Marcus Garvey Meets M.C. Hammer: Review of 'Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk'

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, May 7, 1997

If Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk constituted, as its promoters claimed, a profoundly different vision of what Broadway's future could be, then its audience certainly did not reflect the fundamental shift.

Instead, the crowd's composition was that uniquely Broadway mix of octogenarian day-trippers from Suburbia brown bagging tuna fish sandwiches and balding, Armani-attired, ponytailed men fondling anorexically hip middle-aged women: the same crowd that seems to grace the seats of every weekend matinee. The streets may have been well represented on stage, but 'da flava in 'da seats was decidedly different.

Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk is a dance show whose fundamental feature is the reconciliation of two markedly different dance styles, hip-hop and tap. It is the creation of Savion Glover (also its star), who came to international prominence in the mid-eighties as the world's foremost tap dancer.

The plot of Noise/Funk (the abbreviated form preferred by the show's literature) is consciously simple. Nominally, the show traces 'da beat,' the mythical musical rhythm/soul/spirit of American blacks, through the twinned hallmarks of tritely defined black American history and traditionally black music. Thus slavery is paired with primitively rhythmic music, industrial Chicago with swing jazz and a contemporary street scene with hip-hop. On stage, this takes the form of five back men dancing with continuously awe-inspiring verve and talent through a series of sets, costumes, and musical styles. The story, thin as it is, is ultimately unimportant; its sole real function is to provide a scenic backdrop for Noise/Funk's dancers to hip-hop through.

Noise/Funk opens with the orchestra in the pit playing a funkified version of jazz. The music is bop hopped up on amphetamines laced with street, and it is magnificently energetic. The music is decorated by the percussion of two dreadlocked on-stage drummers, tapping on upturned plastic buckets with the virtuoistic integrity of the New York street. In front of them gyrate five garishly clad but dynamically athletic young black men. Their dance is a futuristic brand of athletic hip-hop with a minor twist: the dancers wear tap shoes. It does not take a historian of dance to recognize that this is tap as tap has never been done before.

The two on-stage percussionists provide the most spectacular moment of the show when, during a scene recalling the Jim Crow South, they spend a full fifteen minutes in a drum-induced frenzy, whacking at a rack of hundreds of dangling pots, pans, and other assorted bits of metal, a wild orgy of percussion that whips the audience out of its mochafied daze and into fits of ecstasy.

Although the show does have its down moments (it drags on a good thirty minutes longer then necessary, including a ten-minute video presentation in which the performers thank their parents and early tap teachers for inspiration), the level of intensity reached during that percussionistic frenzy is generally maintained throughout.

The unmitigated success of the music and dance of the performance makes the show's thematic frailties all the more disappointing. For all of its innovation, Noise/Funk poignantly fails to do any more than trot out the age-old hallmarks of black separatism: the concept of an independent black American history and the idea that success for American blacks lies not in integration into the wider American context but in the development of uniquely black attributes — in this case, 'da beat.'

The performers are exclusively black, and this is a point made consciously. This is a warped view of the history of black Americans because it is entirely without necessary context. No white character appears on stage, blacks are moved from slavery to industrial Chicago to rioting Los Angeles without explanation, and the complexity and diversity of black American experiences is ignored: to believe Noise/Funk is to believe in a gross and fatal oversimplification of the history of black Americans. This is pure decontextualized 'a history.'

There is an additional disturbing thematic flaw. The celebration of 'da beat,' with which the show is primarily concerned, rapidly disintegrates into a ridiculously optimistic misperception of black thought through history. Blacks are throughout portrayed as primarily concerned with music; music is the driving constant, the central feel-good force.

History has not been kind to black Americans, and no amount of Louis Armstrong can change that. The show's central feature may be its music, but black history cannot legitimately be portrayed as musical and musical alone.

The import of this historical feebleness lies in the implications of the show's explicit themes. Any celebration of past success implies that the basis of that achievement might provide a good basis for future success. The danger lies in Noise/Funk's assertion of the success of black separatism. 'Da Beat' is a uniquely black phenomenon, the show argues. It has survived, even prospered, despite white neglect.

The implicit analogy is to black Americans in general. Cannot they thrive, Noise/Funk asks, simply be cultivating their unique spirit, thoroughly independent of the white world?

Such black separatism goes thoroughly uncensored by the audience, who rise as one rhythmically challenged body, bedazzled by the packaged militancy.

Any analysis of Noise/Funk must finally return to the audience. If this was a celebration of the black community, where was the black community? If this was supposed to teach a lesson to whites, why did it simply trot out accepted Politically Correct doctrine to an audience nearly exclusively composed of the community that invented that doctrine, New York liberals?

For all its energy, for all its performance innovation, Noise/Funk ultimately does no more than peddle its tired themes in the exclusive company of those it knows will approve, in the last cushy preserve of white liberal silliness: Broadway.

No matter how dazzling the package, black separatism wouldn't sell anywhere else.

Marcus Garvey Meets M.C. Hammer: Review of 'Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk'

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