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- Bert Williams in The Ziegfeld Follies, 1910. Bert Williams had his first success when he teamed up with George Walker in 1895 in a comic act that pitted Walker's fast-talking city slicker against Williams' slow-moving country bumpkin.
- Charles Gilpin in The Emperor Jones, 1920. With a few rare exceptions, Black roles in dramatic plays on Broadway had been performed by white actors who used burnt cork or greasepaint to make themselves appear darker.
- Shuffle Along, 1921. There had been earlier all-Black musicals on Broadway but they were old-fashioned affairs like A Trip to Coontown and borrowed heavily from the minstrel tradition.
- Porgy and Bess, 1935. Arguably the best-known Black musical ever to play on Broadway, Porgy and Bess was written by a trio of white men: the brothers George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, a southerner who wrote the novel Porgy about a crippled beggar who lives in the poor Black fishing community of Catfish Row and falls for the local bad-girl Bess.
May 12, 2020 · The musical style of this black opera is the popular romantic one of the early 20th century. It has been described as “charming and piquant and … deeply moving”, with elements of black folk songs and dances, including a kind of pre- blues music, spirituals , and a call-and-response style scene featuring a preacher and congregation.
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Feb 7, 2019 · The 20th century ended – as does “45 Minutes from Coontown” – with the emergence of writer-director George C. Wolfe. Between 1992 and 1999, with such seminal works as “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “Noise/Funk,” the visionary black dramatist brought new possibilities to the black musical stage, carrying it into a new millennium.
Feb 16, 2024 · The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the emergence of Black vaudeville performers, who injected humor, music, and social commentary into their acts. These pioneers, including Bert Williams, Sissieretta Jones, and Ethel Waters, challenged stereotypes and paved the way for the development of authentic Black stories on Broadway.
Feb 1, 2023 · Musical Type: Pre-Contemporary (1995) What It’s About: Black history (told through music and tap) Dessa Rose. Music: Stephen Flaherty Lyrics/Book: Lynn Ahrens. Musical Type: Contemporary (2005) What It’s About: Two women’s stories during the Antebellum South. Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.
Feb 23, 2021 · Shuffle Along returned to Broadway in 1933, 1952, and most recently in 2016 with a George C. Wolfe-helmed revival. Featuring a retooled book by Wolfe, the adaptation presented the original 1921 ...
Musical Exchange Across the “Black Atlantic”. 3. By Michael Veal, Ph.D. “They [James Brown and his band] picked a lot from Fela when they came to Nigeria. It’s like both of them sort of influenced each other. Fela got influenced in America, James Brown got the influence in Africa.”. Tony Allen Fela’s Drummer.
