Speakeasy: Vignettes of the Roaring Twenties

Using the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage as a thematic springboard, Speakeasy is a four-movement orchestral celebration of women’s suffrage and the music, philosophy, fashion and excessthat flared into being in the 1920s which became embodied by the empowered Flapper.

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I. For the Record

As the ink dried on the 19th Amendment in Washington DC, corsets across the nation were discarded in favor of loose-fitting garments meant to be danced in. Or at least, that's how I like to imagine things went. 1920s fashion is a prime example of direct musical influence. The glitzy tassels, sparkles, and fringe that adorned ladies’ jazz club attire were designed to gleam in rhythm with the Charleston and other iconic American tunes. While composing the first movement of Speakeasy, I thought about things like, "What does glamour and excess sound like? How can one capture 'sparkle' in music?" The double meaning of the movement’s title, “For the Record,” references both the actual phonograph record featured in movements I and II and the written historical record of women’s fight for suffrage. The first musical direction is "Over The Top." The piece opens with a grand cinematic overture reminiscent of film openings, with optional lighting cues to mimic Zelda Fitzgerald’s description of Parisian nightclubs. This is followed by a rapid-fire musical "slide show" of speakeasy scenes, featuring quotes from the women's suffrage-era song "She's Good Enough To Be Your Baby's Mother and She's Good Enough To Vote With You." It also includes a quotation of the first-known recorded American drum solo by jazz drummer Chauncey Morehouse starting at bar 104 of the first movement.

II. 

The title of this movement, Of Audacity and Rouge – Zelda Fitzgerald, is a quotation from the writing of Zelda Fitzgerald, who wrote first-hand about the 1920’s phenomenon of the Flapper:

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of 'sub-deb-ism,'* bobbed her hair, put on her

choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle.

*(as in, pre-debutante girls, raised by Victorian-era mothers and who weren't yet permitted to go out on dates)

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The story of Zelda Fitzgerald encapsulates the issues confronting many creative women of her era; they had gained some autonomy socially and politically, but this rarely translated to creative agency. Zelda, who is unfortunately still best known as “The Wife Of,” was one of the most iconic Flappers of her era. But more importantly, she was a wildly creative and gifted artist in her own right whose lifelong passions were ballet, writing, and painting. Her novel, Save Me the Waltz, is semi-autobiographical and infuriated her husband by drawing too much from their private life; a well of inspiration he wished to reserve for his own use. Aside from writing, Zelda intensely studied ballet in Paris, but aside from a few brief engagements in the south of France, she stopped just short of achieving her dream of becoming a professional ballerina. When she was invited by an Italian opera company to be a dancer in their production of Aïda, she unexpectedly turned it down; a surprising decision that perhaps hints at her deteriorating mental health. She battled mental illness most of her life, and spent her final years in hospital care, where she was killed in a fire set by an arsonous patient.

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Inspired by Zelda’s artistic output through ballet and writing, this music attempts to bring her florid, elaborate, eccentric prose and passion for ballet to life. Many of the musical instructions are quotations, including a description which is likely of her own symptoms of mental illness: “Her body was so full of static…she could get no clear communication with herself.” The mood, colors, and textures which bookend the piece were inspired by her description of hearing Vincent Youmans' song Tea for Two at twilight: “...like an indigo wash…asphalt dust and sooty shadows…Through the gloom, the whole world went to tea.” The middle of the piece uses ballet-inspired musical gestures such as grand jeté in the clarinet at bar 21, and frenetic rhythmic undercurrents like a gliding bourrée from bars 28-38 where the violins represent the ballerina's feet and the woodwinds become her floating upper body. Eventually “the violins’ hysteria, evolve[s]…to a tortured abstraction,” and “like a shooting star, ectoplasmic arrow,” detonates to a soaring, histrionic, surreal climax which dissolves to return to the opening theme.

The dedication of this movement, for Zelda and all the sisters of Shakespeare, is in reference to Virginia Woolf's thought experiment in her 1928 essay A Room of One's Own. In it, Woolf asks her audience to contemplate a “what if” of equity, and it resonates today: what if artists who are women had the same mentorship, education, and opportunities as men? What if they had a room of their own, where they could be free to create?

III. City on a Still

During Prohibition, New York City stood as a symbol of defiance, earning it the historical nickname "the city on a still,” as in di-still-ery. Astonishingly, there were so many speakeasies in New York that a later demographic study revealed that there existed roughly one bar for every six residents! In this era, the cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement

and underground speakeasies was a fact of life. As soon as the authorities shut down one illicit watering hole, more emerged in its place. Amidst the clandestine world of speakeasies, one charismatic figure stood out: "Texas" Guinan (pronounced “guy-none”), a bold, peroxide-blonde sensation. Her life was a spectacle in itself, with careers ranging from silent film actress, to circus rider, to vaudeville performer. But her most iconic role was fronting mob-controlled speakeasies, greeting patrons with her famous "Hello, suckers!” catchphrase (I reference her “Hello!” in my own version of an orchestral Sprechstimme in the trumpets at bars 107-110 in the first movement), followed up by, "you may be all the world to your mother, but you're just a cover charge to me!" Despite constant police raids and padlock orders, Guinan remained undeterred. She even wore a padlock necklace as a symbol of her clubs' frequent closures and travelled in a chauffeured, armored car. Inspired by the symphonic scherzo, this movement is an intoxicated joy ride pursued by police with “drunken” quotations from the Beethoven 9 scherzo, as a nod to his 250th anniversary which occurred near the time of the world premiere of this piece. I chose this scherzo motive because it mirrors the syncopated rhythm of the Charleston.

The first moments of music evoke a late-night reveler (opening oboe solo) stumbling out of one Texas Guinan’s speakeasies, perhaps for a quiet cigarette, who is suddenly disrupted by a surprise police raid—the chase begins!

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IV. Put the ‘Sin’ in Syncopation

The title of an article in the August 1921 edition of The Ladies' Home Journal posed the question, "Does Jazz Put the ‘Sin’ in Syncopation?" This movement is a satirical rejection and parody of that anti-jazz, racist question. Loosely “theme and syncopated variations,” it includes a reprise of the suffrage tune from the first movement and a musical reference (quotation of Helen Kane’s performance of the song I Wanna Be Loved by You, 1928, starting at bar 54) to the famous 1920s performers Helen Kane and Baby Esther, whose identities were later appropriated and used to create the character Betty Boop. 

The shimmering, delicate opening evokes the siren-like charm of Jazz, an entity which, according to the article, beckons to those of weaker moral resolve with its seductive magic. Suddenly a sinister, syncopated theme enters in the low woodwinds and strings at bar 4, embodying the corrupting force of this “Jazz-entity” as presented in the article.

The idea of music as a corrupting influence spans eras, reaching back to ancient Greece. In reference to antiquity, Zelda Fitzgerald’s amusing description of flapper culture resonates:

“The flapper springs full-grown, like Minerva, from the head of her once-déclassé father, Jazz, upon whom she lavishes affection and reverence, and deepest filial regard.”

Various musical forms have been perceived as impacting society, morals, or youth, particularly when they challenge established norms or align with specific social or cultural

movements. A nod to another era of subversive music appears at bar 84 with a rock drum beat. The suffrage tune, reprised from the first movement, resurfaces triumphantly at the close using the full forces of the orchestra. However, a touch of dissonance in the final chords serves as a reminder that while the 19th Amendment marked significant progress for women, there remains much work ahead. Equality is forever a work in progress. 

2025 update: Speaking of equality being a work in progress, the Equal Rights Amendment was presented by two women's suffrage activists in 1923, and was brought before Congress in EVERY session for five decades until it finally gained traction in the 70s. It was finally ratified by a two-thirds majority of states in January 2020. This is well past the original deadline set by Congress, but should that matter? As of this writing (Jan 2025), we are still arguing amongst ourselves if gender equality should be enshrined in our constitution as the 28th amendment. This "convenient" miring in bureaucratic details is a sobering reminder that the modern fight for women's equality which began in the 19th century still isn't over, and won't be for some time.