Hindu Maidens and Hot Jazz
Terry Teachout’s call for title suggestions got Miss Mussel thinking about a paper she wrote in her undergraduate days called something like Yellow Fever: Orientalism and Hot Jazz in 1920s Chicago. Slightly awkward title aside, it was a fascinating subject to research, mostly because it quickly became apparent that black musicians had no qualms about exploiting the slumming trend amongst white jazz fans or subjugating the only race more distrusted than they, namely Asians.
Issues of race hierarchy, appropriation, novelty, government immigration quotas, geography and traditional race identity stereotypes within American culture are deeply entrenched in the music and provided enough fodder for expansion into a Masters thesis. In the end, Miss Mussel went with another idea but she is looking forward to revisiting this topic in greater detail in future.
Once time becomes available to transfer the text from paper to computer, it will be posted in full in the Essay section. Miss Mussel is still on the look out for a thousand typing monkies to assist with this task, so it may be while yet before the position is filled.
A very worthwhile resources, for those interested in jazz of this period is The Red Hot Jazz archive. It proved to be an invaluable source of recordings and background information during the research period.
Two highlights were Paul Whitman’s Nutcrackeresqe “Chinese Lullaby.” A must for all those jazz bassoon fans lurking in cyberspace.
For pure shock value, Miss Mussel recommends Oriental Blues by Noble Sissle and the Sizzling Syncopators. It’s a real toe-tapper and features this very memorable chorus:
I’ve got those Oriental blues
I’ve got those Oriental blues
I’d like to take a trip across the China Sea to old Shanghai,
Sip a cup of tea with a little almond eye,
Then spend the day at old Bombay, watching those Hindu maidens sway.
[indecipherable] …Persian roll,
On an Arabian steed, an Arabian steed, let me whirl with a Bedouin girl.
[indecipherable] …I’d like to settle down
I’ve got those mysterious, got those delirious Oriental blues.
Miss Mussel would like to think that one of the few plusses of globalization and instant access to everything is that foreign women are no longer exotic objects. Somehow, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
Doug Palmer | Sep 25, 2007 | Reply
The other category is “subject”.
Total equality takes time.
Miss Mussel | Sep 26, 2007 | Reply
It seems to Miss Mussel that total equality is not possible (and therefore not worth pursuing) because you need like things to have equality and really, unless it is factory produced, no two things are exactly the same, therefore taking them out of the running in the equality race.
Essentially, it’s the apples and oranges debate.
And, also…when people are brought into the mix, how boring would it be to have everyone be the same? In this sense, inequality seems like the better solution.
Doug Palmer | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
Hmm…. how ’bout “true relativistic equality”?
The totalitarian social contract is a suspect one
Miss Mussel | Nov 23, 2007 | Reply
Is anything true if it is relative?
Also, it seems to Miss Mussel that a totalitarian social contract is the only honest one. At least you know what you’re getting into up front…..there is no illusion of choice dangled like a phony carrot.