It roused an Arab-black girl from Algeria into a shaking-mad mood. And she jazzed right out into the center of the floor and shook herself in a low-down African shimmying way. The mandolin player, a stocky, cocky lad of brown-paper complexion, the lightest-skinned of the playing boys, had his eyes glued on her. Her hair was cropped and stood up shiny, crinkly like a curiously-wrought bird’s nest. She was big-boned and well-fleshed and her full lips were a savage challenge.
“Cointreau!” The Negroid girl called when, the music ceasing, the paper-brown boy asked her to take a drink.
“That yaller nigger’s sure gone on her,” Malty said to Banjo.
“And she knows he’s got a roll can reach right up to her figure,” said Banjo. “Looka them eyes she shines on him! Oh, boy! it was the same for you and I when we first landed—every kind of eyes in the chippies’ world shining for us!”
“Yes, but you ain’t got nothing to kick about. The goodest eyes in this burg ain’t shining for anybody else but you.”
“Hheh-hheh,” Banjo giggled. “I’ll be dawggone, Malty, ef I don’t think sometimes youse getting soft. Takem as they come, easy and jolly, ole boh.”
He poured out a glass of red wine, chinked his glass against Malty’s, and toasted, “Oh, you Dixieland, here’s praying for you’ soul salvation.”
“And here is joining you,” said Malty.
“Dry land will nevah be my land,
Gimme a wet wide-open land for mine.”
Handsome, happy brutes. The music is on again. The Senegalese boys crowd the floor, dancing with one another. They dance better male with male or individually, than with the girls, putting more power in their feet, dancing more wildly, more natively, more savagely. Senegalese in blue overalls, Madagascan soldiers in khaki, dancing together. A Martiniquan with his mulat-tress flashing her gold teeth. A Senegalese sergeant goes round with his fair blonde. A Congo boxer struts it with his Marguerite. And Banjo, grinning, singing, white teeth, great mouth, leads the band. …
The banjo dominates the other instruments; the charming, pretty sound of the ukulele, the filigree notes of the mandolin, the sensuous color of the guitar. And Banjo’s face shows that he feels that his instrument is first. The Negroes and Spanish Negroids of the evenly-warm, evergreen and ever-flowering Antilles may love the rich chords of the guitar, but the banjo is preeminently the musical instrument of the American Negro. The sharp, noisy notes of the banjo belong to the American Negro’s loud music of life—an affirmation of his hardy existence in the midst of the biggest, the most tumultuous civilization of modern life.
Sing, Banjo! Play, Banjo! Here I is, Big Boss, keeping step, sure step, right long with you in some sort a ways. He-ho, Banjo! Play that thing!
A little flock of pinks from the Ditch floated into the bar. Seamen from Senegal. Soldiers from Madagascar. Pimps from Martinique. Pimps from everywhere. Pimps from Africa. Seamen fed up with the sea. Young men weary of the work of the docks, scornful of the meager reward—doing that now. Black youth close to the bush and the roots of jungle trees, trying to live the precarious life of the poisonous orchids of civilization.
The slim, slate-colored Martiniquan dances with a gold-brown Arab girl in a purely sensual way. His dog’s mouth shows a tiny, protruding bit of pink tongue. Oh, he jazzes like a lizard with his girl. A dark-brown lizard and a gold-brown lizard. …
A coffee-black boy from Cameroon and a chocolate-brown from Dakar stand up to each other to dance a native sex-symbol dance. Bending knee and nodding head, they dance up to each other. As they almost touch, the smaller boy spins suddenly round and dances away. Oh, exquisite movement! Like a ram goat and a ram kid. Hands and feet!
Black skin itching, black flesh warm with the wine of life, the music of life, the love and deep meaning of life. Strong smell of healthy black bodies in a close atmosphere, generating sweat and waves of heat.
Suddenly in the thick joy of it there was a roar and a rush and sheering apart as a Senegalese leaped like a leopard bounding through the jazzers, and, gripping an antagonist, butted him clean on the forehead once, twice, and again, and turned him loose to fall heavily on the floor like a felled tree.
The patron dashed from behind the bar. A babel of different dialects broke forth. Policemen appeared and the musicians slipped outside, followed by most of the Martiniquans.
“Hheh-hheh,” Banjo laughed. “The music so good it put them French fellahs in a fighting mood.”
“Niggers is niggers all ovah the wul’,” said the tall, long-faced chocolate who played the guitar. “Always spoil a good thing. Always the same no matter what color their hide is or what langwidge they talk.”
“And I was fixing for that fair brown. I wonder where at she is?” said the mandolin-player.
“Don’t worry,” said Banjo. “Theah’s always some’n’ better or as good as what you miss. You should do like me whenevah you hit a new port. Always try to make something as different from what you know as a Leghorn is from a Plymouth Rock.”
“Hi-ee! But youse one chicken-knowing fool,” said Malty.
Banjo did a little strut-jig. “You got mah number all right, boh. And what wese gwine to do now? The night ain’t begin yet at all foh mine. I want to do some moh playing and do some moh wine and what not do?”
A
