Big Apple History . Arts and Entertainment . Show Time!


	Times Square at night in 1921

The Broadway Musical, as we know it today, was born in New York during the 1920s. Before that time, most shows on Broadway were song and dance revues in the tradition of vaudeville shows. Ziegfield's FOLLIES, for instance, featured acts with comedians, dancing chorus girls, lavish scenery, and simple, silly plots.

In 1927, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the musical SHOW BOAT. Unlike the typical fluffy boy-meets-girl musicals, SHOW BOAT dealt with serious themes such as racism, slavery, and gambling. It told the story of African-American performers on a Mississippi boat from the 1880s to the 1920s. The songs were interwoven with the plot and were written to advance the story or provide insight into the characters. In 1921, one of Broadway's major hits was a show called SHUFFLE ALONG, written by African-American songwriters including pianist Eubie Blake.

As a Jewish kid growing up on the lower east side of Manhattan, George Gershwin earned his living as a talented piano player who promoted other people's songs in Tin Pan Alley, a district where music composers and publishers were concentrated. Then, using jazz influences coming out of Harlem, Gershwin began composing his own style of music. In 1924, he wrote his famous "Rhapsody In Blue." This piece blended a variety of contemporary and traditional musical styles. Gershwin said he thought of "Rhapsody In Blue" as "a musical kaleidoscope ... of our unduplicated melting pot, of our blues, our metropolitan madness."

Illustration: Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.