Abstract
This article attends to what emerges as, however unlikely, Africanist musical practice in the work of Stephen Sondheim. My analysis considers Sondheim’s use of instrumental vamps as the threshold of song, the articulation of character and the means to dramaturgies of transformation and mood. I hear Sondheim’s vamps as Africanist musical practice, resonating with the African pianism articulated by Akin Euba and J. H. Kwabena Nketia, the appropriated structures of Ghanaian drumming in works by Steve Reich, and the function of African American gospel vamps theorized by musicologist and theologian Braxton D. Shelley. I linger with moments from recent Broadway revivals of Company and Into the Woods, and with feedback I received from Sondheim on my own work as a composer/lyricist and musical dramatist creating songs for West African characters.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 157-165 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Studies in Musical Theatre |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2023 |
Funding
Masi Asare is an assistant professor of theatre and performance studies at Northwestern University. She is a songwriter and dramatist, and also works as a performance scholar specializing in the study of race and vocal sound in musicals. A Tony-nominated lyricist, her work includes Paradise Square (Broadway, Chicago) and Monsoon Wedding (Off-Broadway, Doha). She has been commissioned by Theatre Royal Stratford East, the Lilly Awards and Marvel. Her scholarly book, Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters: Black Women, Voice, and the Musical Stage, is forthcoming from Duke University Press (2024). A past Dramatists Guild Fellow and Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Fellow, honours include the Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award for a woman composer of musicals, a grant from the Theater Hall of Fame and inclusion on the ‘Women to Watch on Broadway’ list. She has published with Concord Theatricals, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, Journal of Popular Music Studies, TDR, The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre and Performance Matters.
Keywords
- African pianism
- Into the Woods
- J. H. Kwabena Nketia
- Stephen Sondheim
- Steve Reich
- minimalism
- vamp
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Visual Arts and Performing Arts
- Music
- Literature and Literary Theory