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Abstract
Knowledge about African performance in the Los Angeles public has historically been dependent on the activities of cultural interpreters as much as on the performers themselves. This work is particularly concerned with African performance that was exhibited, written, and generally accessible to the largest cross-section of the Los Angeles population. It is not focused on the ethnic-specific resident African communities of L.A.; or to African American performance innovations. However, I include, by exception, the contributions of Americans who were trained by Africans or African expatriates.
The methodology includes accessing the archival Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly and L.A. Reader; as well as conducting personal interviews with media professionals, performance professionals, and African musicians. I have consulted various monographs, journals; and a variety of online sources associated with accredited educational institutions, reputable news associations, historical societies, and the private websites of individual scholars. I have also referenced historical and statistical works.
Chapter One is a discussion of the ethnicity of those who settled Los Angeles. This data indicates the possibility of performance elements and/or processes that flowed northward from Latin America with the first settlers of Los Angeles. Chapter Two presents the mythologized discourse that existed in Los Angeles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about continental Africa and its cultures. I have also included a discussion of minstrelsy performed by Blacks who consciously represented ideas and themes about Africa in their performances. Chapter Three introduces the professional career of Prince Modupe—an African expatriate who attained success and celebrity in Los Angeles during the mid-1930s in the field of entertainment. Chapter Four concerns scholarly advancements in the realm of African performance in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s. Further, it acknowledges the accomplishments of the scholars of the Institute of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, established in 1960. Chapter Five deals with the Black power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. During this time Los Angeles was the center of the movement for attaining power through Black cultural nationalism. Images of Africa in the music production of African Americans began to be seen. Chapter Six, discusses historically prominent dance institutions and individuals who have presented African themes and processes to the Los Angeles public through dance. Chapter Seven examines the explosion of African popular music in nightclubs and on concert stages in Los Angeles between the 1960s and the mid-1990s. I profile some of the African bands that performed in Los Angeles public venues. I also discuss the African Beat radio show and the Beat magazine as examples of the cultural mediation that broadly influenced Los Angeles' exposure to African music and performance.
