----------------------------------
“The ‘greatest hit’ of 20th century popular
music was not the creation of Michael Jackson,
the Bee Gees or even the Beatles. Anyone with a sense of history will realize that the once-ubiquitous
dance tune called the ‘Charleston’ fueled a craze that has never been matched.”
– Leslie Stifelman, Columbia Journal of American Studies.
the Bee Gees or even the Beatles. Anyone with a sense of history will realize that the once-ubiquitous
dance tune called the ‘Charleston’ fueled a craze that has never been matched.”
– Leslie Stifelman, Columbia Journal of American Studies.
Thursday, May 2, 1912. The concert that
night was a curious affair, a benefit by black musicians for the Music School Settlement
for Colored People, Harlem’s institution for artistically gifted children. This
would be the largest assemblage of African-American artists ever gathered together
in New York to perform in the most famous white-owned, white-operated theater
in the United States - Carnegie Hall. More than three hundred black American
musical artists were scheduled to play before a sold-out mixed race audience,
on the same stage that had hosted the likes of Tchaikovsky,
Rachmaninoff and Arthur Rubinstein.
Although
Emancipation was fifty years in the past, blacks were still viewed as a lower
class of people by the majority of white Americans, and black musicians were
held in even lower esteem. However, David Mannes,
concertmaster of the New York Symphony, believed that music was a universal
language. This concert would bring together whites and blacks in a way most
never believed possible.
David Mannes |
In reality, Mannes was a bit naïve and more hopeful than most white
Americans at the time. Most whites simply did not understand black music,
derisively calling it “coon” music. It was considered vulgar, crude and primitive,
little more than chants brought over by African slaves to sing on the
plantations. Certainly black music was not the equal to the symphonies of the current
European masters. Coon music obviously had no Brahms, no Puccini, no Gilbert
and Sullivan. It probably didn’t even have a John Philip Sousa.
The Carnegie Hall concert was a risky venture for Mannes. Two days
before the performance barely 1000 tickets had been sold and the Hall held 2800
people. Mannes feared the concert would play to a half-empty house which would
be a public relations disaster not only for him personally, but also for the
school he was attempting to benefit. Despite his secret fear and reservations,
Mannes maintained confidence in the talents of the black musician he had chosen
to host the event – James Reese Europe.
Jim Europe was the head of the first black music society in New York,
the Clef Club. Although some members of the Clef Club were professional
musicians, Mannes also knew that some of them were “barbers, waiters, red caps,
bell-hops,” and could only attend rehearsals when they were free from their
jobs. Even the discovery that many of these “musicians” could not read music
did not weaken his faith in Jim Europe. However, he secretly admitted that his
deepest fear was that the concert would be a production of “chaos.”
Will Marion Cook was even more skeptical. A brilliant violinist and
composer who had studied in Germany and performed for the British royal family,
he was moody and quick-tempered. Several years before, Cook became enraged when
a newspaper reporter called him “the world’s greatest Negro violinist.” He
sought out the reporter at his office and declared, “I am not the world’s greatest Negro violinist. I am the greatest
violinist in the world!” Cook was hesitant to participate in the Carnegie Hall
concert due to his fear that it might “set the Negro race back fifty years.”
But, he also respected and trusted Jim Europe’s musical talent, vision and
determination, so he decided to take his place in the string section of the
Clef Club Orchestra and hope for the best.
Will Marion Cook |
The night before the show the New York Evening Journal published a story which concluded, “The Evening Journal hopes that many of its
readers will attend the concert, enjoy it and perhaps find prejudice based on
ignorance give place to sympathy and good will.”
The concert sold out. More than one thousand people showed up at the box
office that evening. The audience contained the elite of white and black New
York society. Music editors from all the papers were in attendance. Prominent
black ministers, lawyers and businessmen were present. Most of the well-known
white musicians arrived in a show of support. Half an hour before the
performance, hundreds of people were still gathered in front of the box office,
with more arriving by foot, cab, subway, and bus. Blacks and whites, all elegantly dressed,
were seated together in the grand hall. In most theaters at that time, blacks
were still forced to sit in the far left wing or in the balcony. No one was
sure what to expect, or how to behave. When James Reese Europe walked on the
stage before the 125 piece Clef Club Orchestra there was a palpable
anticipation in the audience. He raised his baton to cue his musicians and when
the first notes of Reese’s composition, “The Clef Club March,” filled the hall
American music was never to be the same again.
Gunther
Schuller wrote that Reese “had stormed the bastion of the white establishment
and made many members of New York’s cultural elite aware of Negro music for the
first time.”
*****
During the first decades of the 20th century America
experienced an amazing transformation. The country doubled in size,
admitting twelve new states. Seven new constitutional amendments became law.
The population doubled, as did the number of foreign-born residents. Americans
were more diverse, urban and mobile. The Harlem section of New York City became
a vibrant neighborhood of African culture. Chicago transformed itself from a
dirty immigrant railroad town into the world’s sixth largest city. Hollywood’s
cinematic illusions helped draw thousands of starry-eyed dreamers west to
golden California.
But in the stagnant, shabby old city of Charleston, South Carolina, most
of the tried and true 19th century conventions still applied.
Despite the encroachment of modern life, the Charleston preferred that the
formal, well-defined rules of conduct be strictly adhered to. Manners, decorum
and polite conversation in the white parlors were all components of the finer
southern lifestyle. For the descendants of the pre-Civil War aristocracy,
it was these rules of etiquette that defined a civilized society. Blacks were
still expected to address whites as “massa” and “missus.” If they were employed
by a white family, blacks were to only use the back door, never the street
entrance.
Charleston, SC ... 1920s |
For almost two hundred years racial slavery had been the most
distinctive feature of Charleston life. The slave system was the whole of
existence for nearly four million black Southerners. Slavery was so important to the Old South
that Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens pronounced it the
“cornerstone” of the new nation.” The Jim Crow era of the early 20th
century was merely an altered continuation of that same “cornerstone.” White
Charleston was the most comfortable when they were in charge of the rules with
everything - and everybody - in its
proper place. No one could anticipate how strongly the
political and social shock waves from this Carnegie Hall concert would resonate
across America, and ultimately, the world. It would not only change American
music forever by giving legitimacy to African-American music in mainstream
white culture, but would also be the catalyst of the greatest decade of social
change in American history by igniting the largest dance craze the world would
ever witness.
To prove that God does possess a rich sense of irony, the most overt
symbol of this social and musical upheaval would bear the name of America’s
“most mannerly city,” Charleston - a city so proudly out-of-step with the times
for most of the 20th century that her white citizens preferred
looking backward through a distorted lens to the golden past rather than
forward to an uncertain future. Within a decade of this concert, a fiery
maelstrom of change would sweep the world and millions of people would be
“doin’ the Charleston.”
Thoroughly enjoyed this piece. I am looking forward to reading the book. Good job!
ReplyDeleteLisa Harper Berezny