Gershwin Misfired on Race and Showboat

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I don't think George Gershwin misfired on race and Porgy and Bess because he went down to Gullah country. He did what we would today call getting down with those people. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, they do Showboat. I know people on Facebook who are in tears about the 1988 recording of Showboat in the original orchestrations. 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.

Who can you ask about the Great American Songbook, the finer Jell-O flavors, and peculiar languages like Saramaccan all while expecting the same kind of fast, thoughtful, and energetic response? Listeners of Lexicon Valley might hazard a guess: John McWhorter. A prominent academic linguist, he’s also highly regarded for his podcast and popular writings across countless books and articles where often displays a deep knowledge in topics beyond his academic training.

John joined Tyler to discuss why he thinks that colloquial Indonesian should be the world's universal language, the barbaric circumstances that gave rise to Creole languages, the reason Mandarin won't overtake English as the lingua franca, how the Vikings shaped modern English, the racial politics of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, the decline of American regional accents, why Shakespeare needs an English translation, Harold Arlen vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber, whether reparations for African-Americans is a good idea, how living in Jackson Heights shapes his worldview, what he learned from his mother and father, why good linguistics students enjoy both Russian and Chinese, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded February 17th, 2020 Other ways to connect

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