[music]

Speaker 1: My connection to The Wiz is I watched it as a child. It was really special to me, not just because of how amazing the music was and how big the stars were, like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, but the fact that it represented New York. Emerald City, they're on the Yellow Rig Road, Big City, and Bright Lights, and being that I'm from New York, it resonated with me.

Speaker 2: It made me almost feel like a little kid. I'm 61 now, and to see it at 61- I'm making myself older, because I ain't 61 to November- but it's very good. I felt good. I feel like uplifted.

Speaker 3: All I ever wanted to do was be a musical theater star. My mother introduced me to The Wiz and it changed my life. I have wanted to see this show since I was like 15 years old. The fact that it's here and the fact that it was as gorgeous as it was, I'm just so grateful.

[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. The Wiz. I'm tempted to put it in the category of if you know you know, not because it's particularly niche at this point, but most fans, and there are a whole lot of us, have such specific emotional relationship to this show, often tied in some way to growing up Black.

For me, it is almost impossible to think about being a little kid without flashing to an image of myself parked in front of the TV in my grandmother's den watching a VHS of the movie version for the umpteenth time, which immediately brings me to the image of my uncle walking through the door from the garage, interrupting the movie with his big mouth and my aunt teasing him about one thing or another. It just opens this emotional window into people who have gone to glory, but live on in my heart. That's what this show does for me.

The Wiz. It began on stage in Baltimore in 1974 before going on to win seven Tony Awards as a Broadway show with the incomparable Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. Then came the 1978 film with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross easing on down the road in a trippy Motown Fantasia. There was NBC's star-studded TV special in 2015. Now a Broadway revival has brought the show back into the conversation.

I guess I should also include that Kendrick Lamar broke the internet last week when fans figured out that his new diss track aimed at Drake, that in that, the jumbled audio at the beginning is actually a line from Richard Pryor playing The Wiz himself in the film. Kendrick ran that line in reverse as his opening shot at Drake, which is to say that The Wiz just keeps on giving to the culture.

[MUSIC - Kendrick Lamar: Euphoria]

Kai Wright: That's a little bit of Kendrick's opener, if you haven't heard it. Anyway, listeners, I want to hear as many of your own connections to The Wiz as possible. It could be any version of the show. Did you see the original tour? Did you grow up on the film with Diana and Michael? Were you part of a school production maybe? Maybe you came to it later in life, or maybe you have now caught the new revival. No matter when you encountered The Wiz, if it meant something to you, we want to hear about it. Give us a call or text us at 844-745-talk, that's 844-745-8255, with your stories about The Wiz.

As we take your calls, I am joined by Jason King. He is the dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Among his many accomplishments as a musician and a scholar and a cultural observer, he's got a background in musical theater. He's the perfect person to tell us about the history of The Wiz and how it became such an iconic, intergenerational part of Black American culture in particular. Jason, welcome to Notes from America.

Jason King: Thank you, Kai. I'm so glad to be here.

Kai Wright: As you heard, we're asking our audience to share their stories and memories of The Wiz. We should get to yours right away then. I gather when you first encountered it, you did not like it [laughs]. When was that, and why?

Jason King: I was too young to see the original on Broadway and I saw the 1978 film on VHS soon after VHS was invented in people's homes. I saw it at some point in the early 1980s, because I was a big Michael Jackson fan, so I had to be completist and see everything. I saw it then and I did not love the movie. I didn't love it, although I liked the score.

Then I saw a 1990s revival in New York, and that was directed, I think, by George Faison and starring Stephanie Mills, somewhere around like '92, '93 and I just became such a big fan of it, because then I really connected to the original Broadway cast album, which I think had a different flavor or different feel.

In the early '90s, I also studied with Andre De Shields, who played the original Wiz. I became very close personal friends and colleagues with the late great Carl Hall who replaced Andre De Shields as The Wiz in the original, and then also did the revival in the early '80s. I was a musical theater kid. I have a degree in it. I came to New York to go to study at the American Musical Dramatic Academy. I used to sing songs from The Wiz as my audition songs when I'd go out and audition, so I would sing --

Kai Wright: Oh wow.

Jason King: -- I Was Born On The Day Before Yesterday. I sang Home, What Would I Do If I Could Feel? Wiz was part of my entire ethos, my cosmology. It was like a part of who I was. Like you, I think I saw so much of myself in that musical and it meant so much to me.

Kai Wright: Indeed, if you were performing in the auditions, that's great. Listeners, again, this week is all about sharing our stories and connections to this incredible touch tone. Jason's going to tell us some of the history of the show and the social history around it too. Like I said, we want to hear from you. What is your Wiz connection? 844-745-talk. We ask this question on our show's Instagram page, which is Notes With Kai. We got a lot of responses. We've already got some voicemails to share. Here's one from a listener whose connection goes way back.

Kevin: Hi. This is Kevin from Sacramento, California, and I am a huge Wiz superfan. Actually, I grew up as a Wiz kid. My father was a part of the original Wiz with Stephanie Mills and Mabel King and the crew that got it started in the '70s. I grew up on the set with my dad, not only with the original, but the touring company and their revival. I have followed The Wiz my entire life. It is the soundtrack of my life.

I have pictures from when I was a little guy from early characters. I also have stories from being around them. Most recently, I have followed the current revival, looking forward to it for many, many years. I'm so excited. I did get a chance to be there in Baltimore when they opened and got the national tour started. Then I met the crew again on the opening night of reviews in Broadway. I had a chance to interview and talk to some of the characters, including got a chance to talk with Amber Ruffin. So excited that you're doing this. Take care. Bye-bye.

Kai Wright: Amber Ruffin, who wrote the book for the Revival and we talked to her a few weeks back, if you missed that, you should check it out in our podcast feed. It's hilarious. We did call Kevin back to find out what role his father had in the original. He played the guitar in that production. Listeners, we got some bonafide Wiz heads in this audience if you will join us in the conversation.

Jason, The Wiz was born in this really exciting time in Black history and Black culture in general, a period known as the Black Arts Movement. Can you just set the stage? What was the Black Arts Movement and how did it give birth to The Wiz?

Jason King: In the late 1960s, mid to late 1960s, there was this movement referred to as the Black Arts Movement that consisted of musicians and poets and playwrights and novelists and others. This is all stemming out of the Black Power Movement of that mid-late 1960s moment in which there's this renewed sense of consciousness around Blackness, the idea of what Black liberation might mean, more of an embrace of Afrocentricity, all set against this notion, that historically, particularly in America, Black was connoted with something pejorative. It was negative. You didn't want to claim your Blackness.

In the '60s you had this flowering of people wanting to claim the distinctiveness of Black life and Black culture. In the arts, that was the Black Power Movement. It was figures like Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Sonia Sanchez, and Ntozake Shange, and so many others who came out of this movement.

It had a particular thrust in theater. Some of the works of great 1970s musical theater writers like Mickey Grant or Director Vinnette Carroll, Woody King in his new federal theater, there was a huge outpouring of Black creativity and Black cultural production spilling into film as well. Looking at films like Car Wash, and Sparkle, and others, the rise of what you would call ultimately Black exploitation cinema.

Then even in music, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, making album-length work that was topical and meaningful. People wanted in the theater to see and hear Black cast shows. There was a huge economic motivation for it, and a cultural one as well.

Kai Wright: Which is to say there was money. You could look at it and say, "Oh, you might be able to make money out of this in a way that you weren't previously," because Broadway is about making money.

Jason King: Absolutely. It was definitely economically motivated. In film, you had Melvin Van Peebles who made Sweet Sweetback's, which was independent film that spurred on the rise of what you call blaxploitation cinema. You start to have films like Superfly, and Shaft, and others being made in the wake of that film. There was this huge possibility for Black casts, films with Black leads in them to be money makers. That was spilling over into theater as well, where a lot of producers were seeing the opportunity to make all Black cast musicals in a way that couldn't have really happened in the '50s and '60s in the same way.

Kai Wright: I'm Kai Wright. I'm talking with Jason King. He's the dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. We're going to take your calls. Tell us about your relationship to The Wiz, what's it meant to you. Maybe you got a cool personal story, or a family tradition associated with the show. Whatever it is, call or text us. We will start taking your calls after a break. More just ahead.

[MUSIC - The Wiz: Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News]

So don't nobody bring me no bad news

If we're going to be buddies

You better bone up on the rules

'Cause don't nobody bring me no bad news

You can be my best of friends

As opposed to payin' dues

But don't nobody bring me no bad news

No bad news, no bad news

No bad news, no bad news

Don't you ever bring me--

Kai Wright: This is Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright, and this week we are learning about the history of the iconic Broadway show and Motown film, The Wiz. It's back on Broadway right now, and we've been asking you about your relationship to this show, your family stories, childhood memories associated with it, whatever. Let's take a couple of your calls. Let's go to Lindy in Los Angeles. Lindy, welcome to the show.

Lindy: Hi.

Kai Wright: Hi, Lindy. What's your memory of it?

Lindy: My memory of The Wiz. Well, so I didn't even know what The Wiz was until I was eight and my grandma showed it to me. She showed me the movie, and I thought it was just so beautiful to see people of my skin tone on the screen. It was a mesmerizing moment for me. I love the songs and the dance. I'm a theater kid, so I went to see it in real life, the live play. It was just so beautiful to me. It meant a lot to me because it's not every day that you get to see such diversity on stage and in this world.

Kai Wright: That's great. When did you get to see it on stage?

Lindy: I think it was March earlier this year.

Kai Wright: Just this year.

Lindy: They were on tour. Yes.

Kai Wright: You saw the new production. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you for that, Lindy. Let's go to Gail in Westchester, New York. Gail, welcome to the show.

Gail: Hi. How are you? Thank you for having me. I have to just say, I have to make a correction. My uncle, he worked on the movie of The Wiz. He actually was the first Black scenic artist for United Artist Film. He did films like Raging Bull and several others that I can't recall offhand because it's been so long.

However, I can remember because he was working with a company doing the scenic art for the film, him coming home with his sketches of the lions, of taking golf carts in recon, making them into those little taxi cabs. At the very end of the production, he was able to abscond with Diana Ross's chair. [laughs] He had the yellow director's chair or her acting chair [laughter] for the longest time, which unfortunately got lost in the archives of a storage unit later on in life.

I do remember the pictures he took my cousin who was the same age as I was. We were in like, I think, middle school at the time. He took him to the set and was able to take film and pictures of him interacting with Michael Jackson, and costume-

Kai Wright: Awesome.

Gail: -and Diana Ross, and The Lion. It was just an amazing-- Nipsey Russell, and it was just an amazing experience. My daughter who just had a birthday, I'm taking her soon to see the actual Broadway revival of The Wiz. It's an exciting moment and very special.

Kai Wright: Thank you so much for that, Gail. That's two people going to see one who was just here. I should say Lindy, who called earlier was 11 years old. I hadn't realized. Lindy, thank you for taking the initiative there. Both Lindy and Gail will have seen the new production.

We have a very special caller now. Schele Williams is the director of the new Broadway revival on stage right now. It's actually one of two shows she's leading this season. She's also the director of the musical, The Notebook, but we convinced her to interrupt her busy schedule for a quick check-in for this celebration. Schele, thanks for calling in.

Schele Williams: Hey, Kai. Happy to be here. Always happy to talk about The Wiz.

Kai Wright: We have to, of course, start with your own first connection. Do you remember when you first encountered The Wiz? Was it on stage, on film, on vinyl? What was it?

Schele Williams: I will never forget it. It was 1978 and the touring production came through Dayton, Ohio. My mom took me to see it, and every molecule in my body changed when I saw that show.

Kai Wright: [chuckles] Okay.

Schele Williams: I wouldn't be in theater today-

Kai Wright: Oh, really?

Schele Williams: -if it had not been for that experience of seeing The Wiz when I was seven years old. Yes, absolutely.

Kai Wright: Is that because it showed you just what was possible for Black people on stage?

Schele Williams: It is. It did for me what it still does today. It is a celebration of Black excellence and Black joy. It was the first time I had seen that portrayed in that way. In the '70s, there was still a lot of good times. There's still a lot of Black people struggling when we saw entertainment, and this one was a story that I knew, but suddenly I was a part of it.

I knew The Wizard of Oz, but I had never imagined Blackness inside that fairytale, just as I had never seen Black characters in any Disney movie. Suddenly here was a story that I knew, but I was a part of it, and we were all a part of it. It was joyful, and it was beautiful, and the dancing and the costumes, it just swept me up and it opened a world of possibility to me that has led me to this moment in my life.

Kai Wright: Wow, that's wonderful. The opening night of your revival was quite an affair. It was everybody from Hillary Clinton to Common in the audience. You also had cast members from the original production, Stephanie Mills, Andre De Shields, Dee Dee Bridgewater. What was that like? Take us behind the scenes of that one.

Schele Williams: George Faison was there. It was the most incredible feeling because it's not just a show. As I said on that night, The Wiz is a legacy, and it is an honor to become a part of that legacy and to give this show to a new generation. When Lindy called, I was like, "Oh my gosh." [laughter] She's like me. She saw the show and it did for her exactly what it did for me. It makes me so happy when I see multi-generation come to the show.

There are so many people who have said to me, "My mom took me to see the show when I was little, and now I'm taking her." I see 70 and 80-year-old women coming to the show with their 50, 40-year-old kids. You know what I mean? It's such a beautiful circle that is happening with this show. It's beautiful to see so many families coming to the show.

Kai Wright: Well, it was a beautiful experience when I saw it as well, and I thank you for remaking it. Before we let you go, you're not at the performance of The Wiz tonight, you're actually out of town to launch your new project, Your Legacy Begins: First Words to Empower. Tell us quickly about Your Legacy Begins.

Schele Williams: It is the prequel to my book Your Legacy: A Bold Reclaiming of Our Enslaved History, which is an award-winning children's book that came out in 2021. Your Legacy Begins: First Words to Empower is a board book, and it is all about empowering our generation of young Black children to know that they have strength, ingenuity, love, all of these beautiful words imbuing them with the strength of our ancestors and starting them out with the determination, grace, and courage for them to live their lives fully.

Jason King: Wonderful.

Kai Wright: Schele Williams is the director of the new Broadway revival of The Wiz. Congratulations on your new project and on the revival of The Wiz, and thanks for checking in with us.

Schele Williams: Thanks, Kai.

Kai Wright: Jason, first off anything you want to react to that you heard Schele say there, or Lindy or Gail caller about their encounter with the show?

Jason King: I think it's just amazing to see so many successive generations connect with The Wiz for so many reasons. This is a musical that is 1975 on Broadway, and here we are so many decades later, like five decades later, still having similar conversations about what the musical has done to people and how it's affected people. I think that's incredible to hear a young person talking about it, to hear somebody who's older talking about it in the same glowing way. It's really inspiring.

Kai Wright: As I understand it, to talk a little bit about the original and how it got developed, at first, the production wasn't the fabulousness we think of today as I understand it. Tell us about the early days of The Wiz and what changed.

Jason King: Sure. The story of The Wiz starts with Ken Harper who was the producer. He was actually a radio DJ. He was a program affairs director at New York radio station. He wanted to do an all-Black musical. The Wizard of Oz was in public domain, so his idea was, "Let's make a Black musical," but he was trying to do it on TV. When that fell through, then he said, "Okay, let me try to do a theater piece." He went to all these corporations. Everybody turned it down. He went to 20th Century Fox, and they said, "Okay, we can put some money behind this."

They tried it out in Baltimore in '74, and the reviews were really mad. They were just not the reviews that you will then take a show on to Broadway with, so they had to do some changes. They replaced the director, Gil Moses, with Geoffrey Holder who became the director on Broadway for the original cast. They opened in '75. It was not making any money. It was not even making its weekly amount that it needs to stay open.

Two things happened. One, the Amsterdam News, the local New York Black publication, ran a amazing review of the show and told people to come out and said, "Don't look at the New York Times reviews. A lot of those reviewers, most of whom are white, are not going to understand or get the meaning of the show and are going to have a different relationship to it than Black audiences might." They urged Black theatergoers to go.

20 Century Fox ran these TV ads. That was unusual for Black musicals for any musicals, really, to have TV ads at the time. They ran a TV ad, paid a lot of money to do it at the time. That TV ad featured Ease On Down the Road. In the rising spirit of disco and funk, that became a huge thing. Then suddenly, they were just a massive success. It went on to run on Broadway for 1,700 performances.

Kai Wright: Geoffrey Holder, who was the director that they brought in, is Trinidadian, I believe. That's deeply relevant to the history of this show. Tell me about that.

Jason King: It is. Geoffrey Holder is a personal hero of mine. I'm also Trini, so Trini background. I think I've always looked up to him in that way, but a really smart savvy director, costume designer, choreographer. He'd long been associated with Alvin Ailey. He choreographed and danced for the Metropolitan Opera. He'd done a lot of stuff before he came to The Wiz.

The thing that he brought to The Wiz is his sense of Caribbean flair and fabulousness. I think of The Wiz as part of what I would call the Caribbeanization of popular culture after the 1960s and into the 1970s, and so on. A lot of that had to do with the changes in the Immigration Act in the 1960s that brought a lot of immigrants into the United States. Those immigrants, for instance in New York, would change culture there, creating the rise of hip-hop music, for instance, which is largely defined by Caribbean immigrants aesthetically.

Geoffrey Holder's touch, I think, was bringing Trini carnival. The Carnival happens every year in Trinidadian, this whole sense of fabulousness and the outfits and so on. He brought all of that into The Wiz and it didn't have that before because remember, he wasn't just directing. He was also designing the costumes, and contributing even to the choreography.

You think of The Tornado song in The Wiz for instance. That's just the moment in which Dorothy transitions from her own town into Emerald City. He decided to actually turn it into not only just a song, but have a dancer wear this incredible tornado outfit that looks like something you'd see in Trinity carnival, and dance all over the stage. He brought this burst of energy and vitality and magic and wizardry to the production that it didn't have before. That really made the difference.

Kai Wright: The choreography associated that by George Faison, if that's how you pronounce his last name led to he was the first Black person to win Tony Award for Best Choreography as a consequence.

Jason King: Absolutely. George Faison in the film, it would be Louis Johnson doing the choreography, but there's just such an amazing group of talent associated with The Wiz from Geoffrey Holder to George Faison to Charlie Smalls, of course, who writes the incredible musical score and the lyrics. It's just an amazing group of people who come together. Luther Vandross contributes a song to it long before he starts his solo career.

Kai Wright: Before he's met Louis. Let's take some more calls. Let's go to Matthew in Vermont. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Matthew: Hello. How are you?

Kai Wright: We are well. What's your member you want to share?

Matthew: Well, I grew up in Manhattan. In the '70s, I was a teenager. Tiger Haynes was a good family friend. He was friends. My parents knew him because they were lovers of jazz, and he had been a jazz musician in the '40s and '50s. He was the original Tin Man in the Broadway production.

Kai Wright: Oh, wow.

Matthew: Yes. I just wanted to remember Tiger to the world because, in the '70s, he was struggling to find work. He was an actor. He was a musician. He could dance. He could sing. He was a wonderfully charismatic person. All of these things, he took to The Wiz. He got to the part and it made the end of his-- The later years of his life, he became recognized again by the world through that production.

Kai Wright: Thank you for sharing that, Matthew. Let's go to Nathan in Oak Park, Illinois. Nathan, welcome to the show.

Nathan: Hey, thank you so much. I was always a big fan of The Wizard of Oz as a kid. It was one of my favorite movies. I played it until the VHS died. In elementary school, one of my teachers showed us The Wiz as a class. It just resonated with me a lot because of the contemporary style of it. I'm from just outside of Chicago, so the fact that a lot of it had these city-like themes in it, it just really was an amazing rendition of it.

To this day, I still talk to my friends, I'm like, "You like The Wizard of Oz, but have you ever seen The Wiz." I've only ever seen the movie. Seeing the Broadway production would be amazing. It really just a modernized world that I had fell in love with. It honestly helped me relate to the world better than the original did because of the inclusivity of it all. To this day, I still ease on down the road.

Kai Wright: [laughs] To this day, you still ease on down the road. That's great. Thank you so much for that. A couple of text messages. Julie in Brooklyn writes, "When the movie The Wiz came out, I was in elementary school in Plainfield, New Jersey. I was one of the few white kids in the public school system there. Plainfield had had major white flight after the riots of the late '60s, and my parents decided they would not be part of that- not part of the problem as they saw it.

In third grade, The Wiz coming out was huge. As an adult looking back, it was probably the earliest understanding of how much representation matters. I learned a lot from those years in Plainfield and was given insights that, unfortunately, most middle-class white kids don't get, and The Wiz was one of them. I love the movie." Thank you for that note, Julie.

We're going to take a little break here soon, but we're going to talk a little more about the movie itself when we get back. I'm Kai Wright, and I'm talking about The Wiz with Jason King. He's the dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. We're taking your calls. Tell us about your relationship to The Wiz, what it's meant to you. Maybe you got a personal or a family story or a tradition associated with this, call us up or send us a text 844-745-8255. More just ahead.

[MUSIC - Richard Pryor: Emerald City Sequence]

I want to be seen green

Wouldn't be caught dead, red

'Cause if you are seen

green

It means you got mean bread

Regina de Heer: Hi, I'm Regina, a producer here at Notes from America with Kai Wright. I hope you're loving this episode, and I know you want to get back to it as soon as possible. Before we get back to it, I need to tell you something.

As you know, we cover a lot of issues and ideas on this podcast, and we don't want to do it without you. Having your questions, stories, and experiences in the conversation is so important to us. Let me tell you how to be in touch.

In the show notes of this episode, there's a link that takes you to our website, notesfromamerica.org, where you can record a message for us. Plus, our inbox is always open at notes@wnyc.org, you can write us or even better record a voice memo on your phone and send it to us there. Again, that's notes@wnyc.org. I'll be looking there for a note from you soon. All right, thanks for listening.

[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. I'm joined by Jason King. He's the dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and an aficionado of all things Wiz. The Wiz is back on Broadway right now, and we've been asking about your relationship to this show, your family stories, your childhood memories, whatever it is.

Another text message we got. Someone wrote, "When it came out on television in 1978," so that's actually the movie when it came out on VHS, "I was six years old and instantly loved it. Back in the '70s, Black people watched shows collectively. We all watched Roots. We all watched Sparkle and Car Wash. I thought we all watched The Wiz. I would always be in awe of people who say they never watched it. I love the soundtrack so much that I can identify Luther Vandross's voice on the song, Can You Feel a Brand New Day? Quincy Jones is a genius. He did a fabulous, culturally iconic job when he did this." That's one person.

I want to play another voicemail and then take another call, and then we're going to talk about the TV show. Here is Shameika in Durham.

Shameika: Hey, this is Shameika calling from Durham, North Carolina. My first interaction with The Wiz was at Hillside High School, Durham, North Carolina, late '80s, early '90s production by an amazing theater leader, Wendell Tabb. Hillside has a rich history in Durham, North Carolina, all-Black school, all-Black cast. It was an amazing experience. I, like so many other Black kids, have never seen The Wizard of Oz. I've seen The Wiz. I love it. I have it on DVD. I've now passed it on to the next generation. Love your show. Be well.

Kai Wright: Thanks for that, Shameika. Jason, one more before we talk about some of the things that have just come up. Let's go to Tenay in Minneapolis Minnesota. Tenay, welcome to the show.

Tenay: Hi. Thank you. How are you?

Kai Wright: I'm very well. What's the memory you want to share?

Tenay: I was in theater, actually, in 1970s, and I ran a small theater in Minneapolis which was one of the precursors to Penumbra Theater, which is the theater that August Wilson came out of. We were all part of that Black Arts Renaissance. I went to Broadway, saw the play, came back here, wanted to produce it, but couldn't afford it, couldn't afford the rights. Myself and an actor by the name of Gregory Allen Williams, he's a famous actor. I can't remember. He was a cop or the preacher in the Sopranos. Anyway, he wrote the music and we wrote a poem called it Oz. Our tornado song was this jazzy thing, I would say like, tornado USA.

Kai Wright: [laughs]

Tenay: Then we had a house, and our house, our set designer put our house on wheels. Then the dancer would move during when we'd sing the song, when Gregory's music. I have heard from people that that was one of the best productions that they saw at that time that we wrote.

This is the part that's amazing. Then when my kids were about six, so this is like '78, '79, and the production was traveling, I took my kids to Chicago on the train and we went to see The Wiz in Broadway at the Goodman Theater, I think. Anyways, my children, I'm 71 now, and for my birthday, my daughters are taking me to New York to see The Wiz. I'm so excited. I have tickets for the 19th and I can hardly, hardly wait.

Kai Wright: Happy birthday today.

Tenay: I wish I could find an old-- Thank you [laughs].

Kai Wright: Happy birthday, and I hope it is a joy. Thank you for sharing that long history with this show.

Jason, there's a bunch to cover in what we've just heard from these folks. I want to start with Shameika who pointed out that she'd never seen The Wizard of Oz [laughs]. I'm going to be honest, I'm not 100% I've ever seen The Wizard of Oz all the way through, Jason. Of course, I have met many white theater fans who have never heard of The Wiz. I just wonder, your thoughts about these shows as almost symbols of cultural segregation. I don't know. What comes to mind when you hear those facts?

Jason King: The Wiz in 1975, did come at a time in which there was still this notion of relatively segregated theater. Broadway was the great White Way, and there were Black musicals and then there were white musicals. It's still like that to some degree today. It's not surprising that The Wiz garnered a huge Black audience because I think the themes and the content of The Wiz really spoke to Black people. Some of that was really just based on what was already there in the original novel, and then in the original film.

It's essentially a musical about self-acceptance, and self-empowerment, and stepping out of the closet, and letting out your secrets. I think it's also a musical in some ways about imposter syndrome. In the musical, The Wiz is Herman Smith, who's like a washed-up politician. It's about owning who you are, finding validation and affirmation in yourself, and then affirming it in others. It's a perfect show for anybody who's an outcast or who's been marginalized.

I just think those themes have very special resonance for Black people, especially in the context of white supremacy. A song like, If You Believe, believe in yourself, you don't need an external system to give you brains or heart or courage. You have all the tools that you need. The root of self-empowerment is really going to be the family bond, that kinship feeling that they talk about in the beginning of The Wiz.

I do think you could come to The Wiz if you'd never seen the original, and you could have an amazing takeaway from it. Also, some people just saw the original and never actually saw The Wiz, but they are missing out because I think there's a whole bounty of brilliance in that show that they should connect with.

Kai Wright: The text message before that, talking about the film saying Quincy Jones is a genius, but the film was not Quincy Jones's idea. This was actually something that started with a white production team, correct? Can you give us the thumbnail version of the history of The Wiz, the movie?

Jason King: Yes. 20th Century Fox, they had financed the Broadway musical, but they didn't choose to finance the film production, so Universal took that over. Universal was connected to Motown, and so this became a Motown production. It was actually part of Motown's film and TV division. Previously, they had done Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross. They'd done other films as well.

This was really spearheaded by Rob Cohen, who's an executive producer at Universal Pictures, and Berry Gordy, the CEO of Motown, his company. They had a huge budget, so this is like, $30 to $35 million. Just as a point of comparison, Jaws, which was the big blockbuster that changed the face of modern cinema in 1975, that had a budget of about 7 million. This was a big, big budget.

Kai Wright: Five times the budget of Jaws.

Jason King: Absolutely. It was a huge commercial flop, so it did not even make back its money at all. They tried to make back its money once it was on video. This was devastating. One, it was devastating because the film was expected to be a huge feather in the cap for Diana Ross in terms of her solo film career because she had previously been Oscar-nominated. It was not. People saw it as a vanity project on Awry because she was 33 years old playing Dorothy-

Kai Wright: [laughs] As a teenager.

Jason King: -as a teenager. She had pushed to play this. Berry Gordy didn't want her to play it. Other people didn't want her to play it. She wanted to play it. People saw this as a vanity project gone wrong. Also, given that there was so much of what you'd call Blaxploitation Cinema in the 1970s. and these were films that made a lot of money, but weren't always very positive in terms of the kinds of portrayals of Black people on screen, this effectively ended Black independent film in the 1970s. There was just a few more [crosstalk]--

Kai Wright: Because you couldn't raise money anymore.

Jason King: You couldn't raise the money, and Hollywood just said, "Oh, we tried. We tried to give Black folks the opportunity to make these films and it didn't happen." It really wasn't until the mid-1980s when you had the rise of independent Black filmmakers like Spike Lee and others that you started to have a new revolution of Black cinema come, but The Wiz was really like a nail in the coffin, unfortunately, because of what it did financially.

Kai Wright: But the VHS tape, the dawn of the VHS tape, and this again brings me that first text message in my own experience sitting around as a family, watching it on that VHS, that's what made it a cultural icon again, right?

Jason King: It's true. That was really important. Also, so many revivals of the ways people were doing it in high schools, the score lived on. There was the song Home became a hit through Stephanie Mills and others. It took on a life of its own and it became a cult musical largely because of the film, ultimately.

The film, it's also incredible. There's some negative aspects. They didn't use the original book at all. They had Joel Schumacher, who was essentially the white Hollywood writer for Black movies and musicals. He did Car Wash, he did Sparkle, and others. He threw out the original book, wrote his own. The book is not that good.

They also have Sidney Lumet, the director. Amazing director. He did 12 Angry Men. He did Dog Day Afternoon. He did Network in 1976. He directed it and he had no feeling for the material at all. He was largely doing it as a favor because he had married Lena Horne's daughter and Lena Horne is in the film. They cut lots of films. The set design, the art direction is quite strange. There were reasons why critics really didn't like it, but the talent on it the [crosstalk]--

Kai Wright: The music is just- it kills.

Jason King: The music, the talent. This is Michael Jackson's first main role as an adult and one of his only ones. Quincy Jones, Lena Horne, Richard Pryor, Nipsey Russell. There are a lot of reasons why I think people connected to it.

Kai Wright: Well, speaking of the music, I want to play a couple of voicemails of people talking about specific songs from the film. Here is the first.

Shandra: Hey, Kai. I did not grow up in a Black household, but I did grow up in a household where we lived below the poverty line and we had recorded The Wiz from TV onto a VHS tape and watched it over and over again. My single mother of four, who was always too busy to ever watch a movie all the way through found the time to sit down and watch it and memorize every single word of You Can't Win.

[MUSIC - Michael Jackson: You Cant Win]

You can't win, you can't break even

And you can't get out of the game

People keep saying things are going to change

Shandra: I think it resonated deeply with something in her. I'd never seen her react that way to a movie or a song before. I think it was my first experience before the term was even coined probably of intersectionality, and just that feeling that we are living in this society that wasn't built for us, that is built to exploit us, but not to help us thrive. I was surprised at how moved I was. Thank you for bringing this up and giving me an opportunity to look at it in a way that I haven't as an adult, and see how it's influenced my life. Thank you.

[MUSIC - Michael Jackson: You Cant Win]

You can't win, child

You can’t break even

And you can't get out of the game

Kai Wright: Thank you, Shandra. That's You Can't Win. That's Michael Jackson's big number towards front end of the film. One more, Jason, before we talk about them. Here is Cornelius.

Cornelius: Hello, Kai. My name is Cornelius. I'm calling from Ashton, Minnesota. The Wiz has made a impeccable imprint in my life, has positively influenced me as a person. Of course, Believe in Yourself, I love the theme of that song as a father. That's something I try to teach my daughters every day to believe in themselves as I believe in them.

[MUSIC- Diana Ross: Believe in Yourself]

Believe in yourself

As I believe in you

Cornelius: I also liked the sweatshop scene. That scene is so symbolic because not only was the flesh-out work has being free of the evil spill, but I look at that as people's personal freedom, people finding themselves, discovering themselves and realizing their full potential.

[music]

Kai Wright: The sweatshops, this is in the film when Alvin Ailey dancers pull off their ugly suits. They've been freed from captivity, and I mean the flesh. That comes, and I have to say my little proto-queer self felt all kinds of feels every time I saw that. I wonder about that scene and others in this that we've been talking about this film as a Black iconic experience. What about as a queer iconic experience?

Jason King: I think this film came toward the end of the 1970s where you had all these intersecting movements, so this post-Civil Rights moment in which Black people had much more political representation than it ever had before, but were not truly free in so many other ways, economically and otherwise. Women's movement of course. Then Queer Liberation Movement post Stonewall in 1969 in which, again, queer people were taking ownership of the things that made them culturally distinct.

All of those things, I think , were intersecting in The Wiz. You see this even in the original musical, but it's also in the film as well. There's lots of queer subtext there. This whole notion of hiding in the closet or having to suppress yourself and then coming into your own. That moment in that sweatshop when everybody reveals themselves set to Luther Vandross, Everybody Rejoice, which is both the disco anthem and the pride anthem and the lyrics, "We always knew that we'd be free somehow, in harmony we got to show the world that we have liberty. Freedom has got our heart singing so joyfully, can you feel a brand new day." That could have spoken for any of those intersecting pride movements at the time.

I think there's a lot about this musical that is always already queer or at least speaks to queer audiences, but also speaks to any audience that's been marginalized systematically or treated as an outcast.

Kai Wright: Last 30 seconds, what do you hope fans that go to see it today get out of the show?

Jason King: I think I hope that people really just understand the legacy of the show and why it's so important to other people. This was the show that helped open up Black Broadway. After it opened on Broadway, you had Me and Bessie and Bubbling Brown Sugar and [unintelligible 00:47:58] and Yubi and all these shows. It launched Stephanie Mills solo career. It launched Michael Jackson's solo career. It was such a game-changer in so many ways. You wouldn't have had Dream Girls or Sophisticated Ladies. It's Afro-futuristic vision of the future. Maybe you wouldn't even had Black Panther.

Kai Wright: Wow.

Jason King: I think The Wiz is really one of those important pit stops in the development of Black culture production of the last 50 years and it really deserves to be celebrated as such. I'm so glad it's on Broadway again.

Kai Wright: We will have to leave it there. Jason King is the Dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Thank you so much for this time. It's been a blast.

Jason King: Thank you, Kai.

Kai Wright: Before we go, a note about an upcoming show. It's graduation season and obviously, the class of 2024 has had a really unique journey. Many of them graduated high school at the peak of COVID, and now for many of them, their college graduation is defined by anti-war protest. We're going to be talking about this unique cohort and how they might change our world.

If you are in the class of 2024, I want to hear from you. How have the unique world events you've lived through shaped you and what will you do with that experience? You can leave us a voicemail at 844-745-talk, or send a voice memo to notes@wnyc.org.

Notes From America is a production of WNYC Studios. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, or on Instagram @noteswithkai. This episode was produced by Regina de Heer, theme music and sound design by Jared Paul. Matthew Mirando is our live engineer. Our team also includes Caterina Barton, Karen Frillman, Suzanne Gaber, Mike Kotchman, Siona Petros, and Lindsay Foster Thomas, and I am Kai Wright. Thank you for spending this time with us.

[music]

 

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