Hidden History, Part 2: Joy McLean Bosfield Sings at Kennedy Center Dedication

 By Jennifer Sieck

Joy McLean Bosfield framed this page from the score for “Gloria in Excelsis” signed for her by MASS composer Leonard Bernstein. She sang in the choir for MASS’s world premiere, conducted by Bernstein for the Kennedy Center’s dedication in 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

"Gloria in Excelsis" proclaims the title of this autographed musical score in prelude to the story of Joy McLean Bosfield (1924-1999), a musician, educator, and entrepreneur who lived in Washington, DC from 1962 to 1985. Like another accomplished African American musician in the District featured in a prior post on this blog, McLean Bosfield was instrumental in bringing the Kennedy Center into being. Her contribution took the form of singing in Leonard Bernstein’s MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers at the Kennedy Center’s dedication on September 8, 1971. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in memory of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, Bernstein riffed on the traditional Latin mass to honor the nation’s first Roman Catholic president in an operatic piece featuring more than 200 performers and choreography by Alvin Ailey. The Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary Season concludes with a new interpretation of MASS in September 2022.

Original Production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS, 1971. Photo by Fletcher Drake. Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Center Archives, 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield might be among the robed choir members above the dais, possibly the second singer in the first row to the right of the center aisle. The photo ran on the front page of The Washington Post on September 9, 1971.

The framed sheet music might have been especially meaningful for McLean Bosfield, as she had co-founded a business that prepared printed music for publication in 1959. This excerpt from “Gloria in Excelsis” shows the choral and orchestral parts for an exuberant response to the absolution of sin. Across the opening bars, Bernstein inscribed in red ink, “Gloria to Joy McClean!” [sic] along with his signature and the date. Significantly, it is the only framed item among the newspaper clippings (including Washington Post articles about MASS at the Kennedy Center), photographs, and programs in the Joy McLean Bosfield papers at the Anacostia Community Museum.

A photo from Joy McLean Bosfield’s scrapbook shows the cast of Porgy and Bess in Hollywood in 1954: left to right, unidentified man, Irene Williams, Leslie Scott, Joy McLean, LeVern Hutcherson. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

“Joy McLean” appears among the names in the MASS program along with other renowned artists, such as Alvin Ailey dancers Judith Jamison and Sylvia Waters. The name served as both her real and stage name for much of her career, including when she sang the role of Clara in an international touring production of Porgy and Bess that played a significant role in Cold War cultural diplomacy in the 1950s. 

Norman Scribner wrote a letter to the original MASS cast members on Kennedy Center letterhead, Feb. 16, 1972. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

McLean Bosfield’s papers also include a letter from Washington Choral Arts and MASS choir director Norman Scribner. Its salutation reads, “Dear ‘Original Cast’ Member,” and invites her to participate in a 1972 touring revival of MASS. Professional obligations likely prevented her from participating, such as her service as music minister for John Wesley AME Zion Church in the District’s Logan Circle. A church colleague, Rev. John R. Kinard, became the founding director of the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in 1967. Recognizing the value of her papers, he worked with Senior Curator Portia James to acquire them for the museum’s collection as McLean Bosfield prepared to retire to Mexico in 1985.

Annotated scrapbook photos show Joy McLean Bosfield teaching her choreography to youth in rehearsals for the Community League of West 159th Street’s Cotillion in New York City, 1958. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

Born and raised in New Jersey, McLean Bosfield came of age artistically in New York City. Like Bernstein, she performed and conducted at Lincoln Center. Her scrapbooks attest to a wide-ranging repertoire rooted in African American musical traditions, including those of her mother’s birthplace of Demarara, British Guiana (Guyana, in 2022), alongside fluency in mélodie (French art song), classical compositions, and Broadway showtunes.

A verse on a handmade card congratulating McLean Bosfield on her college acceptance concludes with the double entendre, “Let Joy Be Unconfined.” Her archive and students bear witness to a legacy of unconfined Joy.

In harmony with this post and in honor of Black History Month, McLean Bosfield’s scrapbooks are being relaunched on the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Digital volunteers can refine prior transcriptions, which proved challenging due to the scrapbooks’ varied and fragile materials. Check out the scrapbooks: here and here.

Jennifer Sieck, Ph.D., Collections Researcher

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

Hidden History: Lillian Evanti's Lobbying Contributes to the Creation of the Kennedy Center

 By Jennifer Sieck

This post is being published on November 12, the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the National Negro Opera Company in 1941.

At the same time, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2021. It opened twelve years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed bipartisan legislation creating a national cultural center in 1958. However, the Evans-Tibbs Collection at the Anacostia Community Museum includes even earlier bills. House Resolutions (H.R.) 5397 and 8047 testify to the advocacy of Madam Lillian Evanti (1890-1967) in the early 1950s (see below). The international opera star lobbied for a national performing arts center in her native city of Washington, DC.

A graduate of Armstrong High School, Miner Teacher’s College, and Howard University, Evanti sang the role of Violetta in the National Negro Opera Company’s staging of La Traviata on the Water Gate barge, anchored just downstream from the Kennedy Center’s future location on the Potomac River. An August 28, 1943 performance drew an audience estimated at 12,000, and rave reviews inspired an encore show the following night. The Water Gate provided a rare, racially-integrated venue as segregation barred African Americans from many performance spaces, especially for large-scale productions like operas. This discrimination contributed to Evanti’s desire for a national arts center open to all.

Evanti’s handwriting on H.R. 5397 references H.R. 9111, the “most recent” bill as of May 1954. Stamps on the bills read “From Congressman Charles R. Howell,” who represented New Jersey’s 4th District and introduced H.R. 5397 on the House floor in May 1953. Representative John “Jack” Shelley of California introduced H.R. 8047 in February 1954. Both bills were referred to the Committee on Education and Labor. Groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center took place in 1964, three years before Evanti’s passing. 

Visit the Museum’s Collections page to see Madame Evanti’s custom-built piano, handheld fan, and opera glasses. 

Above: Reproduction of an article by Grace W. Tompkins and photos of La Traviata staged at the Water Gate in 1943 in A Pictorial History and Listing of Achievements of the National Negro Opera Company and National Negro Opera Company Foundation, 1959, p. 32-33. Co-stars William Coleman as Germont and Lillian Evanti as Violetta are pictured in the top right. All images from Evans-Tibbs collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of the Estate of Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr.

Jennifer Sieck

Collections Researcher

Anacostia Community Museum

Prove It on Me: Ma Rainey and the Queer Blues

"When you see two women walking hand in hand 

Just look 'em over and try to understand" 

             – George Hannah, "The Boy in the Boat"

In 1925, the Chicago police arrested blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey in her home for hosting a so-called “lesbian party.” While Rainey had been married to a man for 21 years, she was known to take female lovers. It was even rumored that she was romantically involved with another famous blueswoman, Bessie Smith, who bailed Rainey out of jail the following day.

Ma Rainey and the Wildcats Jazz Band, 1923. Bernice Johnson Reagon
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Getting her start on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s, Ma Rainey made her mark as a blues performer just as the genre’s popularity hit its stride in the 1920s. By 1925, she was two years into a lucrative recording contract with Paramount Records, had worked with Louis Armstrong, and was in the middle of what would become a four-year musical partnership with Thomas Dorsey’s Wild Cats Jazz Band. Ma Rainey had earned the title “Mother of the Blues,” and she had no intention of giving it up.

Three years later, she would respond to the gossip about her sexuality sparked by her arrest with her “Prove It on Me Blues:”

“Went out last night 

With a crowd of my friends 

They must have been women 

Cause I don’t like no men”

Some have called the lesbianism and bisexuality among black female blues musicians the “open secret” of the Harlem Renaissance. While some blues singers, like Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters, were careful to bury rumors that they, too, might be “in the life,” many more, like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Clara Smith, and Lucille Bogan did little to conceal their relationships with women. Lucille Bogan even released a song in 1935, entitled “The B.D. Woman’s Blues” in which “B.D.” stood for “bulldagger,” a slang term for a butch lesbian. Referring affectionately to these lesbian women, Bogan sings: “They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man.”

Perhaps the greater secret was the blues club scene itself. The early 1900s saw a massive migration of black Americans from the South to cities in the North like Chicago and New York City. The Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York proved a particularly popular destination for many migrants, who helped contribute to a flourishing art, academic, and entertainment scene that would come to be known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” Amid this atmosphere of artistic and intellectual expression, gay and lesbian African-Americans found a spirit of social freedom and acceptance that allowed them to pursue same-sex relationships with greater openness than in many other parts of the country.

And it was in the underground blues clubs of the 1920s and 30s where this sexual expression could thrive most freely. In seedy Harlem blues clubs, blueswomen like Gladys Bentley, who became famous for her masculine performances complete with cropped hair, tuxedo, and top hat, found their audiences and stage personas. For black women, who made up the majority of the popular blues singers at this time, these clubs offered an outlet to explore their sexualities and sexual desires onstage in a way that would have been denied them in their day to day lives. Blues clubs spread far beyond just New York City, and while blueswomen like Rainey and Smith tend to be associated with the Harlem Renaissance, many of these women had stronger ties to the South, Midwest, and California. Artists like Bentley toured blues clubs around the country, including San Francisco’s famous Mona’s 440 Club, a bar which marketed itself toward lesbians as the place “where girls will be boys.”

Some have suggested that it is important to not overstate the prevalence of these declarations of same sex desire in the music and performances of female blues musicians. Lesbian-themed songs make up but a small fraction of these singers’ bodies of work, the majority of which focuses instead on romances with men. Yet it is still important to acknowledge the significance of the blues club as a space where black women in the early 20th century were able to express their sexual and romantic desires without fearing for their safety. Using masculine clothing, provocative performances, and homoerotic lyrics, these blueswomen found unique ways to represent their sexuality onstage. More than that, black women blues performers were able to control how their sexuality was represented in their lyrics and performances and decide, for themselves, who they wanted to be onstage and off.

Bessie Smith, undated. Sam DeVincent Collection, African-American Music series, 
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

At the end of “Prove It on Me Blues,” Ma Rainey sings:

“Talk to the gals just like any old man 

Cause they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me 

Sure got to prove it on me.”

In these lines, Rainey coyly seems to say, “My sexuality is mine alone, and I am free to live how I please.” And perhaps this is the most important thing to remember when we talk about the lives and romances of these blueswomen. For women like Ma Rainey, the blues was a world where you could take control of your own story, where you could explore your sexuality and talk about it on your terms, where you could decide who you wanted to be and then become that person onstage each night.

For more on Ma Rainey and the other blueswomen mentioned here, watch T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s on Kanopy.

Erin Walsh, Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center

Introduction to a New World: Processing the Stubblebine Collection

The journey from student to intern in a new city isn’t always the easiest transition. I was fortunate, however, to find a welcome environment that values questions and learning. I just completed an internship at the National Museum of American History Archives Center, where my first assignment was to participate in the processing of the Donald J. Stubblebine Collection of Musical Theater and Motion Picture Sheet Music and Reference Material. It opened my eyes to a different side of archiving, one that involves meticulous attention to detail through technology.

Processing a collection involves the efforts of many dedicated people behind the scenes working tirelessly to organize a collection to make it accessible to researchers. Going through a collection can take a few weeks or a few months, depending on the size of the collection. The Stubblebine Collection is 152 cubic feet; the three archivists and four interns working on it only made a dent in its processing journey. This collection contains music scores, scripts, and miscellaneous ephemera. Each piece in the collection is organized within a series and sub-series. Stage Musicals, for example, is one series under which other sub-series fall, such as “Oh That Melody,” 1918. Each folder is labeled with the collection number, title of the musical, and year or years if that information is available. Stage Musicals are organized in alphabetical order and placed in an acid-free box. The boxes are then labeled with the collection number, collection title, series number, and box number. Once the collection was boxed, I helped it cross the finish line.

"There Seems to be Something About You," sheet music from the Broadway musical, "Oh That Melody," 1918.
 Archives Center, NMAH, AC 1211, Stubblebine Collection, Box 252, Folder 11. File Name: AC1211-0000012.tif.

My main job was to review every box, number each file within the box, and ensure alphabetical order. Once I had gone through each folder, I used a collections management system called ArchivesSpace (or ASpace). ArchivesSpace is an online database application that supports collection management, archival processing, and finding aid creation. In ASpace, I entered every file folder description. A finding aid is “a description of records that gives the repository physical and intellectual control over the materials and that assists users to gain access to and understand the materials.” A finding aid allows researchers to use keyword or phrase searches in the catalog and be able to find what they need down to the folder number. Once this step is complete, we are able to add further description to the finding aids to better serve our patrons. Descriptive content is also added to the system. At the completion of data entry the collection is placed on the shelf. Recording the location is very important, as it allows a repository to track both the permanent and temporary locations of the materials.

Archival processing is a very interesting and lengthy process. I enjoyed getting to know the hurdles a collection goes through in order to get into the researcher’s hands. Processing is an integral part of the archival profession, and this experience is better preparing me for my future as an archivist. I very much appreciate the skills I cultivated at the Archives Center and look forward to many more learning opportunities.

By Sarah K. Rung, Summer 2018 Intern
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

A Jazz Life, Interrupted

A recently acquired National Museum of American History Archives Center collection, the Maceo Jefferson Papers, 1898-1974, relates to a little-known but extremely interesting jazz musician and composer named Maceo Jefferson (1898-1974). Though possessing an impressive resume that included associations with such notables as Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, The Blackbirds, and others, he never attained fame for himself. He was a prolific composer and arranger, and lived an extremely interesting and eventful life. The rich archival collection donated by his great-nephew to the Archives Center gives us glimpses into the very earliest years of jazz and life for jazz musicians in the years between the world wars, and it opens up opportunities for researchers and scholars of this era. Only a few of our jazz collections document this formative era. Jefferson’s correspondence (he saved carbon copies of letters he sent--a luxury for a researcher) documents his efforts to have his music recorded and heard by the public. Reading Jefferson’s letters, one gets the sense of a likable, generous man with an ebullient personality and a wry wit, one who made the best of things when his career and life were derailed by circumstances beyond his control.

Jefferson’s early jazz life was probably typical of many musicians in the 1920s and 1930s, as he went from band to band, nightclub to nightclub. Many of these bands and clubs are documented in photographs in the collection. Born in 1898 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Jefferson, who came from musical parents, showed early aptitude for both banjo and guitar. In a document, he described lying awake nights listening to music from a dance hall down the street. He attended the Avery Institute in Charleston for two years, but the deaths of his parents ended his chance for further education. He served with the Coast Guard on a cutter, and with the Navy in World War I, and in a letter he stated that he “saw death staring me in the face dozens of times.” After his military service, he went back to music. He played in a nightclub in Norfolk, Virginia, for two years. He then spent another two years in a nightclub in Washington, where he met Duke Ellington and was one of the original members of his band, the Washingtonians. According to Jefferson’s nephew, he was the original arranger for this act, but Jefferson and Ellington had a falling out. He moved on to New York and worked in a succession of clubs there. He described the transformative experience of seeing and hearing Fats Waller play the piano in the Gaiety Theater. He joined Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds orchestra in 1926 and went on a European tour with them throughout 1927, and another with Leon Abbey’s band in 1928, eventually relocating to Paris. He lived in France for several years, married a Parisian costume designer, Yvonne Runtz, in 1937, and worked with several jazz bands and musicians including Louis Armstrong’s Plantation Orchestra, and then returned to New York. He played in Willie “The Lion” Smith’s band and later toured with blues composer W.C. Handy.

 Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (front row, wearing arm band) with Louis Armstrong (top row, far left) and his orchestra. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000005.

Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (at left, seated, having his shoes shined) with the Leon Abbey Band. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000004.

Photographer unidentified. Jefferson (holding banjo) with the Four Harmony Kings.
Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000006.

The late 1930s found him back in Paris. Soon afterward, Jefferson’s life took a radical detour. The Germans invaded Paris in 1940. After the closing of the Moulin Rouge left Jefferson without work, he worked with the Red Cross delivering U.S.-donated food and medicine to civilians and prison camps. In a 1967 letter, he said that “the Germans considered most of us working with the American Red Cross a bunch of spies.”

Photographer unidentified. Photographs taken of Jefferson while he was working for the Red Cross. Maceo Jefferson Papers. Top, No. 1370-0000008. Bottom, No. 1370-0000010.

The Nazis arrested Jefferson three days after Germany’s declaration of war on the U.S. (December 11, 1941), and he spent the next 27 months in an internment camp in Compiegne, France. Compiegne held political prisoners, French Jews, employees of the French government, and resistance fighters to the Vichy government. While imprisoned, Jefferson led an orchestra in the camp. According to his nephew, this may have saved his life. A concert program, hand-made, survives in the collection. The musical pieces played at this concert are an eclectic mix of fox trots, waltzes, hymns, solos, and just one composition by Jefferson.

 Program from a February, 1942 concert held inside the Frontstalag 122, Compiegne, France, led by Maceo Jefferson. Maceo Jefferson Papers.  Top: Cover, No. 1370-0000001-01.
Bottom: Inside text, No. 1370-0000001-02.

Jefferson’s wife Yvonne came regularly to see him in the camp, and bring him food. In a letter he wrote late in life, at a time when he had to make many sacrifices to take care of his wife, he said “she came 72 times to see me…walking from home to the station and after arriving at Compiegne she had three miles to walk to the camp, and that back… she has shown me her courage now it’s my time.”

In a 1967 letter, Jefferson describes his wife Yvonne’s heroic efforts to sustain him during his imprisonment by the Nazis. Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000002.

He was released in 1944 in a prisoner exchange, and returned to the United States in diminished health. At this point he resumed club work and songwriting, and in fact, in his later years he concentrated on composing, on developing new arrangements for old songs, and on getting his music performed and recorded. Letters in the collection document Jefferson’s contacts with performers such as Liberace, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Peggy Lee, and others, offering his compositions for their use. Guitarist Ray Rivera and blues singer Alberta Hunter did accept his offers.

A letter from Tennessee Ernie Ford declining Jefferson’s offer of musical compositions, 1956.
Maceo Jefferson Papers, No. 1370-0000003.

Maceo Jefferson died in 1974, leaving behind a sizable but largely unknown musical legacy. The above-described archival materials comprise just 1/8 of the collection. The other 7/8 contains a couple of recordings, one of which is a very early wire recording, and hundreds of Jefferson’s compositions.


By Cathy Keen, Archivist
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Come Join Us at the 2017 Archives Fair!

As an archivist, ethnomusicologist, and musician working at the Smithsonian, I feel inspired when I have opportunities to work with colleagues within and beyond the Institution to provide public-facing platforms for dialogue. I get particularly enthusiastic when these events relate to the power of archival collections to provide context for the customs and traditions that shape the cultures in which we live. On Saturday, October 21, 2017, I will be participating in such an event at the National Museum of American History in the Coulter Performance Plaza and the SC Johnson Conference Center.

From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the public is invited to celebrate American Archives Month at the 2017 Archives Fair with the theme Performance and Preservation. As described on the National Archives webpage, participants will explore “the ways in which the preservation of archival collections translates into the preservation of culture through the performance and artistry of individuals and communities across the United States and around the world.”

The Fair has four main features. First, a diverse range of musicians, dancers, singers, and performers will take the stage throughout the day in the Coulter Performance Plaza to illuminate the ways in which the archival record informs their work as artists. Second, a series of panel discussions in the SC Johnson Conference Center will reveal how archival documentation influences artistic expression, dance (bodies in motion), and access. Third, we will have representatives of over 20 archives and organizational repositories exhibiting at tables set up throughout Coulter Performance Plaza, sharing information about their archival work in a wide range of institutional, regional, and community contexts. Last (but definitely not least), visitors will have the rare opportunity to participate in a behind-the-scenes archives tour at the National Museum of American History’s Archives Center, home to some of the country’s most valuable archival collections.

Ultimately, this year’s event would not be happening were it not for the vision and collaboration between members of the National Archives Assembly, the Smithsonian Institution Archives and Special Collections Council, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference DC and Maryland Caucuses. For more information about the schedule-of-events and a full list of the Fair’s participants, please visit the Archives Fair website and plan on arriving at the National Museum of American History when it opens at 10 a.m. The official welcoming and opening remarks will begin at 10:45 with the first performances and panel discussions taking place at 11!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Greg C. Adams, Assistant Archivist
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

In the Heart of the Storm: The Resilience of Culture

This post originally appeared on September 19, 2017 in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's blog. In honor of October being American Archives Month, we republish it here as an example of how the archival record can help us focus on the importance of cultural resilience in times of catastrophe. The photographs and audio used in this piece are all a part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records .

Young people of the U.S. Virgin Islands march along in a carnival parade, amid the destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

When news started coming in about the catastrophic damage Hurricane Irma brought to the Caribbean, I happened to be filing materials from the 1990 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s program about the U.S. Virgin Islands. In my twenty-nine years at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I’ve produced a healthy amount of research, but in going through those particular boxes, I felt odd reverberations.

On September 17, 1989, in the midst of ongoing research for the U.S. Virgin Islands program, Hurricane Hugo struck the islands, with the greatest damage occurring in St. Croix. As described in a Washington Post special report, “Not only was Christiansted strewn with uprooted trees, broken utility poles, shattered cars and tons of debris from buildings that looked bombed, but the verdant tropical island suddenly had turned brown. So strong were Hugo’s winds that most trees still standing were shorn of leaves.” While St. Croix suffered the brunt of the storm, St. Thomas and St. John were also significantly damaged.

We wondered if we should cancel or defer the Festival program to let the region recuperate, physically and financially. But our partners in the Virgin Islands responded with one voice: now, more than ever, the people of the Virgin Islands needed a cultural event to raise their spirits, remind them of their resilience, and tell the world they were recovering. It is particularly in times of disaster that people turn to culture not only for solace but for survival.

“The recent disaster of Hurricane Hugo made fieldwork a little more difficult than usual,” reported Mary Jane Soule, who was doing research on musicians in St. Croix. “I was unable to rent a car for the first five days I was there, which limited my mobility. Many phones were still not working, so getting in touch with informants was harder than usual. However, once I actually located the individuals I wanted to see, I found most of them willing to talk.”

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

A local press announced that, regardless of the circumstances, the Three Kings Day Parade would not be canceled: “Neither rain or hurricane nor winds nor controversy will stop the Crucian Christmas Fiesta.” In her field research tape log, Soule lists the role of Hugo in the fiesta, adding that calypso bands had recorded songs about it.

“Eve’s Garden troop is depicting Hugo,” she wrote. “The No Nonsense (music and dance) troop is doing ‘The Hugo Family’ depicting the looting and tourists on the run. Mighty Pat’s song ‘Hurricane Hugo’ played from speakers on one of the numerous trucks. Sound Effex (band) can be heard playing ‘Hugo Gi Yo’ (Hugo Gives You).”

Several months later when staff returned to the islands, “Hugo Gi Yo” was still very popular, as were the black, monographed sailors’ caps that proclaimed “Stress Free Recovery for 1990, St. Thomas, V.I.” 

Songs about Hugo relieved anxiety. Many people had lost everything. But like all good calypso tunes, they comically contributed to the oral history of the islands. Look at the verses of “Hugo Gi Yo”:

It was the seventeenth of September 1989 Hugo take over.
Hey, that hurricane was a big surprise,
When it hit St. Croix from the southeast side.
Hey rantanantantan man the roof fall down.
Rantanantantan galvanize around…
No water, no power, no telephone a ring.
We people we dead; there’s nothing to drink….

The band Sound Effex plays for bystanders in a carnival parade in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Listen to "Hugo Gi Yo", played by Sound Effex at Children’s Parade in Christiansted, St. Croix, January 5, 1990:

Calypso songs are noted for their social commentary on events as well as on responses from mainstream society. The Washington Post reported on St. Croix following the hurricane: “The plunder started on the day after the Sunday night storm, as panicky islanders sought to stock up on food. It quickly degenerated into a free-for-all grab of all sorts of consumer goods that some witnesses likened to a ‘feeding frenzy.’ Three days of near-anarchy followed Hugo’s terrible passage during the night of Sept. 17-18 and prompted President Bush to dispatch about 1,100 Army military police and 170 federal law-enforcement officers, including 75 FBI and a ‘special operations group’ of U.S. Marshalls Service.”

In turn, “Hugo Gi Yo” responds:

You no broke nothing.
You no thief nothing.
You no take nothing.
Hugo give you. 

As program research advisor Gilbert Sprauve explained, calypsonians “lend themselves heartily to expressing the underclass’s frustrations and cynicism. They make their mark with lyrics that strike at the heart of the system’s dual standards.”

A parade goer prepares her sign, jokingly addressing the post-hurricane looting that plagued the island of St. Croix. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Another resident readies her sarcastic sign for the parade. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Mighty Pat’s parade float encourages fellow residents to “stay positive.” Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Soule transcribed existing racial and economic tensions in St. Croix expressed in Mighty Pat’s “Hurricane Hugo”:

After the hurricane pass, people telling me to sing a song quickly.
Sing about the looting, sing about the thiefing, black and white people doing.
Sing about them Arabs, up on the Plaza rooftop
With grenade and gun, threaten to shoot the old and the young.
Curfew a big problem, impose on only a few, poor people like me and you.
Rich man roaming nightly, poor man stop by army, getting bust__________
Brutality by marshal, send some to hospital,
Some break down you door, shoot down and plenty more.
When I looked around and saw the condition
of our Virgin Island.
I tell myself advantage can’t done.
One day you rich. Next day you poor.
One day you up the ladder. Next day you
crawling on the floor.
Beauty is skin deep; material things is for a time.
A corrupted soul will find no peace of mind
I think that is all our gale Hugo was trying to say
to all mankind.
Don’t blame me. Hugo did that.

The ubiquitous coal pot depicted on the side of a snack shack in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Hurricane Hugo also came up in conversations about craft. Knowing the importance of charcoal making, especially in St. Croix, researcher Cassandra Dunn interviewed Gabriel Whitney St. Jules who had been making coal for at least forty years and was teaching his son the tradition. In Dunn’s summary report, thoughts of the hurricane are not far away.

“Cooking food by burning charcoal in a coal pot is a technique utilized in the West Indies and Caribbean from the mid-1800s,” she wrote. “Charcoal makers learned the techniques of using a wide variety of woods including that from mango, tibet, mahogany, and saman trees. After Hurricane Hugo, those in St. Croix who had lost access to gas or electricity reverted to charcoal and the coal pot.”

With similar stories from St. Thomas, it became clear that this quotidian cultural artifact that reconnected islanders with their heritage served as an essential item for survival with dignity. The image of the coal pot became central to the themes of the Festival program, both as a useful utensil and a symbol of resilience. To our surprise, the coal pot, which looks much like a cast iron Dutch oven, was identical to that used by participants in the Senegal program featured that same year and led to increased cultural interaction between the two groups. This prompted a re-staging of both programs in St. Croix a year later.

From St. Croix to Washington, D.C., Virgin Islanders bring their parade to the National Mall for the 1990 Folklife Festival. Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

The cultural responses to Hurricane Hugo and those I suspect we’ll see following the calamitous hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria remind us that when disaster strikes, whether natural, social, political, or economic, communities often turn to shared cultural resources. Stories, experiences, and traditional skills prove useful, inspiring us to overcome obstacles and help our communities regain their footing.

Olivia Cadaval was the program curator for the U.S. Virgin Islands program at the 1990 Folklife Festival and is currently a curator and chair of cultural research and education at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

View the original post here.

Reference
Sprauve, Gilbert. “About Man Betta Man, fission and Fusion, and Creole, Calypso and Cultural Survival in the Virgin Islands, 1990 Festival of American Folklife, edited by Peter Seitel, Smithsonian, 1990.

"Whatever Follows the Age of the Dinosaurs": Lee Hays, Bob Dylan, and the Folk Revival

Given the theme for this month is transitions, it makes sense to note the ever-morphing artist, and the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, Bob Dylan. In a career noted for transitions, Dylan has adeptly moved across musical genres, from protest singer, to rock and roller, and country crooner. With a career spanning 56 years, it’s easy to forget Dylan’s early shift from topical protest music to rock and roll reflected not only a shift in his own artistic expression, but a generational shift that rocked the folk revival scene of the mid-twentieth century.

The generation of artists before Dylan were closely connected with the leftist politics of the 1930s and ‘40s. Groups such as the Almanac Singers saw their work not only as a revival of old time music, but as an instrument for social change. [1] With an amorphous membership that at various times included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Josh White, Bess Lomax, and Lee Hays, the Almanac Singers performed music that was unabashedly topical and political. Performing at union halls, and leftist meetings, their repertoire included such songs as “Talking Union,” “Which Side Are You On,” and “Union Maid.” While not officially connected to the Communist Party, most of the members were at the very least sympathetic to its concerns, and counted friends among the party. [2] Though Pete Seeger and Lee Hays moved into a more radio friendly direction in the 1950s, forming the Weavers with Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert, these connections would later come to haunt them. Seeger and Hays were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and the group was blacklisted and harassed. While the Weavers work was tame in comparison to the Almanac Singers, with a stronger focus on timeless lyrics and tight harmonies, the political element never left. Songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” and “Which Side are You On,” were still counter-cultural enough to provoke a reaction during the Red Scare.

The Weavers perform at the Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, January 13, 1968. Photograph by Robert C. Malone, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives.

One of the main intellectual forces behind the Almanac Singers and the Weavers, was the writer and singer, Lee Hays. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives is fortunate to house his works and papers, which have recently been digitized and are now available online. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1914 to a Methodist Minister, Hays rejected his father’s faith and politics after reading Upton Sinclair, and experiencing the hardships of the Great Depression. [3] In the 1930s, Hays joined Claude Williams, the leftist radical and preacher, and worked to help organize the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. While working for Williams, Hays discovered that art, and particularly music, could be enlisted in the struggle for social justice, and began to write what he called “zipper songs.” [4] Using hymns familiar to southern sharecroppers, Lee would “zip” in a few union phrases, transforming them into something subversive and powerful. For example, the refrain from “Old Ship of Zion,” a spiritual about the imminent Kingdom of God, was turned by Hays into a song of protest, replacing “old ship” with “union train”: “It’s that union train a-coming—coming—coming; It will carry us to freedom—freedom—.” [5] In the 1940s and ‘50s, Hays would find a home within a music scene which shared his political sensibilities, and his belief in the power of music to affect social change.

Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. Lee Hays Papers, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. 

As the folk revival exploded in popularity in 1958, with the hit single “Tom Dooley” by the Kingston Trio, a new generation of revival artists had arrived. While some artists affected a “folk” aesthetic, hoping to profit on a new fad, others shared their forebears’ counter-cultural concerns, seeking an authenticity in a post-war boom that seemed only to offer a vacuous consumerism. In 1961, Bob Dylan arrived in New York looking every bit the part of a new Woody Guthrie, with a constructed biography mirroring his idol. Dylan’s first two albums were much a piece with the earlier generation, comprised of folk standards and protest songs. However, by 1965 Dylan was moving in another direction. Dubbed “the voice of a generation,” Dylan was restricted, and unnerved by such heightened expectations. [6] Feeling used and constrained, Dylan was increasingly suspicious of institutions, movements, and parties, with a growing sense of the naiveté surrounding protest music. At the height of the folk revival, in a perceived betrayal of its aims and sensibilities, Dylan debuted at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with an electric set, stunning the crowd into angry taunts and jeers. In a story that that is largely apocryphal, it was said that Pete Seeger was so incensed that he threatened to take an axe to the speaker cables, whether out of protest over the music’s volume or content, will forever be in dispute. [8] Regardless of what actually happened that day, what was clear was that what had been that generation’s best and brightest star, carrying the mantle of Guthrie and Seeger, had become a type of “Judas,” as one concert-goer famously shouted.

Shots of Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Photographs by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections.

Lee Hays’ correspondence offers a fascinating window into this transition, as the older artists attempted to get a handle on this new generation. In an open letter from February 1964, Hays writes:

The question of the day is, what do you think of Bob Dylan? I’d be more sure if I knew what he thinks of himself. There is a lot of cynicism in his songs; but if he contradicts himself, he is entitled to it. There’s a lot of desert ground in many a young artist before you get to the occasional mountain peak. In whatever follows the age of dinosaurs, the ones who give thought to meanings and origins and who sing with respect for the songs will do the most. I am impressed by the songs of Ian and Sylvia for those reasons.

Coming just on the heels of Dylan’s album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, Hays is likely reacting to the more introspective and darker material, though much of his songs remains topical and political. Even before Highway 61’, Dylan’s concerns were already departing from the parent generation, with more introspective and existential themes. [9]

While Dylan may have left the topical protest songs behind, it’s not clear that Hays and Dylan moved apart on a more fundamental level. While Hays hoped for “people’s songs” that would serve as “battle hymns” against “the powers of evil,” he also felt that above all it should be “true.” [10] Moreover, Hays was wary of those who would see folk music as a “static” genre, relegated to fiddles, banjos, and old country melodies:

Who am I, or who is anyone, to say that the music of the juke box, the beetle organ, which the millions of Americans listen to, and drink their beer to, and dance to, and argue by, and make love by, and relax by, and make up their minds who to vote for by, is trash? […] if the only real music were the pure ‘folk music,’ this would be a darn dead country, and I for one would have to leave it and go back to Arkansas […] I believe in creativeness and experiment, in Picasso as in Woody Guthrie, in Bach as in Pete Johnson, in Verdi as in Blitzstein. [11]

While Dylan’s career moved beyond the topical protests of Hay’s generation, there’s no denying that in drawing from “the jukebox” of American song, he has written songs that are true. It is Dylan’s “respect for the songs,” as Hays writes, that continues to bind him to the previous generation, and earned him the rightful place as one of America’s greatest songwriters.

Adrian Vaagenes, Intern

Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections

[1] Cohen, Ronald D., and Dave Samuelson. Songs For Political Action: Folkmusic, Topical Songs and the American Left 1926-1953. Bear Family Records, 1996. (pgs. 9-11);

[2]  Ibid. (pgs. 15-20).

[3] Willens, Doris. Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hays. W.W. Norton 7 Company, 1988, (pgs. 9; 20-21)

[4] Ibid, pgs. 56-59

[5] Hays, Lee. “Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!”: The Writings of Lee Hays. Edited by Robert S. Koppelman, University of Massachusetts Press, 2003, (pgs. 63-64).

[6] Petrus, Stephen and Ronald Cohen. Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival. Oxford University Press, 2015. (pgs. 286, 289). 

[7] Ibid. (pgs. 288-289); Dunaway, David King, and Molly Beer. Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals. Oxford University Press, 2010. (pg. 151).

[8] Dunaway, David King. How Can I Keep From Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger. Villard Books, 2008. (pgs. 306-308).

[9] Folk City. (pg. 288).

[10] “Sing Out, Warning! Sing Out, Love!” (pgs 89-90).

[11] Ibid. (pgs. 148-149).

The Blue Note Photographs of Francis Wolff

For two decades, Francis Wolff photographed every jazz session that Blue Note Records made. He not only preserved a major part of jazz history, but with his remarkable eye, he captured amazing candid portraits of great artists that reveal the joy and intensity of jazz at the point of creation.
--Michael Cuscuna, founder of Mosaic Images

Curtis Fuller at his June 16, 1957 session for "The Opener" at the Van Gelder Studio, New Jersey.  All the photographs shown in this blog were created by Francis Wolff and are from the Archives Center's Francis Wolff Jazz Photoprints collections, National Museum of American History, the gift of Michael Cuscuna and Mosaic Images.

Michael Cuscuna donated twenty-five silver gelatin photographic prints to the Archives Center in 2011, and this April we were pleased to display twelve of these photographs as part of the festivities for Jazz Appreciation Month.  The exhibition, "The Blue Note Photographs of Francis Wolff," will continue until June 30, 2016. It is located in the space outside the Archives Center entrance in the West Wing, on the first floor of the National Museum of American History. Examples of Blue Note LP record albums which utilized Wolff's photographs are included in the exhibition.

John Coltrane and Lee Morgan at Coltrane's September 15, 1957 session for
"Blue Train" (Blue Note) at the Van Gelder studio, New Jersey

Natives of Berlin, Germany, Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion became friends in 1924 when they discovered their mutual interest in jazz.  Like many Europeans, they had an outsider’s enthusiasm for this American art form.  Lion pursued his passion by moving to New York City in 1928, while Wolff remained in Berlin as a commercial photographer. Lion founded Blue Note Records in 1939 and asked Wolff to join him in New York.  Wolff hesitated, although as a Jew his life in Germany was in imminent danger.  He escaped Nazi Germany in the nick of time, and he and Lion released their first jazz recording in 1939.  The company emphasized traditional jazz at first, but by the late 1940s, Blue Note became a major leader in introducing the innovations of modern jazz and avant-garde styles, as well as the talented musicians who created it.  The co-founders of Blue Note treated their artists with consideration and respect, fostering an atmosphere of creativity and excitement.

Alfred Lion and Thelonious Monk at Monk's May 30, 1952 session for
"Genius of Modern Music" (Blue Note) at WOR Studios, New York City

While Alfred Lion supervised the music at Blue Note Records, Francis Wolff handled the business side.  He started photographing the recording sessions as a personal hobby.  His photographs became the label’s trademark when they were incorporated into album cover designs in 1956.  From then on, with his twin-lens, square-format Rolleiflex camera always at hand, Wolff was the label’s official photographer.  His images immortalized recording sessions by the top artists of modern jazz and revealed the camaraderie that made Blue Note a special creative place.  Using an off-camera flashgun held at arm’s length for unposed images, he embraced the interplay of light and shadow with expression and mood, making the musicians with their instruments look powerful and dramatic against deep black backgrounds. The often square or nearly square proportions of Wolff's pictures reflect his talent in utilizing the full 2-1/4 x 2-1/4" format of his camera, composing to the edge. When Lion retired in 1967, Wolff stopped photographing the recording sessions and became the company’s producer until his death in 1971.

Horace Silver at the November 23, 1955 session for "The Jazz Messengers at Cafe Bohemia 

Each year the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) honors selected musicians as “Jazz Masters.”  Many NEA Jazz Masters recorded for Blue Note records and were photographed by Francis Wolff.  Art Blakey—shown below at his January 24, 1962 session for “The African Best”— was one.  Others included Ron Carter, Ornette Coleman, J.J. Johnson, Curtis Fuller, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, and Jimmy Smith, all represented in the Francis Wolff collection.

Art Blakey at his January 24, 1962 session for "The American Beat" at the Van Gelder Studio, New Jersey 

Francis Wolff's photographs have been reproduced in book form, notably in The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff, by Michael Cuscuna, Charlie Lourie, and Oscar Schneider, with a foreword by Herbie Hancock (New York: Rizzoli, 1995); but this is the first time these photographs from the Archives Center's collections, beautifully printed from Wolff's negatives in the Mosaic Images collection, have been placed on public view in the National Museum of American History.  A few days after this small exhibition opened I chanced to mention it in an email to a Spanish friend who also has been a photographer of jazz musicians, and is now a doctoral candidate in the history of photography, Lourdes Delgado. She said that years ago she met the man who printed Wolff's photographs in New York and saw the images. I first met Lourdes when our Museum's Curator of American Music, Dr. John Edward Hasse, introduced her to me while she was living in New York. Wolff photographed musicians at work, during rehearsals and performances, but Lourdes photographed them in their home environments. Dr. Hasse, the creator of Jazz Appreciation Month, is a great Archives Center collaborator, frequently bringing the work of talented photographers of musicians to our attention and facilitating acquisitions, especially in the field of jazz, and his efforts have enriched Archives Center collections enormously.

David Haberstich
Curator of Photography, Archives Center
National Museum of American History