- Bamboula: Musicians’ Brew was made possible through support from the National Dance Project, National Performance Network, and the National Endowment for the Arts; Millicent Johnnie, email message to author, April 8, 2018. The author would like to thank Leah Bailey and David Atkins for their invaluable assistance during this project, as well as the anonymous reviewers and Southern Cultures editors for their instrumental feedback.
- Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs began as Benevolent Associations (Mutual Aid Societies) in the early nineteenth century to provide medical care and funeral services for members, including funerals with music (popularly known as jazz funerals). They still sponsor brass bands and each organization hosts an annual second line parade. Club names tout their dancing mastery (like the Lady Buck Jumpers) or reveal their club turf (like the Big Nine, for the Lower Ninth Ward) or both (Westbank Steppers). For a second line example, see the opening of the Brothers of Change parade: “FOOTWORK: Brothers of Change 2012 second line featuring TBC Brass Band,” BigRedCotton, December 12, 2012, YouTube video, 7:50, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOqJ4migVEc.
- Pre-Carnival day events include brass band Christmas choirs parading on Christmas Eve and Malay night choirs (Nagtroepe) parading on New Year’s Eve. Most musical competitions are held at the Athlone Stadium in the Cape Flats (where many klopse members live) the weekend following Carnival day. These competitions, which began in 1907, are choreographed group musical performances—battles for bragging rights; see “ALL Stars Cape Town Carnival 5 January 2019 Athlone Stadium/Minstrels/Klopse/Coons,” Jimmy De Kock, YouTube video, 10:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovjGp7nTFCc; Francesca Inglese, “Choreographing Cape Town through Goema Music and Dance,” African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 9, no. 4 (2014): 130.
- Helen A. Regis, “Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line,” American Ethnologist 28, no. 4 (November 2001): 756; Clarence A. Becknell, Thomas Price, and Don Short, “History of the Zulu Social Aid & Please Club,” http://www.kreweofzulu.com/history.
- For goema/New Orleans links, watch: “South African Jazz: The Ghoema,” Jazz at Lincoln Center’s JAZZ ACADEMY, September 30, 2014, YouTube video, 5:21, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StfYxD8LqYw.
- Benjamin Doleac, “Strictly Second Line: Funk, Jazz, and the New Orleans Beat,” Ethnomusicology Review 18 (2013): https://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/18/piece/699.
- Other Carnival practices employ blackface, including Colombia’s El Son de Negro and Panama’s Festival de Diablos y Congos. Though this broader context is beyond the scope of this interview, see Melissa M. Valle, “Burlesquing Blackness: Racial Significations in Carnivals and the Carnivalesque on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast,” Public Culture 31, no. 1 (2019): 5–20; and Renée Alexander Craft, When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015); Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, Inc., “Full Script—Official Press Release: NEW ORLEANS (2/13/19),” Facebook, February 14, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/ZuluSAP1909/posts/full-script-official-press-release-new-orleans-21319-blackface-minstrelsy-was-a-/2218617234856752/. Zulu’s explanation is not fully convincing for some, see Michelle Krupa, “The Black Leaders of an Iconic Mardi Gras Parade Want You to Know Their ‘Black Makeup is NOT Blackface,’” CNN, March 5, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/16/us/zulu-new-orleans-blackface/index.html.
- Nadia Davids, “‘It Is Us’: An Exploration of ‘Race’ and Place in the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival,” in Routes of Blackface, ed. Catherine M. Cole and Tracy C. Davis, special issue, TDR 57, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 98.
- Ibid., “‘It Is Us,’” 87, 95, n2. The internationally acclaimed Christy’s Minstrels also visited in 1862. Of note, McAdoo first visited Cape Town in 1890 with his troupe, the Virginia Jubilee Singers, who performed African American spirituals. Denis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (Somerset West, South Africa: African Minds, 2013), 84. Many of the troupe performers permanently settled in Cape Town, continuing to work in local musical and theatrical communities. Martin, Sounding the Cape, 82; Chinua Akimaro Thelwell, “Toward a ‘Modernizing’ Hybridity: McAdoo’s Jubilee Singers, McAdoo’s Minstrels, and Racial Uplift Politics in South Africa, 1890–1898,” Safundi 15, no. 1 (2014): 3, 5. Racial uplift politics, which emerged in postbellum America among middle-class African Americans, stressed “upward social mobility and improvement of the race”; Thelwell, “Toward a ‘Modernizing’ Hybridity,” 9. For McAdoo and his troupe, disrupting convention meant altering the minstrelsy format, wrestling with caricatures of people of color (through lectures about racialized experiences or deadpan deliveries), and even chastising white audience members when they displayed bad behavior at performances. His racial self-classification as coloured granted him access to this fluidity in South African culture but also inherently referenced black experiences. Daphne A. Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 8.
- Recent products taken off the market due to associations with blackface: Katy Perry’s Rue Face Slip On Loafers and Ora Face Block Heel Sandal (black leather shoes with red lips); Gucci’s black wool balaclava jumper that pulls up to the nose to reveal large red lips; and Prada’s Pradamalia monkey key chains and figurines. Recent school incidents of blackface include: a fraternity party at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (April 2018); a man in blackface blatantly walking around the University of Oklahoma campus (January 2019); a female powder-puff football team competing in full blackface in Missouri (2014); a first grade teacher at her Iowa school Halloween party (October 2018); second graders at an Atlanta school using blackface masks while reciting Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask” for the 2018 Black History Month. Alan Blinder and Jonathan Martin, “Governor Admits He Was in Racist Yearbook Photo,” New York Times, February 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/us/politics/ralph-northam-yearbook-blackface.html. See also Cleve R. Wootson Jr., “The Lengthy History of White Politicians Wearing Blackface—and Getting a Pass,” Washington Post, February 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/16/lengthy-history-white-politicians-who-wore-blackface-got-pass/?utm_term=.e6bedcf55aa5. Many Take ’Em Down NOLA (TEDN) activists are people of color. For TEDN’s stance on Zulu, see “Take Em Down NOLA Confronts Zulu Club’s Use on Blackface,” Take Em Down NOLA, March 20, 2019, http://takeemdownnola.org/updates/2019/3/20/take-em-down-nola-confronts-zulu-clubs-use-of-blackface. And Zulu’s taunting response: Janaya Williams, “In New Orleans, the Fight over Blackface Renews Scrutiny of a Mardi Gras Tradition,” NPR, March 3, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/03/03/699858084/in-new-orleans-the-fight-over-blackface-renews-scrutiny-of-a-mardi-gras-traditio. See also Maura Judkis, “A White Cocktail Industry Leader Wore Blackface at Mardi Gras. It Didn’t Go over Well,” Washington Post, March 6, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2017/03/06/a-white-cocktail-industry-leader-wore-blackface-at-mardi-gras-it-didnt-go-over-well/?utm_term=.ad055216bf66. See also C. W. Cannon, “Behind the Zulu Blackface Flap: Liberal Guilt, Clueless Outsiders,” Lens, March 10, 2017, https://thelensnola.org/2017/03/10/behind-the-zulu-blackface-flap-liberal-guilt-clueless-outsiders/.
- Millicent Johnnie visited South Africa in 2010 as a Visiting Academic with the University of Cape Town; in 2012 she served as Southern Methodist University Assistant Professor, directing and choreographing West Side Story at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal; and in 2015 as director/choreographer of the 2015 New England Foundation for the Arts project Bamboula: Musicians’ Brew with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. The fleur-de-lis is a symbol ubiquitous throughout New Orleans, first appearing at the city’s founding (a fleur-de-lis flag flew until Spanish occupation) and more recently as iconic Saints football team logo. Governor Bobby Jindal signed legislation that designated the motif as the city’s official state symbol in 2008. Fleur-de-lis (French, meaning “flower of the lily,” but it can also refer to irises) has come to represent New Orleans’s pride in its French heritage—and staunch resilience post-Katrina—but it also has a complicated racial past. In antebellum Louisiana, escaped slaves, once caught and sentenced by court, were branded with the fleur before having their ears cropped. See Joe Lapointe, “Saints Aren’t the First to Call on Fleur Power,” New York Times, February 6, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/sports/football/07fleurdelis.html; and “Saints Fans Weigh in on the Fleur de Lis’ Association with Slavery,” Louisiana Weekly, January 7, 2019, http://www.louisianaweekly.com/saints-fans-weigh-in-on-the-fleur-de-lis-association-with-slavery/.
- Donald Harrison Jr. is the Big Chief of The Congo Square Nation Afro-New Orleans cultural group; see https://www.donaldharrison.com/bio.html.
- See Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin, “Lessons in Blackbody Minstrelsy: Old Plantation and the Manufacture of Black Authenticity,” TDR 57, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 102–122. For Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club blackface in Mardi Gras history, see Felipe Smith, “‘Things You’d Imagine Zulu Tribes to Do’: The Zulu Parade in New Orleans Carnival,” African Arts 46, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 22–31.
- “Bamboula is not Bamboozled” references Spike Lee’s 2000 satire Bamboozled, which explores American history and culture, racial stereotypes, and performance. See Ashley Clark, “Bamboozled: Spike Lee’s Masterpiece on Race in America Is as Relevant as Ever,” Guardian, October 6, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/06/bamboozled-spike-lee-masterpiece-race-in-america.
- For this first iteration, Johnnie says, “We watched YouTube videos on how to apply clown makeup. We manipulated those [movements] to allow the physical hand gestures to travel through space.” For makeup tutorials, see NGTV, “NG Makeup Prep,” March 12, 2012, YouTube video, 13:41, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wggzfpdWhD8&feature=youtu.be; and JP M, “Applying Mime Paint,” March 16, 2011, YouTube video, 6:54, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AElqKEPeBI&feature=youtu.be.
- Images of some of Zulu’s past Coronation Balls can be found in their club’s online gallery: http://www.kreweofzulu.com/gallery. Johnnie points out that Zulu’s team is focused on developing the creative, rather than administrative, elements of the production. Bamboula creative team members who attended the Zulu ball included Millicent Johnnie (writer, director, choreographer), Charles Vincent Burwell (composer and arranger), and Isaac Points (music director and arranger).
- For a concise explanation of the District Six forced removals under the apartheid government, see “District Six: Recalling the Forced Removals,” South African History Archive, February 11, 2010, http://www.saha.org.za/news/2010/February/district_six_recalling_the_forced_removals.htm.
- For descriptions of the memorial services honoring Nelson Mandela, see Robyn Curnow, “Nelson Mandela’s Funeral, Farewell Plans—a Day by Day Breakdown,” CNN, December 6, 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/06/world/africa/nelson-mandela-whats-next/index.html.
