The East, The Cotton Club, Café Society: exploring the complicated history of segregation in New York’s jazz scene
Jazz is one of the most important genres in human history, both in terms of skill and how it paved the way for musicians, but also in society, as it acted as a form of protest for a lot of musicians who weren’t happy with the world around them. The truth is when you listen to a lot of old jazz albums and hear the energy that comes from those live performances, the tension in the room isn’t just there because of the performers’ skill but also because of society’s attitudes at the time. While segregation was still enforced in some regions of America, a lot of crowds were divided, with some even being exclusively Black or white.
Music these days is used as a form of expressionism. People will take to whatever genre and use it to express their personal and political beliefs. Even if they don’t write music about these topics, the way in which artists conduct themselves online and on stage tells a lot about what they believe. For the most part, people turn to music as a form of community and connection, so it’s interesting to think of the period when experiencing it meant driving communities apart.
Jazz really found its form in New York. When it initially made its way into the city, the musicians weren’t taken seriously, and they were lumped in the same vein as comedians and other nomadic entertainers. The sound was seen as a novelty, and the Black artists who played it were caricatures.
As we know, things eventually changed as jazz made its way into various clubs and cemented itself as a mainstream genre for decades. With its popularity, several subgenres were born, and the jazz artist became a spectacle that crowds everywhere would flock to see. The club was sacred in all this, but many came with conflict built within, as segregation played a massive part in who could attend what shows. Three of the biggest in New York were The East, The Cotton Club and Café Society, each of which had their own rules.
The East
The East wasn’t actually a jazz bar in New York; rather, it was a school where many innovative musicians would play, develop their own style, and help those in attendance better understand the music they wanted to play. Located at 10 Claver Place, it was a school that wanted to address the Board of Education’s inability to provide some communities with quality education.
One of the events that became synonymous with The East was the African Street Carnival (which later became the International African Arts Festival). This event steadily started to mark the beginning of summer, as towards the end of June / the beginning of July, a number of great artists came to The East to play. These included the likes of Pharoah Sanders, Leon Thomas, Roy Brooks, and Sun Ra.
The East always had a strict policy that the audience had to be of African descent. This was a fairly rare requirement in the 1970s, but the venue held it close. They were so strict that even band members who were dating white people had to tell their partners to wait at the door.
Ahmed Abdullah, who went on to become one of Sun Ra’s trumpeters, recalls doing a gig opposite a group called Sunny Murray. The bass player of this group was involved in an interracial relationship and nearly got in a fight with the doorman, who turned his partner away.
Abdullah recalls the exchange in his book A Strange Celestial Place, “’My brother, I am in no way telling you what to do. I am only informing you of the policy of this African American institution’,” the doorman said to the bassist, who replied, “‘Don’t give me this double-talk bullshit. I’m as Black as you and every other motherfucker up in here. And I ain’t got to wear no dashiki or no motherfucking kufi to prove it!’”
The Cotton Club
If there is any venue that symbolises the Jazz Age in New York, it’s The Cotton Club. Completely the opposite of The East, The Cotton Club was a whites-only establishment and was decorated quite blatantly in racist propaganda. The writer Langston Hughes once described it as “A Jim Crow club for gangsters and moneyed whites…”
The venue had an interesting history. It was initially opened in 1920 by the boxer Jack Johnson. He called it Club Deluxe, and it was situated on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue. In 1923, the club was taken over by the paroled mobster Owney Madden, who changed the name to The Cotton Club. Johnson continued to be the manager, but the club essentially became a front that allowed the mob to sell liquor during prohibition.
The predominantly Black performers were kept completely separate from the entirely white clientele. While it might sound like a horrible place for jazz musicians to play, it did provide them with some benefits. In addition to paid gigs, it also helped to provide exposure to these artists, given that it was affiliated with a number of radio broadcasters. Some big names such as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday all performed here.
Café Society
Café Society made history as one of the first jazz clubs in New York to allow for an integrated audience. It provided preferential seating to patrons of colour and invited celebrities from various backgrounds to come down. It was a club dedicated to celebrating music, and that meant letting everybody in, regardless of the colour of their skin.
Putting music first also meant that the club had very strict rules that punters had to abide by when performers were on stage. When someone was playing, people weren’t allowed to dance or socialise; they had to sit back and listen to the music being played.
While Billie Holiday also played at The Cotton Club, she really made a name for herself through Café Society. She sang on the club’s very first day of business. The club became synonymous with promoting excellent singers, such as Hazel Scott, Big Joe Turner, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan.
