John McWhorter: evaluation

Transcript context

…Why is it that Gershwin misfired on race in Porgy and Bess, and Jerome Kern in Showboat arguably did not? He knows this one too. No one asks me these things! I don’t think George Gershwin misfired on race in Porgy and Bess because he went down to Gullah country. He went down to Daughters of the Dust, and he did what we would today call getting down with those people. Gershwin was a genius, and the music that he wrote was some of the best music ever composed by another human being. And you feel guilty saying that because a black person didn’t write it. He had more training than Duke Ellington, and so at the time, he happened to be able to do it. Duke, who I adore, couldn’t have pulled that off. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein — they do Showboat. Showboat is towering as well. I know people on Facebook who are in tears about the 1988 recording of Showboat in the original orchestrations, and I remember feeling the same way at the time. Showboat, though, is thinner art than Porgy and Bess. It’s got wonderful things in it, but in the original Showboat, Queenie was played by a white woman in blackface. It was a show of its time. So I love Showboat, but Kern was like Porter — he did what he did very well, but he was no Arlen. He was a seasoned songwriter. That’s what he did. No, I like Porgy and Bess better. Porgy and Bess, to me, is a human being. They’re times when, if life isn’t going well, I will put on the Houston Opera production of Porgy and Bess and lay down on a couch, and just sit there and listen and lose myself in somebody having created something where you wonder where it came from. Showboat to me is not that. If the Hungarian State Opera wants to put on an all-white performance of Porgy and Bess, should we find that disturbing? And do you personally find it disturbing?…

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