In the wake of David Bowie's recent passing, Schenkerian Gang Signs has declared 2016 to be the Year of Bowie. To commemorate, we will be exploring all twenty-seven of Bowie's studio albums at a rate of one every two weeks or so. Along the way, we will explore the gamut of Bowie's achievements, from granular musical analysis to broader notions of artistic trajectories.
David Bowie (1967)
Before I begin my discussion of David Bowie's debut album, I should probably state my credentials for conducting this evaluation of Bowie's entire output. They are relatively paltry. I was not a person who grew up enamored of his music; in fact, it wasn't until the past year or so that Bowie really attracted my attention. But attract my attention he suddenly did, with an entire month spent listening to Ziggy Stardust almost every day and stretches where I couldn't hear enough of 'The Man Who Sold the World.' So I am excited to embark on this endeavor because I am looking forward to filling in my own knowledge gaps about Bowie and the vast scope of the music that he produced.
That being said, on my first couple of listens to his debut album, I found myself quite underwhelmed by it. It's a hard one to characterize today as it does not quite fit standard tropes. Instead, it was viewed as a 'novelty album' (at least according to a BBC documentary that I recently watched), at a time when Bowie was dabbling in all kinds of novelties, including a tour across Britain in a show called 'Pierrot in Turquoise.'
Pierrot in Turquoise with David Bowie as Cloud
'Pierrot in Turquoise' is pretty much everything that you think a late 60s mimed commedia dell'arte tribute would be, including the climax, which occurs when a mannequin, serving as a proxy for Colombine, is beheaded. Bowie, in the role of Cloud, provides the songs and sits up on a ladder for a while (Bowie and the actor playing Pierrot have some pretty Ziggy-ish hair, as seen above). One of the songs that he wrote for the show, 'When I Live My Dream', would appear on his debut album. The fact that a song from a mimed commedia dell'arte show is on this album gives you a sense of its overall ambiance.
I was about to write this post in the vein of 'Not much here,' but then I started to wonder what I thought I would find on here. A proto-Ziggy? The early seeds of 'Let's Dance'? There is a bit of Ziggy, perhaps, in songs like 'She's Got Medals,' but you have to listen pretty carefully. Then I reminded myself that history is not a teleological endeavor; indeed, if any one artist reminds us to eschew the notion that an artist's biography should be structured around progressively improving stages, it is Bowie. Instead of improving, he transformed time and time again.
Until this morning, this post would have been a short one talking about the experimental nature of this album and how it was more of a curiosity than a masterwork. But I woke up with the melody to 'Little Bombadier' in my head (of course I would remember the waltz!) and realized that, improbably, these songs had taken a light hold in my mind. They still have the inventive melodies that will inform Bowie's subsequent works, a point that I will undoubtedly raise often. These songs are not quite what you think and certainly not quite what you would imagine. David Bowie served as a good start to this project because it reminded me that the goal is not to uncover a trajectory throughout Bowie's career, but instead to pay tribute to his works in their widely varying and engaging forms.
So I saw the indie rock band, San Fermin, last night in Ann Arbor.
Their concert was one of the first live indie rock concerts I've attended in a looooong time. In fact, it had been so long since I'd gone to hear an indie band play that two thoughts entered my mind as I stepped into the venue last night to hear San Fermin perform:
1. Would attending this concert garner me some pretty intense street cred among hipsters?
2. Am I, in the words of Lethal Weapon character Roger Murtaugh (forever immortalized by Danny Glover), officially too old for this shit?
Time will tell on point number one. I'm pretty sure my 19-year-old brother thinks I lack all street cred of any kind. I'm probably irredeemable. A hopeless case. It's time to place my lifeless corpse on a pyre, push it out into the floating waters, and set it on fire.
But I didn't *feel* too old at the concert. Living isn't just for the young, after all! I can actually leave my house on a weekday evening and do something other than watch Netflix. AMAZING REVELATION.
But the most fascinating part about attending the concert was realizing that all of the critical questions that I think about when I write about classical music - questions that excellent musicologists have trained me to ask, questions that strike right at the heart of contemporary debates about authenticity and performance - were firing off in my brain when I heard this octet perform.
A little background on San Fermin before I go any further:
A motley octet of musicians (trumpet, strings, saxophone, guitars, keyboard percussion) that started performing together in 2013, San Fermin sounds like a mix of Sufjan Stevens, the National (seriously: the male vocalists sound indistinguishable from one another sometimes. It's kinda crazy), and Grizzly Bear. One of their most popular songs is "Sonsick:"
But my favorite by far is "Parasites" (listen with headphones on! You need to get into that bass line!):
They're an indie rock band, yes. But I think that the reason I started questioning what I was hearing so much stemmed from the publicity surrounding the band. People describe San Fermin as a classical music/indie rock hybrid. The term "baroque pop band" gets tossed around pretty fast and loose in descriptions of them and their music. Moreover, much of the band's "classical music" cred centers on the main person who writes their music, Brooklynite Ellis Ludwig-Leone:
Composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone
A graduate from Yale's School of Music where he majored in composition, Ludwig-Leone is the brainchild of San Fermin, and earns praise as the band's "composer."
It's that "composer" label here that I want to start picking at. It's what led me to listen more critically to what I was hearing last night. Why do people use it in their descriptions of him? Why don't we apply the term to all songwriters? Because what's the difference, really, between Ludwig-Leone and other famous songwriters of rock/pop/r&b/rap music (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Kanye - yes, even him)?
Obviously, his classical music training or, rather, his sense of belonging to the classical music world empowers Ludwig-Leone and others to call him a "composer" rather than simply a "songwriter." Indeed, part of his big revelation that he could be a "composer" in an indie rock world came during college, when he decided to try writing music for rock instruments: "It was like a big step forward when I realized that those two things [rock music and classical music] could be in same room together," he said in an interview with the Washington Post. Inspired in part by the grand, orchestral scale of Sufjan Stevens's album, Illinois, Ludwig-Leone uses a mix of instruments (violin, mandolin, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, and so on) to create indie rock, like many other musicians (Andrew Bird comes to mind).
But unlike Andrew Bird or Sufjan Stevens, Ludwig-Leone doesn't sing on his records. He is entirely dependent on his octet (of which he is the keyboardist) to perform his music. In fact, if one were to listen to the album without knowing about Ludwig-Leone, one might assume that the two singers in it - Allen Tate and now Charlene Key - were the original generators of the music. Because that's how a lot of rock and pop music has functioned, hasn't it? The singer is usually the main songwriter!
Which leads me back to thinking about the role of the composer in contemporary indie rock music. What role does the composer here serve? What challenges or problems arise in the relationship between the composer and the performer in a contemporary indie rock band? Who should get credit for these live performances?
Musicologists offer much insight here. Through their research on the history of performance practice in classical music, we've come to learn that by the early 20th century, performers and listeners were invested in performing a piece of music "as the composer intended." The sense that one should try to divine the composer's intentions has greatly shaped the history of classical music performance in the 20th century, too. There was (and remains for many) a real sense that one could perform a Bach invention or a Mozart symphony authentically through close musical analysis and historical investigation. One could, in other words, reconstruct a musical event or recreate the musical object.
And here's the kicker: we've tended to see the performer's role in the recreation of a musical work as a servant to the music, an obedient musical worshipper whose sole job is to dogmatically pursue the composer's orthodoxy and implement the composer's musical design. The performer daren't think about wavering from the piece of music, about steering off course, about creatively altering the piece in any way. To alter Beethoven's music would simply be heresy!
But (and many of you see this coming)! Musicologists have taught us to push back against this. In the 1980s and 90s, Richard Taruskin and others came to criticize the Early Music movement, for example, for their attempts to create an authentic early modern musical performance. The more that Early Music folks tried to painstakingly recreate a musical work, the more they revealed their own ideologies and subjectivities in our contemporary world. What are we doing here in trying to honor a composer's wishes, Taruskin and others started to ask. What does it say about us and how we understand classical music today? To many people, these musical orthodoxies were proof that a strict canon of music had been set in place, and that the concert hall had become what Lydia Goehr calls "an imaginary museum of musical works." We go to the concert to admire these sacred musical works but not really to experience them, to be moved by them.
But to take things further - and to get back to thinking about San Fermin - some musicologists began arguing something even more controversial in the 90s: there is no such thing as a musical work. Not really. The only thing that exists at all is the performer! It is the performer entirely who determines what a musical moment will sound like. So why do we spend so much time obsessing over the composer when really all of the power lies in the performer's hands?
Freeing yourself from the composer's intentions is all well and good when the composer's dead. Do whatever you want. You want to make a Mozart sonata slightly more atonal? Go for it. Do your thang, girlfriend.
But what if the composer is alive? And is your friend? And you're in a band together?
Allen Tate, the lead male singer of San Fermin and BFF of composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone
At last night's concert, I found myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable/fascinated by two things:
1. For the first 45 minutes of the show, the composer never revealed himself. He never said that he was Ellis Ludwig-Leone, the composer of all of this music that the band was performing. If he hadn't said anything, one would have (rightly) assumed that the two singers were the leaders of the group.
2. After Ludwig-Leone did out himself as the composer, all of the performers praised him repeatedly as the sole creator of this music. They called him "the creator of all of this music," as if they had no say in it.
But that's not true, is it? The performers are the creators, too. Through moments of musical improvisation and good old-fashioned jamming, they made the music sound like it did and brought it to life. I doubt, for example, that Ludwig-Leone told singer Charlene Kaye to perform that specific vocal melisma at that specific time in one of the songs. I wonder who first suggested that saxophonist Stephen Chen create that basso ostinato in one of their closing numbers: Ludwig-Leone, who as far as I know doesn't play the saxophone (or not nearly as well as Chen), or Chen, who might have been fiddling around on the instrument during a jam session and came up with a cool musical pattern? Who is the originator here? And even if Ludwig-Leone had suggested that Chen play that ostinato bass line, it's Chen's act of performing it that brought it alive during the concert, and who made it fun by bouncing around on stage while performing it.
I really wish I could ask the performers at what point are they in control of their own music-making? At what point are you all pursuing Ludwig-Leone's wishes?
On the other hand, different performers have left the group over the years. The band is now on the third female lead singer:
Charlene Kaye (a University of Michigan alum! Go Blue!)
Clearly the composer's music has continued to resonate with his audience in spite of who might be singing it.
Musicologists studying Western art music have taught us for some time now that the relationship between the performer and the composer is way more complicated, messy, and blurry than we might think. Who is the agent of a musical experience?
I found myself asking the same question last night when I heard San Fermin perform, a band steeped in the world (and perhaps rules!) of classical music while also supposedly being free from many of these debates surrounding authenticity, performance practice, and musical orthodoxy as an indie rock band.
The band has embraced the composer label pretty fiercely. But how do they live with its power?
When I first heard the chorus to the song that was undoubtedly intended to be the Schlager--or instant hit--from the 1923 Yiddish operetta Di goldene Kale, I immediately tried to place the melody, as I was certain that I had heard it before. The overall sound of the operetta resembled Johann Strauss Jr. so closely that momentarily I wondered if it had been lifted directly, but if it was from a Strauss Jr. work, I was unable to identify which one. Instead, I suspected that I had simply heard the tune in the overture and it had stuck, as any good Schlager should. It wasn't until I was standing on the subway platform after the performance that I suddenly realized where I had heard it before: the melody was close (but not identical) to one of the options for the Jewish prayer 'Adon Olam' that is sung as part of synagogue services on Shabbat--as a quick YouTube search taught me, there are many, many options to 'Adon Olam,' including one that sounds like a paraphrase of 'Deep in the Heart of Texas.' The potential connection is intriguing: Jewish audience members whose activities were mostly limited within their community would be exposed to this melody in synagogue, then internalize it as a Schlager almost immediately. But this train of thought can also easily be derailed: what if they didn't know that 'Adon Olam' (prayer melodies are not typically written down, so it would be hard to verify this claim)? What if there is another familiar melody from the time? What if it is simply a successful Schlager?
The complexity behind my association of a Jewish prayer to an operetta Schlager reflects the complexity that underlies this seemingly simple operetta. Di goldene Kale is currently in revival by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbeine and is most certainly worth attending if you find yourself in the New York area. In its time, the work drew crowds not only in New York, but also on a tour of various American cities. It reflects a tradition that disappeared from stages as Yiddish disappeared from American Jewish homes: this belief was already present during the operetta's age, as one of the characters claims that to speak 'fancy,' they will have to learn English. Subsequent generations--particularly those who were second- or third-generation--preferred to speak fancy, and saw Yiddish as a detriment to their pursuit of the American Dream, which required a hefty amount of assimilation. Not so in Di goldene Kale, where the characters move fluidly from one culture to another, as evinced by their ability to speak a combination of English, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew depending on context.
This accretion can even be heard in the score, which draws heavily on operetta standards. The music is undoubtedly influenced by Strauss Jr., in particular his most popular operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874). Indeed, there are points during which Goldele, our heroine, sounds almost identical to Fledermaus' Adele, although the character parallels end there--unless Goldele's friend Khanele's interest in a stage career borrows from Adele's Act III 'Spiel' ich die Unschuld vom Lande.' As would be expected in a Strauss operetta, the characters waltz (and even announce that it's a waltz in case we miss that) and polka (again, announced), then end with the Schlager. The final scene takes place at Strauss-style masked ball: unlike in Fledermaus, where it is essential for the plot, here it takes place for almost no good reason at all.
One of Fledermaus' most memorable moments occurs when Rosalinde, dressed as a Hungarian countess, sings 'Klänge der Heimat,' a plaintive song about her 'homeland' to prove to the guests that she is of Magyar blood (even though she isn't). Di goldene Kale has not one but two numbers in which Misha, Goldele's love interest, expresses his love for his homelands. First, he sings a rousing song about the recent drastic changes that Russia has endured and how the future looks promising, even if the present is a challenge. I heard echos of Rosalinde's Hungarian song, particularly since both are show-stoppers, but then Misha went on to have a second 'Klänge der Heimat'-type number within the finale where he described his voyage around the world. First, he sang plaintively about his time in Palestine and his great love for Israel, at which point, naturally, the crowd of (Jewish) guests at the masked ball chimed in with him. Moments later, he declared his undying love for Mother Russia by singing a folk song (in Russian) and even performed a dance to seal the deal. All of this takes place at masked ball in America. Where everyone speaks Yiddish. Truly, there is no need to speak 'fancy' when one can speak in whatever language is needed.
Misha is not the only character who exhibits such cultural fluidity. Jerome, an American whose father, Benjamin, immigrated from the Russian shtetl featured in Act 1, speaks Yiddish with an American accent and barely knows his Hebrew letters. He extols the virtues of horse races and baseball. Yet when Shabbat falls, he sings Hebrew prayers with his Russian kin. He is a Jew first, then an American. These impulses do not come into conflict, but instead are allowed to co-exist peaceful with virtually every character.
Perhaps this lack of conflict is part of the idealism that envelopes the operetta as a whole. It is hard to miss the fact that every character who immigrates from Russia to America finds a way to not only succeed, but to succeed mightily. We know that Benjamin is a millionaire and that Goldele's father (now dead) also did well in America, so much so that she is now considered the 'golden bride' because of her inheritance (Goldele's wealth conjures up a reference to yet another operetta: The Merry Widow. In contrast to Hanna, who is happy to be single after her husband's passing, Goldele only wants to be married). Contemporary audiences must have found some way to reconcile this fantasy with their reality, one in which, as working-class immigrants, they would not have enjoyed such affluence. Why was this particular work so popular? What was its enduring appeal?
There may be another parallel here with Strauss Jr. operettas, which were immensely popular with recent immigrants to Vienna and, as Camille Crittenden has argued, offered models for learning the nuances of Viennese society. In Vienna, success required acceptance of Habsburg-German culture as preeminent and, by extension, assimilation. In Di goldene Kale, success has been repackaged in the form of the American Dream, best espoused by the character of Benjamin, who is a businessman in America, primarily speaks Yiddish, visits the Russian shtetl, and observes Shabbat. In other words, this version of the American Dream requires almost no assimilation and can be achieved while remaining essentially unchanged. The happy ending here, then, is not simply Goldele marrying her beloved Misha. It is the society that surrounds her finding a way to both stay old and be new in America. So go right on ahead, and blend tradition with innovation. Heck, you can even sing 'Adon Olam' to the tune of 'Deep in the Heart of Texas.'
“For even the best-intentioned Western social theorists and colonial administrators, difference meant inferiority.”
- Michael Adas, "Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology" in Journal of World History, Volume 15, No. 1 (March 2004), p. 33
(Black kids in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, playing classical music)
I'll just cut to the chase: after I tell strangers (scholars and non-scholars alike) that I look at the history of African American classical musicians, that I collect their names and dates like how other people collect baseball cards, they usually ask me this one question: "Why are there so few black people in classical music today?"
Oof. Well, that's a loaded question, isn't it?
I usually respond by asking them why they think they might not have heard of any famous black classical musicians before, deceased or living. What kinds of histories get told and which ones are more difficult for us to hear about? I usually name drop Marian Anderson about now (people have at least heard of her before in American history) and then give a few contemporary examples of working musicians (church organists, conductors, violinists, opera singers, etc.).
Oftentimes, though, people who ask that question already think they know the answer to it.
The problem, implied or explicitly stated: African Americans don't appreciate classical music (said point blank). They only listen to rap and hip-hop, which are terrible. Also, because they're poor, they lack the ability to afford violins, pianos, etc.
The solution: bring classical music to poor, urban (coded for black, of course) neighborhoods in the inner city.
After a conversation with a colleague a few weeks back, I finally realized why this "Groundhog Day" experience that I find myself in every couple of months is so frustrating:
1. People are operating under the assumption that all black people are poor. And yes, there's obviously a relationship between race and class in this country which I don't want to deny and instead wish to condemn. But you know what? There are middle-class and upper-class African Americans out there. And perhaps some of them also don't listen to classical music. What about them?
2. People are espousing the civilizing mission.
What is the civilizing mission?
The civilizing mission ideology, in short, is the belief that people need to "civilize" the "savages." It came of age in the 19th century, when missionaries traveled to Africa and to Asia to bring Christianity to different regions. The problem with the civilizing mission, countless people have pointed out, is that it preached the belief that different groups of people were inferior. They had inferior customs, inferior religious practices, inferior ideas that needed to be corrected/improved/changed/eradicated/replaced.
Moreover - and here's the kicker - it justified European imperialists' claims for invading different regions around the world. These different indigenous peoples obviously can't govern themselves, Europeans argued. Their need for our civilization is too great for us to stand by and let them wallow in their own stupidity.
My students read historian Jürgen Osterhammel's speech on the civilizing mission for class this semester, and I think that's when I began to see how classical music lovers often preach the civilizing mission.
His definition of the civilizing mission is really clear and also broad enough for us to consider how classical music can fit into it:
"The 'civilizing mission' is a special kind of belief with, sometimes, practical consequences. It includes the self-proclaimed right and duty to propagate and actively introduce one's norms and institutions to other peoples and societies, based upon a firm conviction of the inherent superiority and higher legitimacy of one's own collective way of life. Note that the 'mission' here is not restricted to the spreading of a religious faith. It denotes a comprehensive Selbstbewusstsein, a general propensity to universalize the Self." (Osterhammel, "Europe, the 'West,' and the Civilizing Mission, p. 8)
The problem with the civilizer, Osterhammel writes, is that the civilizer thinks he's being generous. The civilizer thinks he's helping. On top of that, the civilizer believes that what he has to offer is so great, so universally good and whole, that as soon as the "less fortunates" receive his gifts, they will immediately be overwhelmed by their beauty, majesty, power, and might, see the error in their ways, and join the light side of the force, so to speak.
The civilizer goes in to the mission field not recognizing that perhaps other people see (or in this case, hear) things differently. It's not that the civilizer doesn't tolerate resistance, Osterhammel writes, it's that he doesn't expect to find any.
But here's the ultimate problem, the boomerang effect, the catch-22 with all of this. The problem, Osterhammel argues, is that when these civilizing missions fail - and they regularly do fail - the civilizer turns to racism and other nefarious ideologies to explain why things didn't work out. "The only possible explanation for missionary failure (in the eyes of the civilizer)," Osterhammel writes, "is the given and unalterable inability of people in need of civilizing to open their hearts and minds to the benefits of a supposedly higher form of human existence." (Osterhammel, "Europe, the 'West,' and the Civilizing Mission, p. 31).
In short: victim-blaming.
And students in history classes read historical accounts all the time that illustrate this. Lines like, "The Chinese as a people are inherently incapable of accepting our Western civilization due to their capricious, mischievous, and untrustworthy nature." Ugh.
So how does this relate to classical music? Many lovers of classical music see it in spiritual, nearly religious terms, almost like an ideology. They argue that classical music is universal and that it's inherently superior to all other forms of music. They'll say, we need to bring this music to the ignorant masses, who, once they see the error of their ways, will become better people (morally, intellectually, culturally, etc). Historical examples here abound, but one that might resonate quickly is the Workers' Symphony Concert Series in Vienna in the early 20th century. Designed to bring high art music to the lower classes, the series' proponents (Schoenberg, Webern, et. al.) believed they were doing a public good.
(Concert program listed in the Worker Symphony Concert Series in Vienna)
They believed they were doing a public good, though, because the organizers of this series didn't value the kinds of music working-class Viennese men and women were listening to and playing (popular music and entertainment music). The organizers believed they deserved better (Beethoven).
Hopefully it's easy to see how us practitioners, lovers, promoters, consumers, and producers of classical music can start preaching the same civilizing missionary rhetoric if we're not careful. Taking on the role of civilizer in our societies, we can reinforce long-standing musical hierarchies and pit different genres of music against each other.
I believe in the power and beauty of classical music. I turn to historical musical works from the Western tradition to unburden my grief in times of profound sadness. I turn to this body of music to express my joy and triumphs, too. In a truly Romantic way, I sometimes feel like I am communing with the Universe on a deep and profound level when I sing in choir, when I go to a concert, or when I play the piano at home.
But I am more aware now than I was at age 18 that my musical experiences are not universal. And I've also become more aware of how much damage and destruction has been created in classical music's name - precisely because people saw it as universal, transcendental, and inherently better and more beautiful than anything else.
Maybe the point isn't to make everyone listen to western art music -- the assumption here being that that's the only way listeners are going to have any kind of profound musical experience. The goal might be to make sure that people are having meaningful and transformative experiences however they can, in whatever musical language they speak. Maybe the goal is to encourage everyone to sing better in their own key to their own music, whatever it sounds like at the time.
Does classical music belong in African American communities? That's a silly question because western art music has been part of African American history and culture for centuries (which in turn begs the question, why do we constantly forget this? Why do we constantly erase this history from memory?). But so have other and different forms of music-making. And, to bring back Michael Adas's line in the opening of this blog post, let's not mistake difference for inferiority.
'At whom should I throw shade today?': possible musings of PG Wodehouse
With this post, Schenkerian Gang Signs ushers in a new series called Throwing Shade Throughout History, in which we examine past cases of shade throwing that we feel merit revisiting by carefully examining primary documents and acknowledging the inexorable and inexhaustible need that we, as people, seem to have to throw shade. The term, of course, derives from the gay/drag ballroom scene that emerged in late 20th-century American culture and is neatly defined in the following colorfully-expressed clip from the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning:
If you haven't seen this documentary, you need to stop reading this and check it out. Don't worry, we will wait for you.
While we have some inkling of the etymology of throwing shade, it is impossible to imagine that we could come anywhere near assembling an exhaustive anthology of the phenomenon that would do justice to its breadth across the eras of history (my brain seems to remember that Catullus threw shade at people during Roman times, although any further details remain foggy). However, we at Schenkerian Gang Signs enjoy tackling these challenging problems within our discipline(s), and so we embark on this journey to identify moments in history when shade was thrown. It is important to note that there is a certain nuance to shade throwing, as Dorien Corey stated in the clip above. To paraphrase: it is not calling someone ugly, for surely that person must already know this indisputable fact. Nor is it akin to the Great Fondue Beef of 2014 that pitted Drake versus Jay-Z in an argument over melty, cheesy Swiss dishes. No, shade is more subtle. More nuanced. More the purview of, say, a PG Wodehouse than a Drake. <-- see what I did there?
And indeed, our inaugural shady post is a salute to PG Wodehouse, who used his power as a writer of comic stories gently mocking England's upper classes to throw some legit shade at Jewish-American often-in-blackface performer Al Jolson. How, you might ask? By selecting one of Jolson's biggest hits as the punchline of an extended joke in his story 'Jeeves and the Song of Songs,' which first appeared in Strand in 1929 (or Cosmopolitan in the same year, if you were in the United States).
If you have not read PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books, you need to stop reading this and check it out. Some (although not this one) are available for free via Amazon.
As with most Jeeves and Wooster stories, the plot involves complications between various younger members of the British upper class, particularly with regard to their relationships. Wooster is Bertie Wooster, a somewhat facile character whose enthusiasm well outmatches his capabilities. His valet (or gentleman's gentleman) is Jeeves, a man who works tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that all turns out well. In 'Jeeves and the Song of Songs,' Bertie's friend Tuppy Glossop is enamored with a professional singer, Cora Bellinger, and is doing his utmost to impress her. His ardor causes consternation with Bertie's Aunt Delia, whose daughter, Angela, was previously the apple of Tuppy's eye. Aunt Delia demands that the Tuppy matter be resolved and while Bertie thinks he may have an answer, of course Jeeves is the one to come up with a solution. Here is where Jolson enters the picture.
Jeeves proposes that Bertie go to a somewhat rough neighborhood of London and perform the song 'Sonny Boy' for charity. Bertie registers his disdain, as he finds the song to be little more than schlock, but he nonetheless obliges:
It's worth noting that Bertie's musical taste is not exactly impeccable. Witness Bertie's glee at the song 'Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors':
Why yes, that is Hugh Laurie singing (and sometimes Stephen Fry sings too). If you haven't seen this series, stop reading this right now and join us again when you're done.
What Bertie does not discover until later is that Jeeves had set up a number of different people to sing 'Sonny Boy,' ending with Cora Bellinger. The crowd, already riled up from having heard the song three times, reacts in the manner that one might expect. Wodehouse could not have arranged this more masterfully, with the oblivious, haughty singer heckled off of the stage by means of rotting fruit and vegetables. People, this is humor! Thinking that Tuppy set her up (as he requested that she sing 'Sonny Boy'), Cora Bellinger stomps off of the stage, never to be seen again. Tuppy returns to Angela and peace is restored.
But why, of all songs, did Wodehouse choose 'Sonny Boy'? It's hard not to think that Al Jolson's maudlin performance of the same did not cross his mind when he was selecting an appropriate tune for his story:
A bit of background: prior to schlocking the bejeezus out of 'Sonny Boy' in the clip above, Jolson starred in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, which explored the drama of a nice Jewish kid wanting to make it in show biz despite his father's strenuous objections. If you've seen that episode of The Simpsons with Krusty and his father, you've pretty much seen The Jazz Singer.
Fun fact: Neil Diamond would later remake The Jazz Singer 1980 with the role of his father played by Laurence Olivier. The historical basis for this decision was most likely tied to the ready availability of cocaine in the late 1970s. You don't need to stop and watch this one (here is a clip, though, to satiate your curiosity).
Flying high on the success of The Jazz Singer, Warner Brothers followed up with the 1928 film The Singing Fool, in which Jolson played a singer who makes it big, then crashes hard, all the while singing 'Sonny Boy' at every given occasion (in truth, he sings it three times). The woman who was with him in the good times leaves him in the bad times, taking his son (aka Sonny Boy) with her. Then Sonny Boy dies. I was not kidding about the maudlin.
This song was a massive hit, selling over three million copies and holding the number one spot as best-selling record for twelve weeks. It is almost impossible that Wodehouse, when penning his 1929 story, was unaware of Jolson's performance, as he was closely tied to Broadway and the cinema.
It's entirely possible that Wodehouse felt antipathy toward 'Sonny Boy' and recorded his frustration as such in a journal or something--I cannot claim to be a Wodehouse scholar, although I can imagine that that would be a particularly enjoyable avenue of study. I can, however, give credit where credit is due. By immortalizing the song in his story, he mocks its faux sentimentality, leaving the reader (and later viewer) with the image of Cora Bellinger exiting the stage as hastily as possible. Credit is also due to the fact that Wodehouse's choice of medium likely helped him in his shade-throwing efforts. His ability to write quickly and cleverly undoubtedly allowed him to capture this moment of history in what would still have been a timely fashion. PG Wodehouse, we salute your ability to turn what could have been a temporal blip of Jolsonian schlock into
a long, long shadow that still casts its shade today.
There's a joke that I'm sure you've heard before about pianists in New York City. If you shake a tree in New York, the saying goes, three pianists will fall out all ready to play Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto. There's an overabundance of talent and few chances for musicians to flash their brilliance.
Something in the same spirit as this joke (minus the tree-shaking and musician-toppling) actually happened in New York in the summer of 1925. The popular Italian tenor Eduoardo Ferrari-Fontana put out a call: were there any black women in America who could sing the part of Aida? He would stage a competition to see if he could find a singer, and the winner was to perform with him in the opera at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Much to his shock, over 250 classically-trained singers replied, ready to audition for the part.
"I have never heard such remarkable voices in all my life," he told the New York Amsterdam News. "All of them can sing, and it is difficult to eliminate a single one of them."
It's true. The women who made the top 24 cut were remarkable. Florence Cole Talbert, Muriel Rahn, and Nettie B. Olden were among the names I immediately recognized. And they all had fabulous careers in the United States and in Europe.
Muriel Rahn
Florence Cole Talbert
Why did Ferrari-Fontana hold this competition? Did he really believe that the Metropolitan would welcome a black singer? He told the New York Amsterdam News, "It has always been a mystery to me why impresarios have not sought a Negro voice for an opera like Aida." Really? A mystery? Huh.
So here's the thing. We know that 1925 wasn't the year that the first black woman performed at the Metropolitan Opera House. No. That minor miracle didn't occur until 1954- thanks, Marian Anderson! So what happened?
Eventually realizing that it would be impossible to bring a black woman to perform in a lead role at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1925, Ferrari-Fontana settled on holding semi-final and final auditions to award two women the chance to study grand opera with him privately.
But for a moment, just a brief moment, the opera world faced up to the fact that there was a brilliant, sparkly, shiny pool of rich, beautiful talent that they had assumed did not exist. That they thought was incapable of existing.
I mention this story because Viola Davis's instant-classic speech at the Emmy awards sparked my memory of this competition.
Viola Davis, in all her glory and splendor (praise be to God)
Here's an excerpt from her speech:
"‘In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me, over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.’
That was Harriet Tubman in the 1800s. And let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.
You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there."
She's right, of course. But how do you convince people to take you on for roles that are? That was the problem in 1925, and as much as I'm excited to see more diversity (of all kinds and stripes!) in performances (theatrical, musical, artistic, etc.), I still worry about shifting targets. It's long been an accepted fact that black opera singers have to be three times as good as everyone else to get noticed. Heavens knows what Hollywood is like.
I think my suspicion here is that it's not the role itself that promises opportunities to all who are talented and deserving of recognition. It's not the equalizer that we hope it will be. It's a good start; of course we need more characters expressing a vast array of life experiences. But I still believe that directors, impresarios, producers, talent agents, and musicians will find ways to rhetorically tap-dance their way out of hiring different voices, in part out of intellectual laziness and lack of imagination. The yardstick will grow, the target will shift, the explanations will change in tone and color.
But history-making moments from 1925 or 2015 teach us how to identify them. And how to call out marginalization when we need to. And above all, they teach us to keep on musicking, to keep on dancing, and to keep on singing our songs anyway.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how we don't have ways to talk specifically about a distinct Afro-European culture. We don't have (or we haven't recognized) markers for Afro-European identity in the way that we do for things like Afro-Cuban music, African American poetry, and the like. Our understanding of black diasporic cultures tends to come from more well-trodden locales such as the Caribbean and the Americas.
In a really smart piece in the New York Times recently called "Being African in Europe,"Afro-Italian journalist and activist Vittorio Longhi reflected on this dilemma: "In the United States, there has been a comprehensive cultural construction of African-American identity, and a movement that responds when there is injustice or violence. We Euro-Africans still lack our own positive, inspiring symbols and leaders, our Martin Luther Kings, our Rosa Parkses, our Barack Obamas."
Some would ask, do we really need to carve out an Afro-European identity anyway? Why can't we just embrace a more universalistic approach to all races and accept everyone as "equals"? The advantage to thinking about Europeans of African descent as a collective identity, though, is that we're more able to make them visible on a continent that has rendered them invisible for centuries. In making Afro-Europeans more visible, we can highlight the ways in which they're marginalized and discriminated against by their fellow citizens.
Moreover, weaving together an Afro-European culture makes it more possible to see that Afro-Europeans have had their own longer history. Far too often, we assume again and again that black people in Europe are a new phenomenon. They must be "fresh off the boat" (literally) from a war-torn country, a refugee of some sort, or an immigrant coming over here for work. True, that is a good percentage of the black population in Europe today. But they represent only a portion of the black experience in Europe. To reduce our understanding of blackness in Europe to the most recent wave of African migrants coming off of a ship is, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns us, only telling one story. But Afro-Europeans (like everyone else) are comprised of many stories.
Take Vittorio Longhi, the author of the NYT piece. He identifies as Italian because his parents also identify as Italian. His father was born in Asmara, Eritrea during Italian occupation yet he rarely thinks of his ties to Africa. There have been three generations of my family in Vienna, Austria. I grew up around the corner from my grandparents' house. Clearly our ties to Vienna are old, spanning several decades.
And I haven't even touched on historical figures that we hold up as examples of Afro-Europeans in the past:
Philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759) might be the most recognizable example. But others like British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) are also good entryways into the history of blacks in Europe.
But I'm still struck by how fragmented and isolated our stories are. Is it possible to create a collective identity formed out of shared experiences and expressed in a creative manner? Is it possible to create, in other words, a sense of a distinct "culture"?
Because I think about everything musically, I've been pondering lately how the crazy-popular musician, Stromae, might actually point us in that direction.
Born to a Rwandan father and Flemish mother, Stromae first became popular in 2009 with his hit song, "Alors On Danse":
But it's his big hit song, "Papaoutai" that I'd like to think about right now. It is such a great song. It has a wonderful pace to it, really great lyrics, and fun musical moments for your ear to get into.
Stromae wrote it as a way to come to terms with the absence and eventual loss of his father, who was killed during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In the refrain, Stromae asks, "Where are you? Papa, where are you?" repeatedly. The inspiration for this song apparently came from a line in his previous hit song, "Alors On Danse": [a loose translation] "Whoever says love says kids... Whoever says love says mourning." To love, in other words, is to mourn.
Lots of people have picked up on the fact that Stromae's song is a song of mourning to his father. If his childhood was anything like Ika Hügel-Marshall's or other Afro-Europeans raised in single-parent households, he also experienced the pain of being different without the parent who looked like him to help him navigate through that. Growing up as an insider/outsider, whose visible difference in Belgium was tied to a man he rarely saw and who later died, it's understandable that he'd sing about longing for this absent father. That he'd reflect on all the ways in which the loss of his father shaped his life. Stromae's story is a pretty resonant story for many Afro-Europeans in this way.
The music video itself also narrates Stromae's attempts to come to terms with the absence of his father. The young boy in the video pleads with his father - who looks like a plastic ken doll - to interact with him. He watches as the other dancers in the video - all biracial or Afro-European like him - interact with their parents or siblings, and he tries to cajole his dad into dancing with him, too. He wants what the other dancers have. But by the end of the music video, he has become like his father - frozen, plastic, empty.
But Stromae's song, "Papaoutai" also gives us a really fascinating musical expression of Afro-European identity that I don't think anyone has picked up on yet. In many ways, it sounds like a really awesome French pop song. In fact, the beat reminds me a lot of the music of French pop musician, Yelle. Songs like "Je Veux Te Voir" and "A Cause Des Garcons" might be good places to start for those who aren't familiar with her work.
It sounds like a European pop song, yes. But something really remarkable happens around the 2:28 minute in Stromae's song, "Papaoutai." And if you're not listening for it, you might not even notice that it's there. He introduces an instrument that sounds like an African mbira:
The mbira or "thumb piano" here gets plucked in a way that's immediately recognizable if you've had much exposure to it. Here's a really great demo of the mbira that I love. It's a song called "Zambezi" by a Zimbabwean musician named Tinashé and it is beautiful and heartbreaking.
Back to Stromae: I'm not sure what instrument he's using in the song, "Papaoutai" and googling around didn't provide that much information on the instrumentation for his song (if anyone figures it out, let me know!). But I think it's striking that this instrument plays in the background throughout the end of the song. It gives the French pop song an anchor in an African musical style that's all the more meaningful when you understand Stromae's story.
I think that "Papaoutai" is a creative cultural expression of a distinctly Afro-European experience. Stromae integrated or blended different musical styles and heritages in order to give listeners a unique perspective on his life. It's one song. It's one story. But I'm hoping there's more like this (past and present) for us to discover.
