Read an Excerpt
Paris Blues
African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920â"1960
By Andy Fry The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2014 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-13895-4
CHAPTER 1
Rethinking the Revue nègre Black Musical Theatre after Josephine Baker
"Keepin' It Real": Bamboozled in Paris
Arriving in Paris one spring, early in the research for this book, I had a peculiar experience. As I thumbed through the week's entertainment listings in Pariscope, eager for a distraction from apartment hunting, two men in blackface stared out at me (fig. 1.1). They were presenting The Very Black Show, as Spike Lee's film Bamboozled was known in France. This polemic on the representation of African Americans had so far escaped my attention, so its release at the moment I returned to the city to research its history of black musical theatre was unnerving, perhaps even uncanny. Suddenly my subject seemed à la mode.
As its opening lines are anxious to establish, Bamboozled is a satire. Meticulously spoken Negro (his term) TV writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) prefaces his desperate attempt to lose an insufferable job at ailing corporation CNS with a definition of that dramatic type. Gone are the days when he would write middle-class dramas and situation comedies that his boss Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) could call "white people with black faces." With his "black wife and two biracial kids," Dunwitty has told Delacroix, "I ... know niggers better than you": "Brother man, I'm blacker than you. I'm keepin' it real.... You're just frontin', tryin' to be white." Under such an edict to dig into his roots, Delacroix will deliver exactly what is expected of him: a very "black" show.
Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show stars two African American street entertainers (tap dancer Savion Glover and comedian Tommy Davidson) whom Delacroix used to pass on his way to work. Renamed after stars of a former era, Mantan (for Mantan Moreland) and Sleep 'n' Eat (Willie Best's moniker) revive minstrel routines, complete with chickens and watermelons, in blackface and comic attire. "Two real coons," they call themselves (in honor of Williams and Walker), from a time when "nigras knew they place" [sic]. The studio audience look around nervously before they applaud; the film viewer's position is similarly uncomfortable. When I saw it in Paris, the cinemagoers, primarily people of color, first laughed uproariously then gradually fell into silence. As Delacroix asks when told the network had taken his (supposedly satirical) show and "made it funnier": "Funnier to whom? And at whose expense?"
While the principal target of Lee's ire is the white-dominated entertainment industry, which perpetuates racist stereotypes, Bamboozled is by no means singular in its attack. Regardless of his original intent, Delacroix becomes complicit, as does his ambitious assistant, Sloan Hopkins (Jada Pinkett-Smith). She's a "house-nigger" "working hard for the man on the plantation," according to her brother Julius, a.k.a. Big Blak Afrika (hip-hop artist Mos Def). But he and his band of quasi-revolutionary gangsta rappers, the Mau Maus, are also ceaselessly lampooned, particularly in their empty-headed song "Blak iz Blak." While Sleep 'n' Eat and Mantan throw off success in renunciation of the minstrel mask, the Mau Maus turn words into action and execute Mantan (live on TV and the Internet) for his treachery against the race. By now, the viewer might legitimately ask if Spike Lee's satire has not itself lapsed into stereotype. That, of course, is precisely the point: for African American performers (and directors), minstrelsy is at once an unavoidable, sometimes desirable, reference and a dangerous, often destructive, force.
My interest in Bamboozled is more than anecdotal. The film asks some important questions that resonate with this chapter. How is "black culture" defined and who may access it? When does "authenticity" become stereotype? To what extent can African Americans control their representation on stage and screen? The history and legacy of minstrelsy is a fraught topic, but one that can now lay claim to a sophisticated literature bridging several disciplines. While raising public awareness of these issues, Bamboozled, some complained, failed to distinguish adequately between different contexts and eras: "who did what to whom," in the words of scholar Michele Wallace. If minstrelsy traded in images that today are unpalatable, it did so in myriad circumstances and their politics were not always the same. Particularly at its nineteenth-century origins, it may have challenged social hierarchies as much as consolidated them, and affection as well as animosity drives the stereotypes; at least in part, minstrelsy functioned as a means to critique mainstream society from a position outside of it. The decline from satire into demeaning comedy seems almost to be topicalized, within the film world of Bamboozled, in the fall from grace of Delacroix's show.
These questions may have been well rehearsed in the American context, but in France they are much less frequently raised. Indeed, it is still fondly imagined in some quarters that African Americans escaped prejudice there and were welcomed by everyone as true artists. While the critical response to Bamboozled in France was mixed, therefore, most reviewers agreed that its relevance to them was limited if not lacking: they distanced the minstrel mask both geographically (a US phenomenon, ignoring the extent to which it had traveled) and historically (a nineteenth-century theatrical tradition, forgetting Bamboozled's setting in contemporary TV). These "negative and often racist representation[s]," thought one writer, demonstrated "American show business's shameful past"; they were characteristic in particular of late nineteenth-century minstrelsy. Another wondered why Lee rehearsed old grievances rather than taking the next step: the "relative advancement of current practices [mœurs]" would allow him to "mix colors or, better, to ignore them" without risking offense. Race, critics seemed to argue, was an American problem, and at that one of the past.
More egalitarian online discussion lists offered contrasting views—ones in which French attitudes were implicated. One writer thought Bamboozled the "best film for all self-respecting blacks to see"; a "lucid critique of the current position of blacks in the Western media," which was especially relevant "in France ... where minorities must still caricature themselves to appear on TV." Another agreed: it represented a profound reflection on "the condition of blacks in France and in the world." The fate of the movie with Parisian audiences, then, comes as little surprise: released in a handful of mainstream houses, it was soon showing in only one, Images d'Ailleurs, "premier espace cinéma black de Paris"—the cinematic equivalent of a ghetto.
Contemporary French representations of people of color are beyond the scope of my project. But I do hope to fill one historical lacuna in the Paris reviews: the black shows of the 1920s and 1930s—a time when, the story goes, African Americans were in vogue in France. A scene eventually omitted from the movie might have made the point: a picture of a naked Josephine Baker adorns the wall of Mantan's dressing room. But, a few stars excepted, memories are short; the connection runs much deeper. In fact, the original Mantan, Mantan Moreland, was among the many black entertainers who performed in the French capital during the entre-deux-guerres. Like it or not, the French are implicated in this history, if in different ways to Americans. In this chapter, I study a number of black shows, examining both their production and their reception in Paris in some detail, and endeavoring to understand the dialogue that took place between performers and audience.
Contexts and Controversies: La Revue nègre
One moment in particular was notable by its absence from the Bamboozled reviews: La Revue nègre, Josephine Baker's first Paris show, in 1925. Assembled in New York by white American Caroline Dudley, an all-black troupe famously performed putative scenes of African American life—"Mississippi Steam Boat Race," "New York Skyscraper," "Charleston Cabaret," and so on—on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. So successful were they that theatre manager André Daven, director Jacques-Charles, and poster artist Paul Colin would all later be eager to claim a formative role. Baker's biographers have sometimes begun their narratives with La Revue nègre, although it was far from the beginning of her career. Writers always give particular attention to Baker and Joe Alex's "Danse de sauvage," barely clad, in feathers—the most shocking routine of all. Certain descriptions—André Levinson's "black Venus that haunted Baudelaire," Janet Flanner's "unforgettable female ebony statue," even Robert de Flers's "lamentable transatlantic exhibitionism which has us reverting to the ape"—signify an almost apocalyptical moment. Less often heard are the reactions of some of Baker's coperformers, who were "horrified at how disgusting Josie was behaving ... doing her nigger routine": "She had no self-respect, no shame," complained one. Acclaim and horror are juxtaposed, even combined, in the reviews: La Revue nègre represented equally "the most barbaric spectacle imaginable" and "the very quintessence of modernism." No account of les années folles is complete without it.
Such is the actual and rhetorical importance assigned to La Revue nègre that it has come to represent both the apex of African American entertainment in Paris and, paradoxically, the crux of a reaction against it. As is well-known, the show was the last all-black affair in which Baker performed, and the only one in France. While she moved on to feature as an exotic star at the Folies-Bergère and Casino de Paris, most of the troupe had soon returned home. La Revue nègre thus serves as the mythologized origin of a star who comes to stand for—becomes synonymous with—African American show business in Paris. Typical is a republication of Paul Colin's 1927 lithograph series, Le Tumulte noir, renamed Josephine Baker and "La Revue nègre." Although it includes several images of Baker, this is not a portrayal of the Champs-Élysées show but a survey of black music and dancing in Paris. More than just marketing, the confusion extends to an introductory essay by Karen Dalton and Henry Louis Gates. Set on a one-track path, they misidentify as Baker the final image, of entertainer Adelaide Hall (about whom more below), and fail to notice that two others are not unknown revelers but familiar figures on the French stage, Joe Alex and Hal Sherman, respectively (the latter was in fact white).
Worse, if Baker was the only real black star in Paris, as the authors suggest, even her appeal was not to last. While acknowledging the images' sometimes questionable connotations, Dalton and Gates insist that they represent a last flowering of racial tolerance: an expression, in their words, of "the communal sigh of relief African Americans exhaled" in this "color-blind land of tolerance" where "they could savor the freedom of feeling like a human being for the very first time." They quickly about-face: "This climate of openness would not last, however. Already in 1921, what became known as 'The Call to Order' ... [was] admonishing a return to French 'classical' traditions and a rejection of ... foreign influences.... Throughout Europe, resentment mounted.... And although the National Socialist party would not come to power in Germany until 1933, the first volume of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf had already appeared in 1925." Here both chronology and geography are distorted in order to locate an incipient conservatism, if not fascism. More judicious but in broad agreement, Jody Blake also thinks La Revue nègre was seminal: it "secured the triumph of African American music and dance and unleashed the backlash against it"; it "gave added momentum ... to a Call to Order in popular entertainment." Both Blake and other authors find support for this argument in contemporary statements now dismissing jazz by composers such as Darius Milhaud. In effect, they narrate an end to cosmopolitan postwar ebullience and an anticipation of the cultural politics of the collaborating Vichy regime.
But was La Revue nègre so unique? Less often cited than occasional writers "slumming" for the "snob" value, the most experienced music-hall critics, such as Gustave Fréjaville, were more measured in their praise: "It's a small event, in the history of Parisian music hall.... To tell the truth, we had already seen just about all this in detail, either in variety acts, or in revues." The originality of La Revue nègre came less in nature than in degree: for the first time, black performers were occupying a French stage for an entire act (though still not an entire show). Fréjaville could trace a tradition of African American music and dance in Paris right back to cakewalkers at the beginning of the century. Aside from jazz musicians (generally interval entertainment), recent examples multiplied. Two of Baker's costars in La Revue nègre, Louis Douglas and Joe Alex, were already familiar. Usually, as here, performing in blackface, Douglas had been part of two duos: first with Fernando Jones, then with his wife Marion Cook; according to one critic, he was the true "pioneer of this Negro American civilization" in Paris. Perhaps more significant, the year before La Revue nègre, a whole troupe of "Coloured Girls" had provided chimney sweeps and chocolate drops for a Moulin Rouge show that had also featured the "danseur noire burlesque" Tommy Wood. Fréjaville thought that they had "prepared [French eyes] for several of the effects of Josephine Baker and her companions." Among other performers he might have cited are "blacrobats" Mutt and Jeff, Will Garland (and his "troupe de créoles"), "le jongleur mulâtre" Rowland, and the misnamed Peggy Leblanc, "fantaisiste, danseuse nègre et chanteuse acrobatique"; it is unclear if in all cases these were Americans.
If black performers were not a terribly rare sight prior to La Revue nègre, neither did they disappear thereafter. Even limiting the field to the larger black troupes—to revues nègres—African American performers were a recurrent feature of Parisian music hall throughout the entre-deux-guerres, the Call to Order notwithstanding. Far from falling out of fashion, subsequent shows may have infiltrated French popular culture more deeply than the original. Sketching their history opens an illuminating window on race and representation in Paris, specifically a process of cultural negotiation between African Americans and the French. In what follows, I begin by showing how primitivist stereotypes of old were confronted and gradually displaced by alternative models of "civilized" and "spiritual" black people. I then consider how this range of behaviors came to be theorized in terms of discourses of hybridity (not, historically, the panacea contemporary theory would sometimes wish it to be). I conclude by exploring some attempts by African American performers and directors to gain a greater hold on their representation, as the tradition of black shows extended into the 1930s.
Establishing a Tradition: Revues nègres, 1926–1930
In the half decade following the Baker show, revue nègre ceased to denote a particular show and became a generic description. "Each year, on the return of Spring," the great music-hall critic Legrand-Chabrier wrote in 1930, "we offer a revue nègre, if not two!" On another occasion, he spotted a duo of black dancers whom he deemed "worthy ... of our revues nègres of yesterday, today and tomorrow." Legrand-Chabrier was not exaggerating: every year from 1925 to 1930 there was at least one all-black show. If not all were of the same high profile as Josephine Baker's, a few may even have reached wider audiences than did hers.
First among these troupes, in 1926, were the Blackbirds. Their manager-director was another white American, central to black revues both at home and abroad: Lew Leslie (formerly Louis Lesinsky, of Russian Jewish parentage), a performer turned producer who promoted black talent, first in nightclub shows and later in the theatre. Versions of the Blackbirds of 1926 had already been successful in London and New York. In Paris the Blackbirds played the Ambassadeurs, newly redesigned as a "théâtrerestaurant," moving only later to the nearby Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Thus several skits—"The Heart of the Jungle," "The Wrong Cop," "Treasure Castle"—were dropped in favor of song-and-dance acts, more accommodating of digestion. Favorites were the opening plantation number, "Down South," in which a homecoming Florence Mills (star of the show) burst out of a huge cake on her mammy's birthday; a jungle dance for Mills and her "Zulus"; Johnny Hudgins's "In Silence" in which he, in blackface and white gloves, mimed a song whose notes were supplied on a cornet (fig. 1.2); and a parody of Russian dance troupe La Chauve-Souris's "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" (which, reviewers agreed, brought not only humor to the number but greater precision). Original music for the show had been provided by a team of Leslie's white colleagues: composers Geo(rge) W. Meyer and Arthur Johnson and lyricists Grant Clarke and Roy Turk.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Paris Blues by Andy Fry. Copyright © 2014 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
