Tambourines to Glory

T
ambourines to Glory
is an old-fashioned but modernized morality play or tale based in Harlem where good and evil tussle over souls. At the core is the tug-of-war between the “likker”-drenched hustler Laura Wright Reed and the stolid, God-fearing Essie Belle Johnson. Though both trace their roots to somewhere in the South, they represent the clash of urban slickness with backwoods purity and simplicity. Both have had their share of “no-good men.”

It’s Laura’s scheme for the two women to get some tambourines and become street-corner evangelists in order to raise money to pay the rent, to buy “likker,” and to get rich quick. That Langston Hughes chose to focus on gospel and storefront
churches probably stemmed from what he saw happening around him in Harlem in the late 1950s.

While the civil rights movement was beginning to flex its muscles in the South, Harlem was still caught in the throes of an unrelenting slump where unemployment, dilapidated buildings, rampant racism, and police brutality combined to nullify hope and progress among most of the community’s destitute residents. The real-life counterparts of Laura and Essie didn’t experience the avenues of opportunity until the careers of New York political leaders like Hulan Jack and J. Raymond Jones fully blossomed in the 1960s. This was also a time when many singers were crossing over from gospel to rhythm and blues or rock and roll. Hughes makes several references to this trend in the novel.

Laura and Essie are so successful at preaching that they soon are no longer on the street corner but are the proud proprietors of a rundown theater that they renovate into their church. As they prosper, the size of their congregation increases, attracting an assortment of misfits, including Big-Eyed Buddy Lomax, who seduces Laura (or does she seduce him?).

Tambourines to Glory
, first published in 1958, was Hughes’s second novel, though unlike his
Not Without Laughter
(1930), it is rarely mentioned. This oversight may stem from the fact that
Not Without Laughter
was written first and almost a generation before
Tambourines to Glory;
thus, it would appear on more lists and bibliographies than the later published novel. In addition, it’s possible that many readers and critics perceive
Tambourines
more as a play than a novel.

“Did I tell you I’ve just finished a little novel called
Tambourines to Glory
about the goings-on in gospel churches?” Hughes wrote in a letter to his friend Carl Van Vechten. “Also
made a play of it with a Tambourine Chorus and two women preacher-songsters, one sweet, one naughty …”

This letter from Hughes to one of his literary mentors was written in September 1956. However, we know from Arnold Rampersad, in his two-volume study of Hughes’s life, that there was earlier correspondence between Hughes and his lifelong friend and collaborator Arna Bontemps about
Tambourines to Glory
suggesting the play preceded the novel.

According to Rampersad, Hughes began working on the “drama” on July 14, 1956, and finished it in ten days. It was entitled
Tambourines to Glory: A Play with Songs
. In his letter to Bontemps he exclaimed: “It’s a singing, shouting, wailing, drama of the old conflict between blatant Evil and quiet Good, with the Devil driving a Cadillac.”

(It should be noted that there are several places in the novel where stage directions appear to be vestiges of the play. Or, Hughes may have deliberately added them to set the scenes in a stylized way.)

Whether the novel preceded the play or vice versa may be a moot point since there is no dramatic difference between them. There is a difference, though, in the time in which they reached the public. The novel was published in 1958, while the play, after enduring a troubled and delayed arrival, did not appear on Broadway until 1963, lasting only twenty-five performances. Most of the reviews lambasted the play, citing it as “slapped together” and containing a “shifting point of view.”

On the other hand, reviews of the novel were comparatively generous. “As a literary work,” wrote Gilbert Millstein of the
New York Times, “Tambourines to Glory
is skillful and engaging—the consistently high quality of Hughes’s production over the
years is, considering its great quantity, a remarkable phenomenon and the mark of an exuberant professionalism.”

If, in essence, the play and the novel are the same, why would one be so woefully dismissed and the other praised? It might be the portrayals of the characters, the perception of the critics, or, as I propose, the play’s inability to capture all the humor, irony, subtleties, nuances, figures of speech, folklore, and cultural references that enliven the novel. Not only does Hughes develop compelling characters—and more than one literary critic has noted the similarities between the protagonists, Laura Reed and Essie, and Zarita and Joyce from the “Simple” tales—he gives them settings and contexts in which to express colorful language, and in which Hughes can show vital musical correlations.

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