Beyond the Sound Barrier by Henson Kristin K.;

Author:Henson, Kristin K.; [Henson, Kristin K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

As this passage indicates, Lesche’s clients are total strangers to black culture. They are, in fact, at several levels of remove, since even the jazz they might have heard about through “remote chatter” concerns music from the Cotton Club, a Harlem club that admitted whites only and marketed “exotic” entertainment to a white audience. These details emphasize the idea that Lesche can sell them any definition of jazz because they are not only an uninformed audience but also an audience indoctrinated in and acceptant of the prevailing racial stereotypes. In other words, Lesche effortlessly sells them their own stereotypes at a high price through the music. He sells them their own idea that black equals primitive and that this equation is biologically determined but can (paradoxically) be culturally learned and appropriated for their own use by whites. Significantly, this contradictory feat is accomplished through African Americans’ performance of music and dance: “Happy Lane’s African band, two tap dancers, and a real blues singer were contracted to spread joy, and act as the primordial pulse beat of the house. In other words, they were to furnish the primitive” (76). The focus is on the African component of African American cultural and artistic identity in order to emphasize the “primordial.” In this sense, the story parodies the white modernist fascination with a superficial understanding of African culture–particularly as it manifests itself through residual traces in African American culture, which is not seen as “American” at all.

Lesche’s history is an interesting component of the story’s portrayal of the relationship of jazz to race and class. Lesche, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s James Gatz/Gatsby, is a self-made American man with a sketchy past. His origins are working class, and he acquires his wealth by any means necessary. Unlike Gatsby, however, Lesche does not have the power of a great, illusory love to redeem his quest for success. After launching his career with a job in the circus in California, Lesche finds “a softer job posing for the members of a modernistic art colony who were modeling and painting away under a most expensive teacher at a nearby resort, saving their souls through art” (76). Lesche basically prostitutes himself to wealthy women, and when this work ends, he finds employment as an extra in the movies. Later, he and his friend Sol Blum create a profitable operation selling swimming lessons to wealthy ladies, and then Lesche and Blum get the idea for a colony. The details of Lesche’s inauspicious (and even nefarious) past help to develop a significant aspect of the story’s portrayal of the colonization of jazz. He knows from past experience that profit can be derived easily from wealthy patrons willing to pay for a version of what they want reality to be. High society ladies paid him well for “love” under the guise of swimming lessons and modeling. The movies also paid him to play a minor role. Lesche’s history confirms the idea that make-believe sells. The notion that jazz will sell to

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