a more interesting personality, set of concerns, life and trajectory.) The saddest thing about all this is, at the heart of this novel is a fascinating conundrum: What happens when one's talent is anti-social. To whom does the artist have responsibility? Part of Williams's art consists of making fun of black people, of abetting his (mostly) white audiences' bigotry. The implicit question behind Dancing in the Dark is: At what cost does Bert Williams' success come? All very good, but in order for this to be fairly answered, the beauty of Williams's art, the liberation it offers, has to be conveyed. And to my mind, Phillips just isn't up to it. He is too obviously on the side of the artist's social responsibility. Despite all that, Dancing in the Dark makes it clear Phillips is a talented writer. One could criticize his occasional use of cliche (lips "taste sweet as cherries" and skin is "jet black") and the odd awkwardness of diction (his American idiom -- he was born and raised in Britain though he is now a U.S. resident -- is not consistent or always credible). But throughout the novel, Phillips is a decent director. He moves from one perspective to another, from the past to the present, from sketches and routines to songs. He switches voices quickly and, for most of the novel, expertly, so that one rarely feels lost or bewildered. It's very like a vaudeville show and it's impressive. Toward the end of the novel, he commits the sin of having one character (Aida Overton Walker) explain a scene that we've just read. That's awkward and unfortunate, but until then his skill in arranging the rhythm and pace of the narrative is admirable. Dancing in the Dark has a great premise, an interesting cast of characters and, at its core, a fascinating dilemma. I wish Caryl Phillips had been up to them. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2959 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Yep, we all do see things differently, Steve. And when even critics can't agree about the assets or liabilities of a book, then readers just have to form their own opinion, based on how the book struck them. | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 945 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
steve_s: I have yet to read the novel. But, I think the point of the paragraph you quoted saturday, 5:40 am, was not the fact of being able to perform in front of the premier, or the US president for that matter, but that a black man was better treated in Europe (this is typical of african american intellectuals/arts...Dubois and others have made the same commentary, though Baldwin was quick to say that the French were racist but differently than white americans). Also, there is the question of the actual treatment of the performer that Phillips addresses. And finally, there is the fact of Booker T. Washington being an educator and politician, for his presence with the president was related to questions of philanthropy and the fact that he assuaged the fears of white elites, southerner and northern. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 164 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Yukio (and Cynique), Thanks very much for your input, I look forward to discussing some novels with you both. Obviously, performances by entertainers before heads of state are pretty poor indicators of any country's racial tolerance -- think of the 2000 Republican convention, however, my feeling is that the author includes that quote for just that reason. It is true what you say that blacks were better treated in Europe, but my understanding (from reading novels like Andrea Levy's "Small Island," about the experience of the Windrush generation of West Indians in the UK around WWII) is that there were relatively few blacks in the UK in 1903, which is when the show toured there. Btw, not included in the novel is the fact that the musical received a lukewarm reception at first in the UK and then set off a cakewalk craze that swept England and France. What you say about Booker T. Washington presence at the White House sounds accurate to me. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 165 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
I searched the Internet and found that "In Dahomey" was recently revived in a production starring the great Metropolitan Opera soprano Shirley Verrett, but that the book was updated or changed, as it would obviously be inappropriate to modern sensibilities toward racial stereotypes. I'm not at all familiar with the musical so perhaps I shouldn't say that it isn't offensive by modern standards, which I'm sure it is, but just that it was a landmark event in American musical history -- the first all-black musical on Broadway, and under black creative control (which, I believe is where black music has always been way ahead in relation to black literature, which has been subject to political or ideological constraints, from Phillis Wheatley having to prove authorship, to the slave narratives' service to abolitionism, to the creative approval required by patrons of the arts during the Harlem Renaissance, etc.). So at the beginning of the novel when the narrator describes the reaction of some fictional black audience members to a 1903 performance of In Dahomey, he focuses on their offense at the star performer, Bert William's, minstrel make up, not on their total experience of the musical, which also included: performers singing while simultanously performing vigorous, almost athletic dancing (an innovation which was the black musical theater's legacy to all of Broadway), a black chorus singing as only black choruses can, syncopated rhythms, harmonies based in black church cadences, etc. Of course, this is based solely on what I've read. The other point I think he's missing is that black audiencies of the era would have been completely familiar with the convention of cork makeup in musical productions. Although it's not an era I've really studied, I have a music degree, so I'll give it my best shot. Minstrelsy was the country's most popular form of musical entertainment for nearly 100 years, beginning with Thomas Rice's "Jump Jim Crow" in 1928. I'm referring to commercial music; obviously, there were other musics (and the other musics are the only one's I've ever been interested in). There were various forms of minstrel music, but in general, one can say that antebellum minstrelsy by white performers started in 1928, and then, after the Civil War, black musical performers inherited the conventions of the minstrel show. Minstrelsy was followed by rural tent shows and medicine shows and then the theater circuit and vaudeville (black and white). It's my understanding that Bert Williams was one of the star performers who crossed-over to white vaudeville. There's a photo of Lester Young, the great jazz saxophonist, with his family's band when he was 12 or 13-years-old. They played the tent shows throughout the South and Midwest. He was born in 1909, so this would have been around 1922, the year that Bert Williams died. Anyway, in the photo, he has the cork smeared all over his face. It hurts to see that, but it was probably a holdover from minstrelsy. I'll post something from a music history text in case anyone is interested. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 166 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: |
Excerpt from "Looking Up at Down: The Emergence of Blues Culture" by William Barlow Part II: Urban Blues "Laughin' to Keep from Cryin'" Vaudeville Blues Blues and the Music Industry Black minstrelsy, in its heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the most popular form of commercial entertainment in the black community. Among these southern-based African-American performing troupes, the best known were Silas Green's show out of New Orleans and the Rabbit Foot Minstrels out of Port Gibson, Mississippi; both organizations built up a following and longevity that was rare for black minstrel aggregations. They, and countless other lesser-known troupes with shorter life spans, made seasonal tours of the rural South, visiting tobacco regions in the spring and the cotton belt in the fall, as well as lumber, levee, and coal camps. The more successful black troupes traveled in special railroad cars and performed under large canvas tents. In their numbers were musicians, singers, dancers, comics, various novelty acts, and a work crew to set up and break down the tents, stage, and seating. From its inception, black minstrelsy was dependent on white men who controlled the business end of the enterprise. From that vantage point, these white entrepreneurs also exerted considerable influence over the content of the shows, even though they were staged primarily for black audiences. While the black minstrel performers were able eventually to eliminate the more offensive racial stereotypes from their shows, they also had to accommodate the wishes of their white employers. As a result, fragments of the antebellum blackface minstrel tradition survived in black minstrelsy. For example, the practice of blacking up with burnt cork persisted even among African-American minstrel entertainers well into the 1920s. Because black minstrelsy was the first African-American beachhead in commercial entertainment, it established procedures and practices that carried over to later enterprises in the music industry involving black entertainers and audiences. The three major enterprises caught up in the commercial production of the blues were the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the music publishing firms located along New York's Tin Pan Alley, and the phonograph record companies based in New York and Chicago. In the early 1900s, the touring tent shows also began appearing before African-American audiences in urban theaters. The theaters were usually owned and managed by white businessmen who were notorious for the scanty wages they paid black entertainers and for their unwillingness to provide clean and adequate facilities for the performers. Nevertheless, these theaters became the metropolitan palaces for a black vaudeville circuit that flourished over the next two decades. As early as 1907, a white Memphis theater owner, F.A. Barrasso, attempted to organize a chain of theaters in the South featuring black entertainment into a vaudeville network. By formalizing the procedures for booking black performers at these theaters, he hoped to make them more efficient and thus more profitable for the owners, if not the entertainers. In 1909, his brother Anselmo took over the venture and founded the Theater Owners Booking Association. He slowly built up a string of member theaters in the South and Midwest, and along the eastern seabord. By 1921, when the TOBA was taken over by a Nashville theater owner named Milton Starr and Charles Turpin, his TOBA counterpart in St. Louis, it was a prosperous enterprise with some forty theaters listed as members. To its credit, the TOBA provided valuable experience and exposure for innumerable black entertainers and musicians who might not have had an opportunity to break into show business otherwise. Some of the more established black performers like Bert Williams, Ben Harney, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Noble Sissle, and Eubie Blake also appeared in white vaudeville houses, where the salaries were more substantial. Harney was light enough to pass for white and sometimes did. Almost all the black entertainers, however, remained with the TOBA even though the facilities, wages, and working conditions inspired the well-circulated employee definition of TOBA: "Tough on Black Asses!" Yet the TOBA also offered entertainers the chance to perform before discerning African-American audiences throughout much of the country. And there was the allure of fame and fortune. Like the black minstrel shows it superseded, black vaudeville was one of the few means by which African -Americans could acquire wealth and status. Overflow crowds flocked to the black vaudeville shows and lavished applause on the featured entertainers. The shows became a major cultural activity in the urban black communities, and their headline acts became cultural heroes and heroines. Hence, it is understandable that aspiring black performers took to vaudeville with such a passion and in such large numbers. The TOBA entertainment staged by black stock companies usually was organized around a mojor attraction. The shows all had their own band, and often a female chorus line. The acts that received top billing were a diverse lot: comedy teams, song-and-dance artists, instrumental virtuosos, theatrical troupes, novelty acts. A good number of husband-and-wife teams were active on the black vaudeville circuit. Jody and Susie Edwards, better known as Butterbeans and Susie, got married in a TOBA theater in 1917 and perfected a successful comedy routine satirizing their marriage squabbles; they also sang popular songs as a duet, occasionally including a blues number. Leola B. and Wesley Wilson -- Coot Grant and Kid Sock Wilson -- were seasoned vaudeville performers and songwriters with more than four hundred compositions to their credit, including one of Bessie Smith's trademarks, "Gimme a Pigfoot." A third well-known couple, George Williams and Bessie Smith -- no relation to the "Empress of the Blues" -- were vaudeville singers who performed both together and as soloists; George Williams played the piano and later recorded some material for Columbia Records that featured him both alone and with his wife. Women as well as men achieved star status on the TOBA, a notable change from the days of male-dominated minstrelsy. The leading male entertainers on the circuit, including Hamtree Harrington, Tom Fletcher, Sammy Lewis, Billy King, Ernest Hogan, and Dusty Fletcher, were complemented by a growing contingent of female stars, the most famous of whom were Fanny Wise, the Whiteman sisters, Sweet Mama Stringbean (Ethel Waters), Ada Myers, Ella Moore, Dianah Scott, and those women such as Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Bessie Smith who have more recently been labeled "classic blues singers." These were the women working on the TOBA or in the cabarets of New York and Chicago who first recorded the blues in the early 1920s. The TOBA peaked as an entertainment enterprise in the mid-twenties, when it had over fifty theaters employing hundreds of black performers who played to forty-five hundred paying customers a day. At this time, small communities of African-American performers were also flourishing in many of the larger cities. In Atlanta, the veteran black entertainer S.H. Dudley had established a local African-American repertory company, using Charles Bailey's 81 theater as a base of operation. A similar organization existed in Chicago, using the Grand Theatre as its base, under the direction of Billy King . . . . | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 949 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
steve_s: I have not had time to check on race relations in europe, but here are some considerations: Black folk have always been in england; not large numbers of enough for them to establish a racist society. Remember Caribbean slavery started in the 17th century. PLantation slavery was never got off in england or france, but Africans did serve as domestics and folk toiled in what we would call the service sector, today. Also consider that British slavery ended in 1834. In fact, Caryl Phillips has written a book on blacks in Europe, The European Tribe, 1987...it is interesting. Personally, I've always been a bit skeptical of African Americans' characterization of the British and French, for it is well known that they masterered, different from started, modern colonialism and slavery. In this regard, it is more helpful to read Caribbeans' and Africans' analysis of European life and times, for their necks were the support of europeans whites not African Americans. | ||
| Yukio "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yukio Post Number: 950 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Steve_s and Cynique: Here's some extracurricular activity for ya! Karen Sotiropoulos, Staging Race: Black Performers in Turn of the Century America (Harvard University Press). | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 167 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Yukio, thanks. If you do read the novel I'd be interested in your opinion. The latest issue of Downbeat, dedicated to the New Orleans jazz scene in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, features a tribute to a friend and former employer of mine, who died a few days after evacuating his home in Slidell, La. He was 81. "In the end, it took a hurricane of mythic proportions to take down one of the larger-than-life figures in American music. . . " steve | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 168 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Yukio, I read a synopsis of the Karen Sotiropoulos book on the Harvard University Press Web site. It sounds like a good book. Unfortunately, I checked my library's Web site and they don't have it. I'll check for the Phillips book you mention. I lived in Europe for a year when I had a teaching gig in Amsterdam. It's a very easy city to live in, although not as exciting as Paris. If I were under 30 and out of school, I might try live in Europe for a couple of years. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2967 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I will check this out if I get a chance, Yukio, since I've always been into the Harlem Renassiance show biz scene, I'm sure I'd find the turn of the century era of black music interesting too. Florence Mills the petite young black star of musical comedies who has faded into oblivion is whom I'm currently checking out. She was the daughter of slaves and ended up becoming the darling of Broadway before she died in 1927 at the age of 31 from complications of tuberculosis. |
