Nicholas Brothers addendum: art and PC purity
For those of you who read and enjoyed last Saturday’s post on tap dancing, and especially the clips of the Nicholas Brothers, here are some additional nuggets of interest:
(1) The brothers were the children of vaudevillians, and never had any formal dance training.
(2) Later in life they taught dance, and one of their students is reported to have been Michael Jackson.
(3) Fred Astaire called that Nicholas Brothers number from “Stormy Weather” (the one that appeared in my post in its YouTube version) “the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen.”
(4) Both brothers married three times. The first wife of the younger, Harold, was the beautiful actress Dorothy Dandridge—who, like the brothers, had spent her childhood as a performer on the black vaudeville circuit in a sibling act.
Now I’ll weigh in on the topic introduced by commenter John Schroeder in the comments section of that thread:
You have stepped into one of the great debates in the arts – What is tap all about – rhythm or style.- and it is buried in race.
The contention is that tap was “invented” by blacks and is a rhythmic exercise. It was only when it was “stolen” by the white man and combined with more acceptable forms of dance that it took on the appearance you seem to prefer. Some have even accused the Nicholas Brothers of “selling out” – and Bill Robinson was “forced” to dance that way to make a living.
I personally think there is room for both styles – they ask very different things of the audience. One is essentially visual and one aural.
Savion is not pretty, but close your eyes and listen – there are professional drummers that cannot do that with four extremities and a kit.
Very interesting indeed. But my response is that dance is a predominantly visual art, not an aural one. If Glover, and the tap dancers who resemble him—be they black, white, green, or polka-dotted—wish to call themselves “tap musicians,” or to refer to what they do as “playing the feet,” that’s perfectly all right with me. Just don’t call a predominantly auditory art “dance,” because it’s not.
As for the black art purists who say the Nicholas Brothers are a sell-out and Glover the real deal, I would maintain that, if they wish art to remain in the domain of anthropology, keeping it static and never allowing a culture to develop its own blended art forms, then the world of art will be sadly diminished.
One of the greatest strengths of this country is that we have managed to create new types of art: rock n’ roll, jazz, ragtime, Broadway musicals, modern dance, ballet with an American twist (one of the developments for which Russian emigre choreographer George Balanchine was known, as was American-born Jew Jerome Robbins)—and, yes, tap dancing. All of these wonderful contributions to the world exist only because they took art forms that began in other parts of the world and added to them, changing and blending them into something almost unrecognizable in the process.
This is the incredible strength of the American popular performing arts. To destroy it for some misguided PC idea of artistic ethnic purity is not only counterproductive, it’s offensive.
Perfect put. I had an idea for a similar response to that comment but t would not have been so well tempered. Thanks!
“Oh hell. Girl, you ride that damn banana. Art is for living, not for looking at.” Photo at bottom of http://thebloggess.com/?p=9025
The contention is that tap was “invented” by blacks and is a rhythmic exercise. It was only when it was “stolen” by the white man and combined with more acceptable forms of dance that it took on the appearance you seem to prefer.
“stolen by the white man” oh, no, call James Cone…
the white man didnt steal juba dancing or handbone, and if you ever saw handbone you would definitely know tap didnt come from that.
Juba dis and Juba dat,
and Juba killed da yellow cat
It also expresses antisematism “the Jubal Jew” was a dance step.
The CLOSEST to tap that we know today is from the IRISH… so i guess the author is referring to the dark or black Irish… (just kidding)
their desire to melt things together has very strange combinations being said to be the same… like cherokees having a clog dance… it was these people that brought a huge mix.
now its all mixed up..
remember flatly?
the reason it came about had to do with offensive laws, similar to laws in the US today and new england. that is, you cant dance in a bar, only in a cabaret or night club.
well… the whole of it was that the people wanted to dance, but there would be trouble if they did.
if you look through a window of a bar (oil glass) and you saw people moving about, you cant tell given the type of dance, as the upper part of the body is held still.
the main thing as to tap coming from clogs…
WOODEN shoes…
these shoes made obvious noises, and its not too long before people figure out that certain moves make shushing noises, and others make a stomp.
in fact, if you knew the different dances, you can spot the step drawn into tap.
metal taps of the formal kind didnt appear until the 1920s… but before that bottle caps, metal pieces, clogs, bells, and such also were used.
the dick van dyke dance at the fair singing the old baboon is a modern version of such dances, related to the morris dance… (which uses swords and technically is supposed to decapitate when the ring is broken)
if you go here, you can read about taps, and read that it was NOT stolen by the white man
Tap dancing America: a cultural history
By Constance Valis Hill
books.google.com/books?id=rU9dUaCsd94C&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=inventor+of+the+metal+tap&source=bl&ots=djmzwORK6G&sig=oXP7nIj1c0XDPGc3dJLl-yTWBXY&hl=en&ei=6EXYTL6cEYG88ga7-dS_DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
in fact, africans didnt wear shoes, and certainly did not wear clogs… and so the dancing where the glogs and moves made sounds was not theirs!!!
even in the above book they try to make it african as the major change and melting was during the jazz era.
for the most part. Vaudville was a white past time. it was not until later and the end of it that blacks appeared with any regularity.
Ulyses slow kid thompson is an example.
but george primrose and the irish minstrel men
and THATS where the blacks got tap…
and the Old Soft Shoe….
Minstrel shows lampooned black people as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, joyous, and musical.[citation needed] The minstrel show began with brief burlesques and comic entr’actes in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form in the next decade. In 1848, blackface minstrel shows were the national art of the time, translating formal art such as opera into popular terms for a general audience.[1] By the turn of the century, the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former popularity, having been replaced for the most part by vaudeville. It survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur performances continued until the 1960s in high schools, fraternities, and local theaters. As blacks began to score legal and social victories against racism and to successfully assert political power, minstrelsy lost popularity.
if you study it… the black face was for similar reasons that men played women in shakespears day!
Although white theatrical portrayals of black characters date back to as early as 1604,[6] the minstrel show as such has later origins. By the late 17th century, blackface characters began appearing on the American stage, usually as “servant” types whose roles did little more than provide some element of comic relief.[7] Eventually, similar performers appeared in entr’actes in New York theaters and other venues such as taverns and circuses. As a result, the blackface “Sambo” character came to supplant the “tall-tale-telling Yankee” and “frontiersman” character-types in popularity,[8] and white actors such as Charles Mathews, George Washington Dixon, and Edwin Forrest began to build reputations as blackface performers. Author Constance Rourke even claimed that Forrest’s impression was so good he could fool blacks when he mingled with them in the streets.[9] Thomas Dartmouth Rice’s successful song-and-dance number, “Jump Jim Crow”, brought blackface performance to a new level of prominence in the early 1830s. At the height of Rice’s success, The Boston Post wrote, “The two most popular characters in the world at the present are [Queen] Victoria and Jim Crow.”[10] As early as the 1820s, blackface performers called themselves “Ethiopian delineators”;[11] from then into the early 1840s, unlike the later heyday of minstrelsy, they performed either solo or in small teams.[12]
Blackface soon found a home in the taverns of New York’s less respectable precincts of Lower Broadway, the Bowery, and Chatham Street.[13] It also appeared on more respectable stages, most often as an entr’acte.[13] Upper-class houses at first limited the number of such acts they would show, but beginning in 1841, blackface performers frequently took to the stage at even the classy Park Theatre, much to the dismay of some patrons. Theater was a participatory activity, and the lower classes came to dominate the playhouse. They threw things at actors or orchestras who performed unpopular material,[14] and rowdy audiences eventually prevented the Bowery Theatre from staging high drama at all.[15] Typical blackface acts of the period were short burlesques, often with mock Shakespearean titles like “Hamlet the Dainty”, “Bad Breath, the Crane of Chowder”, “Julius Sneezer”, or “Dars-de-Money”.[16]
and the wierdest part of it was that blacks basically joined in and did blackface better. that is, rather than a white man with less talent and comedie, they played and showed competency.
[you can see hints of this in movies like Buster Keatons College, and Civil War]
from the time of uncle toms cabin and onward, the minstrel shows died and vaudville took their place.
but by then, all the seeds and various forms were already there, and things like metal taps were invented formalizing it..
In the 1840s and 50s, William Henry Lane and Thomas Dilward became the first African Americans to perform on the minstrel stage
All-black troupes followed as early as 1855. These companies emphasized that their ethnicity made them the only true delineators of black song and dance, with one advertisement describing a troupe as “SEVEN SLAVES just from Alabama, who are EARNING THEIR FREEDOM by giving concerts under the guidance of their Northern friends.”[55] White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting “spontaneously” and “naturally.”[56] Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as “THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT.”[57] Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked the faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as “mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. . . . The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork.”[58] The minstrels themselves promoted their performing abilities, quoting reviews that favorably compared them to popular white troupes. These black companies often featured female minstrels.
so the blacks did minstrel better than the whites…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show#Early_development
sorry, that should have read “Perfectly put”. I’m sure there’s a lesson in that.
Yeah, that Bela Bartok just stole all those folk melodies like Belenyes and ruined them, eh? Just so that he could impress all his fancy city friends. Any Hungarian who plays his stuff is just a sellout.
What the Nicholas Brothers accomplished in the Stormy Weather clip was both visual and aural – their dancing is not only a delight to the eyes, but a treat for the ears. They are active members of the orchestra, dancing in and around the musicians, and the explosive rhythmic tapping of their feet puts them squarely in the percussion section, even as they wing around the whole expanse of the stage.
Likewise, the blues is constantly beset by the controversy over “authenticity.”
Whites are supposedly not authentic, and stole everything from blacks.
Read a thread some time back lamenting the stealing of the Maori dance called the “haka”.
A bit late. The horse is out of the barn. College and some high school football teams do it before the game.
You can start by searching for “haka byu”.
Seems to me to show respect for the Maoris.
But, nooooooo. Rotten white man stealing the poor, downtrodden, helpless Maoris’ daaaance.
That comments scratched me, too – but being a naturalized American, I felt unqualified to criticize it.
Thank you, Neo, you – once again – relayed what was on my mind, and did it beautifully.
AVI: add List to Bela Bartok. And Chaikovsky. And pretty much all Russian composers of 19cent. And Shostakovich. And if we start looking into Brazilian music’ influences…oy gevolt!
Somewhat related…
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/16/89-saint-patricks-day/
Ah, yes. Swiss bankers and Belarus cock-fighting impresarios all agree: You got peanut butter in my chocolate!
Reminds me of the silliness in some native American circles where you need to be demonstrably at least 1/16th indian blood to sell “tribal art”. WTF?
We’ve so mythologised American indian culture you’d swear they never possesed a single ignorant a$$hole and a guy named Bob in New Jersey can suddenly be said to be at one with nature if he finds out his great great grandfather was Sitting Bull’s fifth cousin on his mother’s side.
My oldest and I had a conversation about Avatar the other day. He didn’t especially like it – felt that too much of it was done purely for effect, not advancing the story – but on the subject of its 3d rendering, he flip-flopped.
He didn’t like the 3d because it wasn’t sufficiently in-your-face – he said, “It was like, ‘Gosh, that tree is even more obviously in front of the other tree!'”. (I love my son. He’s funny.) I told him it was my opinion that as 3d develops, it’ll take two simultaneous paths. One, I thought, would be the “artsy” path, in which the director (or whoever’s in charge) seeks to minimize the audience’s awareness of the 3d so that the film as a whole is basically so 3d that it appears to be real, no matter what the subject matter. (I said, “That’s the adult approach.”) And the other path would be the “in-your-face” approach, in which things are deliberately zoomed at the audience so they could ooh and aah as if they’re on a visual roller coaster. This, I told him, would be the “kid” approach.
I was mostly tweaking him about the adult-vs.-kid divide. But it occurred to me later that my own prejudices were coloring my perception of this new art form: I prefer to suspend my disbelief and don’t give a hoot if something flies out of the screen at me, so to me it’s more “high art” if any 3d in a movie is subtle and atmospheric. But who’s to say that 3d movies aren’t basically speciating away from 2d, and will one day be their own unique form, in which (who knows?) the more obvious the 3d effect, the higher the art?
I’m a curmudgeon, apparently.
I’d say black stole tap dancing from the Irish. Does that make me somehow racist? Not that I care.