Brotherhood In Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers - Softcover

Hill, Constance

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815412150 ISBN 13: 9780815412151

Verlag: CSP-Cooper Square Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Tap dancing legends Fayard (b. 1914) and Harold (1918-2000) Nicholas amazed crowds with their performances in musicals and films from the 30s to the 80s. They performed with Gene Kelly in The Pirate, with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather, with Dorothy Dandridge (Harold's wife) in Sun Valley Serenade, and with a number of other stars on the stage and on the screen. Author Hill not only guides readers through the brothers' showstopping successes and the repressive times in which their dancing won them universal acclaim, she also offers extensive insight into the history and choreography of tap dancing, bringing readers up to speed on the art form in which the Nicholas Brothers excelled.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Constance Valis Hill's articles and reviews have appeared in such publications as Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, and Dance Research Journal. She lives in Albany, New York. Gregory Hines is a world-renowned tap dancer and actor.

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Brotherhood in Rhythm

The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas BrothersBy Constance Valis Hill

Cooper Square Publishers

Copyright © 2002 Constance Valis Hill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780815412151

Chapter One

Born
into Jazz

Fayard Nicholas was born in Mobile, Alabama, on October 28,1914, twelve weeks after the Austro-Hungarian declaration of waron Serbia and amidst the succession of declarations of war byother European countries that exploded into World War I.Harold Nicholas was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, onMarch 17, 1921, in the wake of the Great War. In Paris a yearbefore Fayard's birth, Igor Stravinsky's dissonant and pulsatingscore for the Ballets Russes' Le Sacre du printemps had instigatedoutraged members of the audience to stomp their feet and beateach other over the head, their strokes synchronized with thebeat of the music. Their response to the rhythm-driven syncopationsin Stravinsky's jazz-influenced score echoed the volatilepredisposition of a people on the brink of war. In the span of timebetween the Nicholas brothers' births, with its mixed moods ofanxiety and optimism over what the future would bring, a newform of music emerged?jazz?that reshaped American cultureand influenced European culture with its sudden turns, shocks,and swift changes of pace. English critic R.W.S. Mendl describedjazz as being the product of a restless age, "when men and womenare still too much disturbed to be content with a tranquil existence ...America is turning out her merchandise at an unprecedentedspeed, and the whole world is rushing helter skelter inunknown directions." Symbolic of the new age, jazz served as areminder, Ralph Ellison wrote, that "the world is ever unexplored,and that while a complete mastery of life is mere illusion,the real secret of the game is to make life swing."

Jazz Music: The Teens Through the Twenties

Jazz invaded Europe on New Year's Day in 1918 when, after theU.S. declaration of war (on Germany, April 2, 1917; on Austria-Hungary,December 7, 1917), hundreds of thousands of blackAmerican soldiers were drafted and shipped overseas to France.The American armies brought not only musicians and Americanrecordings but also, as Colonel William Heyward boasted, "thebest damn brass band in the United States Army." The 369thInfantry Regiment Band was led by James Reese Europe, who,born in Mobile, Alabama, was a classically trained musician; hehad studied violin and piano as a child. In New York in 1910, hehad organized the Clef Club, a professional black musicians' association,and in 1913, with his Society Orchestra, he became thefirst African American to make a recording.

    James Reese Europe's 369th Infantry Band, dubbed the Hell-fighters,featured Chicago's leading cornetist, Jacon Frank deBraithe, as soloist; Harlem's most beloved tap dancer, Bill "Bojangles"Robinson, as drum major; and a group of multitalentedmusicians, some recruited from as far as Puerto Rico, who couldsing, dance, and perform a number of entertainments. The bandprided itself on playing anything?from ragtime cakewalks tonovelty music specialties with instrumental effects and "barnyard"imitations to the classics. In the winter of 1918, they traveled twothousand miles throughout France with a program that beganwith a French march, followed by favorite overtures and vocalselections by a male quartet, and continued with John PhilipSousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," as well as arrangements ofsouthern plantation melodies. Then came the fireworks, a soul-rousingrendition of "Memphis Blues." Noble Sissle, a drummajor in the band, recalls the moment Europe's baton camecrashing down on the opening note:

Cornet and clarinet players began to manipulate notes as the drummers struck the stride, their shoulders shaking in time to their syncopated rags. Then it seemed the whole audience began to sway and dignified French officers began to pat their feet, along with the American general, who had temporarily lost his style and grace. The audience could stand it no longer, the jazz germ hit them and it seemed to find the vital spot, loosening all muscles and causing what is known in America as "an eagle rocking it."

    The Hellfighters did not play jazz in the strictest sense, but arough blend of brass band music and ragtime that James Europehad developed years earlier for the popular American ballroomdance team of Vernon and Irene Castle. With them he had createdthe fox-trot and many other popular dance steps that had had amajor part in initiating the Jazz Age. James Europe's "syncopatedmusic," as it was called, was dance music. Although most of it, likeragtime, was notated?only a few of the solos were improvised?thefiercely insistent beat, built-in syncopation, and deliberatelypitched notes of this ragtime-jazz blend were in dramatic contrastto the painstaking formalities of European dance music. The dancing,not simply the jazz music, became the reigning obsession ofthe Parisian Jazz Age.

    After the war ended in 1918, the general public in Paris turnedout nightly by the thousands to dance the fox-trot. When theCasino de Paris reopened its doors with the revue Laissez-lestomber! (Let them drop!) and with an American band composedof banjos, big nickel tubas, and motorcycle horns, the audience,wrote Jean Cocteau, "rose from their seats and with head, chestand arms, followed the rhythm." No one knew for sure what jazzwas, but the music meant dancing that was energetic, with roomfor full body movement and personal expression. The streets andalleys of Montmartre became the center of Parisian jazz, thougheverywhere in Paris American bands were playing a rough versionof jazz that made people move.

    If the boulevards of Montmartre, as the center of postwarParisian jazz, had become a transatlantic reflection of Harlem,Harlem itself and New York had become the source for "hot" jazzrhythms. "Hot" was the term used in the 1920s to suggest qualitiesof speed, excitement, and intensity, as well as to distinguishjazz from other music genres.

    Jazz had not originated in New York City, but some claim thatit was "discovered" there around 1917, when the all-white OriginalDixieland Jass [sic] Band made its debut at Reisenweber's Cabaretin midtown Manhattan. The group of five New Orleans musicians,which included Nick LaRocca (cornet), Eddie Edwards(trombone), Larry Shields (clarinet), Henry Ragas (piano), andTony Sbarbaro (drums), played their "jass" by ear and as "hot" asthey could; their melodies, Variety reported, were "quite conduciveto making the dancers on the floor loosen up and go the limit intheir stepping." ODJB was at the right place at the right time: thegroup made the first out-and-out jazz recordings to be issued onthe RCA Victor label's popular phonograph-record lists and soldin the millions.

    A richer and more developed form of jazz was already beingplayed by black musicians in New Orleans at least ten years earlier.Marshall Stearns reports that the words "jas," "jass," and later"jazz" turned up in Chicago in the middle teens, along with otherwords like "boogie," "swing," and "rock"; all were descriptive ofmusical styles with origins in turn-of-the-century Negro slang.And in a Negro cabaret in Chicago, so J. A. Rogers writes, therewas a wild and reckless musician named Jasbo Brown who playedextravagant and risque interpretations of the blues on his trombone,to the delight of patrons who shouted,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: CSP-Cooper Square Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0815412150
• ISBN 13: 9780815412151
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 349
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland