Before Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll…
In Meredith Wilson’s 1957 hit musical The Music Man, con man Professor Harold Hill sings out about “ragtime, shameless music” as one of the pending disasters that threaten Riverside if the parents of the town don’t get their collective act together.
It’s intended to be funny. In 1957, parents were facing new musical threats that could grab their sons and daughters “in the arms of a jungle animal instinct.”* By comparison, ragtime was delightful, old-timey music. Nothing transgressive about it.
In fact, as musicologist Dale Cockerell makes clear in Everybody’s Doin’ It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917, an earlier generation believed ragtime was indeed “shameless music” that threatened the social as well as the musical status quo.
Cockerell traces the connection between popular music and and the disorderly world of New York City’s brothels, bars, dance halls, concert saloons and “Raines Law hotels”** in the period between the first blackface minstrel shows and the rise of jazz. Writing about a time when “dives” were literally located in below-sidewalk cellars, Cockerell demonstrates a symbiotic relationship between rowdy dancing inspired by equally rowdy music and the flourishing business of prostitution.
Because his subjects often lived below what Cockerell calls “the horizon of record,” many of his sources are middle-class observers who wrote about the music and its audience with disdain. (Some of the most explicit accounts come from undercover investigators hired by various reform societies to provide evidence of immoral activities.) These accounts refer to the “alleged music” produced by musicians and singers with no formal training. They describe erotically charged “tough dancing,” from the imported cancan to “animal dances” like the turkey trot and the bunny hug. They detail sexual solicitation in graphic detail, as well as undercover agents’ sting operations.
Never letting the reader forget the inherent bias of his middle-class, largely white, sources, Cockerell evokes a kaleidoscope of colorful characters and institutions without ever losing track of the poverty on which his subject rests. He raises complicated issues of class, gender and race, issues that would shape the development of American popular music in the coming decades.
Long before sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, sex, alcohol and ragtime ruled.
*Yep, that is just as racist as it sounds.
**The Raines Law, passed in 1896 by the New York State legislature, was intended to regulate alcohol consumption, particularly alcohol consumption by working class men. The law made it illegal to sell alcohol on Sundays except in a hotel. In order to get around the regulation, saloons opened furnished rooms upstairs and began to serve sandwiches with drinks. The rooms were loosely defined–sometimes demised with no more than a thin fabric curtain–and scantily furnished. They soon became a convenient place for prostitutes to retire with their customers. Can you say “unintended consequences”?
Much of this post previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
From Kenyan Coffee to a Search for Kikuyu Women Warriors
As those of you who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and/or Instagram know, one of the delights of my week in the summer is my Thursday morning trip to the farmers’ market. I chat with the vendors about the plums or the tomatoes or the asparagus, I load up on veggies for the coming week, and this year I end my visit with treats from two booths: an asparagus taco from Taylor’s Tacos and a bright acidic cup of Kenyan coffee from Kikwetu Coffee.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been talking about women warriors, and Women Warriors, with both the taco and the coffee vendors.* And this week I came away with a quest: to track down traditional stories of Kikuya women warriors.
I was already aware of the role Kikuyu women played in the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonialism in Kenya in the 1950s.** Women made up roughly five percent of the forest guerilla forces. Thousands more took part in the civilian wing of the movement, which provided the supplies of information, food, medicine and guns that kept the guerilla forces alive for the seven years of the Mau Mau uprising. Their activities were similar to those of European women who supported the resistance in occupied Europe in the Second World War. And like those women, their contribution is often referred to as “passive resistance.” I prefer the term “soft resistance”, which historian Ronald Rosbottom uses for members of the resistance who do not were not active combatants. They were not passive by any meaningful definition of the term. They operated with the full knowledge that they faced torture and imprisonment by the British if they were captured.
My coffee providers told me an older story of a matriarchal society in the distant past in which women held the political power. Left at home while the women went off to fight, the men plotted to overthrow them by getting them all pregnant at the same time and then seizing power while they were giving birth. I haven’t been able to find more details. If you know more, let me know.
*As one does.
**This is the part of the larger story of women who fought in the anti-colonial wars that followed World War II.
A New History Podcast I’m Excited About
Almost exactly four years ago, I started looking for a history podcast or ten that I could love. (I put out the call for suggestions here on the Margins four years and 29 days ago, to be precise.)
Since then, I’ve reported back twice on history podcasts I’ve enjoyed listening to. (You can find the lists HERE and HERE.)* Since then, more have made it to my list.**
Yesterday I received a heads up that my friend Elizabeth Lundy has a history podcast in the pipeline: The Year That Was. Here’s what she has to say about it:
The thing about history is that everything happens all at once, everywhere, all the time. This podcast attempts to capture the messy reality of history by looking at one year from as many angles as possible. We tell the big headline stories as well as smaller stories of more intimate moments. We learn about all sorts of people—not just old white dudes, but also women and people of color. And we seek out the connections between events. What strands link politics and science, art and international affairs? We learn something different by looking at history this way—something about how life was actually experienced in the past.
In my experience, Elizabeth does good work. I don’t expect this to be any different. The first episode will release on September 3—as in almost immediately. In the meantime, if you want a little taste, you can check out her trailer:
The first season will look at 1919, which was a hell of a year.
This should be Big Fun.
* I inexplicably left off The Dead Prussian podcast, which I’ve been listening to one and off for several years now. I’m particularly interested in how different guests fill in the blank to “War is—” (Not easy.) If you’re interested in military history and theory, this one’s for you.
** Including The Exploress, The Dead Ladies Show ,and Overheard at National Geographic (which is not exactly history, but is certainly history adjacent.)