Bring on Da Funk. - Review - book review

Black Issues Book Review, Nov, 2000 by Dunkor Imani, Kelly Ellis

Recent books about Black pioneers in movie scores and musicals

The premiere of Shaft this summer rekindled a jones for Isaac Hayes' thumping, original thematic score. The familiar chords symbolized, as they did when they were first heard in the original, 1971 flick, the triumph of the black man as a bad mother-shut-your-mouth, and an urban superhero. A lot of shut mouths fell open when Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Musical Score that year--it was a first in Hollywood. However, black Hollywood took it all in knowing stride--African Americans had been creating phenomenal scores for movies and theater long before Hayes' cinematic conquest.

Race movies of the early 1900s with their all-black casts were written, produced, directed and scored by black artists with a black audience in mind. Musical talents, including Duke Ellington ("Black and Tan") and Eubie Blake, often supplied a musical backdrop. John Kisch and Edward Mapp discuss their contributions, and those of many others, in their book A Separate Cinema: 50 Years of Black Filmmaking from 1915-1965 (Noonday, 1992, $30.00, ISBN 0-374-52360-6), featuring forewords by Spike Lee and film historian Donald Bogle (Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography, Berkley, 1998).

Hollywood's exclusion of black talent also provided the catalyst for a different sort of race film, the black exploitation movies which exploded from the late '60s through the early '80s. Darius James provides a funky, funny overview of the genre in his That's Blaxploitation (St. Martin's Press, 1995, $14.95, ISBN 0-312-13192-5). James' book is a series of reviews covering films from Melvin Van Peebles' groundbreaking Sweet Sweetback's Baaadasssss Song to the well-known Cleopatra Jones. Moreover, he discusses the music that drove the genre into multiple industries from film, to television, to music.

While Isaac Hayes was busy scoring Shaft, and the late, great Curtis Mayfield was putting it down on Superfly, James Brown was throwing down on Black Caesar and Herbie Hancock was laying smooth tracks for Blow Up. George Clinton edited and produced the soundtrack for 1980's The Apple, a rock musical on film and Quincy Jones put down the score for Come Back Charleston Blue.

The Great White Way of Broadway has also benefited greatly from black musical talent. Eubie Blakes' Shuffle Along (which at one time starred Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson), was written with Nobel Sissle and spawned the hit song "I'm Just Wild About Harry." This song is still in use today in a number of Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Reminiscing With Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake (Cooper Square, July 2000, $24.95, ISBN 0-815-41045-X) by Robert Kimball & William Bolcom, and the much earlier Eubie Blake: Keys of Memory, (Balamp Publishing, 1979, $40.00, ISBN 0-913-64210-X) by Lawrence T. Carter, discusses the contributions of the musical giant.

While there are no definitive tomes on black musical scores, there are quite a few titles that discuss not only the music written by blacks for films but the pop culture impact of this work that reaches such a wide audience, yet offers little critical acclaim for the artists. Black American Cinema (Routledge, 1993, $21.00, ISBN 0-415-90397-1) by Manthia Diawara and Soul (Purchase, 1997, $19.00, ISBN 0-814-73085-X) edited by Monique Guillroy and Richard Green, treat the subject broadly while offering readers a beginning course in black contributions to the genre.

Today's popular-music-driven movie soundtracks, where artists are commissioned to contribute musical pieces but the score is completed by another individual who arranges the commissions and puts them together with the whole of the film, are changing the name of the game. However, whether the subject is film or theater, black America continues to be the leader of the band, and we look forward to more from our trendsetting musicians who are hard at work keeping the rest of the world in tune.

Dunkor Imani BIBR Associate Editor