Noise/Funk: Fo' real Black theatre on 'Da great White way - play 'Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk' on Broadway

African American Review, Winter, 1997 by Elmo Terry-Morgan

'Da Beat, now, holds post-World War I, Jazz Era, Getting Ready for the Depression, pre-World War II memory--more blues on the way. And the odyssey continues. With cinematic speed, the story shifts from Chicago to Harlem, New York. The segue is abrupt, and my dramaturgical analysis is that the shift would benefit from a more fluid movement of time and mood. With so much of act one devoted to the Chicago experience, there needs to be a beat in 'Da Beat to explain why the story is moving eastward to Harlem in the midst of its famed Renaissance. However, thematically, the transition supports the thesis that Black Americans are metaphysical mysteries. They occupy spaces of extreme pain and joy, of ugliness and beauty, at the same time.

The "I Got 'Da Beat/Dark Tower" scene is dominated by 'Da Voice. His Jazz/Rap epic poem paints the 1920s Harlem landscape with names and images of Black/Brown/Red/Yalla Damn-Near-White New Negro icons. (Take your copy of Langston Hughes's The Big Sea to refresh your memory.)

As the Roaring '20s roar on, this moment segues into the wild and furious "Whirling Stomp." Projections of the near future, now memories of systematic and technologically supported holocausts and devastation, flash on the rear screen, and loom as reminders of how small the world really is. The End of Act One: 'Da Beat is now in the world. What impact will it have?

Act Two opens by asking the question "Where's 'Da Beat?" Time has progressed to the 1930s and 1940s. The setting: Hollywood.

This entire movement is a grand metaphor for the co-opting of Black folks' artistic expressions by White America. The Kid represents the Black performers who are caught up in the wicked dilemma of choosing between maintaining their artistic and human integrity, and, therefore, remaining unknown outside of the Black world, and starving--or donning Blackface Minstrel Masks and achieving Negro fame and fortune in the White world.

'Da Singer, now a Billie Holiday-like incarnation, is the reminder of what this entertainment business can do to a talented Negro. Although struggling and all but defeated, she is the voice that pleads to the Kid not to betray 'Da Beat.

As the Kid goes from one sound stage to another, he comes across Grin & Flash, a successful tap-dancing team that has cooned its way into Hollywood--i.e., American--favor and that tries to teach him the rules of the game.

The Kid's next encounter is with Uncle Huck-a-Buck and Lil' Dahlin, a bodacious parody of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Shirley Temple movies. In an ingenious use of actor, costume, and property, Savion Glover portrays the golden-locked Lil' Dahlin'. With a life-sized Lil' Dahlin' doll attached to his feet, and her arms attached to his hands like a marionette puppet, Glover becomes an actualization of the coded features of Black Moral Culture. In effect, the image says, "I know you have stolen my Beat and claimed it as yours, and there is nothing I can do about it, but I will keep on tapping to My Beat." Deferring to White folks, going along with the program, has been a long-time survival strategy employed by many Blacks. As Uncle Huck-a-Buck says, "Who de hell cares if I acts de fool / When I takes me a swim in my swimming pool...." The Kid has learned a lesson. If you want the status items of success, even a "high yella" horse, give'm what they want: Sell your soul to the devil.