Word: musicalization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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First, though, I had to pass through scenic New Jersey, scenic southern Pennsylvania, scenic Ohio--ah, the natural wonders of the interstate highway system, with three squalling brats across the aisle as background music. Still, this was the price of cheap transportation west. Anxious to reach the wide open spaces, I stayed on the bus as state after state rolled by, telling myself I would get off when I reached America, the old "When it's right, you know it" type thing. Indiana merged into Illinois, which metamorphosed into St. Louis, Missouri and Oklahoma...
...split up to travel faster--I began to look forward to this gathering immensely, so when I got to Roseburg, Oregon (where you turn east into the Umpqa National Forest to get to White Horse Meadow, my destination) I began to look forward to food, a good sleep, some music and comfort. Roseburg was crawling with hitchhikers, all heading where I was, to this great Sixties type rock concert. Woodstock, here I come. A VW van slowed down, picked me up, and then took another hitcher, and another, and we headed off. By their conversation I was able to deduce...
...Music by Eubie Blake
...that selfsame year Scott Joplin turned out Maple Leaf Rag. Eubie had an unlikely background for a composer. The son of ex-slaves, he had dropped out of school at 15. He was the only one of eleven children to live to maturity. Ragtime was regarded as indecent music; his mother never permitted him to play it in the house. Initially, Eubie toured the vaudeville circuit with Singer Noble Sissle. In 1921, with Sissle as lyricist, the pair scored a national breakthrough with Shuffle Along, the first Broadway musical ever to be produced, directed, composed and performed solely by blacks...
Through an interesting process of historical change, Eubie! probably owes its existence to the current vogue for all-black musicals. Ironically, where a Shuffle Along, a Blackbirds of 1930 or a Chocolate Dandies (two other shows for which Eubie wrote the music) were intended for all-white audiences, the current production courts black playgoers. As a measure of heightened self-esteem and possibly amused self-parody, blacks are now willing to admit that they can be superb singers and dancers - something that was regarded as a condescending racial stereotype...