Tag Archives: Wilhemena Whitfield

Don't Tell Mama! We're having a vaudeville party!

Mama
Thinks I’m living in a convent,
A secluded little convent
In the southern part of France.

Mama
Doesn’t even have an inkling
That I’m working in a Nightclub
In a pair of Lacy pants.

So please, sir.
If you run into my Mama,
Don’t reveal my indiscretion,
Give a working girl a chance.

I love cabaret, burlesque and vaudeville music – the naughty risque and boisterously celebratory music that has mostly faded away though resuscitated from time to time with revival CD’s like Ute Lemper’s Berlin Cabaret Songs where you can hear Don’t Tell Mama in all its glory.  Authorities like to pretend that culture marches in a straight line directly from nostalgic purity to modern hedonism on its way to hellfire and damnation. It’s much more complicated than that – and really goes through eras of social liberality and repression, openness and prudery, swinging back and forth like a pendulum and while one or the other might be in ascendent, the other cultural mores are there waiting their turn again.  The prudes tsk-tsking away during liberal eras and the flamboyant maintaining an underground cultural freedom during repressive eras.

The 1890’s through the early 1930’s were an era of liberality that sparked great music, new fashions and new roles for women. Certainly the raunchiest song I have ever heard is from that era, raunchier by far than anything by Nine Inch Nails or Soulja Boy.  Beware, it’s Not Safe For Work!  There were also songs about the drug culture such as Wacky Dust and Reefer Man.  Remember that when someone’s granddad or great granddad is going off complaining about “kids today” that really, everything old is new again, including raunchy music.

So, to celebrate the fabulous fashions of the Designers United Vaudeville exhibition and the joyous music of that time period, I thought a Vaudeville/Burlesque Dance Party might be in order – and Sasy Scarborough graciously offered The Deck as a venue….so please, mark your calendars for 8 p.m. Saturday January 2nd at the Deck for a crazy set of music from the past – and some from the present, too.

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