Ruß im Gesicht

Zur Inszenierung US-amerikanischer Musical Shorts

Abstract

From 1926 musical shorts begin to appear commercially in the US as a support to talkies in the recently-built cinemas. Some of these shorts appear useful as a source for jazz research but have been rarely analysed, showing various forms of music and its presentation. With a yearly production volume of about 1000 titles (1926– 1940) the musical shorts reflect the spirit of the time using respective performance and stage characteristics, and using serious as well as popular music.

In this paper, eight film formats will be looked at systematically, belonging to the most established types of movies. Referring to the musical repertoire of the syncopated music of the musical shorts they can be divided into a first period (1926–1932), and then a more jazz-oriented second period (1932–1940). It is remarkable that the blackface activities correlate with syncopated music (ragtime, cakewalk, coon songs). The showing of social life makes up a large part of the programme: illusory fictitious scenes are staged, such as cabins in front of cotton plantations, a jazz club in Harlem, etc. An analysis of the representative Paramount musical short AFTER SEBEN (USA 1929) reveals both musical and visual characteristics of the first and the second period.

As a result of the analysis musical shorts can be considered as a significant source for the research on popular music in the USA as well as a basic documentation of the different jazz styles at the time. Due to little material funds a search for these musical shorts should be intensified.