Solidarity for Political Prisoners

The Confederadas and its supporters held hundreds of rallies, pickets, and demonstrations across the United States to protest political persecution in Spain. In their cultural fundraisers, antifascist plays were performed, artists danced and sang, speeches were delivered, dinners were served, dance orchestras played, lotteries were held, and funds subsequently collected. España Libre reviewed the extraordinary activism for political prisoners in each of its issues. Protest was extended to other media, too. Members published letters of protest in American mainstream papers and rented radio space in several radio stations. The Confederadas’ numerous forms of protest and occupation of the public space garnered international attention for the incarcerations and executions of dissenters in Spain.

Harlem Carnival

Chapter 3 turns to the establishment of Harlem’s Dame Lorraine Carnival dances in the mid-1930s and the founding of an outdoor Carnival parade on Seventh Avenue in 1947. The importance of calypso music and the early steelbands in the parade is examined, and the music’s role in maintaining connections to Trinidad and uniting Harlem’s Caribbean migrants is considered. The first large-scale Carnival dances were those produced by the bandleader Gerald Clark, who called his events “Gala Dame Lorraine,” a reference to an early nineteenth-century female Carnival character who was always elegantly dressed. At these dances, bands came clad in themed costumes to compete for prize money. These events showed that New York’s Caribbean migrant communities were eager to support annual Carnival celebrations that combined three essential components of Trinidadian Carnival: dance orchestras, calypso song battles, and masquerade contests. Their success led to an outdoor Carnival parade up Harlem’s Seventh Avenue.

Harlem’s Caribbean Dance Orchestras and Early Calypsonians

Chapter 2 focuses on Harlem Carnival activities from the late 1920s through the 1940s. The stories of the early dance orchestras led by the Trinidad expatriate Gerald Clark, and those of New York-based calypsonians Wilmoth Houdini, Cecil “Duke of Iron” Anderson, Sir Lancelot Pinard, and Patrick “MacBeth the Great” MacDonald, are recounted. Their recording careers and performances in Harlem dance halls and downtown Village clubs are explored. The rise of Harlem’s Carnival parade coincided with an upsurge in interest in calypso music by non-Caribbean white and black Americans that culminated in the “calypso craze” of the 1950s. The dance orchestras, calypsonians, and steelband players who provided the music were constantly seeking to broaden their audiences by crossing over into new cultural arenas. This chapter looks at the host of Caribbean-themed dances and calypso performances that were popular in Harlem’s clubs and dance halls from the mid-1930s through the 1950s, and to the calypso shows that proliferated in midtown concert halls and downtown clubs during this period.