As a disturbing addendum to yesterday’s post about “The Mikado,” written in honor of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s birthday: the same friend with whom I enjoyed a volley of favorite Gilbert & Sullivan YouTube videos last week wrote overnight to remind me that, in the case of Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner’s famous “list” song – in which he catalogues those “society offenders who never would be missed” – absent from modern productions is the line, “There’s the n***** serenader and others of his race… I’ve got them on the list!”
I remember, even after the lyric had been altered, as it had been by the time of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company recording through which I first encountered the work when I was in high school, to “the banjo serenader and others of his race,” that I found it curiously jangling. What race could possibly be meant? Sure, “The Mikado” was written in 1885, when everyone would have been familiar with minstrel shows and the songs of Stephen Foster, with all their banjo strumming, but even a hundred years later, as a teenager, I knew precisely.
Of course, we can deflect it onto the character of Ko-Ko – not everything a character says necessarily reflects the attitudes or beliefs of its author (in this case, W.S. Gilbert) – but considering everything else on the list is calculated to provoke a titter, its out-of-left-field inclusion strikes a sour note indeed.
Perhaps “others of his race” is now to be taken figuratively, as in any kind of person who might play the banjo? I think it requires some seriously gymnastic denial to contort from the original line and arrive at that conclusion.
What I find especially poignant about my friend’s note is that he alludes to his friendship with Henry Varlack, long-time radio personality at the late, lamented WFLN, for 50 years Philadelphia’s full-time classical music station.
My friend recalls, “Oddly enough…when I visited Henry Varlack… after he’d retired from even the tour business… and was approaching the end… he always sang it: ‘You know… it’s the n***** serenader and the others of his race… and the prohibitionist. I’ve got them on the list. I’ve got them on the list.’
“I was always extremely saddened by him singing these verses… but… in retrospect… I realize that he might’ve known that I was the only person in the room who understood the historical context of the lyrics, as none of the other employees had ever listened to Henry as a classical D.J.
“It still disturbs me though… that these lyrics were running through his head in the weeks before died.
“Henry lived through the height of racism.”
Of course, Varlack did not grow up in the age of W.S. Gilbert or the minstrel show, but even in the ‘50s and ’60s, there’s no doubt he saw, and likely experienced, a lot of nastiness.
It makes me sad to think of Henry, who was always a hero of mine, a disembodied friend in the middle of the night, whose distinctive voice introduced so much of the music most meaningful to me, ever having been the object of hatred or discrimination.
The funny thing is, I listened to him for years before I ever even learned that he was black. A true case of race being skin deep. In what way would it ever be acceptable to demean this man, or anyone like him?
By the way, Henry was also a baseball scout. I know I’ve written about him once or twice before. Here’s a post from 2019.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1142137445953544&set=a.279006378933326
Varlack died in 2006 at the age of 65. His remains were interred at St. Clement’s Church in Philadelphia. Rest his beautiful soul.
The “little list” lyric was not changed until 1948. Henry would have been 7 years-old. This is an example of why it’s so important for history not to be erased.
Here’s a 1926 recording with the original lyric:
It is possible, I suppose – and I hope it is the case – that W.S. Gilbert, with his education and razor wit, could have been railing against the figure of the Negro minstrel – a white man in blackface, twanging on the banjo – an image so prevalent in those days.
Gilbert, I so want to believe in you.
But why, then, use the word again later in the opera? In “A More Humane Mikado,” the original lyrics describe a lady given to modifying her appearance excessively (as the Mikado perceives) receiving the punishment of being “blacked like a n***** with permanent walnut juice.”
I would hope that that is a line that never would be missed. You would never hear it sung that way today. Even so, it’s important that it is remembered. These may have been cases of casual racism in the society in which they were bandied, but from our vantage in the 21st century, these things still matter.
PHOTO: Sir Henry Lytton as Ko-Ko
