Tag Archives: Theatre

SongCatcher: Reckoning and (possibly) Reconciling with Frances Densmore.

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Written in 1998 by Native American playwright Marcie Rendon, SongCatcher follows two young Native American protagonists who are visited by the spirits of their ancestors, as well as that of Frances Densmore, infamous in the field musicology for her recordings of Native American songs, including those of the Ojibwe and Sioux, among others.

The protagonists of the play, Jack and Chris are foils. Jack tries to get back in touch with tradition through reading Densmore’s work and playing her transcriptions on a keyboard. Chris, on the other hand, participates in more traditional ways of gaining knowledge. She learns from elders.

The pair are visited by spirits in their dreams. The spirit of Frances Densmore initially visits Chris. The audience might see similarities between the two; both young women who are sure of themselves. In the initial dream, Rendon even imagines them smoking together (31). Their exchange, though, quickly turns a bit hostile:

FRANCES DENSMORE
This is the one habit I’ve acquired while in the company of your people. I find it most relaxing. I might even venture to say that tobacco might be Native people’s greatest contribution to modern civilization.
CHRIS
Well that contribution you’re sitting there smoking was given to us by the Creator to pray with.
FRANCES DENSMORE
I’m well aware of the spiritual significance your people place on this plant. If I daresay, given the extent of my research, there are a few things I could possibly even teach you.
CHRIS
Oh, really? (31-2)


Densmore is a kind of Faustian anti-villain in the piece. The scenes we do see her in show her dubious ethics, but many of the dream scenes center on her personal life, her relationship with her best friend and her sister. Her obsession with her work consumes her over the course of the play, culminating in the final scene where she burns her personal papers:

FRANCES DENSMORE
… I don’t want people rifling through the attachments of my heart once I am gone.
OLD MAN SPIRIT
I cry for your spirit. The songs you recorded were always The People’s. The work you clung to was never yours. Once you’ve burned the stirrings of your heart, you will be no more. (80)


Densmore, by erasing her letters, is erasing herself. She hopes to be remembered through her work. In a similar way, she erased the people who gave her the songs in trying to preserve them. They are missing the living knowledge essential to them.


This highlights an essential difference in Densmore’s view of knowledge, and an Indigenous view represented by Chris and the spirits of this play: To Densmore, knowledge is information. It is the notes of the page, the words in the songs, etc. To Chris, knowledge is a gift from previous generations to the next, and most importantly, it is lived (“being Indian is something you live. It’s inside you. You can’t learn it from a tape.” (12) )


In her Author’s note, Rendon says that the conversation around Densmore does us a disservice by implying that “the real songs are locked up in Washington, D˙C˙, instead of in the hearts and spirits of Native people themselves. It is a systematic erosion of a people’s belief in themselves, their own history, and their very existence as a living, breathing, modern people.” (4-5)


The play handles the life of Frances Densmore with a focus on her heart and spirit, extending to her what she did not extend to her subjects.

Rendon, Marcie. SongCatcher. 1998.

Representations of Minstrelsy in the Americas

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PFOP: 'Welby and Pearl' a minstrel act with local roots

Minstrelsy is 1“the form of entertainment associated with minstrel shows, featuring songs, dances, and formulaic comic routines based on stereotyped depictions of African Americans and typically performed by white actors with blackened faces,” as defined by Oxford Languages.

Seeing the history of minstrelsy emerge in America beginning in the 1830’s in the Northeastern states was just another racist blow directed to people of color, specifically African Americans. The hatred was portrayed as a “national artform” expanding to even operatic shows by appealing to the intended white audience.2

It is also important to know that minstrelsy was not limited to only America, but Latin America was exposed to it as well. It can be observed that 1“American blackface minstrels began to perform for local audiences in Buenos Aires between 1868 and 1873” (Adamovsky, 2021).

The reasoning behind this takes into account the slave trade going mainly to parts of America and South America and spreading inward. The artforms of theatre, opera, and dance found a common ground for the white audience to ridicule the black folk regardless of if they were free or not. Thus creating a race barrier for any person of African descent living in the Americas since the emergence of minstrelsy and progress of slavery.

The incorporation of Shakespeare’s minstrelsy seen in the nineteenth century productions as well shows the crossing of time relative borders of racism and does not come as a surprise as it incorporated swing music and African American culture that was catered to the exclusively white audience.  As continued in one of the productions Swingin’ he Dream, 3“the only hint of non-Anglo ethnicity is a Latin American chanteuse who plays the bad girl role of Kyser’s would-be seducer” (Lanier). The inclusion of people of color as the weaker party submissive to the white superior only ties back to the roots of slavery.4

 

1Adamovsky, Ezequiel. “Blackface minstrelsy en Buenos Aires: Las actuaciones de Albert Phillips en 1868 y las visitas de los Christy’s Minstrels en 1869, 1871 y 1873 (y una discusión sobre su impacto en la cultura local).” Latin American Theatre Review 55, no. 1 (2021): 5-26. https://doi.org/10.1353/ltr.2021.0027.

2Haines, Kathryn. n.d. “Guides: Blackface Minstrelsy Resources: Blackface in Other Cultures.” Pitt.libguides.com. Accessed October 5, 2023. https://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=935570&p=6831076.

3Lanier, Douglas. 2005. “Minstrelsy, Jazz, Rap: Shakespeare, African American Music, and Cultural Legitimation.” Borrowers and Lenders I (1).

4McMains, Juliet. “Brownface: Representations of Latin-Ness in Dancesport.” Dance Research Journal 33, no. 2 (2001): 54–71. https://doi.org/10.2307/1477804.

 

 

HBCU Marching Bands Take the Big Screen….Now the Stage

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Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs) have been known for their marching bands for over a century. Marching band competitions flood most of the southern states throughout the marching band season with the big competitions such as Nationals and the Honda Battle of the Bands being greatly anticipated. It wasn’t until 2002 when Charles Stone decided to showcase HBCU marching bands and the culture that has been born from this musical community. The film is labeled as a drama, musical, comedy, and romance and features a young man from Harlem who joins a Southern university’s marching band but antagonizes the musical director and its leader. There is a coming-of-age element to the film as the young college student finds his way in college and the band.

Almost a decade later in 2011, a new version of Drumline came out for a different audience. Drumline was made into a theatre production.

 

When researching the culture behind black marching bands from HBCUs I was intrigued when coming across not only the Drumline Film but also the Drumline LIVE production. It is curious to note the audience that usually sits for a marching band performance and a football game is not usually an audience that would sit for a theatre production.  

 

 

 

Reading into a newspaper article from the Philadelphia Tribune on the year that Drumline Live came out as a theatre production it was clear that the production made quite an impact on the audience and was a surprising success.

“Drumline Live” is the brainchild of Atlanta native Don P. Roberts, a former Florida A&M University (FAMU) drum major who began his musical journey as a trumpeter. An educator who has served as the instrumental music coordinator of the DeKalb County School System since 1996, Roberts was recruited by “Drumline” producer Dallas Austin, an accomplished drummer who is also an Atlanta native, to serve as executive band consultant for the film.”

It was a booming success amongst HBCUs, BIPOC communities, musical communities, theatre-goers, and so many others. Roberts could not keep himself from boasting of the accomplishment that was Drumline Live.

“This show is absolutely the most dynamic, exciting theatrical production to come out in years. These are big words, but every time people see the show, they tell me I was right! I don’t think there’s anything that’s comparable, and I go to shows all the time. I feel like there’s some really good shows out there, but there’s nothing like us. We touch every emotion in your body. We’re going to make you sing, we’re gonna make you shout, we’re gonna make you cry, we’re gonna make you smile, we’re gonna make you laugh – we touch all of the emotions. You will totally be surprised by the things that you see in the show, and that’s one of the beautiful things about it.”

As I read through the newspaper clippings, looked further into the film and the comparison of the theatre production, one question kept coming to mind: Why this way? I do not have an answer for why these two avenues of art would be chosen to inform an audience of the culture of a HBCU marching band yet it was. What art forms are we using to spread knowledge of something that doesn’t seem like it should fit there?

 

Bibliography:

Drumline Live. 2011-12-03. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://hdl.handle.net/11134/510002:20109259. (Accessed November 24, 2021.)

Roberts, Kimberly C. 2011. “‘Drumline Live’ Thrilling Audiences.” Philadelphia Tribune, Oct 21, 6-7. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/drumline-live-thrilling-audiences/docview/903433037/se-2?accountid=351.

 

 

 

 

 

The Way from Marginal to Mainstream: Another Early Example

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I can freely admit that this playbill announcement caught my attention because I share a name with it. Helena, Montana and its musical and theatrical scene is almost as far from the musical encounters we have discussed between Europeans and coastal Native American tribes as I am, but I do believe that it has some connection to the development of an “American” music.

Native American references are markedly absent from this particular theatre’s presentation, although they seem to have been fairly common in other places at the time. The Montana Territory, not yet a state in 1866 when this playbill was published, was a frontier territory. Clashes between Native American tribes and European settlers were still common. Perhaps this continuing conflict is the reason for this music’s absence; theater is designed to be an escape, and comedy, farce, and melodrama were particularly popular in this period (1). The Vanishing Indian trope doesn’t fit well into the shows of an area that know the Indians have definitely not vanished yet.

However, there are plenty of interesting features of this program.  “Exotic” features or tidbits of a marginalised culture are often used as a draw in entertainment, so it is probable that this is the case here. Prominently displayed are the acts of “Ethiopian” comedian Ned Ward (who would have been a white actor in blackface) and the play “The Irish Diamond.” In discussion of anti-blackness and the racism particularly directed at non-white groups as a society and a class, we often neglect to be aware of the struggles of certain white (as they are considered now, in our black/white dichotomy) ethnic groups, such as the Catholic Irish who were marginalised in both Protestant America and Britain after the English Reformation. This playbill was published not terribly long after a large wave of Irish immigrants came to the United States in the 1840s. This type of wave of immigration often comes with mixed feelings toward the group in question, and the Irish certainly were not met with arms all open. The prominence of an Irish drama in this program could be another example of what was discussed in our very first class session: the construction of a distinct American identity through reference to and use of the art and culture of marginalised American groups, in this case Irish culture and African-American culture through the lens of blackface. There is even a second Irish play in what appears to be a “coming soon to theatres” section at the bottom – Arrah-na-Pogue, which was written in 1864 and adapted into an early silent film in 1911 (2)!

American music and art has always been an amalgamation of cultures, and that of frontier Montana in the 1860s is no different. Home to mostly young, male miners (3), this playbill from a theatre in Helena, Montana nonetheless draws on different styles of music, dance, and theater, and conveys an interesting picture of the artistic landscape that people from this time would have encountered. Much like music of the time, American theater was moving away from its European counterpart and searching for a new identity in the cultural resources of the “New World.”

  1. Meserve, Walter J. An Outline History of American Drama, New York: Feedback/Prospero, 1994.
  2. Williams, Henry Llewellyn, and Dion Boucicault. Arrah-Na-Pogue; (Arrah-of-the-Kiss.) or, The Wicklow Wedding. Founded on the Same Incidents as the Celebrated Drama. New York: R.M. De Witt, 1865.
  3. Wikipedia contributors, “Montana,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Montana&oldid=915390740 (accessed September 16, 2019).