An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre at Wigmore Hall, London.
In June of 2020, with all physical theatre venues shut, the arts world was struggling with how to react to the global protests that followed in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, two names in an increasingly long list of Black people killed by police. When theatres reopened, we were promised, things would be better. The systemic dominance of white voices would be addressed to ensure that all aspects of theatre – from producers to creatives, from crews to casts, to the audience itself – could really reflect 21st century Britain.
As we sputter out of lockdown, it does seem as if the impetus for change has gone from the majority of organisations who made such commitments last year. And change is needed, for over the last century the contributions of non-white theatre practitioners has been systematically minimised, erased even.
And yet there is a Black history at the heart of British musical theatre, something which academic Sarah K. Whitfield and practitioner Sean Mayes have researched and documented for their new book, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950, which received a formal launch with a concert performance and discussion at Wigmore Hall.
Baritone Jonathan Andrew Hume and soprano Esme Sears, accompanied by Mayes, were on hand to deliver numbers either written or originally performed by some of the forgotten figures highlighted in Mayes and Whitfield’s book. ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing’, revered as a Black national anthem in the US, is presented as a tribute to J. Rosamond Johnson, who set his brother’s poem to music. The early 20th century saw several African-American figures, including Johnson, journey to London to perform, conduct and compose several works.
Some of that influence was evident in choral arrangements for musical theatre, which gained influence from US church choirs as a result. So many practitioners of that time have all but disappeared; one, John C. Payne, has but a single recording remaining. Hume presents a compelling rendition of ‘Standin’ in the Need o’ Prayer’, his only surviving arrangement.
It is such fragmentary remnants that Mayes and Whitfield have attempted to piece together for their book. On stage, the authors took very different approaches to answering the leading questions lobbed by Hume and Sears in their secondary role as interviewers. Whitfield was precise, analytical, her answers forever pointing people towards the book while driving the conversation towards something that could tie in to the next musical performance.
Mayes took a more free-wheeling approach, his passion evident. Sentences poured out of him, each one starting before the previous one had a chance to finish. Sometimes that may have got in the way of the point he was trying to make, but his depth of knowledge and his enthusiasm for both the craft in general and the reclamation of Black artists at his heart was without question.
The venue of the Wigmore Hall itself, first constructed at the turn of the 20th century as an annex to the C. Bechstein piano showroom that was next door, is a place that also features heavily in the forgotten histories that Mayes and Whitfield have reconstituted. One such tale is of Edric Connor, whose broad appeal was such that he would be performing concerts there one night, and at music halls on others. Connor and his wife opened their Notting Hill home to Caribbean students and visiting performers including Paul Robeson – a visit that Connor would come to believe was the reason why his later request for a US visa was denied.
Both the evening and the book give extensive occasions as to when Black performers and practitioners were at the heart of musical theatre performance in the first half of the20th century. So why, then, have their stories been downplayed and forgotten? The reasons may be many, from unintended bias to outright racism. It is also open to debate as to whether some performers were “conformists that replicated white hegemony”, or using (in the words of American fellow historian Paula Seniors) “the very tools of hegemony to create a distinctly black theater informed by black politics, history, and culture”.
But that is a debate we can only have if those stories are heard, known and respected. Mayes and Whitfield are reintroducing stories that should never have been forgotten, but are conscious that the manner of doing so is vitally important. “As much as we may wish to disrupt today answers,” they write, “clearly writing a book about these complex stories risks the same issue by putting people into ‘boxes’.”
On first reading, the authors’ work does indeed avoid that risk. And as Mayes and Whitfield state: “Black theatre histories are theatre histories: and ultimately, are uncontainable.”
Lift every voice, and sing.
Scott Matthewman
- An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950 is published by Methuen Drama
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