Cool Stuff: Black America and South America
- Hannah Cheatham
- Jan 22, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 27, 2020
Cool stuff round 2!!! We've done this before so I don't feel like I need to explain it. Let's go!!!
1. The road to Broadway
When I was in 8th grade, I was in a musical review going through the history of Broadway and I thoroughly enjoyed it (being the nerd that I am). So, when we were watching the Blues documentary in class and they were talking about vaudeville, it sparked my memory that vaudeville influenced Broadway as we know it quite a bit. So I wanted to look for the connections between the two.
(To be honest, most of the articles I've read connected vaudeville to the movies, but I'm gonna stick with it! I makes sense in my mind!)
So we learned from The documentary "Wild Women Don't Have The Blues", how the Blues influenced Vaudeville. But you might be wondering what this "Vaudeville" is? Well I'm glad you asked!
Vaudeville originated from France in the 1880's and it's title is usually traced back to two French phrases: Val de Vire, meaning "valley of the river Vire" and voix de ville, meaning "voices of the town." They were shows of variety: skits, escape artists, dancers, singers, and comedy bits, among many other things. They were a bit risqué, but despite that, they mostly remained pretty inoffensive to most people, even presenting black artists beyond the common blackface practice of the era. Chains of theaters banded together mostly underneath 4 main impresarios (a person who organizes and financially manage theatres): Tony Pastor, B.F. Keith, E.F. Albee, and P.T. Barnum (yes the circus guy). This created a similar string of theatres that we see today, especially in New York. These theatres also hosted the earlier forms of Broadway with shows such as "Show Boat" and "Strike Up The Band" that were influenced by the German singspiel (opera). Vaudeville faded when the Great Depression happened and the stars that started on the Vaudeville stage found work in the American movie business. These stars, like Judy Garland, still participated in theatre, influencing Broadway with their Vaudevillian skills.
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2. Ragtime
Ragtime is a derivative of the blues, coming into popularity around 1895 and falling out of fashion around 1919 giving way to jazz. It's a fun, uniquely American take on piano music with "ragged" or syncopated rhythms (African polyrhythm influence), combined with elements of the blues, classical piano, and bordello/bar instrumental music. Originally know as "jig piano" or "thumping piano", Rags were based on marches and jigs performed by African American bands. In Ragtime, the player's hands are doing two different rhythms: a march-like bass line in the left hand and all the syncopation in the right hand. During it's rather short-lived (but impactful) moment of popularity, Ragtime broke the more formal European piano solos with the characteristic peppiness and bounce and helped pave the way for jazz, influencing early jazz entrepreneurs like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. This style was not lost on European audiences either, influencing composers such as Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Igor Stravinsky. Pretty cool.
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3. Costa Rican Music
All this talk about South America got me thinking about lands that I'd already been to, a.k.a. Central America. I went to Costa Rica a few years ago on a mission trip and most of the music I heard was American popular music in Spanish and (of course) the ever popular Despacito :D
So I was wondering what un-Americanized music there was in Costa Rica. Here are my findings:
The more popular styles to come out of Costa Rica are soca, salsa, merengue, and cumbia, with the most popular being Costa Rican Calypso music. This is a syncretic style, hailing from the Costa Rican Caribbean coastline. It's very easy to hear the Reggae/Calypso elements of the style: the underlying rhythms, the free and easy flow of the music itself, but it also grooves like a Latin American dance.
Other popular styles include the aforementioned dance music: salsa, merengue, and so on, but another popular genre is folk music (which has also become very syncretic). Of course the Caribbean coast shows a strong African influence (like in the Costa Rican Calypso mentioned before). Like its northerly neighbors, the marimba is a very popular instrument, with Costa Rican marimba music being very popular. Costa Rica's indigenous population has contributed largely to the country's folk heritage as well. This includes odd musical scales, ceremonial songs and ocarnitas. The Guanacaste region in the Nicoya Peninsula, is home to some of the best-known folk traditions, such as the Danza del Sol (dance of the sun) and Danza de la Luna (dance of the moon) of the Chorotega, who also popularized the quijongo (a single-string bow and a gourd resonator), and the chirimia (an oboe like instrument). Most of these ancient instruments are being replaced by other instruments such as accordions and guitars.
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I actually played quite a bit of ragtime when I was younger--my piano teacher was really into it. My favorite is Joplin's "Solace", which combines traditional rag elements with a bit of a Latin beat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKNHp-daefk
I remember taking a German Horror Film here at Converse and we talked about how Germany formed Hollywood and we did talk about Vaudeville because of some of the performers.