Black Musicals: A Jewish Legacy

Kosher? Or Cultural Appropriation?

John McWhorter is a musical theatre queen. And I helped.

My venerated friend gave me permission to characterize him this way. He’s a rapturous fan of the musical theatre—where I’ve spent most of my performing career. John’s also a fine musician, and a compelling public speaker—which takes some real acting chops. He’s also got great comedic timing: just ask Bill Maher.

John and I were dorm roommates at Simon’s Rock College as teens. We realized we shared the same wicked sense of humor and sarcasm, and a shared passion for great books and music. My artistic parents were devoted record collectors, and their LPs encompassed almost every genre. They especially loved Broadway original cast albums, and my Dad became an expert, hunting down rare shows and playing all this great music in the studios where he worked as a scenic artist, with little me underfoot. Naturally, when my fifteen-year old stage struck self was leaving for Simon’s Rock, I recorded a bunch of Dad’s vinyl onto cassette.

John was already musically knowledgeable, and had a natural flair for performing, but all this Broadway music was a revelation to him. I rattled off all the history, the backstage stories and anecdotes about the stars that he was listening to, because over the years I’d absorbed it all—my Dad was a brilliant guy. John became an enthusiast, and over the past forty years, he’s become a connoisseur of the musical theatre. I heard him say in an interview once: “Musicals are my church.” I’ve spent much of the past thirty years of my career doing musicals—some of the greatest; and many of my dream roles. John and I reconnected after four decades last summer, when I sought his advice and expertise following a run-in I had with some antiracist activist coworkers in rehearsals for a show (for details, read my first Substack post, I Am What I Am). It’s due to him that I started The Cornfield! I’ve been dying to get away from issues of race and all things Woke and talk musicals with John, so…

John McWhorter

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!: John McWhorter will be one of my first guests on The Cornfield Podcast later this month! And I can’t think of two more appropriate musical theatre lovers than we to take on our topic: Black Musicals: A Jewish Legacy.

I spent two glorious years playing Sir Robin in the First National Tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot. I had, of course, the best number in the show, “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway:”

In any great adventure, if you don't want to lose
Victory depends upon the people that you choose
So listen, Arthur, darling, closely to this news
We won't succeed on Broadway if we don't have any Jews!

As Sir Robin in the First National Tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot

It’s okay, I’m Jewish, relax. Besides, everyone knows the Jews made Broadway what it is, and are still big players, keeping the American Musical Theatre vibrant and alive. I do find it fascinating that nearly all of the most successful and enduring Black musicals—the masterworks of the repertoire—providing iconic roles for Black performers, have been written by white Jews. Fact. And these stories have authenticity. These complex characters of color perennially resonate with actors and audiences alike. The musical styles these works encompass span an American century, transforming Black singers and actors into stars along the way.

In the current cultural climate, I’ve been pondering these works, apprehensive of what the sensitivity police might make of them… or unmake of them, as the case may be. By their ideology, are not the authors of these staples of the repertoire “cultural appropriators?” Do these musicals offer the Black experience, distorted? Perceived “with a white eye?” Would some deem these Tony and Pulitzer and Oscar-winning white folks not entitled to write these stories? It seems a moot point to me. These shows are beloved by audiences, cherished by the Black performing community, and have all been hugely popular and financial successes. The film versions have been events, featuring the biggest Black stars on the planet. Dreamgirls alone immortalized Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy, and—in her Oscar-winning debut—Jennifer Hudson. Seems to me that the eyes, ears, and imaginations of a few talented Jews succeeded in honoring and elevating the Black stories that inspired them. Historian and author Josh Kun of USC has this insight:

One of the ways that Jewish songwriters on Broadway wrote about the experience of being Jewish was by writing about other outsiders: ‘I’m not going to tell you the story of Jews in America, but I am going to tell you the story of an African-American on a riverboat, I’m going to use somebody’s else’s story to tell you mine’. The more the Jews are not writing about Jews, I think you could argue is when they are actually writing the most about Jews.

You can feel the empathy and cultural homage in all of these works. Yet, today’s DEI meddlers would see only the white faces of their brilliant creators, and start ferreting out what’s “problematic” in these works. I know that John will have so many insights and opinions about why these musicals endure and how he feels about the way Black culture is portrayed in them. This is gonna be a really stimulating conversation and I can’t wait! Since I want you all to tune in for the podcast, I won’t start digging into these, but below are the musicals we plan to focus on:

Porgy and Bess. The enduring success of it on Broadway and major opera companies worldwide. Author DuBose Heyward’s upbringing in South Carolina, and the inspiration of the Black community he moved about in. The Gershwins collaboration and their research trip to Heyward’s South Carolina, where they immersed in the culture and studied the Gullah dialect which features in Porgy and Bess. The piece has inspired both harsh criticism and effusive praise…but endures.

Caroline, or Change. Autobiographical Tony Kushner musical about his experience as a Jewish kid growing up in Louisiana, and his relationship with the family’s Black maid. Jeanine Tesori wrote the score. If this story comes from Kushner’s life, and the woman he’s written is drawn from his deep connection with her real life inspiration, how can the whiteness of the creators be of issue?

The Color Purple. I mean , it’s Alice Walker. Such cherished source material must be interpreted with utmost delicacy, and who better than Marsha Norman? Oprah Winfrey, who commissioned and produced the musical, clearly thought so. The musical team was diverse and included Black songwriter, Brenda Russell.

Dreamgirls. The supernova of all Black musicals, was written by Henry Krieger and conceived and directed by the legendary Michael Bennett. Two Jewish gay men who loved Motown! And its essence is captured brilliantly in Krieger’s score. Fascinating: a musical about Black artists struggling to get a foothold in the white dominated music industry and having their music stolen by white artists…written by a white writer, interpreting and capturing the Black musical sound of the era. Can we allow Bennett and Krieger a pass on this one? The love and inspiration is palpable in every note of that show. The careers it launched, the stars it made, the heights to which those stars soared with it? It couldn’t have been written by anyone else—because then it wouldn’t be Dreamgirls.

George and Ira Gershwin

We Jews honor history. We’re raised never to forget the struggles of our ancestors, and to be truthful in our retelling of the past. The Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York in the early 20th century, like musical brothers George and Ira Gershwin, were determined to become, in every way possible, Americans. Black music is American music, and these classical musicians, steeped also in the Yiddish musical tradition, encountering ragtime, and the blues, and jazz, listening with those ears? To them a commitment to absorbing and learning Black music would make them American Songwriters. Their efforts brought to the nation’s highest levels of culture, and introduced to a dazzled public, Black performers who would become legend. We lament, of course, what works we might have had today, if Black composers and songwriters weren’t denied the kinds of opportunities that the Gershwin brothers were afforded to create and produce theirs. But there are blessings along with the losses. The celebration of, and introduction into national consciousness generations of Black performers who’ve made their mark in these classics. Jazz music, invented by Black musicians, revolutionized our culture and gave an Age its name. Let’s cherish what they all left us, and honor the memories of those pioneering talents, like the great Paul Robeson, who took those first breakthrough steps into the footlights…with their immigrant Jewish authors smiling from the wings.

Subscribe, if you haven’t yet, and stay tuned for my chat with John McWhorter and the launch of The Cornfield podcast!