Somi Kakoma: An Investigative Essay



WHYSEEART (research) After discovering the jazz musician known as Somi Kakoma, we took a look into the expansive history of Jazz in America, and furthermore into the musicology of the history of American Musical Theater.

L’Alliance New York Brought a series of performers to the 2021 Crossing the Line Festival for exploring black culture, African diaspora, and local community & diversity in New York City.





2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Dogstar Theatre Co.

Mungo Park: Travels in the Interior of Africa, 2016.

Musical Comedy, Intimate Revues, Extravaganzas, Operettas

Starting with, Lady, Be Good to Rose-Marie, stories of love affairs are consistent with a formula. After the Jazz-age, Lady, Be Good changes from ragtime to Jazz.

Broadway songwriters made musicals more popular than revues through the 20’s, these songwriters then moved west to Hollywood to write for sound in movies. Formula was high-energy opening choruses featuring the girls, opening scenes that told the audience everything they needed to know to get the minimal stories rolling, predictable plots that could stop at any time for only slightly integrated songs and comedy sequences, dances that had no bearing on character or plot, and whole shows tailored to the talents of the stars,

In 1927, sound took over in Hollywood. Audiences for operettas were getting older, rapidly diminishing. Then the adaptation of operettas into Hollywood films were an affordable way for audiences to see the same stories, just not very innovative. So, Operettas became musical plays, and vaudeville turned to television.

The dramatic shape of the song reminds me of the scatting style of jazz musicians, improvisation, keeping the rhythm. The music and the lyrics tell the musician where the climax is, and the responsorial effect of pitch, and melody for jazz musicians are somethings to look into later on. From the form, musical plays seem to use a popular structure, AABA, ABAC, ABAC/A, while jazz is a cyclical structure.

Rodgers and Hart- wrote with true emotion and catchy melodies. Experimenting with the form, “Peggy-Ann” (1926) was partly expressionistic and dealt with Freudian theories before they’d become fashionable. It also had no opening chorus and no singing at all for the first twenty minutes- also true of their satiric, semi-musical, semi-concept show, “I’d Rather Be Right” (1937). In Hollywood, they wrote rhythmic, rhymed dialogue as lead-ins to some of their songs, never tried before in a movie (and rarely since).”

1938 – “The Boys from Syracuse,” leaving only one line of the original Shakespeare play. 

1940 – Collaboration with John O’Hara- “Pal Joey” hard-boiled New Yorker stories, was the most frank, adult, and realistic treatment of sex and sleaze yet seen in a Broadway musical. Set in a Chicago nightclub, with unpleasant central characters and a downer for an ending. Now the songs reveal the characters and help move the plot forward. Similar to the 1966 “Cabaret.”

B.G. Desylva worked with Gershwin, Kern, and Herbert. Wrote lyrics that became popular stand alones. In 1931, he moved to Hollywood, co-producedDubarry Was a Lady” and in 1939 with Cole Porter, and 1940 “Panama Hattie”, and produced Berlin’s 1940, ”Louisiana Purchase.” He then went on to become a producer at Paramount Pictures.

The Garrick Gaieties– Msc. Richard Rogers, Lyrics. Lorenz Hart, Sketches. Marrie Ryskind and several others, Director. Philip Loeb, Stage Manager. Harold Clurman, Choreographer. Herbert Fields, Cast Includes. Philip Loeb, Lee Strasberg, and Sanford Meisner, Performers. 211

The intimate revue, Rodgers and Hart, went on to Broadway, and this led to their big hit “Dearest Enemy.” – ”three-set sex face based on a real event that took place during the Revolutionary War, when a group of women delayed the British troops overnight while the American troops managed an escape.” pg.152 (History of The American Musical Theater)

Inherit the Wind,” 1955, flashback to 1925 Garrick Garrities and the Scope “Monkey Trial” was a current event that went into its production. Again, in !925-1927, Floyd Colins is trapped in a cave in Kentucky for 18 days, later made into a musical 1996 based on the event.

1926 – “The Desert Song” was the next hit after “The Prince Student” and two years after, Hammerstein and Harbach had another huge success with “Rose-Marie.” Kern and Hammerstein work together much like Rodgers and Hart. The formula is ridden of sappy love affairs, and challenges the audience with musically driven compositions.

“Betsy” performed 36 times book by Irving Caesar, David Freedman, and William Anthony McGuire; it was produced by Ziefeld, designs by Urban, among others. Starring Al Shean without Gallagher. Including “This Funny World” which showed Harts truest expression of how he felt about life; he was not a happy man.”

“Oh, Kay!” Is about bootleggers on Long Island.

1927 – there were 268 Broadway shows. “The Merry Monahans”, “Ziegfeld Follies of 1927”, “Africana,77 performances, was an African American revue with Ethel Waters debut.

“Show Boat” An American Musical Play, “The humor in the show comes out of the character and situation, as do the lyrics, making the audiences keep the plot in mind while enjoying the musical numbers.” pg.164 (History of American Musical Theater)

“The music in Show Boat and there’s a lot of it- is therefore part operetta, part vaudeville and show tunes, part distillations of Negro Spirituals and work songs, and part rag and jazz.”

In 1928, Show Boat had made a new American genre that took social realities and put them on stage. Jazz was making an impact and this new style of signing called crooning, singing into a microphone. This was an intimate style, that in essence interpreted the words through scatting, and swing to different turns of phrases to give meaning to the text on sheet music.

Sixty movie musicals and revues are made during the years 1928-1929. Berlin’s first full movie score for “Putin’On the Ritz”. “Hallelujah,” with an all African American Cast. 1929, a movie musical wins for best movie in the Academy Awards- “The Broadway Melody”

Stephen Sondheim writes songs for the theater, Virtuosic songs that grow from the dramatic ideas inherent in a show’s concept to become the very drama earlier songs would only reflect. Before him, a Broadway musical evolved from stories audiences wanted to hear, like how everything turns out all right in the end, or how being human and alive is enough. That approach worked for Rodgers and Hammerstein because they believed in it. Sondheim doesn’t. His musical theater trades the world of emotion for the world of intellect, sweetness for bite, warmth for detachment. “ When the label, “concept musical” applies to a Sondheim show, it means this: music, lyrics, dance, direction, dialogue, and design integrate in production to support a thought. The thought directs everything.”pg. 152 (The Musical, A Look at The American Musical Theater)

“One of the biggest hits of all the African American Broadway revues, BlackBirds” of 1928 was created entirely by whites… The show was fifty-year-old Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s Broadway debut. The score included “I Cant Give You Anything but Love, Baby,” “Diga Diga Do,” and “Doin’ the New Low Down,” Robinson’s solo. It included his signature tap dance up and down a staircase, a routine that he later taught Shirley Temple and that they performed in some of their movies together.” pg. 180 (A History of American Musical Theater)

“BlackBirds” of 1928 – Musc. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, Director/Producer. Lew Leslie, Cast Included. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Mantan Moreland, and Adelaide Hall, 518 performances.

During this time, Johann Straus’s, Die Fledermaus (A Wonderful Night),” Brecht’s Happy End,” Noel Coward’sBitter Sweet,” and “Show Girl” happened at the cusp of the American Great Depression.

A reflection of the times in the twenties was sophisticated silliness in musical entertainment. This became escapist entertainment during the Great Depression. Still boy-meets-girl, “more shows about getting enough money to rise above the real world so boy could get girl and good could triumph over evil.” (History of the American Musical Theater)

“No legs, no jokes, no chance” : a history of the American musical theater by Patinkin, Sheldon

The musical : a look at the American musical theater by Kislan, Richard