All tagged Katherine Dunham

Remembering Cabin in the Sky

Musicals about the black experience were not unheard of in the early years of the Golden Age of Broadway, despite a society that didn’t exactly embrace black culture. Shows like Porgy & Bess (1935), Carmen Jones (1943), St. Louis Woman (1946) and Lost in the Stars (1949) told compelling stories about this underrepresented faction of the population. What was harder to come by were musicals about black characters that delved into the world of fantasy and folklore. There was, however, the 1940 musical Cabin in the Sky which gave us both a serious story about people of color that also delved into their cultural heritage and folklore while employing a touch of fantasy.