(cover photograph direction: Victor Akhere)
The sign of the club frowned at Eli as he headed toward the back door. The entertainers and cooks in The Cotton Club had memorised the sign. Entry is for the Whites. Eli’s body stiffened when he remembered how his kind were pushed to the edges, their skin a harmful sight.
He muttered angry words to himself as he walked among his kin. Even with them, he felt cut off, distant. The music from the stage travelled from one room to another and from one space to the next. For them, the music was beautiful, but for the whites, it was savage. Eli avoided his fellows backstage. He was afraid of being yelled at for wasting precious time that could be used to entertain their guests rather than in handshakes and smiles. Or at least that was what their supervisoraid. Mr. Smith knew they couldn’t afford to spend a smile. Indeed, a smile was rare, for to spend it in these halls would be a crime. Here, Eli and his folks were not artists but entertainers. Here, they were first entertainers before they were human beings. Eli had waited long to be given his title as a human.
A silly belief took residence inside his ribs and next to the scars left by the whips of the past. A belief that if he were to bow his head, silence his protests, and sing their songs – the black songs that were now considered white – then, surely, they would accept him with open arms. He would be truly free. And since freedom did not exist inside the walls of The Cotton Club, he was yet to be free.
“Still believes that we are in a plantation?” Eli’s acquaintance, Elijah, asked him when he entered the small dressing room to change into his outfit.
“More than ever.”
Someplace inside Eli hated the similarity between his name and Elijah’s. It made him feel like a duplicate rather than a unique entity. It made him remember the black faces staring at him in the minstrel shows he would sneak into with other acquaintances. The painted faces appeared to him to be painted with blood as much as they were painted with black. When these shows ended and the feet of the “white” audience hit the pavement outside the establishment, they removed the black colour off their faces. They looked at Eli, asking him, too, to remove the blackness off his face. If he could afford it, he would have laughed at their expectations. If only it was that easy to meet their expectations, then perhaps the whip would have never met his skin. It was his skin that doomed him, and at the passing of such memories, he wished he had a terrible character that he could blame for all the suffering he went through. Then, he would tell himself that he deserved the lashes of the whip. Maybe then he would have shed his victim undergarment.
“It is a plantation indeed, brother,” said Alonzo, one of the elder cooks. Alonzo spoke with fear his voice would be stolen in the middle of his sentences. Alonzo remembers the years of violence in the plantations when they were beaten for speaking too long to one another. And although there were no whips inside the club, hundreds of those who wielded them were nearby.
Alonzo took a deep breath and started to speak. “They say abolition and freedom are in our hands but can you feel these things, brother? How can we hold this freedom if our hands have been cut before they handed it to us? Huh, they didn’t even hand it. They threw it on the floor and ordered us to pick it and here we bow again to pick these false dreams of a new negro. A new us. We in no plantation, but it feels like one. I bow in front of food I won’t taste because neither the freedom they claim to have given us nor the pennies they pass to us in ruined envelopes can make me afford a taste of America’s food. To them, we are no Americans. We ain’t even humans. We may call them masters no more, but under this roof, they are masters in one way or another. We slip through the back doors, bow before their excellency, call our music theirs, and prevent ourselves from dancing to our own harmonies because we are entertainers. They are the ones to be entertained.” Alonzo’s words silenced any protest that may have come from Elijah. Eli said “Amen.”
He said amen because his own ruined envelope rested against his chest in the inner pocket of his shirt. For the first time, he kept the wage envelope in his normal clothes rather than putting it into his work clothes while he sang. He wasn’t afraid that his own kin would steal from him. He could no longer be made to believe his own people were thieves. How could he believe them? Alonzo called him brother, and had his own share of scars. Truth can only be told from the mouths of those who shared your suffering, not from those who brought hell on your head.
“We aren’t thieves,” Eli started saying to his companions. “No thief will call you ‘brother’ for a thief must be immoral and the only ones who I can think of to be so are the ones who shout at me ‘Sing nigger’ and ‘Smile nigger.’ At least Alonzo sees me as no puppet but as a fellow. As a human
“Are we savages?” Eli whispered to Elijah who matched his steps as they headed to the stage. “I keep wondering about our identity day and night because the only thing I can identify with is my history of suffering. How I wish that this history was special only to me so I wouldn’t have to see it in the eyes of every single black person under the roof of such a place as The Cotton Club.”
“I’m a savage,” Elijah said proudly and with a smile that flickered when he remembered how expensive it was.
“Why so?”
“Because they said so. If the whites want me to call myself a savage then so be it. Perhaps when they accept me I would taste the American food Alonzo talked about.”
Such an answer disgusted Eli despite the fact that he had similar thoughts earlier. “I used to think like you,” Eli started saying to Elijah. “But that was before Alonzo called me a brother because then I realised I’m no savage. I’m more than so. I’m more than an entertainer and a nigger. I ain’t old negro and maybe I’m not a new negro too, but I’m figuring things out.”
Eli began to wrap his head around what identity he should claim. He wasn’t sure yet, but he saw himself throwing away whatever identity Elijah wanted to claim.
“I’m no savage,” Eli replied. At the same time, he and Elijah mounted the stage, making sure to put enough distance between themselves and the first row filled with the white audience.
Eli held his head high and glared at the white faces smiling at him not because they admired him, but because he was their source of entertainment. In their eyes Eli saw his inhumanity. The whites didn’t see him as a human. They never saw him as an equal. He would not to bow to whites anymore, not entertain them anymore. He raised his head.
No more bowing.
No more distance.
No more conflict.
No more old negro.
He could not prevent his feet from dancing back and forth and moving to the beats from the instruments of his brothers. No more. He was born to fly and witness the trees of Africa rather than endure the glares of the whites. Maybe Elijah was satisfied by the glares of the whip holders and the sign of the Cotton Club, but not Eli. As his lips neared the mic, he pulled his face back and jumped off the stage. He heard the supervisor call him, and with each new call came a slur. Eli was used to them, but no more. If the white club owners allowed blacks to sign work contracts, Eli would have ripped his apart before leaving. He would throw it at the faces of the white, angry, entitled Americans. He had no contract for he was no human to have a signature. But no more.
*
His feet took him to the new club he heard about in whispers, for talking about it was forbidden at The Cotton Club. The Savoy Ballroom stood in front of Eli. Tender were the beams of light from the club’s sign. They gave him the same feeling as the one when Alonzo called him brother. It was a feeling of belonging. When he entered the place, he saw no whites in blackface, like the ones in The Cotton Club. He was in the right place. Now, he met with both white and brotherly faces who did not glare at the black people. Here, black heads did not bow.
Save for the band and their instruments, the stage was empty. There were no singers yet, so he asked to sing. One of the band members offered a disinterested nod. A wave of communication passed between him and the band as he felt himself being born again, but this time as a new negro. They understood what he was about to sing, and as the words “Savoy, gives happy feet a chance to dance” slipped from him, his feet danced and no one frowned at him. No white supervisor lurked in the shadow waiting to yell a slur. Nothing existed but happiness knowing he was born again. The audience cheered. He was an artist who could sing songs about life and dance freely without bowing. He sang until the sound of the lashes of the whips no longer existed in his ears. He sang. He sang and they clapped and danced and he danced with them like he belonged. He did belong. Even after the song’s end, he belonged. He belonged on and off the stage, and that was enough.
“Will you come tomorrow?” the band member asked Eli. Eli nodded, smiling, for now a smile was cheap. Eli came the next night. Tonight, as he headed toward the front door of The Savoy Ballroom, the club sign glowed.
Songs included:
https://youtu.be/Dk1toxG81nY?si=VOKT1tvs1L-u71DR
https://youtu.be/xTZjTyJlr0o?si=KlPp7BrBrERvb4b6