Drums over Harlem: Signifying Africa, 1919-1932

In the 1920s in New York the jazz cabaret was seen as offering what the writer Eric Walrond called “Africa undraped”, and its sound was the tom-tom.  This talk will explore the period’s fascination with that instrument and with what it might signify, focusing on two texts entitled Tom-Tom, both of which offer to associate contemporary Harlem with “Africa”, in one or another of its manifestations.
Peter Hulme is Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex, where he taught for 40 years.  His books include Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492 1797 (1986), Cuba’s Wild East: A Literary Geography of Oriente (2011), and The Dinner at Gonfarone’s: Salomón de la Selva’s Pan-American Project in Nueva York, 1915-1919 (2019).