Transcript In Dahomey (1902)

In Dahomey (1902)
Paul Lawrence Dunbar (lyrics)
Jesse A. Shipp (book)
Will Marion Cook (music)
Part II of IV
Paul Lawrence Dunbar (18721906)
1) The first African-American poet to garner national critical acclaim.
2) Dunbar penned a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays,
novels and short stories before he died at the age of 33.
3) His work often addressed the difficulties encountered by members of his race and
the efforts of African-Americans to achieve equality in America. He was praised
both by the prominent literary critics of his time and his literary contemporaries.
4) Dunbar decided to publish a book of poems. Oak and Ivy, his first collection, was
published in 1892.
5) In 1893, he was invited to recite at the World's Fair, where he met Frederick
Douglass, the renowned abolitionist who rose from slavery to political and literary
prominence in America. Douglass called Dunbar "the most promising young colored
man in America."
6) Dunbar's second book, Majors and Minors propelled him to national fame.
7) In 1897, Dunbar traveled to England to recite his works on the London literary
circuit.
8) In 1902, Dunbar and his wife separated.
9) He ultimately produced 12 books of poetry, four books of short stories, a play and
five novels. His work appeared in Harper's Weekly, the Sunday Evening Post, the
Denver Post, Current Literature and a number of other magazines and journals.
Will Marion Cook (1869-1944)
1) The first great African-American composer for the musical stage.
2) Trained at the Oberlin Conservatory, the National Conservatory of Music in New York under Anton Dvorak
and in Berlin, Germany at Hochschule fur Musik.
3) IN 1890, he begins to compose that drew on the idioms and themes of African-American folklore and
music.
4) Throughout the 1890s and 1900s, he composed for the stage shows of Bert Williams, the leading black
comic and vaudevillian. I
5) In 1889 Cook produced and wrote the music for Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk. This debut in the
theater world was a series of skits. The skits were written in an hour-long session between Cook and the
celebrated African American dialect poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar. It was the first musical comedy written,
directed, and performed entirely by African-American artists. The show opened at the Casino Theater
Roof Garden in New York to rave reviews and enjoyed success on Broadway and in London. The beauty
of the lead dancer Ada Overton Walker prompted the cakewalk dance craze among even the highsociety of New York.
6) Named Composer-in-Chief and Musical Director for William Walker's Broadway shows. He went on to
compose the music for a number of popular black musicals, including In Dahomey (1903)
7) Cook composed Abyssinia in 1906, but his reliance on ragtime left him behind the changing tastes. He led
his Southern Syncopated Orchestra, a huge ragtime and concert ensemble, and composed "I'm Coming,
Virginia" and "Mammy" in the 1910s.
8) His last European tour by his orchestra was in 1919. It was then that critics noted that he had developed
an emerging jazz style
Jesse Shipp
Writer, Director, Lyricist
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ON BROADWAY
Productions Dates of Production
Kilpatrick's Old-Time Minstrels [Original, Musical, Minstrel]
Staged by Jesse A. Shipp
Apr 19, 1930 - Apr 26, 1930
The Green Pastures [Original, Play, Play with music]
Performer: Jesse A. Shipp [Abraham];
Performer: Jesse A. Shipp [Archangel]
Feb 26, 1930 - Aug 29, 1931
Mr. Lode of Koal [Original, Musical]
Book by Jesse A. Shipp;
Lyrics by Jesse A. Shipp
Nov 1, 1909 - Dec 4, 1909
Bandanna Land [Original, Musical, Comedy]
Starring: Jesse A. Shipp [Mose Blackstone];
Staged by Jesse A. Shipp;
Book by Jesse A. Shipp;
Lyrics by Jesse A. Shipp
Feb 3, 1908 - Apr 18, 1908
Abyssinia [Original, Musical, Comedy]
Performer: Jesse A. Shipp [The Affa Negus Tegulet];
Staged by Jesse A. Shipp;
Dahomey [Original, Musical, Farce]
Performer: Jesse A. Shipp [Hustling Charley];
Book by Jesse A. Shipp
Feb 18, 1903 - Apr 4, 1903
Sons of Ham [Revival, Musical, Comedy]
Performer: Jesse A. Shipp [Professor Switchen];
Staged by Jesse A. Shipp;
Book by Jesse A. Shipp
Apr 29, 1901 - May 4,
The Policy Players [Original, Musical, Comedy, Farce]
Directed by Jesse A. Shipp
Oct 16, 1899 - Apr 9, 1900
Williams and Walker:
A More Sophisticated Black Theatre?
• George Walker and Egbert Austin
Williams were a vaudeville comedy team
and had one of the most renowned and
successful stage partnerships in
American theatrical history. They
decided to team up when they met in
San Francisco in the early 1890's.
Williams and Walker pioneered a new
kind of "Black" humor and eventually
developed their own company. With
musical shows such as "Clorindy, the
Origin of the Cakewalk," "Sons of Ham,"
and "In Dahomey," they opened the door
for other African-American actors,
singers, dancers, and musicians, and
sought to redefine the boundaries of
Black Theater.
In Dahomey
Minstrelsy
Vaudeville
Popular Art
Folklore
Musical Comedy/ Light Opera
Farce designed to Lampoon “Repatriation” as a solution to
the “Race Problem”
The History of the Minstrel Show
1) 1769- Lewis Hallman performs is blackface in the play The
Padlock
2) 1769-1843- Performers of so-called “Negro Music”
increasingly use blackface in their performances and are
dubbed “minstrels”
3) 1843- The Virginia Minstrels perform at the New York Bowery
Ampitheatre
4) 1843- E.P. Christy founds the Christy Minstrels, who establish
the template for minstrel show for the next three decades
5) 1843-1865- The rise of minstrelsy coincides with the growing
abolitionist movement in the U.S., and isoften used as
propaganda to promote the image of the contented slave
6) 1860s- Blackface begins to serve as a sort of fool’s mask,
allowing the performers to lampoon virtually anything
without offending the audience.
7) 1860s- The minstrel show increasingly becomes associated
with social criticism during the Civil War, advocating for
abolition, women’s rights, and temperance. Black performers
begin to use blackface
8) 1890s- Vaudeville gradually replaces minstrelsy as America’s
favorite genre of theatrical comedy
The Structure of the Minstrel Show
PART 1- The entire troupe danced onto stage singing a popular song. Upon the instruction of the
interlocutor, a sort of host, they sat in a semicircle. Various stock characters always took the same positions:
the genteel interlocutor in the middle, flanked by Tambo and Bones, who served as the endmen or
cornermen. The interlocutor acted as a master of ceremonies and as a dignified, if pompous, straight man
while the endmen exchanged jokes and performed a variety of humorous songs. Over time, the first act
came to include maudlin numbers not always in dialect. One minstrel, usually a tenor, came to specialize in
this part; such singers often became celebrities, especially with women. Initially, an upbeat plantation song
and dance ended the act; later it was more common for the first act to end with a walkaround, including
dances in the style of a cakewalk
PART 2- The “olio”-” had of a variety show structure. Performers danced, played instruments, did acrobatics,
and demonstrated other amusing talents. Troupes offered parodies of European-style entertainments, and
European troupes themselves sometimes performed.
PART 3/FINALE- Uusually one actor, typically one of the endmen , delivered a faux-black-dialect stump
speech, a long oration about anything from nonsense to science, society, or politics, during which the dimwitted character tried to speak eloquently, only to deliver countless malapropisms, jokes, and unintentional
puns. All the while, the speaker moved about like a clown, standing on his head and almost always falling off
his stump at some point. With blackface makeup serving as fool’s mask, these stump speakers could deliver
biting social criticism without offending the audience, although the focus was usually on sending up
unpopular issues and making fun of blacks' ability to make sense of them.
Minstrelsy and the “Race Problem”:
A Complex Con
Act 1
(Public Square with a house doorway. Above the door is a sign: "Intelligence
Office." A crowd is assembled around a medicine show pitchman. Applause
at rise of curtain. A banjo player acts as an interlocutor as Tambo, and
Bones tell one or two jokes. The banjoist sings a song. Dr. Straight, the
pitchman, addresses the crowd.)
[...]
DR. STRAIGHT Wait, wait, wait, this is not all. I have another preparation,
Oblicuticus, "Obli" -- in this case, being an abbreviation of the word
"obliterate." "Cuti" -- taken from the word "cuticle," the outer skin, and
"cuss" is what everybody does when the desired results are not obtained,
but there is no such word as "fail." This wonderful face bleach removes
the outer skin and leaves in its place a peachlike complexion that can't be
duplicated -- even by peaches. Changing black to white and vice versa. I
am going to spend only one day in your city, but I am going to convince
you by exhibiting a living evidence of my assertions that these two grand
preparations Straightaline and Oblicuticus are the most wonderful
discovery of modern times.
American Colonization Society
• In 1822, the American Colonization Society (A.C.S.) which was the primary
vehicle for returning black Americans to greater freedom in Africa,
established Liberia as a place to send people who were formerly enslaved.
This movement of black people by the A.C.S. had broad support nationwide
among white people in America, including prominent leaders such as Henry
Clay and James Monroe, who saw this as preferable to emancipation in
America, with Clay believing "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their
color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country".
STAMPFIELD You shouldn't let trifles annoy you. I'll dare say
you'll find the population of Dahomey quite as much a source
of annoyance as the colored population of this country. Your
exalted opinion of the ideal life to be found in a barbarous
country is beyond my comprehension.
MOSES It's all right for you, son, to argue that way, 'cause you
'specs to live and die amongst these white folks here in the
United States, but the colonization society that leaves this
country for Dahomey takes a different view of the matter. In
the first place, we've 'vestigated the country and found out
just what's what.
In Dahomey?
The origins of Dahomey (present day Benin) can be
traced back to a group of Aja from the coastal kingdom
of Allada who moved northward and settled among
the Fon People of the interior. By about 1650, the Aja
managed to dominate the Fon, and Wegbaja declared
himself king of their joint territory. Based in his capital
of Agbome, Wegbaja and his successors succeeded in
establishing a highly centralized state with a deeprooted kingship cult of sacrificial offerings. These
included an emphasis on human sacrifices in large
numbers, to the ancestors of the monarch
Economically, however, Wegbaja and his successors
profited mainly from the slave trade and relations with
slavers along the coast. As Dahomey's kings embarked
on wars to expand their territory, they began using
rifles and other firearms traded with French and
Spanish slave traders for young men captured in battle,
who fetched a very high price from the European slave
merchants.
Pop culture
In Dahomey as Meta-Theatre
RAREBACK You're just as much a
detective as you're ever going to be. I
can see now that you'll never be a Nick
Carter or an Old Sleuth.
SHYLOCK You always castin' up
reflections. I never heard of dis man
Nick Carter or old Hoof either.
RAREBACK Never heard of Nick Carter
and Old Sleuth? Why, Shy, they're the
greatest detectives in the world. Nick
Carter is the only man living that's been
shot through the heart forty-one times,
and Old Sleuth's been knocked in the
head with his arms tied behind him and
a gag in his mouth and throwed in every
sewer in the country.
On Broadway in Dahomey/
In Dahomey on Broadway
RAREBACK
(laughing) Stick to me and after we're in Dahomey six months if you like it, I'll buy it for you. I'll tell
the King over there that I'm a surveyor, and you're a contractor. If he asks for a recommendation,
I'll tell him to go over to New York City and take a look at Broadway -- it's the best job the firm
ever did, and if he don't mind, we'll build him a Broadway in the jungle.
(song)
If we went to Dahomey, suppose the King would say We want a Broadway built for us, we want it
right away. We'd git a bunch of natives, say ten thousand or more Wid banyan trees, build a big
department store. We'd sell big Georgia possums, some water melons, too. To get the coin for
other things we'd like to do. If we couldn't have real horse cars, we'd use zebras for awhile On the
face of the Broadway clock, use a crockodial.
CHORUS On Broadway in Dahomey bye and bye We'll build a Bamboo Railway to the sky. You'll
see on the sides of the rocks and hills, On Broadway in Dahomey bye and bye. We'd git some
large Gorillas and use them for police, then git a Hippopotamus for Justice of the Peace. We'd
build a nice roof garden somewhere along the line, Serve Giraffe Highballs and real Cokenut wine.
We'd use Montana Diamonds to make Electric light, And then have Wagner sung by parrots ev'ry
night. We'd have a savage festival, serve Rhine-os-erus stew, Have pork chops and U-need-a
Biscuit too.