Gladys Bentley: From Stage to Church

Gladys Bentley was a very famous pianist and blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance in America. She was born in 1907 and died in 1960. Many African Americans of her generation moved to New York. She gave it a try and when she was only 16 years old, she left her hometown, Philadelphia, and moved to New York’s city Harlem.

She started her career as a singer at the rent parties and moved on to nightclubs. Later she would be singing as a headliner in the famous Clam House. She did not feel very comfortable in women’s clothes, so she dressed in men’s clothes, usually it was a tuxedo and top hat. Gladys played piano and sang her own kind of vulgar, rough lyrics with her powerful voice, while she was flirting with women in the audience. She could sing and play the whole night.

In the 1920s Harlem changed rapidly. A huge part of the well-designed houses and apartments buildings in Harlem turned into low-priced rooming flats. During “Harlem Renaissance”, the musical style and all type of art of black people became more attractive to white people who came there for entertainment.

The list of lesbians, bisexuals or gay men between Harlem Renaissance is a guide to many of the most talented people of this period. Gladys Bentley was one of them.  She was very open and proud about her sexuality.

In the 1930s, when the Great Depression started the tolerance was gone.Gladys moved to Los Angeles to live with her mother. She still had some success in the homosexual bars on the west coast. However she had legal trouble for performing in her specific male clothing.

In 1950s in the United States it was not safe to be “out and proud” anymore. Scared for her own safety, Gladys Bentley started to wear women dresses, and changed her personality in more female version. In 1950, Bentley wrote fictional article for Ebony entitled “I am Woman Again” in which she said that she treated her lesbianism via female hormone treatments. Bentley became an active member of “The Temple of Love in Christ “. She would become an ordained minister in the church, but she died of a flu epidemic in 1960 at the age of 52.

Did Gladys favor a strategy of sameness or difference during the Harlem Renaissance? In my opinion she was for political strategy of difference. An artist who followed the strategy of sameness is for example Josephine Baker.

First Baker was wearing banana leaves and posing next to a leopard which looked like the stereotype that white people had of black people. Then she changed into white person as you can see in these two pictures.

                 

In the second picture her black skin looks white, her hair looks like hair of a flapper, which was how modern white women looked like. She even changed the way she spoke. Furthermore, Josephine performed in front of a white audience.

Gladys performed in front of a mixed up audience. She did not dress as a flapper or a savage, but instead as I already mentioned she dressed as a gentleman. While she was performing her songs and style were not following white tradition. She improvised and she was scatting, which was created from black tradition and was an important part of jazz music. Enjoy the song.