Performing Arts Book Reviews

2010-09-07T09:25:00.001-07:00

Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. By Constance Valis Hill.

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, January 2010. Cloth: ISBN 978-0195390827, $39.95. 464 pages.

Review by Douglas C. Macleod, State University of New York, Albany

On May 9^th, 2010, actress and singer Lena Horne died at the age of ninety-two. In an ironic twist, it was on that same day that I was reading about Ms. Horne and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in Constance Valis Hill’s comprehensive encyclopedia of tap dance entitled Tap Dancing America: a Cultural History. In her work, Hill talks about a then-twenty-six-year-old Horne performing in Stormy Weather, a 1943 musical that contains what some may consider one of the greatest tap sequences of all time: “Jumpin’ Jive.” Here is a segment of Hill’s description of that scene:

Dressed in tailcoats, they [the Nicholas Brothers] jump table to table, then over the railing and onto the stage floor. Stepping and sliding across the floor, they follow [Cab] Calloway to center stage and begin their tap dance (their A section). Spins, cramp rolls, turns, and crossover steps are woven into an intricate pattern of sound and movement, as the brothers spin out backsliding rhythms that slip them smoothly from place to place on the stage. In the second A section, they repeat and vary their step patterns in alternating solos and duets. Then, with a back-slide split that springs up into a jump-split, they land on the platform where a row of musicians are seated. (136)

As one can clearly ascertain from the passage above, Hill is not only an accomplished tap dance historian (and performer), but an extremely descriptive and passionate writer; she is able to paint a colorful and dynamic picture for her reader, which is an arduous task when writing about a visual and aural art-form.

In fact, that is what makes Tap Dancing America: a Cultural History such a compelling read. Obviously, her knowledge of the subject is substantial; but, with the material she is covering, she could have easily slipped into just providing her reader with a list of names, dates, movies, and scenes. Instead, Hill shows the reader the dance sequences she writes about using specificities and fine detail. This helps prove Hill’s claim that tap dance is a people-filled, tangible form of entertainment that is “intercultural and interracial” and is all “inclusive to men and women, soloists and choristers, sister acts and two-man teams, producers and choreographers” and to “proselytizers and preservationists” (xiii).

Hill also successfully proves her claim by taking the reader back in time, to the early days of tap. Starting with the mid-1600’s to 1900, she delves deeply into the roots of modern-day American tap dance, which stem from a fusion of Irish American jig and sean-no dancing and Afro-American jig and gioube dancing, as well as turn of the century buck-and-wing dancing, which in and of itself stemmed from Appalachian clog dancing (22). She takes her time to provide to her reader a rich and layered history of tap, a history filled with many different racial and cultural dance styles. She then takes her reader on a decade-by-decade journey, writing on filmed and un-filmed dance sequences, and memorable and less-than-famous tap dancers like: Jack Donohue, Bert and Baby Alice, and George Primrose (1910s); James Barton, Buddy Bradley, and Fredi Washington (1920s); Buck and Bubbles, Edith “Baby” Edwards, Louise Madison, Fred Astaire, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1930s); Betty Grable, Ann Miller, The Brothers Condos, Ray Bolger, and Gene Kelly (1940s); Little Teddy Hale, Leon Collins, Jimmy Slyde, Donald O’Connor, and Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates (1950s); Bunny Briggs and Charles “Cholly”Atkins (1960s);The Hines Brothers (Maurice and Gregory), Brenda Bufolino, and Honi Coles (1970s); Lynn Dally, Linda Sohl-Donnell, Diane Walker, and Savion Glover (1980s); Roxanne “Butterfly” Semadini, Baakari Wilder, and Ayodele Casel (1990s); and, Chole Arnold, Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards, Derrick K. Grant, and Sarah Petronio (present day). All of these tap dancers (amongst scores of others Hill writes about) have influence not only in the decade in which she spotlights them in, but also within the decades when the old timers intentionally or unintentionally stepped out of that spotlight to allow younger hoofers to continue on the path to tap dancing greatness.

Not only does Hill provide her reader with a significant (almost too much, in some instances) amount of physical detail, but she intertwines that physical detail with her thoughts and observations on the cultural significance of the dance. Her section on Ada (Aida) Overton Walker, for example, is one of her strongest:

Mourned as the foremost African American female stage artist, Overton Walker’s interest in both African and African American indigenous material and her translation of these to the modern stage anticipated the choreographic work of modern dance pioneers Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus. Both in her solo work for women and in the unison and precision choreographies for the female chorus, she claimed a female presence on the American theatrical stage. She also gave presence to black rhythm dancing, thus opening the prime-time, public professional space for tap performance, which had been previously restricted to post-show-time, late-night buck-and-wing contests. By negotiating the narrow white definitions of appropriate black performance with her own version of black specialization and innovation, Overton Walker established a black cultural integrity onstage that established a model by which African American musical artists could gain acceptance on the professional concert stage. (41)

Very much like Lena Horne after her and in her own way, Aida Overton Walker was foundational and set the standard high for future dancers; and, Hill certainly gives Overton Walker recognition because of it. Overton Walker broke major misogynistic barriers, although it was (and in some ways still is) prominent some sixty or seventy years after she first set foot on stage. Hill’s strength is certainly in her ability to recognize the importance of women in a medium that never fully appreciated dancers like Overton Walker, Bufolino, and Dally.

I must admit that it was extremely difficult to get through Tap Dancing America not because of its sheer length, nor because of its abundance of information, but because, after reading sections of Hill’s book, I felt compelled to go to YouTube to see many of the acts she alludes to. Bunny Briggs, Brenda Bufolino, Honi Coles, Gregory Hines, Jimmy Slyde: simply amazing clips, all of which are readily available for everyone to see. Just type in each name, and watch how sweet it is.

And, yes, the Nicholas Brothers in “Jumpin’ Jive” is definitely one of the greatest tap dance sequences ever filmed; but the best: debatable.

2010-07-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Serious Play: Modern Clown Performance. By Louise Peacock.

Bristol: Intellect, June 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1-84150-241-0, $30. 224 pages.

Review by Christophe Collard, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

In May 2009, almost simultaneously with the publication of Serious Play, Bill Hopkinson, another British expert on clowning, gave a talk in which he called the clown “a complex of embodied unlearning.” Louise Peacock’s landmark study opens on very much the same premise with a title containing an internal tension. Both serious and frivolous, clowning to her uniquely succeeds in bridging contemporary Western society’s alleged undervaluation of play with our own visceral drive towards make-believe. After all, the clown’s subversive spontaneity is characteristically performed within a formalized framework. By analogy, therefore, a monograph retracing contemporary clown practice in the US and Europe over the last 50 years and which ambitions to establish the clown’s cathartic social function should also “embody” such tension between the frivolity of its subject and the seriousness of its theoretical implications.

A first look at the table of contents suggests just that: a lucid progression from factual presentation to more complex conceptualizations, followed by a straightforward reassessment of “the centrality of play in clowning.” Unfortunately, the remainder of Hopkinson’s formula equally applies to Peacock’s book. In a highly complex introduction stacked with rather unrelated and poorly integrated theoretical excursions, “unlearning” is rather the name of the game. What sets off as a promising and very intriguing intellectual journey very soon morphs into an almost “clownish” parody of academese, were it not for the author’s dogged, over-zealous discussion of performance theories by Huizinga (1944), Turner (1982), Schechner (1988 and 1993), Winnicott (1991), or Sutton-Smith (1997) from the particular perspective of clowning – a perspective which Louise Peacock paradoxically only clarifies further down the road. Granted, the actual definition she provides is a model of clarity. Nevertheless, the overall impression after reading the introduction is one of good intentions, an even better grasp of the material, but catastrophic presentation. Another illustration would be the repeated references to the advantages of a semiotic take on the subject which resurface in every chapter but, frustratingly, remain dead-letter. This similarly applies to the many a priori arguments, abrupt shifts, and/or ambiguous chapter endings.

That said, even if Serious Play is seriously flawed, it has everything to become a serious player in its field. For like the subject it so knowledgeably covers, the book trundles along, seemingly innocuously, before leaving the reader with a very precise understanding that, indeed, clowning is both serious and frivolous, and a deceptively important social force to boot. The clown, Peacock remarks, “deal[s] with what it means to be human” (26). And by “presenting an image of the physically malformed” he metaphorically places himself “beyond critical comment in our politically correct world” (32). Of course it would be stretching things to argue that Serious Play adopts a similar strategy to shield itself from criticism – and neither is this parallel significant enough to attach any more importance to it. Still, the effect remains, for better or worse. By providing her reader with a most unequal panorama Louise Peacock establishes a “clownesque” sense of complicité, which she defines along famous French mime and influential acting theorist Jacques Lecoq as “a silent communication, an unspoken understanding” (33).

The first chapter promises “a taxonomy of clown types” (19) while presenting a catalogue of famous and lesser-known clowns from past and present. Chapter 2 proposes a reconsideration of the frame-principle to tackle modern clowning’s progressive “re-framing” from the circus to the political arena, only to leave these amply documented switches without conceptual “frame” of what “framing” actually means. One could even argue that the distinction between chapters 2 to 4 is arbitrary, that no real sense of structural necessity exists to demarcate their various focal points, and that their comparable length hints at cosmetic interventions to accommodate the reader. To the point, even, that Serious Play emerges as an unorthodox reference guide, an encyclopedia of clowning that somehow ended up on the desk of the wrong copy editor. By end of the fifth chapter, though, none of these considerations subside except for a straightforward notion of the clown as a disruptive presence in a complex world. Extended case studies of the highly political Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA, Chapter 5) as of the so-called Clown Healers (Chapter 6), a psychosocial variant of clownish subversion, channel all the previous chapters’ factual overkill, theoretical skittishness, and structural ambiguity towards a seasoned understanding of the most concrete kind. Be it in the circus, in streets rife with political strife, or at the bedside of a suffering child, clowns “enable us to embrace failing as part of learning” (154). In the unlikeliest of ways Louise Peacock in the end proves her point. But credit where credit is due: “Clowns show us the way” (159).

2010-04-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare’s Opposites: The Admiral’s Company 1594-1625.
By Andrew Gurr.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, June 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-521-86903-4. $99. 328 pages.

Review by Suanna H. Davis, Houston Baptist University

The potential of this book fascinates. Who are these others who performed at the same time as Shakespeare’s company? What do we know about them? Why are they not as famous as Shakespeare?

Gurr offers interesting insights into various aspects of the Admiral’s Company, beginning with his hypothesis for why the two companies, and only those two, were operating in London from 1594 to 1600. The development of the hypothesis is not discussed in the book, because it has already been presented in an article. Despite the lack of details, it is an intriguing explanation. For the issue of fame, Gurr suggests that Shakespeare’s company had the better plays, which we can still read today, while the Admiral’s Company was better at theatrical entertainment, a visual and aural experience that is long gone. However, the Admiral’s Company left many more records than Shakespeare’s group and it is with these records that Gurr develops his discussion.

The book begins slowly. Within the first chapter, repetitions abound. References to chapter two seem to follow every major point. The idea of the familiar face of the players appears five times in the first fifty pages, as does the fact that there is a new play every week or two or three, depending on the page. The description “games of disguise” is also repeated. The repetitions are very distracting and the chapter is hard to read. However, the rest of the book is significantly better, with limited repetitions, good detail, and fascinating descriptions.

Gurr is at his best when he is explaining the plot of the plays and detailing the implications of the plays for his discussion. For example, the story of The Wise Men of West Chester provides rapid reading for more than ten pages; it is a quixotic tale told in an engaging style. His discussion of the printed version of The Tragedy of Hoffman is equally captivating. Few would be able to write an interesting rendition of various name change problems within a printed text, but Gurr pulls it off.

The chapter on staging is interesting. It begins comparing the outdoor venues with significantly more space for the audience to the limited indoor arena of the Globe. Gurr presents the history of the various playhouses of both companies, comparing and contrasting them. The chapter gives background information on architects and archaeological excavations, discusses building materials and methods, and details the stages of the original and rebuilt first playhouse of the Admiral’s Company. The point and purposes of the changes to the playhouse, after its midnight burning, are presented. This chapter also has figures that help the reader visualize the descriptions. This chapter offers a well-developed introduction to staging, which could be helpful in both theater and English classes in discussions of plays of the era.

The chapter also presents, again, the surviving play-texts of the Admiral’s Company. This presentation, though, divides them into three categories based on whether they were written to be played at the original, the rebuilt, or the second playhouse of the company. Then Gurr discusses the staging of the plays at the various venues.

The chapter on the company’s repertory practices details their exclusion from the court and connects their famous revenge play with Hamlet. A scrap of paper written in the hand of the Master of the Revels offers Gurr an opportunity to develop the connection between the two plays, and then he segues into the disappearance of the Admiral’s Company from the court performances after 1615. The Admiral’s Company was not the only group that was spurned, and Gurr offers class distinctions between the playgoers as the reason. Though the patrons of these two companies were royal, the open-air venue meant that those in attendance were not aristocrats.

Gurr also presents the possibility that the plays of this company were viewed as old-fashioned, since they were locked into play styles. The explanation for the style seems to be the return of the company’s most famous actor who was known for “stalking and roaring” (170). Finally, Gurr discusses their political and cultural ramifications, since some of the plays repeated aristocratic experiences and scandals as they were happening, but without tying this into the expulsion from court.

Three appendices make up the last third of the book. The first lists the plays and all their known titles by the year either of their probable performance or their probable writing. The second is an alphabetical listing, with a paragraph-length biography, of the various players from the Admiral’s Company. The third is a reconstruction of the company’s traveling schedule.

The book, after the first chapter, is well written and interesting. It gives details of the time and the acting experience that even Shakespearean scholars might not know. Overall, it is accessible to someone outside the field, though there are some “explanations” which do not actually explain to an outsider unfamiliar with the arguments to which Gurr is responding. The book offers an opportunity to expand one’s understanding of Shakespeare’s plays, clearly an impetus from the title, but more importantly it presents a well-developed discussion of some of the plays, players, and playgoers of the era, adding political, historical, and cultural insights into a reading of the plays of the Admiral’s company.

2010-02-28T15:49:00.000-08:00

Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear.

By Court Carney.

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, November 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0700616756, $34.95. 219 pages.

Review by Reba Wissner, Brandeis University

While much ink has been spent on the role of jazz in America, its broad cultural and societal influences within cities other than New York, Chicago, and New Orleans has not received such extensive treatment. Court Carney’s new book, Cuttin’ Up: How Early Jazz Got America’s Ear, has ventured beyond existing work in the field of jazz studies. Carney’s study synthesizes and reconciles the basic information about the origins and cultural implications of jazz in a clear and convenient manner. The book spans the 1890s to 1930s, combining both musical and historical analysis in order for the reader to gain a greater understanding of the larger cultural and social issues that contributed to the birth of the genre. The primary objective of the study is to “establish an emphasis on the shifts in American culture as well as the process of diffusion” (7), and it does so by discussing the broader cultural aspects of the dissemination and acceptance of jazz in the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth. He does so by diving the book into three parts and further dissecting it into six chapters. The essential details in each chapter are supplemented by focusing on a particular jazz musician within that geographic area during that time. Part 1: Creation, consists of Chapters 1 and 2; Part 2: Dispersion, consists of Chapters 3, 4, and 5; and Part 3: Acceptance, consists of Chapter 6 and the Conclusion. The book also contains an index of all the songs written during the time span that the book covers. Part 1 discusses the origins of jazz from ragtime and the blues and its earliest versions within New Orleans. Part 2 is dedicated to the way in which jazz was disseminated in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Changes in society led to corresponding changes in taste, and these changes are an important key to establishing a greater understanding of the dissemination and acceptance of this new musical genre. Part 3 examines jazz as the new American music, concluding with the contributions of Benny Goodman.

The greatest strength of this study is that it is based on a much more thorough discussion of the cultural implications of jazz in various cities than has previously appeared in print. Carney’s writing style is clear, succinct, and accessible and avoids the use of jargon, making the book easy to read for both the expert musician and the layman without seeming simplified. My one main criticism of the book is that at times, Carney seems to do what he says in the introduction he does not plan to do: to “retell the totality of the early jazz narrative” (4). In some instances, especially in the early chapters, it seems as if he is attempting to reinvent the wheel and writing a jazz history textbook rather than composing a cultural history.

This book is a fascinating study of jazz in its earliest forms and how the music, contemporary culture, and society were intertwined. The information presented in Carney’s book asks new questions and reinforces the need for a more holistic approach to the study of early jazz than has so far been the case. Such a vast amount of information is provided in this book that it is impossible to do it justice in such a brief review. For any scholar undertaking research in jazz and early American music, this book is an invaluable source of information. Carney’s study brings a new perspective to musicological and cultural studies and deserves a central place on the map of jazz studies and studies of early American music.

2009-11-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

Dancing From The Heart: Movement, Gender, And Cook Islands Globalization.

By Kalissa Alexeyeff.

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, May 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-8248-3244-5, $55.00. 206 pages.

Review by Matthew J. Forss, Goddard College, Vermont

Kalissa Alexeyeff's study of expressive culture in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific highlights the various interrelated roles of sexuality, gender, religion, politics, and economics. For the most part, Alexeyeff's fieldwork was aided by an Aitutaki woman named Mamia, for which the prologue was dedicated. Mamia died from breast cancer in 2002, but not before passing along Cook Island dance traditions to Alexeyeff, while also supplying her with arranged interviews with dancers, and a place to live throughout the fieldwork period. Most of the research was conducted at the administrative and economic capital of the islands in Rarotonga from 1996-1998. The introduction provides an overview of anthropology, dance, and expressive culture, while incorporating Alexeyeff's summarization of dance by exploring "song texts and the themes they raise…analysis of dance choreography and music compositions given by their creators and talk that surrounds dance--the evaluations of dance performances and of dancers, and the gossip, commentary, and other verbal narratives that dance produces" (13).

The notion behind the title of "dancing from the heart" expresses the Cook Island "spirit" of happiness coming from the soul. Alexeyeff's interviews with numerous Cook Islanders found that motivations for dancing were clearly for happiness or enjoyment. In simple terms, dancers that were happy were truly “dancing from the heart.” Furthermore, Alexeyeff goes beyond simple, direct dance observation and notes dance expression may be an “extralinguistic” medium for grief, sadness, and other forms of communication not normally served with verbal responses. These dance forms and expressions of culture are influenced by the global-local web of social mobility, modernity, femininity, and politics.

Chapter one follows the religious, social, and political developments of expressive culture practices beginning with the London Missionary Society's involvement from 1823-1888, and the first European missionary, Charles Pittman, to settle on Rarotonga in 1827. The Cook Islands were part of the New Zealand colony from 1901-1965, which impacted expressive culture as a gradual changeover to Europeanization took place. Alexeyeff provides an interview with Jane Tararo and her dealings with dance and the impact of colonization, mobility, and femininity. Additionally, issues of tourism, culture, and revivalism from the 1970's-1998 was closely linked with the establishment of the Ministry of Cultural Development that attempted to "preserve…enhance the Cook Islands Cultural Heritage in order to uphold tradition…enrich cultural art forms…[and] maintain the unique cultural identity of the people of the Cook Islands" (54). Alexeyeff focuses on historical records with personal interviews and ethnographic research to create a more than adequate volume that traces the early to modern steps of expressive culture in the Cook Islands. Chapter two primarily focuses on the tourism industry in contemporary settings. The problem with tourism and dance is dependent on the observer and the performer, as native Cook Islanders want to maintain cultural identity without invalidating traditions. The older population is more likely to view tourism as a negative change for contemporary dance culture, while the younger generation views it as re-innovation. Chapter three investigates the relationship between femininity through dance and the Miss Cook Islands beauty pageant. This study analyzes the behavior of women with regards to morality, social obligations, and public performances. Throughout the book, Alexeyeff inserts poignant observations and critiques of comparable research, including alternatives to, and current limitations within, the data. The boundaries of normative genders and dance performance are contested with the analysis of a 1998 Drag Queen competition. The interrelated roles of men and women cross-dressing seem to be secondary in importance over "familial status and community maintenance" (114). Chapter five discusses the nightclub culture and musical activities in village centers. The nightclub etiquette of barmanning involves one person that dispenses small amounts of alcohol in a single cup and passes it around to a group of people. The practice of “outing,” or “going out,” which is the more familiar term for Westerners, mixes the same elements of drinking, dancing, and music familiar to Western audiences. Dancing From The Heart is as much about dancing as it is about social customs, order, and identity. The final chapter provides directions for the future outlook of Cook Islands dance activities and other expressive forms of culture. Dance is a medium with a variety of historic, political, religious, cultural, and gendered influences that have, and continue to shape its existence. At times, Dancing From The Heart reads like a diary of an ethnographer, which allows readers to learn about an understudied topic of dance culture in a very localized geographic area. The text does include a few Cook Islands Maori (Rarotongan) words, but they are used sparingly and defined effectively. It should be noted that complicated dance notation, otherwise known as “Labanotation,” is not used. Rather, the ethnographic and anthropological components related to dance and other expressive displays of performance are the primary themes of Dancing From The Heart. Lastly, the epilogue is an ode to Mamia's guidance and involvement throughout the text.

An appendix provides additional information on drum dances, action songs, chants and commemorative songs. Chapter notes, a glossary, extensive bibliography, and an index are included to help aid the reader in finding additional resources on the topic of Cook Island expressive culture. Overall, the Cook Islands have received much less “global” attention than other areas in the South Pacific, unlike Tahiti, Fiji, and Samoa. A smattering of black-and-white photographs, drawings, and maps provide additional clarifications accompanied with the text. All in all, this is an invaluable reference for undergraduate and graduate students interested in South Pacific cultural studies. However, anyone interested in learning about expressive culture and its affiliated components (i.e. gender, politics, sexuality, religion, etc.) should find Dancing From The Heart to be an informative and pleasurable read.

2009-11-29T14:23:00.000-08:00

Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States.

By Ari Kelman.

Berkeley: University of California Press, May 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-520-25573-9, $39.95. 304 pages.

Review by Elizabeth Whittenburg Ozment, University of Georgia

An important contribution to the study of radio and Jewish-American culture, Ari Kelman’s publication is the first detailed study of Yiddish Radio history in the United States. Kelman’s attention to the impact of media regulations on immigrant radio, and to the use of language as a powerful tool for cultural identification, is valuable. In particular, Kelman demonstrates how American Jews shared a common desire to connect with other Jews. Radio became their virtual community, using the Yiddish language as a boundary to separate insiders from outsiders.Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in the United States not only traces the rise of Yiddish radio, but also follows patterns of Jewish immigration, stratification of power among radio stations, twentieth-century American nationalism’s effect on the use of Yiddish in the United States, and the transformation of media outlets during times of war. The book is organized chronologically spanning the period from 1920 to 1980, and each chapter concentrates on a particular theme. The first theme is Jewish culture in the margin of the larger American culture. Religious traditions made Jewish radio different from mainstream American radio from the onset. Jewish customs and holidays impacted the days and times Yiddish radio could be broadcast, and what advertisements were appropriate for Jewish audiences. English language programming remained important to these stations, and broadcasters were constantly challenged by the English-Yiddish balancing act. The radio created a space for Jewish immigrants to maintain their religious cultural identity, while assimilating into English-American culture.

The second theme is the relationship between American nationalism and radio regulation. Although Yiddish radio communicated to a relatively small portion of the American population, immigration restrictions in the 1920s led to a push for English homogenization, causing Yiddish radio to appear as a threat to the national agenda. Broadcasters reacted to these threats by creating shows that encouraged assimilation. This prepares the book’s third theme: Jewish-American representation. Who were the Yiddish radio personalities? How did they describe themselves, what techniques did they use to connect with listeners, and how did their audiences respond? How did these radio personalities represent a Jewish-American identity? Yiddish radio listeners desired to hear people on the radio whom they could relate to, and who exhibited qualities they found in themselves. Kelman argues that Yiddish radio provided a framework from which American Jews could reflect upon and make choices about their identities.

Perhaps the most engaging theme in the book is the effect of World War II on Yiddish radio and the Jewish-American population. The Yiddish language allowed Jewish radio broadcasters to comment on World War II with more freedom than their English radio counterparts. Yiddish was especially symbolic during this time, aurally connecting American Jews to European Jews. These radio stations vigorously encouraged the purchase of war-bonds, which were equally symbolic as expressions of American patriotism with the intention of supporting European Jews. Radio personalities transformed listeners from passive audiences into activists who supported American efforts for Jewish causes.

Station Identification is a well-written product of intense archival research, and a significant addition to the history of Yiddish culture; however, for the ethnomusicologist and indeed for the general reader, something is lacking. The reader only experiences this history through Kelman’s voice. There are no transcriptions, and quotes from broadcasters or audiences are few, making the voices of Yiddish radio seem suppressed. For a book concerned with the verbal communication of a specific community, and their important linguistic codes, the absence of these texts is troubling. To the author’s credit, he does include the web addresses of the American Jewish Congress and the Yiddish Radio Project in the bibliography. Yiddish radio sound files from these sites truly complement Kelman’s book. In the endnotes, the author does reference recordings of radio shows, and directs the reader to audio streaming sites when available. But as the book stands, the reader must have an outward interest in searching for these sources in order to experience Yiddish radio in sound or text. Regardless of these criticisms, the book is an important contribution to Yiddish studies. The main themes will easily translate to pop-culture studies involving other immigrant communities, and ought to interest readers from a variety of disciplines.

2009-10-30T12:50:00.001-07:00

Performing Worlds into Being: Native American Women’s Theater.

Edited by Anne Elizabeth Armstrong, Kelli Lyon Johnson, and William A. Wortman.

Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, April 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1-4243-3112-3, $29.99. 186 pages.

Review by Megan Burnett, Alice Lloyd College, Kentucky

Entering this text is entering a theatrical world of Indigenous voices speaking words of truth, and a retelling, or rather, a re-knowing of Native American history. While the material in the text represents Native American Women’s theatre, the contributors offer the Native and non-native theatre practitioner feminist perspectives on materials chosen for performance as well as styles of Indigenous theatrical performance. This offering of the NAWPA collection make it clear that there are many opportunities for further exploration in academic and performance settings. The Native American Women Playwrights Archive was founded in 1997 as a “living archive by sponsoring readings, performances, and conferences” (iii). This volume is the representation of their third conference at Miami University (Oxford, OH) where the archive is kept. Performing Worlds into Being: Native American Women’s Theater is a fitting example of the work that NAWPA is doing to keep Native American theatre present and alive within both the academic and performance communities. The scholars, artists, and theatre practitioners represented in this book include Indigenous peoples from Canada, Mexico, Central and Caribbean America, and Pacific Islands.

A recurring theme throughout this text is that “storytellers are the rememberers” (75). All of the contributors explore this Native American cultural norm. Theatre and feminist literature scholars can turn to Section I: Looking Back, Looking Forward for a critique of Native American myths and legends. These stories are “known” to our current culture as they were told to us from a seventeenth-century European male perspective. This section re-examines the story of Pocahontas bringing her back to the truth of her tribe and the customs she honored and challenged. The keen analysis offered by scholars such as Jill Carter in “Blind Faith Remembers” brings an understanding of Native American theatre that has been lacking in the traditional theatre classroom. Section II: Honoring Spiderwoman Theater is a most invaluable section for those artists interested in creating their own work. This section is accompanied by a DVD with selections from Spiderwoman Theater’s performances and a photo archive of their extensive body of work. Section III: Voices offers concrete examples of play texts written by Native American women for an audience accustomed to the Western style of theatre presentation. The large number of script excerpts provides a broad perspective on Native theatre, bringing to light a voice in the world that has been squelched for decades and is still frequently ignored in the overall theatre community. Section IV: Community and Collaboration brings the discussion of theatre back to the community, whether professional, community, or educational, and offers interviews with theatre artists who have focused their careers on creating and presenting Native American work for the Native American audience and the broader North and Central American audiences in general.

Section 1: Looking Back, Looking Forward offers an attack on the past and the need to learn from the wounds of that past. These stories, including the story of Pocahontas and general awareness of Indians to most non-native peoples, was shaped by the perspective of seventeenth-century British working-class soldiers. Monique Mojica, Ric Knowles, and Jill Carter make their point clear that it is important to re-learn Native American history through the knowledge and history of the Nation tribes themselves, not the “white man’s” narrative anymore. Monique Mojica’s re-interpretation of Pocahontas’s story does not stop at fixing the romantic version told through storybooks and cartoons. She delves into the wounds of Native peoples and forces her audience to face them with her. “When we make a decision to create from a base of ancestral knowledge, we confront the rupture, the original wound” (3). While Mojica’s play Sky Woman Falling is offered in this text, her critically important play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots is not included. The critical analysis of the latter play, the real story of Pocahontas and of Mojica’s performance technique, would have been well served by offering this play either in the book or as a performance on the accompanying DVD. Many artists and scholars refer to Mojica’s play, Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots, throughout this book, so its inclusion would have been an added asset.

The Honoring Spiderwoman Theater section is valuable for its practical application for devising new work, the sharing of the history of the women involved in creating and sustaining this unique theater company, and samples of their work both in print and on the accompanying DVD. The information and techniques are useful for practitioners and for the theatre classroom. According to Murielle Borst in her essay “Spiderwoman Theater’s Legacy,” “the technique through which they combine storytelling, acting, and writing to create their kind of theater” is the main legacy of Spiderwoman Theater from which we can all benefit. Borst goes on to state, “Storytelling is a key aspect of Spiderwoman’s technique, whether traditional or non-traditional” (75). The artists in Spiderwoman Theater ignore the traditional Western style of theatre. Their performances are based on text written in response to events in their lives and expressed through traditional Indian storytelling techniques such as drumming circles, dance, and the aspect of spirituality in their text and stories. One concept explored by Marcie Rendon is the confusion of being white or Indian in her poem “What’s an Indian Woman to Do?” (58-59).

Section III: Voices includes several examples of Native American plays by women. Many reflect the Western Aristotelian model of theatre (plot, character, theme, spectacle, diction, music). These scripts open readers to the depth and breadth of NAWPA’s archival material. This section offers material that any Native American or non-native theatre company interested in telling the stories of Indigenous peoples could produce. This “normal” model of publishing houses selling the scripts and rights to perform plays is in contrast to material explored elsewhere in the text. Several of the artists, including Spiderwoman Theater and Monique Mojica, develop their own work with voices that are not necessarily meant to be spoken by other women. They create their own story for themselves to perform, not others.

Section IV: Collaboration and Community offers enlightening and useful interviews with working Native artists. “Theatre in the House/Raving Native Productions,” an essay by Marci Rendon, offers identifiable and reproducible techniques in playwrighting, rehearsing, character creation, and story creation in an educational as well as community center setting. This section beautifully reflects the overall premise of this collection, including the need to tell Indigenous stories, the desire to find universality, and the need to honor specificity of why these stories need to be told, shared, and saved. Many of the theatre practitioners in this section suggest a desire to wait to be invited by communities they wish to serve. They help those communities tell stories they are ready to share rather than forcing their story upon the community. Contrast this aesthetic to the authors and artists represented in earlier sections of this text, who take an activist feminist perspective. They explore the wounds they and their people have suffered for hundreds of years, and with guerilla theatre precision, force their audiences to face the truth with them.

2009-08-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage

By Barbara Wallace Grossman. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, February 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0809328826, $37.50. 344 pages.

Review by Hayley Wood, Massachusetts Humanities

Barbara Wallace Grossman has contributed an engaging biography of Clara Morris to the Theater in the Americas series published by Southern Illinois University Press. Written with crisp and down-to-earth prose, the book not only conveys the remarkable life of an acclaimed nineteenth-century actress, it also recreates the industry of the gas-lit, resident stock theatre company—already in its decline by the time Morris began her stage career at the age of fifteen as a lowly “ballet girl” for three dollars a week.

Clara Morris was known in her heyday as a virtuoso of the “emotional school” of acting, an aesthetic match with the popular contemporary plays of the day, many of which were French melodramas with complicated plots and maudlin, hysteria-prone female characters. The actress, who excelled in summoning real tears and moving audiences with a blend of emotional realism and choreographed movements, honed her signature roles, all “victims of social usage.”

It will not surprise readers that Morris rose to prominence from an extremely poor and lonely childhood, the painstakingly researched (and puzzling) details of which Grossman records with care, noting all remaining uncertainties and using several sources besides Morris’s diaries, memoirs, and autobiographical fiction. Born in Toronto to a house servant and a man later discovered to be a bigamist, Morris knew little ease or joy as a young child. Her early life with her mother was marked by several moves to homes in which she was expected to remain quiet and unobtrusive—she experienced no security beyond the lifelong bond of mother and daughter (Morris’s mother lived with her until she died in her nineties). Getting a job at the Academy of Music in Cleveland signaled a dramatic upswing in the lives of Clara Morris and her mother.

Moving relatively quickly from playing chorus and dancing parts to being a stand-in for leading lady roles, Morris stayed with the Cleveland company for seven years. She advanced to a “leading business” position in a Cincinnati company, and from there, at the age of 22, moved on to the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, run with talent, care and a despotic level of control by Augustin Daly. Here she emerged in her career’s signature role as Cora the vengeful Creole in Article 47, in which her “descent into raving madness” seduced audiences and critics, cementing her reputation as an actress skilled at depicting acute emotional and physical pain.

Clara Morris’s decline—caused by chronic pain, morphine addiction, and an unhappy marriage—was long, public and painful, although her persistence as an actress and a writer was remarkable. Chronicling with intelligence and compassion both Morris’s satisfying hard work and success as well as her decline into poverty and illness, Grossman masterfully weaves details from Morris’s large body of work, which includes six books of fiction, three memoirs, countless newspaper articles, and her fifty-four-volume diary. A Spectacle of Suffering is a great read and a reminder of the treasure trove that a faithfully kept diary can be. It doesn’t hurt if that diary records the life of a famous stage actress whose arc of life resembles the American dream in both its promise and disenchantment.

2009-07-16T14:57:00.001-07:00

Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion

Edited by Naomi Jackson and Toni Shapiro-Phim. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, December 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0810861497, $65. 416 pages.

Review by Kirstin L. Ellsworth, California State University, Dominguez Hills

How do we incorporate dance into discussions of human rights in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? A significant part of the question that informs Jackson’s and Shapiro-Phim’s carefully edited collection is the extent to which the query has remained largely under-examined. Dance historians and critics have generated an extensive body of literature on the aesthetic and performative contexts of modern and contemporary dance. However, Jackson and Shapiro-Phim are the first to focus the investigation so cohesively on the political implications of movement. Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion investigates the role of dance as a medium for expressing human rights by way of a global perspective that incorporates voices, performances, and cultural contexts typically absent in western-dominated narratives. Jackson and Shapiro-Phim also extend the definition of dance beyond traditional classical or modernist criteria to include folk, therapeutic, and other forms. The result is a ground-breaking anthology that repositions understandings of the fundamental ways in which the dancer’s body serves a range of human rights agendas from the oppressive to the corporate-controlled, nationalist, and liberatory.

Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion is organized into four sections; contributors to each include dancers, choreographers, critics, historians, and human rights activists. Jackson’s and Shapiro’s decision to include academic essays alongside personal anecdotes allows for a richly textured and accessible collection. “Regulatory Moves” examines the use of mandatory state dance as a means for repressive socio-political control. Case studies range from analysis of Minzu Wudao anticommunist mass dance performances in Taiwan in the 1950s, to Joseph Mobutu’s brutally enforced Animation Politique dances in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1970s. “Choreographing Human Rights” addresses the staging of performances such as Barro Rojo Arte Escénico’s El Camino that enact through dance the torture and abuses experienced in the history of El Salvador. Choreographer-dancers including Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, survivor of the Pol Pot Regime in Cambodia, illuminate the ways a single dance inscribes a tragic history while seeking to gain closure from the past. Authors in “Healing, Access, and the Experience of Youth” document the use of dance as therapy with children and young people who have witnessed violence in Haiti, Serbia, and the Sudan, or have experienced the power of dancing with physical disabilities. “Kinetic Transgressions” documents dance in social justice causes from Mall Dances in conjunction with the AIDS quilt to the cueca sola, a dance created by women under Pinochet’s dictatorship that transforms the national cueca dance into the “cueca of solitude.” In the cueca sola, still performed as a protest against social abuse of power today, a single woman from the Association of the Detained and Disappeared dances alone, emphasizing the absence of a husband, son, father, or other male taken during Pinochet’s regime.

Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion asks readers to re-evaluate the power of dance as a staged form of resistance. In the process, contributors also reveal in more subtle ways the complexity of defining human rights. If we accept Jackson’s and Shapiro-Phim’s premise that control of the body is at the basis of human rights, the role of dance in assessing the past and regulating the future is critical, thus making Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion of interest to an audience much broader than just those interested in the performing arts.

2009-06-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Chinese Street Opera in Singapore

By Tong Soon Lee. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, January 2009. Cloth:
ISBN 978-0252032462, $40. 232 pages.

Review by Justin Patch, University of Texas, Austin

The small city-state of Singapore is both politically and culturally unique in South Asia. It has a history as the trade gateway between South East and East Asia before and throughout its colonial period, and as such has long been a cosmopolitan site. Following its independence from colonial power Great Britain, Singapore was briefly part of Malaysia before seceding and becoming autonomous. This then began an ongoing nation-building process which has been heavily influenced by the drive to be a modern nation by Western definition and affective ex-patriot ties to China. This situation is unique among recent post-colonial movements because it combines separation from a colonizing nation with explicit affective and cultural ties to a kind of “parent nation.” Singapore’s continuing transformation bears the marks of its racial makeup of an ethnically Chinese majority (75% in 2005), followed by Indian, Malay, and European minorities, and includes struggles over language, political power, public culture, and artistic expression.

Tong Soon Lee takes up the pivotal role of Chinese Street Opera, a performance practice that has existed in Singapore since at least the mid-19th century, in the complex development of Singaporean modernity. His monograph, Chinese Street Opera in Singapore, focuses on two different, competing performance traditions: that of professionals and that of amateur groups or clubs. These two practices vary greatly in performance practice, context, and social discourse. In Singapore’s post-colonial modernizing process, professional opera has progressively withered, with the exception of specifically patronized temple performances around religious holidays, while amateur opera proliferated and has become a signifier of Singapore-ness as well as a state-sponsored cultural and tourist activity. Much of this owes to the social position of performers of both traditions – professionals being poorly educated and of a low class, and amateurs being middle- to upper-class and well educated – and to Confucian aesthetics, which place value on arts performed for personal development and communal edification. These aesthetics dovetail with the Singaporean government’s ideal of citizenship – well-educated, altruistic, cultured, and with a sense of history. In this case, Chinese opera -- even when modified to accommodate modern Singaporean populations, like stories from the Ramayana and English recitative, as is sometimes the case with modern performances -- is representative of high and profound artistic tradition. This resonance has resulted in government-funded opportunities for amateur troops to perform for their communities and tourists and provided them with state recognition. It has effectively sidelined professional performers, reinforced their low status, and closed off important venues for transcending their low social class.

The book begins with a brief history of Singapore and Chinese emigration, as well as an overview of Chinese operatic style and development, with particular attention paid to Fujian and Chouzhou, the two dominant styles in Singapore. It then moves on to describe the histories of both professional opera and amateur performances through the myriad social transformations that Singapore has gone through over the past century and a half. Lee also includes brief ethnographic sections, an in-depth analysis of the impact of Confucian aesthetics on Singaporean Opera performance discourse, and the most social theory-laden chapter in the book, which is the conclusion. Organized into six short chapters and written in narrative style, Street Opera presents both a good thumbnail overview of the music culture of opera as well as in-depth looks at recent developments in the two genres and changing performance practice and discourse.

This particular book’s most important contribution to the field of study is the excellent chapter on the impact of Confucian aesthetics. Lee lucidly summarizes Confucian teachings on self-improvement, the value of altruistic and avocational artistic pursuits, and the links between the social organization of Chinese clan associations and their modern incarnation as amateur opera groups. The growth of these clubs also coincides with the massive economic growth experienced by Singapore in the decades after independence. With increased prosperity, patronage of amateur troops in the form of subscriptions and donations grew, enabling the staging of elaborate and ornate shows. Even though the talent of the hobbyists could not rival that of professional troupes, may of whom have trained full-time since late childhood for operatic performance (this is the primary reason for their poor education), these productions have gained a privileged place in social life because of their appeal to Confucian aesthetics, which were adopted by the state. By these aesthetics, art and artistic involvement is best done as a serious hobby, art for contemplation and its altruistic display for the greater public good. Art and performance that is aimed at the open market and done for profit is deemed less worthy, as are its practitioners who must compromise artistic pursuit for popular appeal. As a result, these groups are seen to embody the ideal Singaporean.

While the book is an enjoyable read and historically well-researched, there are a few holes that leave relevant considerations untouched. Lee leaves the public hegemony of ex-patriot Chinese culture unquestioned in regard to minority populations. Although he gives ample reason as to why amateur opera and its Confucian ideals appeal to the state, he does not interrogate the blanketing of Singaporean citizenship in what are essentially imported values that are openly associated with China or the appropriations of Western notions of citizenship. He also does not provide detailed description of the types of amalgamations that occur and the cultural politics of these hybrid forms and appropriations, especially in relation to the incorporation of Hindu lore into Chinese opera, the thought of which is extremely interesting. The structure of the book is also unexpected, as the theory chapter is saved for last. While this does leave room for the reader to process the given information first before encountering Lee’s conclusions, it leaves the frame of the book, especially the relevance of tourism in the creation of national identity, vague. However, for a student of the de- and re-territorialization of Chinese culture, both in performance and philosophically, and of Singaporean nationalism, this book is extremely relevant and accessible to non-musicians.

2009-04-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

Performing Class in British Popular Music

By Nathan Wiseman-Trowse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-230-21949-6, $75.00. 216 pages.

Review by Christopher Malone, Northeastern State University

Perhaps the hardest lesson that a materialist approach to culture has to teach us concerns our habits of consumption. What we like or dislike, our sense of things being true, good, and authentic: these intuitive responses to the world (and the marketplace) seem most intimately our own. But these responses are shaped by socio-economic and discursive forces as much as the objects of culture that elicit these responses. If marketing executives trust the power of culture to shape these habits and perceptions in consumers, it is difficult all the same to think about the naturalness of our affections as being caught up in such discursive processes.

In his book Performing Class in British Popular Music, Nathan Wiseman-Trowse examines these processes as they shape the way audiences register the authenticity of a work of pop music. He argues that part of what makes us respond to a song or artist as genuine or “real” has to do with representations of class, not only in the lyrical content of the song but in the entire “rock discourse” that surrounds it. One recent barometer for measuring this concerns the chart battle in the mid-1990s between Oasis and Blur. “The simple story of two competing young British bands trying to outmanoeuvre each other” (1) turned into a kind of “class war” in the British media. Much was made in the press of how Blur came from the suburban Essex town of Colchester, while Oasis originated in working-class Manchester. Competition between the bands was styled in terms that have a long history in British popular music: working-class authenticity and middle-class artistry.

Wiseman-Trowse’s approach to class here does not involve analysis of actual class positions in a socio-economic sense. Rather class identity is construed as a “relatively mobile form of subjectivity that can be invoked through cultural texts such as popular music” (5). What this means is that audiences, regardless of their socio-economic background, may participate in class identities as they become “sutured” into the outlooks and attitudes conveyed in popular music. How this occurs depends not only on the content of specific songs, or the biographies of artists themselves, but also in the way songs and performers are taken up in “rock discourse.” The effects of marketing and promotion, media portrayals, music videos, fan culture, as well as the history of popular music itself and its “accumulation of textual values across time and space”(5), all comprise a discourse that shapes representations of class and allows audiences to identify with and register the authenticity of popular music.

Drawing from the work of Judith Butler and her performative theory of gender, Wiseman-Trowse goes beyond a model of class understood in deterministic relationship with economic circumstances. Just as Butler critiques certain feminist discourse for assigning a priori roles, actions, and attitudes to the category of womanhood, this study points to the limits of the formulation that “working-class kids produce working class music.” Instead, popular music provides a range of “performative class positions that are proffered through the textual moment” (70).

To speak of the performative nature of rock authenticity means to consider the network of values which give meaning to actions or texts, not just in public discourse but also in the “private” subjectivity of the artist herself. Wiseman-Trowse illustrates this with the example of Richey James (Edwards), guitarist with Manic Street Preachers, and his encounter with a journalist who questioned his band’s authenticity in the press. Edwards took out a razorblade and etched “4 REAL” into his arm. This act of carving authenticity into his arm connects James with “a performative vocabulary that speaks of his authenticity as he performs it” (59). That is, in the words of one critic Wiseman-Trowse cites, “the act is private but has public consequences; the sign is authentic but archly so, calling attention to itself as an artificial statement as it declares its reality” (59).

Of course there is a contradiction inherent in these signifying processes representing class. The authenticity that rock discourse generates—which artists self-reflectively or unconsciously deploy, and into which audiences are in various ways drawn—actually masks what popular music is: an industrialized form that grants the oppositional character and authenticity of pop performers in the first place. It is a contradiction that Wiseman-Trowse carefully explores throughout the history of British popular music.

The scope of the study is broad, as much as it focuses on specific case studies. Wiseman-Trowse offers an overview of the “folk voice” in British culture, and how it came to articulate not “the voice of the people,” but an oppositional idiom deployed to resist commercialism and middle-class values. The first case study considers the conflation of this folk voice with rock music, and how the organic nature of folk performance was supplanted by a sense of authenticity generated through unmediated acoustic performance that came to embody a romantic ideal in opposition to industrialism.

The second case study examines the British punk movement, complicating the popular media portrayal of this music as belonging to the working-class youth. Wiseman-Trowse explores the evolution of punk, the different ways punk engaged its representations in the media, and how it consistently constructed its own values of authenticity in dialogue with and in opposition to rock discourse. He also considers how the genre affirms working-class solidarity, while at the same maintaining a masculine character, the implications of which comment on the values circulating within rock discourse.

While this work does not pretend to be exhaustive in its approach to British popular music, its theoretical implications are far-reaching. Scholars exploring the significance of American popular music, for instance, particularly issues of audience reception, will find much of interest in this study. Performing Class in British Popular Music is a work that considers the “text” of popular music on multiple interpretive horizons, not only at the levels of lyrical content, artist biography, and performance, but also the ever-shifting discursive contexts surrounding and shaping popular music.

2009-04-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance

Edited by Chad Berry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, August 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-252-03353-7, $65.00; paper: 978-0-252-07557-5, $24.95. 232 pages.

Review by Sara Boslaugh

When you think “country music,” what American cities come first to mind? Most likely Nashville, followed perhaps by Branson or Bakersfield, with Chicago way down the list if it comes up at all. And yet Chicago was a center of country music in the genre’s formative years and played a crucial role in popularizing the country sound to a broad audience. An important aspect of this influence was the radio program The National Barn Dance (NBD), a variety show including string bands, singers, and comedy sketches, which began broadcasting on WLS from Chicago on April 19, 1924 and remained on the air until 1969.

NBD launched the career of many popular country musicians, including Gene Autry and Patsy Montana. Bill Monroe also made his professional debut as a square dancer on the show, which was recorded live before an audience at Chicago’s Eighth Street Theatre. NBD served as the model for the WSM Barn Dance (now The Grand Ole Opry), which began broadcasting from Nashville the following year. Ironically, while nearly everyone has heard of The Grand Ole Opry, its predecessor has largely faded from public memory.

Reclaiming that lost heritage is the goal of the essays in The Hayloft Gang: The Story of the National Barn Dance, edited by Chad Berry, director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College. Some of the essays stick close to the topic implied by the title and trace the programming, economic history, and other aspects of the program. Others venture farther afield, discussing broader cultural aspects of country music.

Paul Tyler and Wayne W. Daniels remain close to the source as they trace the history of NBD: Tyler covers the program from its origins in 1924 through the 1930’s in “The Rise of Rural Rhythm,” while Daniel’s “Music of the Postwar Era” picks up the story from the 1940’s through the station’s demise in 1969. Both essays are loaded with information and together create a convincing picture of the program and its place in American culture of the period. Lisa Krissoff Boehm discusses the importance of the city of Chicago in the popularization of country music in “Chicago as Forgotten Country Music Mecca,” while Susan Smulyan places NBD in the context of a young but rapidly-growing radio industry in “Early Broadcasting and Radio Audiences.”

Michael T. Bertrand, in “Race and Racial Identity,” argues that NBD was one among a number of contemporary radio programs that promoted the benefits of traditional rural culture against what some saw as threatening aspects of modern life, including urbanization and new styles of music. He also notes that blackface performers appeared on NBD as they did on many radio programs of the period, and that “minstrelsy” touring acts were popular as well. Kristine M. McKusker traces patriarchal attitudes, as exemplified by NBD programming, as well as other aspects of contemporary culture in “Patriarchy and the Great Depression.” In “Cowboys in Chicago,” Don Cusic takes a look at an obvious question, yet one I can’t recall having been addressed previously: how did the image of the cowboy come to be identified with country music, and why did rural southern performers frequently adopt western stage personas? For example, Ruby Blevins of Arkansas became “Patsy Montana” and as such sold over a million copies of her hit song “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” Cusic argues that the cowboy was a wholesome, all-American image that replaced that of the less attractive and less marketable hillbilly. Finally, in “The National Folk Festival,” Michael Ann Williams looks at the relationship between the National Folk Festival (begun in 1934) and NBD.

If Chicago and country music seem to go together like chalk and cheese, consider two powerful cultural myths debunked by several authors in this collection. One is the commonly-accepted “creation myth” of country music, which places its origins entirely in the South; the other is the popular image of Chicago as a haven for crooked politicians, gangsters, and jazz. Both are oversimplifications: Paul Tyler convincingly argues that country music is more rural than exclusively southern, and Lisa Krissoff Boehm makes the case that Chicago was a diverse city which included many rural people who migrated there for employment; it’s not surprising that they brought their musical tastes with them. Furthermore, Chicago was the headquarters of Sears and Roebuck, who owned WLS at the time (the call letters stand for “World’s Largest Store”), a company which understood that rural and small-town America constituted an important source of customers for their catalogue sales.

Overall, the essayists did an admirable job, often working with a dearth of available materials: although the show was broadcast for 4 ½ hours weekly, the main source of recordings is the one-hour national broadcasts carried by NBC, and these were not representative of the program as a whole. A greater problem, treated less effectively, is that it’s impossible to determine who was listening to the program, or why: assumptions can be made, extrapolating from statements by station management and the type of programming included, but they must remain speculative. True, listeners did write to the station, revealing their tastes and preferences, but these form what social scientists call a self-selected sample. There’s no way to know if attitudes expressed by people who chose to write letters to the station (or make telephone calls, or send telegraphs) were representative of the broader listenership; modern survey research suggests just the opposite.

Other readers will no doubt take issue with other specific points included in one or more of the essays in The Hayloft Gang, but together they present a variety of viewpoints on NBD and form a valuable addition to the history of radio and of country music.

2009-02-11T14:48:00.000-08:00

Black Feminism in Contemporary Drama

By Lisa M. Anderson. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN 9780252032288, $35.00. 142 pages.

Review by Elizabeth Johnson, Governors State University, Illinois

In Black Feminism in Contemporary Drama, Lisa Anderson gives a history of black feminism in the United States from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries and what role black feminism plays in the lives of women today. Anderson, an associate professor in women’s studies and theatre at Arizona State University, looks at the position of theorists, artists, and black feminist aesthetic to critique fourteen plays by black playwrights. Few books explore the development and principles of black women's plays and feminism; therefore, both academicians and thespians will find Anderson’s book valuable. Black female playwrights’ work is for the most part hidden from mainstream attention, and the critique of black feminist theatrical dramas is almost nonexistent (13).

How does one critique black feminist drama? Anderson explains that she examined each play by how they bring to light histories that have remained buried in dominant society. Such burials hide the challenges to the lives of young women today. Anderson’s descriptors and dissection of the characters in each of the plays allows the reader to truly visualize the image of black women’s pains, joys, hurdles, and triumphs throughout the history of the U.S. Anderson shows that black feminist dramas are not only instructing and entertaining viewers, but more importantly, provoking the audience to conscious action. Readers should be moved to consciously act on communicating awareness they’ve gained regarding the complex lives of African American women in American society, past and present. Students of theatre can benefit from the primary and secondary sources of the first, second, and third waves of feminist movements, which positioned women as speaking subjects in the theater as opposed to just submissive objects for visual consumption. Anderson’s concept of black feminist aesthetic involves the image of black women, the history of black women across the diaspora, violence against black women, homophobic fears and alienation, and other identities (14). Anderson investigates nine black female playwrights through the foundation of black feminist scholars and helps the reader understand how these playwrights all had a range of components that constitute black feminist drama. A few of these components are: confronting racist imaging of black men, abuses that black women suffer at the hands of all men of all races, the importance of reproductive freedom for black women, oral folk or oral culture, and the impact of institutional racism.

Anderson does what few works of scholarship have attempted: she exposes the commonalities in plays that tackle black feminism and black nationalism. Anderson is very successful in showing how the plays were situated, constructed, shaped, and informative of the politics of black feminism. The playwrights Anderson selected represent different writing styles; this serves as a strong asset for the book. The major strength of this book is showing how black female identities can be and are reinvented to exclude negative stereotypes but still are impacted by race, class, and gender oppression.

The first playwright examined is Pearl Cleage and three of her plays. The dramatic review of these plays all shared the obstacles that black women faced in the late 1880s, 1930s, and 1960s. The next playwrights are Breena Clarke and Glena Dickerson, for their play Re/Membering Aunt Jemima: A Menstrual Show. This play is examined as a parody of minstrel shows, commingling recent and contemporary contacts with historical ones (53). For example, the story of how plantation miscegenation during enslavement was political for the offspring, is commingled with the tragic life of mulatto actress Dorothy Dandridge, whose acting career was hampered by her neither “black enough” nor, because of her black blood, “white enough.” Most importantly, this play shows the complexity of womanhood, and how black women are dishonored, through the main character Aunt J (Aunt Jemima). Three plays by Suzan-Lori Park, a new up-and-coming artist, are explored: Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Venus: A Play, and In the Blood. Anderson gives a dramatic commentary on the victimization of women in each play.

The chapter “Signifying Black Lesbians: Dramatic Speculations,” as its title indicates, counters the general tendency to keep the history of black lesbian and gay history buried. The last playwrights in this chapter, Kia Corthron and Shirley Holmes, self-identify as lesbians. Their plays tackle sexual orientation and acceptance/rejection within the black community. Anderson makes known how identification as a black lesbian is political, and black lesbians’ relationships are often challenged: they are often considered not truly black and at the same time not truly lesbian, because acceptance of such lifestyles is (questionably) viewed as a white, middle-class issue (98). This chapter may be for many an eye-opener, as it promotes understanding the history of black lesbian identity in the black community, which for the most part was invisible in black plays until the 1960s (97). The plays selected, overall, are a valuable addition to the field of black feminist theatrical criticism because they bring to readers’ attention the works of a number of overlooked black feminist playwrights and provide a language to recognize and discuss black feminist drama (126).

2009-02-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

Delta Blues: The Life and Times of The Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

By Ted Gioia. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-393-06258-8, $27.95; also available on Amazon.com’s Kindle, $9.95. 448 pages.

Review by Timothy J. O’Brien, University of Houston

Music lovers and researchers have long been fascinated with the mystery and imagery of the blues. The story of Delta bluesman Robert Johnson’s going to the crossroads and selling his soul to the devil in exchange for a superior talent to play the blues is the primary blues myth. Decades after his death, the public fascination with Johnson translated into Grammy awards, sales of over a million copies of the boxed set of his music, movies, and numerous books. Robert Johnson and his legend became the most profitable commodity in blues music. All the attention is focused on a performer who only lived twenty-seven years and recorded less than thirty songs. Despite the enormous posthumous popularity of Johnson, very little is known about his life.An understanding of the Mississippi Delta region and its musicians is necessary to contextualize Johnson’s role in blues history. Although Gioia’s book does not add any details to Johnson’s biography, it excels in sketching a broader picture of the musicians’ lives and the music of the region. Gioia begins by setting out the origins and history of the music. In an early chapter he explains the success and significance of W.C. Handy and blues women Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and others. Discussions of the environment of the blues such as plantations and Parchman prison further set the stage for the musicians’ lives. After filling out the cultural context and the formulation of the music, Gioia organizes his study by biographies of both popular and lesser-known blues figures.

Although the book does not have a thesis, the title argues that the subject musicians were responsible for revolutionizing American music. The author allows that the absence of definitive data in many facets of the Delta blues necessarily permits numerous interpretations of the material that is available.

Early on there are warning signs that Gioia will engage in hyperbole. For example, he sets out unsupported assertions that the Delta blues hold “second place to none” and “possess the deepest roots of all” (5). The book does not contrast or compare Delta blues with blues from any other region, so the reader is left to take those declarations on faith. However, for the most part, Gioia refrains from objectifying and romanticizing his topic.

The sources are mostly secondary, but Gioia did conduct some archival research at the Library of Congress. The relative scarcity of original research is supplemented by in-depth interviews with the leading researchers in the field. Gioia’s knowledge of the topic, and his smooth and engaging prose, are also strengths. In addition to digging deep into the existing scholarship, he listens hard to the music, searching for answers and meanings in the lyrics. He steers clear of jargon, complex academic theories, and technical music terms, which makes the volume accessible to a general audience. At times he reverts to a conversational or thinking-out-loud writing style that invites the reader to join him in looking for answers as he sifts through the evidence.

Gioia devotes a whole chapter to examining and reviewing Johnson’s life and the myths that surround it. He runs into the same barricades earlier researchers encountered. With so little known about Johnson, what can a writer add? Gioia settles for reviewing and analyzing the research and theories of Mack McCormick, David Evans, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Elijah Wald, and others. Gioia notes McCormick’s claim that he found Robert Johnson’s supposed killer but was unable to get McCormick to disclose the name. The chapter includes a concise look at Johnson’s influences and examines his songs and their themes. After weighing and discussing the theories and myth surrounding Johnson’s life, Gioia takes the position that the deal at the crossroads “may have never happened” (168). He ultimately comes to the conclusion that researchers are unlikely to ever solve the mysteries of Johnson’s life.

The limitations of the Delta-centric view of the blues show up in the chapter on the blues revival. Gioia notes Samuel Charters’s book The Country Blues “as a signal event in the history of the music” (351). However, he fails to note Charters’s 1959 rediscovery and recording of Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins, a Texas bluesman, and its importance in kicking off the blues revival. Instead, Gioia skips ahead to the rediscovery of the Delta blues men Ishmon Bracey and John Hurt in 1963.

It is commonly recognized that the blues impacted American music, and that the Mississippi masters whom Gioia examines were important blues artists. He never does quite flesh out the title statement that these masters revolutionized American music. He needs to connect the dots. Although he begins to develop this argument in the chapter on Muddy Waters, more evidence and examples would have strengthened his study. For example, merely listing famous musicians like Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, Bonnie Raitt, and Carlos Santana who credited John Lee Hooker’s music is not enough. Gioia should explain how that Mississippi master influenced their art. That quibble aside, this is a solid contribution to the literature. It synthesizes a century of the blues and expands and updates Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues, the gold standard for Delta blues scholarship.

2008-12-14T16:49:00.001-08:00

From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s. By Flannery Burke. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, May 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-7006-1579-7, $34.95. 232 pages.

Review by Hilary Iris Lowe, University of Kansas

Flannery Burke’s From Greenwich Village to Taos examines the circle of artists, writers, and political agitators who interacted with Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos, New Mexico. In addition to those who Mabel Dodge (as Burke chooses to call her) lured to Taos from Greenwich Village, Harlem, and Italy, Burke investigates the New Mexicans whom Dodge encountered when she left New York. With chapters that focus on several famous characters who either visit or play a role in creating Dodge’s Taos salon, Burke recreates the complicated world that Dodge found and loved in Taos. Burke explores how these individuals negotiated the central ideals of Modernism while devoting themselves to their vision of New Mexico as a place that held spiritual, creative, and political opportunities. Burke’s most important contribution to the study of these famous men and women—all but one have been studied in detail before—is that she considers for the first time how they functioned on a day-to-day basis in New Mexico. She delves into how the “outsiders” allied themselves with local causes and populations. Most significantly, she uncovers, through local primary sources, the complicated ways that local Hispano and Taos Pueblo populations responded to and managed Dodge and her circle.
With individual chapters on Dodge, John Collier, Nina Otero-Warren, Carl Van Vechten, Tony Lujan, Mary Austin, D.H. Lawrence, and Georgia O’Keeffe, it is hardly possible to summarize effectively the contents of Burke’s study. This breadth is both an asset and a shortcoming for the text. Several subjects deserve more time and a couple might have been left out to create a tighter focus for the book. The study is strongest when Burke concentrates on those individuals who were closest to Dodge or who were most interested in the relationship between modernism and the celebration of primitivism. Her chapter on the correlation between Mabel Dodge’s patronage of Pueblo artists and Carl Van Vechten’s patronage of African American artists (such as Langston Hughes) highlights elements of Dodge and Van Vechten’s work in comparison. Burke carefully reconstructs their conversations about the artistic communities they patronized. Each argued that the communities that interested them were the most authentically American, because as Burke puts it, they “were obsessed with authenticity” (7). This resoundingly competitive strain of advocacy allows Burke to define and explore the primitivism to which Van Vechten and Dodge were committed. Unfortunately, much of Burke’s exploration of these ideas happens in footnotes. Dodge’s advocacy for Taos Pueblo was limited by the idealized primitive egalitarian life she imagines there. Her patronage verged on historic preservation; for example, she campaigned to keep electricity and modern conveniences out of the pueblo, despite bringing them to her own estate on former Taos Pueblo land.
Burke’s chapter on Tony Lujan is also groundbreaking. Because Lujan “was functionally illiterate, “his important role in the commercial development of Taos as an artists’ colony has been largely overlooked by historians” (115). Scholars have long perceived Lujan as merely Dodge’s husband rather than an active agent in her circle. Burke explores his history in a chapter that carefully parses what readers may know about Lujan from Dodge’s letters on his behalf, from accounts of his nights out with Van Vechten in Harlem, and importantly from a few interviews with family members. Because Lujan often led tours for Dodge’s visitors, including John and Lucy Collier, D.H. Lawrence, and Georgia O’Keeffe, he was the first official guide through which they came to see New Mexico. His vision of Taos and the surrounding area profoundly influenced how these “outsiders” came to understand and develop their own desert aesthetic. Through interviews with Lujan’s nephews and niece, readers will be able to see for the first time an account of Lujan as part of a larger family, and as a local employer, landowner, and businessman. It also becomes clearer how his complicated relationship with Dodge separated him from Taos Pueblo and, at the same time, gave him power over the individuals in that community whom he chose to employ at the pair’s estate (122).
Strangely, for a book about place, Burke makes very little of Taos as a tangible place and only barely touches on the homes that Dodge, Austin, and O’Keeffe, in particular, made there. Individual homes are rarely mentioned; if readers are interested, for instance, in the estate that Lujan and Dodge built, they will find a much better account of it in Lois Rudnick’s biography of Dodge and her Utopian Vistas: Mabel Dodge Luhan’s House and the American Counter Culture. Burke does not focus on the physical places of New Mexico. Her exploration of Dodge’s place is largely limited to place as a political and social construction. She carefully articulates the ways that Dodge, Collier, Nina Otero-Warren, and Austin locate themselves within the complicated “tri-ethnic trap” of Anglo, Indian, and Hispano Taos and Santa Fe. Burke also carefully explores the complex and exclusionary world that white women made for themselves in New Mexico when they decided to call it “home” (135-144).
From Greenwich Village to Taos will be most useful to scholars interested in the study of American Modernism. They will find Burke’s work an important counter-narrative about where and how ideas about modernism were worked out. Taos—and its very particular cultural history—was an important and interactive laboratory for modern artists, thinkers, and writers.

2008-11-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era. By Richard Iton. New York: Oxford UP, June 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-19-517846-3, $29.95. 416 pages. Review by Debbie Clare Olson, Oklahoma State University
from SJC post 2 (10/13/08)

Richard Iton traces the complex connections between black popular culture, black political landscapes, the Diaspora, and black identity within the context of socially entrenched racism and the pursuit of the American ideal. He examines the question of a post-civil rights modernity and the “progressive assumptions and hierarchical designs” (14) within its relation to blackness, popular culture, and politics. The concept of the fantastic, for Iton, lives in the “joints” of the “politics/popular culture matrix” (17) and functions to disturb dominant power structures and traditional thinking within a society whose notions of modernity are determined by the exclusion of non-whites from any meaningful participation in both the public sphere and the political. Iton argues that the anxiety about African American exceptionalism framed the actual domains of post-civil rights political activity and cultural expression, which are united in a multitude of intricate ways (13). For Iton, the desire to assimilate into mainstream spaces entails “accepting alienation and subordination as the price of the ticket” (13).
The book begins with the Red Scare era (1945-1965) within black popular culture and the efforts to form a black identity that paralleled the “borders and ambitions of the modern American project” (28). Iton offers an in-depth look at the negotiations of Adam Clayton Powell, Paul Robeson, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and many others, with the fear of being blacklisted or deemed a “red” during a time of heavy American propaganda intended to persuade an overseas audience that race relations in the US were harmonious and affable. In response to questions of contradiction between the US fight for democracy and its Jim Crow practices, the US government took advantage of the popularity of Jazz to export a black image that would quell any ideas of American domestic divisiveness. For the US, the Jazz ambassadors, including Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, played an important role in shaping foreign opinions about US race relations, which in turn bolstered the US political image abroad. Iton argues that this government-controlled exportation of Jazz served to create a black identity that charmed non-domestic audiences yet did not follow the radical “diasporic paths” set out by Paul Robeson, Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and others. Iton draws important cultural connections between Franz Fanon, the overseas Jazz tours, Aime Cesaire, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and other iconic black artisans, extending into the Cold War era and beyond to shape the current black political landscape.
The Cold War era, Iton argues, marked a shift in cultural pressures to separate formal politics from popular culture and creative expression. He examines black popular support for artists during the Red Scare and how that support broke along class lines. Support for Paul Robeson, as for W.E.B. du Bois, for instance, was heaviest among the working class while the black middle class were reluctant to oppose any government attempts at censorship. Such breaks in class lines of support for those who extended their artistic space into the political space continued throughout the Cold War era. Examples of such resistance include Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, who were active in opposing government attempts at censorship while fighting for more dignified roles for black actors.
The notion of the political becomes central to the spaces within which, Iton argues, the black identity operates. From the Civil Rights movement, Pan Africanism, the Harlem Renaissance to Reggae, Hip Hop, and Rap, what defines the “political” is important to black mobilization in light of the dominant cultural conception of a politics-of-exclusion based on the subaltern spaces whites perceive as inhabited by blacks. For instance, Iton calls out Hip Hop’s reference to poor black communities as “fabulous,” as such references in popular culture tend to render the economically disadvantaged “invisible” (170). For Iton, key to the struggle for black political inclusion are the intersections between black aesthetics, identities, and the black public sphere to generate a political landscape that challenges and destabilizes the dominant hegemonic notion of politics. But according to Iton, this challenge, instead of bringing autonomy to the black political sphere, makes “hegemonic” the notion of a politics that rejects cultural spaces and, in opposition, works to continue and reinforce colonial and hierarchical norms within the “constructions and expressions of contemporary black politics.” Such cultural expression merely appear as resistance but rather function to reinforce attitudes of black difference that work to continue the politics of exclusion. Iton believes that the cultural and political “silence” on coloniality is a result of its internalization in order to achieve a “modernity” that is sustainable both inside and outside the borders of blackness (287).
Though Iton provides a unique and wide-sweeping probe into the historical and social complexities of black cultural/political matrices, much of the scope of his analysis is lost to an overabundance of unnecessarily dense language. So much so, that the chapters rather lack meaningful connections between them, thus impeding any sense of a chronological trajectory, and blinding his historical vision within a fog of academese. Jargon aside, his study does flesh out a number of interesting questions about how a cultural identity can be articulated through its aesthetic expressions, yet still be unconsciously enfolded into the dominant political arena contrary to its perceived resistance to that dominance. According to Iton, “blackness and the Fantastic” work both “separately and in tandem” to discombobulate notions of colonialism and the modern, a process that continues to negotiate the stubborn social discords of racism, imperialism, and separate-but-equalness that sit quietly on the shoulder of modernity (287).

2008-11-16T15:21:00.001-08:00

Nahuatl Theater Volume 3: Spanish Golden Age Drama in Mexican Translation. Edited by Barry D. Sell, Louise M. Burkhart, and Elizabeth R. Wright. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, April 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0806138787, $49.95. 420 pages.
Review by Bradley Montgomery-Anderson, Northeastern State University, Oklahoma
from SJC post 2 (10/13/08)

Starting in 2004, Nahuatl-language dramas have begun appearing in a projected four-volume Nahuatl theater series, of which Spanish Golden Age Drama in Mexican Translation is the third. In the current volume the editors present three dramatic pieces and a short farce, or “Intermezzo.” When the Spaniards first conquered Mexico in the sixteenth century, they needed a language to communicate with a large indigenous population. The imperial language of the Aztecs, Nahuatl, already enjoyed great prestige as a language of empire and trade, and pockets of Nahuatl speakers were found throughout Mesoamerica and as far south as Honduras. While the pre-contact Aztecs had a pictographic system rather than a true writing system, they were in contact with the Maya to the south who did possess writing. The Spanish colonizers, recognizing the importance of the language, created a Latin-based writing system for Nahuatl and used it as a lingua franca. The desire to evangelize created a demand for Nahuatl-speaking priests, and the new alphabet adapted for Nahuatl was easily received by a culture with a high regard for the written word. The result is a large body of Nahuatl-language texts, the largest collection of colonial texts in an indigenous American language.Don Bartolomé de Alva, a fluent Nahuatl-speaker of mixed royal Aztec and Castilian ancestry, adapted and translated these plays from the original Spanish. Three introductory essays, as well as a preface with biographical information on Alva, alert the reader to the importance of these texts. The Nahuatl elements in these indigenized dramas are aptly explained in Louise Burkhart’s introductory essay “Nahuatl Baroque: How Alva Mexicanized the Spanish Dramas.” In another essay Barry D. Sell describes the relationship of the translator with Father Horacio Carochi, the author of the most important colonial-era Nahuatl grammar. “A Dramatic Diaspora,” by Elizabeth R. Wright, explains some of the sociolinguistic factors at play in the creation of the dramas and shows how Alva deftly combines elements of Spanish Baroque with native Nahuatl elements. One thing that makes these works especially fascinating is the process of Mexicanization they underwent as Alva adapted them to local sensibilities. These transformations are made apparent by the editors’ decision to present them in four side-by-side columns: the first is the original Spanish play, and the second an English translation. The third column, on the facing page, has the Nahuatl version, and the fourth has the English translation of this text. This layout allows the reader to compare the Nahuatl adaptations with the originals.
In “The Great Theater of the World,” a Eucharistic play that is the first drama presented, Alva often has the piece’s allegorical characters use Nahuatl-appropriate metaphors. In an especially striking example, the original Spanish “Praise the Lord of Earth and Heaven, the Sun, the Moon, and the stars; let the beautiful flowers, earth’s hallmark, praise him” (90)” becomes, “Let our hearts and words sprout jades, hatch motmots; intertwined with sacred popcorn flowers they extol the master of heaven and earth” (91). In "The Animal Prophet and the Fortunate Patricide," the character Irene is transformed into Malintzin; in the original the protagonist’s servant declares, “I’m Vulcan. My father was a Roman who had the custom of naming us children after gods, and so he called me Vulcan, after a well-known god” (170). In Alva’s adaption this becomes, “I’m Tizoc. My father is Mexicatl. They gave us royal Mexica names that are feared everywhere in the world” (171). In the indigenized form of the drama, several layers of cultural interpretation overlay the Spanish version of the story of St. Julian the Hospitaler. This old European legend tells of a nobleman who leads a holy life after unknowingly killing his parents in a jealous rage, an event foretold by a dying deer he had shot while hunting. The third drama, “The Mother of the Best,” is based on apocryphal gospels and portrays a couple, Joachim and Anne, who discover that their previously childless union is to bear fruit in the person of Mary, the future mother of Jesus. Alva’s version of this play ends with a beautiful example of Nahuatl aesthetics when a Mexicanized Archangel Gabriel announces the destiny of the infant Mary: “And moreover, the heavenly Atotoztli, the turquoise bellbird, will give birth in her girlhood to the great and royal child” (403).
Spanish Golden Age Drama in Mexican Translation has an abundance of information for those interested in colonial Latin American culture, religious history, cultural contact, and linguistics. Nahuatl language scholars will find much useful data in these texts for studying the impact of Spanish on the language. The editors have chosen to preserve Alva’s original linguistic commentaries within the texts, a feature that will help the language scholar to understand the complexities of translating between these two very different languages and cultures. They have done an excellent job, both in the introductory essays as well as in the layout and presentation of the texts. An additional feature that might render the texts more approachable would be a very brief grammatical sketch of the language; such an addition would give a greater appreciation of the Nahuatl language itself and enhance the side-by side comparisons. There is some discussion of the Nahuatl writing system, but it would be an improvement to have this information in a more complete format, perhaps with a few examples from the Nahuatl texts to exemplify the pronunciation.Burkhart and Sell state in the first volume of the series that this project aims “to establish the place of these dramas in the literary canon of the Americas” (xix). This third volume offers an engaging look at the beginnings of a new hybrid culture, a dynamic Nahua-Catholic literature created for a sophisticated and literate indigenous public. These texts represent a great cultural might-have-been; Spanish eventually became the dominant language as Mexico slowly became Hispanicized, and the culture of written Nahuatl eventually died out. Anyone interested in cultural aspects of the Columbian Exchange will find these dramas, and the excellent essays that accompany them, a fascinating read.

2008-10-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Memoir of Tiny Kline. By Tiny Kline. Edited by Janet M. Davis. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-252-03312-4, $65.00; paper: ISBN 978-0-252-07510-0, $24.95. 376 pages.

Review by Robert Sugarman, Circus Historical SocietyJanet

Davis’s previous book, The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) has established itself as one of the most authoritative analyses of the Golden Age Circus that thrived in America in the early part of the twentieth century. The volume also examines in depth the relationship of that circus to the society in which it existed. Her new book, a memoir written by performer Tiny Kline and edited by Davis, is an excellent complement to The Circus Age, providing a firsthand account of the Golden Age circus by one of its participants. Kline rose through the ranks of what was then a rigid caste system from “Statue girl,” one who posed semi-nude in heavy grease paint in emulation of classic sculpture, to center ring performer. Legendary circus personalities such as Equestrian Director Fred Bradna and aerialists Lillian Leitzel and Alfred Codona are seen as professional colleagues in a demanding work situation. Kline recounts the difficulties performers experienced when the Ringling and the Barnum shows combined, and the awkward transition when the grounded Ringling Barnum show moved many of its acts to the Al G. Barnes show with which Kline had been appearing. When Kline joined the Barnum and Bailey circus in 1916, it was a gigantic affair. Its layout, usually in a different city each day, filled nine acres. Horses that moved the circus on and off the lot were the backbone of the mile-long parades that preceded each day’s show and of the performance itself. Except for top management and the most elite performers, living conditions for circus personnel were hard. In addition to the vicissitudes of weather, performers were responsible for creating and maintaining their costumes, which meant washing them in buckets of cold water and hanging them on tent ropes to dry. Performers traveled on trains in crowded and uncomfortable conditions. Through all this, Kline’s passion for circus performance led her to improve her skills and move up the circus ladder to present elephants, ride horses bareback and in chariot races around the hippodrome track surrounding the three rings and four stages, and to do a daring descent, suspended by her teeth, from the top of the tent on a breakaway wire. Davis’s introduction places Kline’s life in perspective. A Hungarian Jewish immigrant, Kline typified the immersion of many immigrants in American Popular Culture. Starting her career as a dancer in burlesque, Kline moved to various touring shows and Wild West shows, and eventually became a dancer at New York’s Hippodrome and played vaudeville during the circus’s off seasons. Kline’s memoir ends in 1948 when, four years after retiring from circus performance, she visited the thoroughly mechanized Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Show, which had been reduced in size and was directed and choreographed by Broadway showmen who, she felt, sexualized and regimented the show, diminished the spontaneity of performance, and compromised the show’s appeal for family audiences. Kline continued doing her “slides for life” in a variety of venues. Davis provides information about Kline’s final performance activity. In her seventies, Kline performed as Tinker Bell in Disneyland, doing a 484-foot slide suspended from a wire from the 146-foot Mount Matterhorn to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, where her arrival signaled the start of the evening’s fireworks. Working from two drafts of Kline’s memoir, Davis has not only provided a coherent and enlightening document, but has supplied fully annotated endnotes to explicate references and correct factual errors. Like The Circus Age, Circus Queen and Tinker Bell is an exemplary demonstration of how the study of circus in particular and Popular Culture in general can enrich our understanding of the world in which we live. The book includes some photos. It will prove to be an indispensable addition to any Popular Culture collection.

2008-08-22T15:43:00.001-07:00

from University of Oklahoma Press
Legacies of Camelot
by L. Boyd Finch
under review by William Housel, Northwestern Louisiana State University