Copyright information: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/press_copyright_and_disclaimer/default.html
The synchronized plate throwing of the Wesselys, a troupe of five jugglers, received an enormous round of applause as they bowed and walked off the stage. With the stage completely empty, Lee Tung Foo, arguably the first Chinese American in vaudeville, stepped out and positioned himself in front of the primarily white audience. The band struck up Dave Reed Jr. and Ernest R. Ball's "Love Me and the World Is Mine" (1906), a popular ballad that year, and Lee began to sing: "I wander on as in a dream . . . " From what we know of Lee's act from reviews and his own writings, he then gave a comedic monologue, sang an unnamed song in Cantonese, and broke out into an Irish brogue for his rendition of another 1906 hit, William Jerome's "My Irish Molly, O" (1906). His act ended with "Im Tiefen Keller" (In the Deep Cellar), a drinking song he sang in the original German.1
During the last week of December 1906 and into January 1907, Lee Tung Foo performed at Keith's Theater in Providence, Rhode Island, and received fulsome praise. Local critics in New England dedicated whole columns to Lee's act not only because it was original but also because it was a direct challenge to American perceptions of the Chinese. Lee, however, was not from China. As an American of Chinese descent, he knew what it meant to be Chinese only through what he saw in immigrant communities and in American caricatures, and he combined this material to create an image of what it meant to be Chinese. But it was all an "act" (see ill. 1). Novelty was important to Lee, and through it he drew attention to the incongruity between fixed preconceptions of race and his capacity to impersonate non-Asian characters, speak English without an accent, and sing American and European popular songs. As one critic wrote, "Not only has he an excellent voice, which he uses with such amazing intelligence, that one almost forgets his race, but he sings and speaks fluently in English and with an evident sense of humor that is surprising."2 By all accounts, audiences were stunned at witnessing firsthand a Chinese American performing in an American idiom, a feat they had to see to believe. Indeed, his very presence on the stage challenged widely held beliefs about performers of Chinese descent and heralded the emergence of scores of other Chinese American vaudevillians.
Lee Tung Foo's arrival on the vaudeville stage marked an important transition in the relationship between American music and identity. His act may have led the Providence reviewer to "almost forget [Lee's] race," but in fact his act had everything to do with race. Since the nineteenth century, several important shifts had occurred in musical and theatrical performances about and by Chinese and Chinese Americans. Large numbers of performers and writers participated in circulating images of China and its people via print media and the stage, which eventually hardened into stereotypes. These individuals, who came from a variety of backgrounds, created certain images on the stage and in music not for the sake of accuracy but to help define and understand themselves as well as others around them. Many Euro-American musicians and writers created race-based distinctions between music and noise, used attitudes about race to question whether the Chinese could participate in Western music and performance, and finally, circulated anti-Chinese stereotypes. They, however, also turned to China to address other issues in the United States, such as gender relations, the definition of citizenship, working-class identity, the effects of modernity, and the development of new modes of musical expression. At the same time, Chinese and Chinese Americans had their own reasons for performing on the stage. Some came lured by stories of success and huge profits only to be left penniless by their American managers. Several Chinese immigrants, imbued with an entrepreneurial spirit, employed music and theater in hopes of maintaining their heritage among fellow immigrants and promoting cultural understanding with outsiders. Finally, the desire of Chinese American vaudevillians, such as Lee Tung Foo, to perform in an American popular idiom confronted established stereotypes by demonstrating that race was a performance. Together, these diverse voices, although unequal in their access to mainstream media, shed light on the complexity of constructions of race in the United States and the important role China played in the generation of an American identity and popular culture.
Although several historians have addressed the relationship between African American and Euro-American musical traditions, few have studied the connections between China and the United States through popular music, and of these, even fewer have gone beyond lyrics and staging to look at musical notation and instrumentation. Music and its performance, however, give us a window into the ways in which information circulated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how various groups saw their world. Because it requires listening, music operates differently from written or visual cultural products. This is not to say that a historical analysis of music does not rely on written or visual objects, but that music, in order to participate in the construction and circulation of meaning, must be performed to be consumed. Through its ephemeral and at times improvisational qualities, music cuts in several directions, depending on the body of the performer, performance strategies, musical notation, instrumentation, and lyrics. Moreover, music's performativity is not one-sided and functions more like a conversion among the producers (who consist of two coexisting groups-the songwriters and the performers) and the consumers. As argued by John Fiske in Understanding Popular Culture, consumers have a limited number of ways in which to respond to cultural products: they can reinforce the meaning generated by producers, partially accept it, or completely subvert it.3 Furthermore, because the performers are not always the same as the songwriters, they too alter the materials they are singing or playing on a musical instrument in ways that fit more with their own ideas. It is by looking at all these sources and the contradictions among them that historians can begin to understand the complexity of representation and insert China into discussions of American identity and culture.
As a form of performance, music appeared in several types of venues. Although the phonograph and radio were growing in popularity at the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of American audiences frequented concert halls, parks, or theaters in order to listen to music during this period. Because some instruments were portable (such as the harmonica or the human voice), musicians broke out into song almost anywhere they could; many Americans also played musical instruments in their homes.4 Even silent films were not silent; "mood" music (what later became known as the soundtrack in talkies and television) was played by a pianist or a small orchestra to set the scene and to generate a certain atmosphere. Although certainly not limited to "Americans" or to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, musical performances were a main form of entertainment in the United States at this time and, as such, a potential purveyor of knowledge and communication.
The performative qualities of music resulted not only from the performance venues (after all, recordings are performances) but also from the disjuncture between music and everyday life. Of course, people whistle a tune or turn on the radio/CD player while working or relaxing, but music still functions as an alternative to what is perceived as "real" (most notably as a form of escapism and as a tool for relaxation). As Judith Butler maintains in her discussion of theater, audiences and performers share an understanding that what is going on is an "act" distinct from everyday activities and that the actor/actress has taken on a role that is not his/her "own."5 Or put another way (and more closely tied to music), a conversation between two persons relies on the spoken word, not the sung word (imagine a board meeting conducted in recitative). The act of singing exists in a distinct space separate from what we consider normal, daily communication.
Music, however, as a form of performance can be separated from theater because it is primarily defined as a succession of tones or pitches guided by certain rules or values. The concepts that guide music making, such as harmonic movement and notational systems, are important in understanding the meaning behind these kinds of artistic works. Even with lyrics, music ultimately relies on sounds (sometimes organized into patterns, but also spontaneous) to relay meaning. Most listeners tie the meaning of music to feelings and emotions; however, music, like other forms of cultural production, is part of larger systems of thought. Rationality, constructions of gender, and national and racial identity are all manifested in music.
Edward Said has described Orientalism as a "western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over" the non-Western world. Imaginings of the "Orient," including China, function in opposition to whatever symbolized the West, and often portrayed the "sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, [and] intense energy" of this region of the world.6 By the end of the eighteenth century, many European and American writers, realizing that what they saw as the "laws" of music and drama were not the same throughout the world, began systematically to marginalize non-Western traditions. China's performing arts tradition at this time were diverse, depending on region, type of ceremony or celebration, sex, and class.
1