SPIN Magazine Mentions Harlem Rens, Basketball-Music Connection


August 2008 SPIN Magazine coverThe New York Renaissance aka “Harlem Rens” got a nice mention in the current issue of SPIN Magazine (August 2008).

The mention is in an article on the last page, in the Hidden Tracks section, called “Dunk The Funk.”

The byline of the piece is “Could the Olympics save basketball’s musical soul?”

My answer is “no.” Because it’s the wrong question. Basketball’s musical soul isn’t in jeopardy. The caged bird will still sing.

I bring up Converse because the 100-year-old history of that brand is the generation-by-generation diary of the connection between basketball and music.

Anyway, the premise of the piece, by Bethlehem Shoals, the well known blogger and founder of FreeDarko.com, is that somehow basketball’s connection to music is in trouble since music seemingly doesn’t play a role during Olympic basketball games.

Although music is used to pump up the fans in other sports, Shoals observes that, “professional basketball is the only sport in which the game itself seems inextricably tied to music.”

Well, of course not just pro basketball.

Shoals appreciates the modern links between basketball and music, citing Marvin Gaye’s version of the national anthem prior to the 1983 N.B.A. All Star Game, thumping in-game hip hop beats, rap experimentation by N.B.A. players, and N.B.A. experimentation by rappers (well, just Jay-Z for now, although he doesn’t mention Master P’s failed effort nor the court side admiration of numerous music royalty).

“Nor was it by accident that, in the 1920s, the Harlem Rens played on the dance floor between sets by Duke Ellington,” says Shoals. Duke Ellington arrived in Harlem in 1923, the year that future Basketball Hall of Fame member Bob Douglas cut a deal with the Renaissance Ballroom and formed the Rens basketball team.

Ellington was a newcomer to the Harlem scene and would have been just as likely to be found playing at rent parties alongside future legendary pianists Willie “The Lion” Smith, “Fats” Waller, and Eubie Blake. These men weren’t headliners yet, although most played professionally as members of someone else’s orchestra.

Rent parties, where up-and-coming pianists endlessly competed against one another, were called “jumps” or “shouts.” In order to play them, those pianists had to get substitutes and sneak away from their regular night club gigs, or else come out afterwards in the late night. But, to make your reputation, you were obliged to show up. Not to mention that playing rent parties paid better than night clubs.

Meanwhile, from day one, Douglas had a house band in the form of Vernon Andrade’s Orchestra. Ellington might have made appearances with Andrade’s orchestra. He was one of the rent-party regulars, still eagerly learning his way around Harlem on the coat-tails of Smith.

By the mid-1920s, Ellington had joined Elmer Snowden’s Washingtonians, who had copped an exclusive multi-year run at a midtown Manhattan night club, was making records, and was beginning to exert his own musical influence. In 1927, now with his own orchestra, Ellington opened at the Cotton Club, marking the beginning of his rise to national and international stardom.

Ellington may have played the Renaissance Ballroom after that, but not in connection with the Rens. By the late 1920s the Rens began spending the majority of their time on the road due to poor attendance at home.

Back to Shoals, basketball, and music.

The original linkage between basketball and music came immediately after African American teams first emerged around 1907. Every Black Fives Era basketball game was advertised as a “Basket Ball Game And Dance.”

Why? Enterprising basketball managers knew that audiences wanted entertainment and meaningful social events on the one hand, and that black orchestras wanted crowds to play on the other. Black compositions — in ragtime, jazz, and blues — previously had no large-scale “live” outlet, as most of them were underground or rendered to sheet music to be played on parlor pianos. That is, until the emergence of the radio and phonograph around 1910.

After that, people wanted to dance and parlors just weren’t big enough for the live orchestra nor the dancers. A ballroom construction boom followed, and that’s where black basketball teams played, filling in otherwise empty dance floors on off nights, while most athletic facilities remained whites-only.

The marriage of basketball and music at the turn of the last century was an African American innovation, partly of necessity and partly of enterprise, with a social benefit to boot.

Much of this basis continues today, although the blaring music at N.B.A. games and many streetball tournaments often seems like force-feeding.

Given all this, Shoals asks, “So why does our Olympic team compete in silence?”

He continues:

Maybe there’s a subtle element of racism, a desire on the part of powerful institutions to pretend that USA Basketball can still be blandly ecumenical. But I prefer to think of it as a simple missed opportunity.

I appreciate his concern, but believe that we need not worry about basketball losing its 100-year-old musical soul. Instead, my response is that the only music that matters for the United States Olympic Basketball Team right now is the “Star Spangled Banner.” Can I get an Amen?

(Image courtesy of SPIN.com.)

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15 years ago

Just to reiterate, both my editors and myself were at the mercy of the word count. The relationship between basketball and music was only the first half (middle third?) of the piece. We had to offer up evidence to a non-sports audience, but without the space to flesh out the distinctions that anyone on the inside of the discussion would’ve been left wondering about. Especially since that was just the set-up for the far less problematic second part.

Boone
15 years ago

Would love to hear some gogo music at the Olympics Claude…great research and knowledge man…God Bless…

Claude
15 years ago

Update:

Here are some portions of the reply by writer Bethlehem Shoals, to my post above:

Okay, I’m embarrassed on a number of levels. First, I used to be a jazz writer, and an Ellington buff at that. So I shouldn’t have made that historical error.

The second is that the piece is an uncomfortable melange of things I believe and self-defeating bombast. I do think that certain players perk up when the music comes on; there’s a reason streetball tournaments aren’t conducted in silence. There is something to be said for certain international players and the different sense of “rhythm” in their games, one that could, in some vague way, be connected to their culture’s aesthetic/musical/dance tradition. It would be funny if that were somehow highlighted at the Olympics.

I agree it would be funny (really funny) to play Serbian Gypsy music or Angolan Soca through the P.A. system at Olympic basketball games … it would probably help those teams win against the U.S.A.! But, I have to say that this would be a can’t-win situation because just as many people would be outraged and ask, “Why not hip hop?”

Shoals continues:

And I do believe that Marvin’s “Star-Spangled Banner” took on added significance because it was at a pre-Jordan ASG.

But the grab-bag evidence I included to establish the “inextricable connection”, including some of the sloppy history, kind of went against what I really think about basketball/music. I think there’s a family resemblance between the two within particular eras. However, the idea that there’s some grand unified theory of basketball and music, where LeBron is Coltrane, Elgin Baylor is Kool G Rap, and Marvin Barnes is Sly, strikes me as vaguely offensive, and certainly silly.

I would tend to agree.

Then:

But the more I included, the less space I had to qualify each one—or the relationship as a whole.

This portion of Shoal’s reply makes me believe that SPIN editors (doctors?) had their own agenda to force-fit a connection between basketball and music. Maybe they took over after he submitted to them the original text. But if they wanted a better understanding why didn’t they just come directly to us? :-)

About the Rens/jazz thing: That’s actually one of the ones I felt the shakiest on.

Hey, it takes courage to admit a mistake. Cool.

Anyway, I ended up thinking of the piece as light, maybe satirical, but with a kernel of truth somewhere in it. Ironically, for part of the summer I was working on a basketball/music book proposal that was going to include a “basketball is not jazz” chapter, but decided on a different project. But that’s still a pet vendetta of mine, ever since the ESPN Mag did a spread with Shawn Marion and Larry Hughes dressed in natty 1930’s attire and holding an alto and upright bass, respectively.

Sorry for the long and rambling email, feel free to use any of this if it might help clear my name.

Bethlehem Shoals, your name is hereby officially cleared! :-)

Not only that but we honor your forthrightness and humility as it sets a good example. Thank you.