John Coltrane Quartet - “Afro Blue” (1963)
Goddamn magnificence
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So I found the original post by, duh, looking up the “Al Jolson” tag I put on here. In the wonderful way of tumblr I can’t find it through my dashboard (in fact, it just turned into a tumblr search for Al Jolson; which, don’t do unless you have a strong stomach for blackface imagery), but I was able to find it by actually looking up Al Jolson on my blog itself. Don’t ask me why. But here’s a longer, though not as eloquent as I’d like, dissection of what goes on in the cartoon.
This used to be one of my favorite of the old time Merrie Melodies. (I Love to Singa (1936) inspired/loosely based on the 1927 Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer).
Then I took a class my third year of college that was about the historical overlaps of American and Anglo Jewry as well as Black American history. Unfortunately, the Al Jolson film is a phenomenal white washing of the Jewish/Black connection that developed around early American Jazz and Vaudeville—it includes a few intense scenes of blackface, including one which was somewhat reproduced in I Like to Singa. In the later cartoon the main character is Owl Jolson (that spry little fellow in the red jacket). What still strikes me, even as I watch it is the way in which the traditional appearance of cartoon owls—especially at the time—is a stand in for continuous black face. So that while the owl family is depicted as vaguely Eastern European (another stereotype that persists to this time, but was particularly persistent then), though not Jewish (which the real-life Jolson was, as was his character in the film), they are simultaneously blackfaced and passing as non-Jews. This is a theme in The Jazz Singer where Jolson has to find a way to blend his American (blackfaced Vaudeville Jazz singer) Identity with his Orthodox (specifically, Hasidic) Jewish upbringing—there is a scene in Jazz Singer where Jolson goes to a performance of a famous Cantor, Yossele Rosenblatt, and has something of an epiphany.
In the end, like Owl Jolson, Al Jolson’s “Jakie Rabinowitz” finds a way to merge his American and Jewish identities—albeit with the help of blackface.
However, at the time, the Eastern European identity was wrapped up in Jewish identity, at least to the English and US Americans.* Numerous pogroms had been in effect for decades and the resultant flight to the US, particularly Chicago and New York produced some of the most famous American artists and performers of the 20s, 30s, and 40s (both the creators of Superman and Batman were Eastern European Jews whose parents had fled to the US to escape persecution—the details are hazy, but the information is available in the wonderful book Men of Tomorrow). So the simultaneous “blackface” of the owls, as characters, as well as their Eastern European voices—except for little Owl Jolson—creates this double erasure. They are not explicitly classed religiously or ethnically, yet, Leon Schlesinger and Tex Avery manage to successfully create a Jewish, immigrant, blackface-wearing minstrel character.
A lot of this is implicit and, in many ways, does not translate to our generation without the benefit of research or knowing the context of the cartoon. However, the particular affect and diction used for the song “I love to sing-a/ About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a,/ I love to sing-a,/ About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a,/ Anything-a with a swing-a to an “I love you-a,”/ I love to, I love to sing!” are all traditional stylizations of a blackface show.
Far from trying to be a downer, I find it interesting, and I think the thing that is so fascinating about old cartoons, particularly Merrie Melodies (which has the most cartoons on the list of the Censored 11—10 out of the original 11) is how they tapped into common language and imagery for the time.
I’ve watched a bunch of the 11, and some of the other banned cartoons that are around on youtube (seriously, don’t click that link unless you want to see some intensely racist cartoons) and they’re pretty horrific. I’m not gonna sugar coat that aspect. But, at the same time, they were masterpieces of animation. They represent the first generation or so of animation as we know it—color and sound syncing, painted lithographs on painted backdrops. Not to mention, they relied on the commonplace images and symbology of the time. They didn’t invent much new symbolism—at least not until later in the weird modernist ‘toons of the 60s and 70s—but they did capture something of a zeitgeist.**
Remember, these were generally no more than ten minutes long, a few examples stray into the fifteen minute realm, but generally a ‘toon was a pre-movie treat, or a weekend special for kids. They were meant to be like a Readers’ Digest, and in many cases, they offered a way to watch operas, classic plays, and highbrow literature for scores of people with no other access to such media.
Anyway, that’s my spiel, triggered by the above gif from I Love to Singa
*And even now Jewish identity in media continues to be almost exclusively identified with Ashkenazim (European and Eastern European, more specifically), even though there are Sephardi and African Jews, as well as Jews throughout the world who do not identify as either Ashkenazim or Sephardi.
**1938’s Porky in Wackyland (later
reproducedremixed as 1949’s Dough for the Do-do) is probably still on my list of trippiest cartoons ever produced
BWAH!
Okay, so I keep meaning to look for this semi-rant I wrote about this cartoon ages ago.
The main thing is:
Don’t get me wrong, I love this cartoon, and I used to watch it all the time on the Tex Avery show and Toon Heads back when Cartoon Network played old cartoons all the time. It’s not a bad cartoon, and it’s one of the top examples of the role cartoons had in expanding the listenership of jazz. But it is a very interesting example of just how insidious blackface was and on how many levels it was applied.
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Moondog—Lament I, “Bird’s Lament”
This used to be one of my favorite of the old time Merrie Melodies. (I Love to Singa (1936) inspired/loosely based on the 1927 Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer).
Then I took a class my third year of college that was about the historical overlaps of American and Anglo Jewry as well as Black American history. Unfortunately, the Al Jolson film is a phenomenal white washing of the Jewish/Black connection that developed around early American Jazz and Vaudeville—it includes a few intense scenes of blackface, including one which was somewhat reproduced in I Like to Singa. In the later cartoon the main character is Owl Jolson (that spry little fellow in the red jacket). What still strikes me, even as I watch it is the way in which the traditional appearance of cartoon owls—especially at the time—is a stand in for continuous black face. So that while the owl family is depicted as vaguely Eastern European (another stereotype that persists to this time, but was particularly persistent then), though not Jewish (which the real-life Jolson was, as was his character in the film), they are simultaneously blackfaced and passing as non-Jews. This is a theme in The Jazz Singer where Jolson has to find a way to blend his American (blackfaced Vaudeville Jazz singer) Identity with his Orthodox (specifically, Hasidic) Jewish upbringing—there is a scene in Jazz Singer where Jolson goes to a performance of a famous Cantor, Yossele Rosenblatt, and has something of an epiphany.
In the end, like Owl Jolson, Al Jolson’s “Jakie Rabinowitz” finds a way to merge his American and Jewish identities—albeit with the help of blackface.
However, at the time, the Eastern European identity was wrapped up in Jewish identity, at least to the English and US Americans.* Numerous pogroms had been in effect for decades and the resultant flight to the US, particularly Chicago and New York produced some of the most famous American artists and performers of the 20s, 30s, and 40s (both the creators of Superman and Batman were Eastern European Jews whose parents had fled to the US to escape persecution—the details are hazy, but the information is available in the wonderful book Men of Tomorrow). So the simultaneous “blackface” of the owls, as characters, as well as their Eastern European voices—except for little Owl Jolson—creates this double erasure. They are not explicitly classed religiously or ethnically, yet, Leon Schlesinger and Tex Avery manage to successfully create a Jewish, immigrant, blackface-wearing minstrel character.
A lot of this is implicit and, in many ways, does not translate to our generation without the benefit of research or knowing the context of the cartoon. However, the particular affect and diction used for the song “I love to sing-a/ About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a,/ I love to sing-a,/ About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a,/ Anything-a with a swing-a to an “I love you-a,”/ I love to, I love to sing!” are all traditional stylizations of a blackface show.
Far from trying to be a downer, I find it interesting, and I think the thing that is so fascinating about old cartoons, particularly Merrie Melodies (which has the most cartoons on the list of the Censored 11—10 out of the original 11) is how they tapped into common language and imagery for the time.
I’ve watched a bunch of the 11, and some of the other banned cartoons that are around on youtube (seriously, don’t click that link unless you want to see some intensely racist cartoons) and they’re pretty horrific. I’m not gonna sugar coat that aspect. But, at the same time, they were masterpieces of animation. They represent the first generation or so of animation as we know it—color and sound syncing, painted lithographs on painted backdrops. Not to mention, they relied on the commonplace images and symbology of the time. They didn’t invent much new symbolism—at least not until later in the weird modernist ‘toons of the 60s and 70s—but they did capture something of a zeitgeist.**
Remember, these were generally no more than ten minutes long, a few examples stray into the fifteen minute realm, but generally a ‘toon was a pre-movie treat, or a weekend special for kids. They were meant to be like a Readers’ Digest, and in many cases, they offered a way to watch operas, classic plays, and highbrow literature for scores of people with no other access to such media.
Anyway, that’s my spiel, triggered by the above gif from I Love to Singa
*And even now Jewish identity in media continues to be almost exclusively identified with Ashkenazim (European and Eastern European, more specifically), even though there are Sephardi and African Jews, as well as Jews throughout the world who do not identify as either Ashkenazim or Sephardi.
**1938’s Porky in Wackyland (later reproduced remixed as 1949’s Dough for the Do-do) is probably still on my list of trippiest cartoons ever produced
