Saturday (well, Sunday) Sing: July 5, 2020
This morning I sing the song My Buddy, a song that my grandmother used to sing to me. It was “our” song. She would have been 105 on June 24th.
As I looked at the sheet music of this 1922 song, I see the words “Introduced by Al Jolson.” That gives me such conflicted emotions, because Al Jolson was one of the premier blackface performers of his day. Yes, he was the star of the first full-length movie to have a synchronized dialogue (aka the first “talkie”), The Jazz Singer. But performing in blackface was the core of his public persona. Yet, as I tried to research his career, I found quotes such as “Al Jolson was no racist,” “black audiences wept during screenings [of his movie The Jazz Singer],” and “Jolson showed no overt signs of ethnic hatred.”
The articles quoted above, the latest from 2015, clearly define racism as overt acts against a single person or small group of persons. Today, systemic racism is more clearly defined as acts or actions that systematically and systemically place one group above another. The use of blackface is one such tool used by whites to keep blacks “in their place.” As sympathetic as Jolson may have been to individual human circumstances, the fact remains that he utilized a tool of systemic oppression to create and sustain his long career on stage and screen.
Today I choose to sing this song because of the emotional history I have with it around my relationship with my grandmother, who I call my hero. Yet, I also acknowledge and call out its problematic history, due to the performer associated with it, for your consideration. Thank you for taking the time to investigate.
Rachel
Lyrics by Gus Kahn
Music by Walter Donaldson
Photo: December 30, 2015, Rachel and her grandmother Bettyclaire Day (age 100.5)
