Elsie Houston

Abstract The early twentieth century ushered in an exciting wave of avant-garde artistic innovation. While Igor Stravinsky was thinking about new ways of interpreting sound, Pablo Picasso was exploring new ways of representing the figure, and Coco Chanel was giving women a new sense of style. Within this moment of avant-garde change, few recognized black women artistes and intellectuals who were also driving cultural innovation and were agents of molding and shaping Western culture and society. This book uncovers the forgotten story of one such woman called Elsie Houston—a mixed-race, Brazilian, classically trained soprano. Following her artistic and social networks from Brazil to Paris and then on to New York, this book opens the door to an unexpected history of race, sexuality, and society during the twentieth century. Elsie captured the 1920s and 1930s Western artistic vogue for black exotica by restylizing Afro-Brazilian folk songs on elite stages. In Paris, she became the ultimate flapper girl: she performed in one of the city’s risqué nudist cabarets; moved in the same social circles as the likes of Josephine Baker; became a muse for Man Ray; and engaged the same political sphere as the Trotskyists. After her move to New York City in 1937, the press branded her folk songs as “voodoo” and she was part of a bohemian set of figures who were connected to the Harlem Renaissance such as Carl Van Vechten and Virgil Thomson. Elsie reconceptualized black music, in particular Afro-Brazilian music, as modern and cosmopolitan.