Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters

Book excerpt: In Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters, songwriter, scholar, and dramatist Masi Asare explores the singing practice of black women singers in US musical theatre between 1900 and 1970. Asare shows how a vanguard of black women singers including Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Pearl Bailey, Juanita Hall, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Diahann Carroll, and Leslie Uggams created a lineage of highly trained and effective voice teachers whose sound and vocal techniques continue to be heard today. Challenging pervasive narratives that these and other black women possessed “untrained” voices, Asare theorizes singing as a form of sonic citational practice—how the sound of the teacher’s voice lives on in the student’s singing. From vaudeville-blues shouters, black torch singers, and character actresses to nightclub vocalists and Broadway glamour girls, Asare locates black women of the musical stage in the context of historical voice pedagogy. She invites readers not only to study these singers, but to study with them—taking seriously what they and their contemporaries have taught about the voice. Ultimately, Asare speaks to the need to feel and hear the racial history in contemporary musical theatre.