As we approach Black History Month and reflect on the evolving nature of Harlem, with its current influx of a new generation of culturally and ethnic diverse residents, it’s worth reflecting back to a similar time a hundred years ago. By 1917 Harlem had already accommodated a wave of displaced tenement dwellers driven from the heart of their neighborhoods by large civic projects. Blacks, with the building of Pennsylvania Station and its extensive rail systems, were moving from the Tenderloin District of the West Side, and Jews were forced from areas of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg by the construction of the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges with their associated expanded roadway approaches. The uprooted youth from those migrating waves weren’t interested in the operatic entertainments then being offered by Harlem’s established theater owners such as Oscar Hammerstein or Weber & Fields, but preferred the “hip-hop” rhythms of their day, ragtime. Future songwriters and lyricists such as George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers are being influenced by Harlem’s African-American talents, James Reese Europe, W. C. Handy, Bert Williams and others. Currently, there’s an amazing exhibition documenting the interactions and musical influences that evolved between these two groups that’s running through Feb. 22, 2017 at The Interchurch Center Gallery, located at 475 Riverside Drive, New York, N.Y. (212-870-2200).
Community Works’ “harlem is . . . Music,” offers an expanded exhibition featuring this new component “Harlem’s Black and Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930,” a spectacular showcase of sheet music and other documents that tells the story of collaborations between the neighborhood’s Black and Jewish composers, performers and music publishers, with never before seen archival materials and documents curated from the collection of Harlem historian and Columbia University Community Scholar, John T. Reddick. The sheet music and other documents he’s amassed while researching Harlem’s historic music culture is rich in material that predates the Harlem Renaissance, including that of early 20th-century talents Bert Williams and his partner George Walker, along with other artists of their Williams & Walker Company, which included James Reese Europe, Aida Overton-Walker and Abbie Mitchell. Such artists cast an influential shadow over the evolving careers of the performers Sophie Tucker, George Gershwin, Florenz Ziegfeld and others.
One unique component of the exhibition focuses on the Apollo Theater, which was built and owned by Sidney Cohen in 1914 with a 30-year lease to Benjamin Hurtig and Harry Seamon, who named it Hurtig & Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater. Documents on exhibit reflect Hurtig & Seamon’s history and association with African-American performers that predate the theater’s more heralded presentation of Black performers by Frank Schiffman when it was renamed the Apollo Theater in 1934. On display are Hurtig & Seamon contracts and documents dating back to the 1890s during their early 125th Street Music Hall days, when they were producing and promoting shows that showcased leading African-American talents in the internationally successful show, “In Dahomey,” starring Williams & Walker and their gifted company of players.
Before the Apollo Theater, the other theater that embodied the early influences and collaborative dialogue between Blacks and Jews was Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre. Opening in 1912, the theater provided an early neighborhood home for the presentation of African-American talent, in both dramatic and musical performance to an audience that soon reflected the area’s increasing Black population. The venue also served to amplify the presence and social life of the reining African-American performers of the era, many of whom lived within blocks of the theater. Talented artist, including composers Scott Joplin, J. Leubrie Hill, Will Marion Cook and James Reese Europe, and cultural arbiters, such as the New York Age’s Lester A. Walton, also frequented and often contributed to the Lafayette’s famed theatrical productions.
Another highlight of the exhibit focuses on the composer and performer J. Leubrie Hill’s 1913 production of “Darktown Follies,” at the Lafayette Theatre. Seen by the Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, the show’s songs and choreography were transported downtown, contributing to what became Ziegfeld’s next hit production, the “Ziegfeld’s Follies of 1914.” Also, film producers seeing the talent and energy of “The Darktown Follies” engaged many of its cast as the prancing and supportive comic players for Ziegfeld’s marquee star, Bert Williams for their film titled, “Lime Kiln Club Field Day,” shot around 1914. Never edited or released, the production was dropped after the release of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” poisoned the general market for any mainstream release of a film focused on African-American life. Besides Bert Williams, the cast included J. Leubrie Hill, Abbie Mitchell and other prominent Black theatrical players of the era.
For those unaware of this period in Harlem’s history, a visit to this exhibition will be a revelation. After all, who knew that Scott Joplin lived on 131st Street or that Milton Berle and George Jessel grew up as neighbors on 118th Street and were bar mitzvahed along with Lorenz Hart at Temple Mt. Zion on 119th Street? Well, a visit to this unique exhibition on Harlem’s Black and Jewish music culture will answer and enlighten even the most knowledgeable among us.
For more information, visit http://interchurch-center.org/exhibitions/harlem-is-music.
