Spectacular sweethearts: rethinking novelty through racial diversity and femininity on the bandstand

ABSTRACT The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-girl jazz band that toured the United States from 1939 to 1949, was made up of a diverse group of musicians. Using a performance historiography approach to analyze newspaper articles and videos of the band, I argue the Sweethearts utilized a spectacularized racial diversity and femininity to respond to the perception that female bands were inferior to male bands and nothing more than a novelty. This argument hinges on spectacle’s relationship to theatricality, and provides a new way to situate Guy Debord’s screen in a theatrical logic – it is not simply a screen, but a scrim.