Last time we
looked at how the racial tensions happening in America during the early 20th-century
manifested themselves in Show Boat,
the 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Today, let’s continue
this theme by using Leonard Bernstein’s West
Side Story as the example.
During the mid-20th
century, New York City existed in a state of unrest as Puerto Ricans migrated
to the U.S. Juvenile delinquency became a popular topic in the press as street
gangs formed and rivalries developed between Caucasians and Puerto Ricans.
Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and the team that worked behind the making
of West Side Story decided to use
this contemporary and real problem in society as the basis for their new
musical, a show based in the Upper West Side of New York City and involving two
gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Caucasian Jets.
When writing the
music for West Side Story, Bernstein
traveled to Puerto Rico for inspiration. The musical indeed draws on Hispanic
elements in both music and dance. In her book West
Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical, Elizabeth A.
Wells states “the
adoption of a specific ethnic style in a serious and self-consciously ‘American’
work has ultimately, and perhaps unexpectedly, earned for the Hispanic style a
level of recognition in American culture it had never before achieved.”
Two popular Latin
American dance forms are found in the gymnasium dance scene: the mambo and the
cha-cha. During the mambo, Bernstein chose to use bongos, cowbells, and
trumpets in order to resemble a Latin jazz band. The performers yell “Mambo!”
from the sidelines of the dance floor, directly referencing the flamenco
tradition in which dancers are urged on by onlookers. The choreography during
this scene is also based on conventions of Latin social dancing.
You can watch the
“Mambo” clip from the 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story here:
Coming up next
week, let’s continue looking at music and ethnicity only this time, in Russia!
