‘Underneath Our Harlem Moon . . .’

Twice this year I’ve written a little bit about Rhiannon Giddens, perhaps the most fascinating new artist I’ve come across in the past fifteen or so years. As I noted last spring: 

Banjo virtuoso, folk music scholar and more, Giddens was a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group devoted to resurrecting and renewing the Black string band music of the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Their five albums, recorded between 2006 and 2012, are all worth checking out.) 

Since then, she’s recorded in a number of collaborations, the most recent being two albums with her husband, Francesco Turrisi, and released two solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn in 2015 and Freedom Highway in 2017. 

And you can add to that listing of albums this year’s You're The One, which went onto my shelves no more than a couple of weeks after it was released. But it was an earlier recording that caught my attention a while ago and came to mind this morning. Here’s something I wrote at the time: 

I was parked at my computer, idly clicking from one track to another in iTunes, as I sometimes do, just seeing what there was among the 3,900-some tracks, when up popped one I’d not really noticed before: Rhiannon Giddens’ take on the 1930s tune “Underneath the Harlem Moon” from her 2015 EP Factory Girl. (See the lyrics below.)

Creole babies walk along with rhythm in their thighs
Rhythm in their hips and in their lips and in their eyes
Where do high-browns find the kind of love that satisfies?
Underneath our Harlem moon 

We don’t pick no cotton; picking cotton is taboo
We don’t live in cabins like the old folks used to do
Our cabin is a penthouse up on St. Nicholas Avenue
Underneath that Harlem moon 

We just live for dancing
We’re never blue or forlorn
Ain’t no sin to laugh and grin
That’s why we schwarzes were born 

We shout, “Hallelujah!” every time we’re feeling low
And every sheik is dressed up like a Georgia gigolo
White folks call it madness but I call it hi-de-ho
Underneath that Harlem moon 

Once we wore bandanas, now we wear Parisian hats
Once we were barefoot, now we’re sporting shoes and spats
Once we were Republicans but now we’re Democrats
Underneath our Harlem moon 

We don’t pick no cotton; picking cotton is taboo
All we pick is numbers and that includes you white folks too
’Cause if we hit, we pay our rent on any avenue
Underneath the Harlem moon 

We just thrive on dancing
Why be blue and forlorn?
We just laugh and grin. Ha! Let the landlord in
That’s why house rent parties were born 

We also drink our gin, smoke our reefer, when we’re feeling low
Then we’re ready to step out and take charge of any so-and-so
Don’t stop for law, no traffic, when we’re raring to go
Underneath our Harlem moon
Underneath our Harlem moon 

I wondered for a bit about Giddens’ purpose in recording the song, written in the 1930s by Harry Revel and Mack Gordon and first recorded in 1932 by Howard Joyner. I wondered a little less after I found a video of Giddens introducing the song during a 2020 concert in San Francisco, when she cited a Ethel Waters version of the song that changed “the Harlem moon” to “our Harlem Moon.” (You’ll note that in Giddens’ version of the song – unless I’m mishearing things – that change is not consistent.) 

Was Giddens reclaiming heritage, as she is wont to do? I think so. It seems to me that Giddens, with her clear interest in bringing the musical past into the present – from her work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops to her current solo work – is one of the few performers who could get away with performing “Underneath The Harlem Moon.”