Shake That Thing. The opening of the Café African by a Senegalese had brought all the joy-lovers of darkest color together. Never was there such a big black-throated guzzling of red wine, white wine, and close, indiscriminate jazzing of all the Negroes of Marseilles.

For the Negro-Negroid population of the town divides sharply into groups. The Martiniquans and Guadeloupans, regarding themselves as constituting the dark flower of all Marianne’s blacks, make a little aristocracy of themselves. The Madagascans with their cousins from the little dots of islands around their big island and the North African Negroes, whom the pure Arabs despise, fall somewhere between the Martiniquans and the Senegalese, who are the savages. Senegalese is the geographically inaccurate term generally used to designate all the Negroes from the different parts of French West Africa.

The magic thing had brought all shades and grades of Negroes together. Money. A Senegalese had emigrated to the United States, and after some years had returned with a few thousand dollars. And he had bought a café on the quay. It was a big café, the first that any Negro in the town ever owned.

The tiny group of handsomely-clothed Senegalese were politely proud of the bar, and all the blue overall boys of the docks and the ships were boisterously glad of a spacious place to spread joy in.

All shades of Negroes came together there. Even the mulattoes took a step down from their perch to mix in. For, as in the British West Indies and South Africa, the mulattoes of the French colonies do not usually intermingle with the blacks.

But the magic had brought them all together to jazz and drink red wine, white wine, sweet wine. All the British West African blacks, Portuguese blacks, American blacks, all who had drifted into this port that the world goes through.

A great event! And to Banjo it had brought a unique feeling of satisfaction. He did not miss it, as he never missed anything rich that came within his line of living. There was music at the bar and Banjo made much of it. He got a little acquainted with the patron, who often chatted with him. The patron was proud of his English and liked to display it when there was any distinguished-appearing person at the café.

“Shake That Thing!” That was the version of the “Jellyroll Blues” that Banjo loved and always played. And the Senegalese boys loved to shake to it. Banjo was treated to plenty of red wine and white wine when he played that tune. And he would not think of collecting sous. Latnah had gone about once and collected sous in her tiny jade tray. But she never went again. She loved Banjo, but she could not enter into the spirit of that all-Negro-atmosphere of the bar. Banjo was glad she stayed away. He did not want to collect sous from a crowd of fellows just like himself. He preferred to play for them and be treated to wine. Sous! How could he respect sous? He who had burnt up dollars. Why should he care, with a free bed, free love, and wine?

His plan of an orchestra filled his imagination now. Maybe he could use the Café African as a base to get some fellows together. Malty could play the guitar right splendid, but he had no instrument. If that Senegalese patron had a little imagination, he might buy Malty a guitar and they would start a little orchestra that would make the bar unique and popular.

Many big things started in just such a little way. Only give him a chance and he would make this dump sit up and take notice⁠—show it how to be sporty and game. How he would love to see a couple of brown chippies from Gawd’s own show this Ditch some decent movement⁠—turn themselves jazzing loose in a back-home, brownskin Harlem way. Oh, Banjo’s skin was itching to make some romantic thing.

And one afternoon he walked straight into a dream⁠—a cargo boat with a crew of four music-making colored boys, with banjo, ukelele, mandolin, guitar, and horn. That evening Banjo and Malty, mad with enthusiasm, literally carried the little band to the Vieux Port. It was the biggest evening ever at the Senegalese bar. They played several lively popular tunes, but the Senegalese boys yelled for “Shake That Thing.” Banjo picked it off and the boys from the boat quickly got it. Then Banjo keyed himself up and began playing in his own wonderful wild way.

It roused an Arab-black girl from Algeria into a shaking-mad mood. And she jazzed right out into the center of the floor and shook herself in a low-down African shimmying way. The mandolin player, a stocky, cocky lad of brown-paper complexion, the lightest-skinned of the playing boys, had his eyes glued on her. Her hair was cropped and stood up shiny, crinkly like a curiously-wrought bird’s nest. She was big-boned and well-fleshed and her full lips were a savage challenge.

“Cointreau!” The Negroid girl called when, the music ceasing, the paper-brown boy asked her to take a drink.

“That yaller nigger’s sure gone on her,” Malty said to Banjo.

“And she knows he’s got a roll can reach right up to her figure,” said Banjo. “Looka them eyes she shines on him! Oh, boy! it was the same for you and I when we first landed⁠—every kind of eyes in the chippies’ world shining for us!”

“Yes, but you ain’t got nothing to kick about. The goodest eyes in this burg ain’t shining for anybody else but you.”

“Hheh-hheh,” Banjo giggled. “I’ll be dawggone, Malty, ef I don’t think sometimes youse getting soft. Takem as they come, easy and jolly, ole boh.”

He poured out a glass of red wine, chinked his glass against Malty’s, and toasted, “Oh, you Dixieland, here’s praying for you’ soul salvation.”

“And here is joining you,” said Malty.

“Dry land will nevah be my land,
Gimme a wet wide-open land for mine.”

Handsome, happy brutes. The music is on again. The Senegalese boys crowd the floor, dancing with one another. They dance better male with male or individually, than with the girls, putting more power in their feet, dancing more wildly, more natively, more savagely. Senegalese in blue overalls, Madagascan soldiers in khaki, dancing together. A Martiniquan with his mulat-tress flashing her gold teeth. A Senegalese sergeant goes round with his fair blonde. A Congo boxer struts it with his Marguerite. And Banjo, grinning, singing, white teeth, great mouth, leads the band.⁠ ⁠…

The banjo dominates the other instruments; the charming, pretty sound of the ukulele, the filigree notes of the mandolin, the sensuous color of the guitar. And Banjo’s face shows that he feels that his instrument is first. The Negroes and Spanish Negroids of the evenly-warm, evergreen and ever-flowering Antilles may love the rich chords of the guitar, but the banjo is preeminently the musical instrument of the American Negro. The sharp, noisy notes of the banjo belong to the American Negro’s loud music of life⁠—an affirmation of his hardy existence in the midst of the biggest, the most tumultuous civilization of modern life.

Sing, Banjo! Play, Banjo! Here I is, Big Boss, keeping step, sure step, right long with you in some sort a ways. He-ho, Banjo! Play that thing!

A little flock of pinks from the Ditch floated into the bar. Seamen from Senegal. Soldiers from Madagascar. Pimps from Martinique. Pimps from everywhere. Pimps from Africa. Seamen fed up with the sea. Young men weary of the work of the docks, scornful of the meager reward⁠—doing that now. Black youth close to the bush and the roots of jungle trees, trying to live the precarious life of the poisonous orchids of civilization.

The slim, slate-colored Martiniquan dances with a gold-brown Arab girl in a purely sensual way. His dog’s mouth shows a tiny, protruding bit of pink tongue. Oh, he jazzes like a lizard with his girl. A dark-brown lizard and a gold-brown lizard.⁠ ⁠…

A coffee-black boy from Cameroon and a chocolate-brown from Dakar stand up to each other to dance a native sex-symbol dance. Bending knee and nodding head, they dance up to each other. As they almost touch, the smaller boy spins suddenly round and dances away. Oh, exquisite movement! Like a ram goat and a ram kid. Hands and feet!

Black skin itching, black flesh warm with the wine of life, the music of life, the love and deep meaning of life. Strong smell of healthy black bodies in a close atmosphere, generating sweat and waves of heat.

Suddenly in the thick joy of it there was a roar and a rush and sheering apart as a Senegalese leaped like a leopard bounding through the jazzers, and, gripping an antagonist, butted him clean on the forehead once, twice, and again, and turned him loose to fall heavily on the floor like a felled tree.

The patron dashed from behind the bar. A babel of different dialects broke forth. Policemen appeared and the musicians slipped outside, followed by most of the Martiniquans.

“Hheh-hheh,” Banjo laughed. “The music so good it put them French fellahs in a fighting mood.”

“Niggers is niggers all ovah the wul’,” said the tall, long-faced chocolate who played the guitar. “Always spoil a good thing. Always the same no matter what color their hide is or what langwidge they talk.”

“And I was fixing for that fair brown. I wonder where at she is?” said the mandolin-player.

“Don’t worry,” said Banjo. “Theah’s always some’n’ better or as good as what you miss. You should do like me whenevah you hit a new port. Always try to make something as different from what you know as a Leghorn is from a Plymouth Rock.”

“Hi-ee! But youse one chicken-knowing fool,” said Malty.

Banjo did a little strut-jig. “You got mah number all right, boh. And what wese gwine to do now? The night ain’t begin yet at all foh mine. I want to do some moh playing and do some moh wine and what not do?”

A Martinique guide, who had had them under surveillance for a long while, now stepped up and said that he knew of a love shop where they could play music and have some real fun.

“You sure?” asked Banjo. “Don’t fool us now, for I lives right down here in this dump and know most a them. And if that joint you know ain’t a place that we can lay around in for a while, nothing doing I tell you straight. I’ll just take all mah buddies right outa there.”

The guide assured the boys that his place was all right. They all went into another bar on the quay and the guitar-player paid for a round of drinks. From there they turned up the Rue de la Mairie and west along the Rue de la Loge to find the Martiniquan’s rendezvous.

They went by the Rue de la Reynarde, where a loud jarring cluster of colored lights was shouting its trade. Standing in the slimy litter of a narrow turning, an emaciated, middle-aged, watery-eyed woman was doing a sort of dance and singing in a thin streaky voice. She was advertising the house in whose shadow she danced, and was much like a poorly-feathered hen pecking and clucking on a dunghill.

The boys hesitated a little before the appearance of the drab-fronted building that their escort indicated. Then they entered and were surprised at finding themselves in a showy love shop of methodically assorted things. It was very international. European, African, Asiatic. Contemporary feminine styles competed with old and forgotten. Rose-petal pajamas, knee-length frocks, silken shifts, the nude, the boyish bob contrasted with shimmering princess gowns, country-girl dresses of striking freshness, severe glove-fitting black setting off a demure lady with Italian-rich, thick, long hair, the piquant semi-nude and Spanish-shawled shoulders.

Banjo saw his first flame of the Ditch between two sailors with batik-like kerchiefs curiously knotted on their heads. They were Malay, perhaps. This time he was not aroused. The Martiniquan talked to a strangely attractive girl. She had almond eyes that were painted in a unique manner to emphasize their exotic effect. Evidently she was not pure Mongolian, but perhaps some casual crossing of Occident and Orient, commerce-spanned, dropped on the shore of the wonderful sea of the world.

There were half a dozen touts. One seemed a person of authority in the place. He was this side of forty, above average height, of meager form, Spanish type, with a face rather disgusting, because, although dark, it was sallow and deep-sunken under the cheek bones. He wore a blue suit, white scarf, heavy gold chain, and patent-leather shoes. The other five were youths. Three sported bright suits and fancy shoes of two and three colors, and two were in ordinary proletarian blue. The proletarian suits among all the striking feminine finery gave a certain elusive tone of distinction to the atmosphere, and one dressed thus was particularly conspicuous, reclining on a red-cushioned seat, under the lavish and intimate caresses of a Negress from the Antilles. Her face was like that of a Pekinese. She wore a bit of orange chiffon and had a green fan, which she opened at intervals against her mouth as she grinned deliciously.

Sitting like a queen in prim fatness, quite high up against a desk near the staircase that led to the regions above, a lady ruled over the scene with smiling business efficiency. When the Martiniquan spoke to her, introducing his evening’s catch by a wave of the hand toward where the boys had seated themselves, and explaining that they wanted to play their own music, she smiled a gay acquiescence.

When Banjo and his fellows entered, many eyes had followed them. And now as they played and hummed and swayed, all eyes were fixed on them, and soon the whole shop was right out on the floor.

The little black girl was all in a wild heat of movement as she went rearing up and down with her young Provençal. But he seemed unequal to catch and keep up with her motion, so she exchanged him for the Martiniquan, who went prancing into it. And round and round they went, bounding in and out among the jazzers, rearing and riding together with the speed and freedom of two wild goats.

The players paused and some girls tried to order champagne on them, but the Martiniquan intervened and demanded wine and spirits.

“He knows his business,” the mandolin-player said to Banjo.

“He’s gotta,” Banjo replied, “because he’s got himself to look out for and me to reckin with.”

Suddenly the air was full of a terrible tenseness and gravity as an altercation between the lady at the desk and the meager, sallow-faced man seemed at the point of developing into a fateful affair. The man was leaning against the desk, looking into the woman’s face with cold, ghastly earnestness, his hand resting a little in his hip pocket. The woman’s face fell flat like paste and all the girls stood tiptoe in silence and trembling excitement. Abruptly, without a word, the man turned and left the room with murder in his stride.

“That must be the boss-man,” the mandolin-player said.

“And he looks like a mean mastiff,” said the guitar-player.

“Sure seems lak he’s just that thing,” agreed Banjo.

Tem, tem, ti-tum, tim ti-tim, tum, tem. Banjo and the boys were chording up. Back⁠ ⁠… thing⁠ ⁠… bed⁠ ⁠… black⁠ ⁠… dead.⁠ ⁠… Jelly‑r‑o‑o‑o‑o‑o‑oll! Again all the shop was out on the floor. No graceful sliding and gliding, but strutting, jigging, shimmying, shuffling, humping, standing-swaying, dogging. The girls were now tiptoeing to another kind of excitement. Blood had crept back up into the face of the woman at the desk.⁠ ⁠…

The sallow-faced man appeared in the entrance and strode through the midst of it to the desk. Bomb! The fearful report snuffed out the revel and the dame tumbled fatly to the floor. The murderer gloated over the sad mess of flesh for an instant, then with a wild leap he lanced himself like a rat through the paralyzed revelers and disappeared.

The bewildered music-makers halted hesitantly at the foot of the alley.

“Let’s all go in here and take a stiff drink.” Banjo indicated a little bistro at the corner.

“Better let’s leg it a li’l’ ways longer,” said the ukelele-player, “so the police won’t come fooling around us now that wese good and well away outa there. I don’t wanta have no truck with the police.”

“And they ain’t gwineta mess around us, pardner,” said Malty. “We don’t speak that there lingo a theirn and they ain’t studying us. Ise been in on a dozen shooting-ups in this here Ditch, ef Ise been in on one, with the bullets them jest burning pass mah black buttum, and Ise nevah been asked by the police, ‘What did you miss?’ nor ‘What did you see?’ ”

“Did you say a dozen?” cried the ukelele-player.

“Just that I did, boh, which was what I was pussonally attached to. But that ain’t nothing at all, for theah’s a shooting-up or a cutting-up⁠—and sometimes moh⁠—every day in this here burg.”

“Malty,” said Banjo, “youse sure one eggsigirating spade.”

“Doughnuts on that there eggsigirating. It’s the same crap to me whether there was a dozen or a thousand. They ain’t nevah made a hole in me, for Ise got magic in mah skin foh protection, when you done got you souvenir there on you’ wrist, Banjo boy.”

“Gawd! But it was a bloody affair, all right,” said the guitar-player. “I was so frightened I didn’t really know what was happening. Bam! Biff! And the big boss-lady was undertaker’s business before you could squint.”

“Jest spoiled the whole sport,” said the ukelele-player. “I kinda liked the nifty dump. It was the goods, all right.”

“You said it, boh,” the mandolin-player grinned, scratching his person. “It was some moh collection. All the same, I gotta plug.”

“With you, buddy,” cried Banjo. “Right there with you I sure indeed is.”

“Let’s go back to the African Bar,” suggested the mandolin-player. The picture of the North African girl shaking that jellyroll thing was still warmly working in his blood.

They found the African Bar closed. Again they left the quay, and Banjo took them up one of the somber, rubbish-strewn alleys of the Ditch. On both sides of the alley were the dingy cubicles whose only lights were the occupants who filled the fronts, gesturing and calling in ludicrous tones: “Viens ici, viens ici,” and repeating pridefully the raw expressions of the low love shops that they had learned from English-speaking seamen.

Out of a drinking hole-in-the-wall came the creaky jangling notes of a small, upright and ancient pianola. The place was chock-full of a mixed crowd of girls, seamen, and dockers, with two man-of-war sailors and three soldiers among them.

“What about this here dump?” asked Banjo.

The mandolin-player looked lustfully up and down the alley and into the bistro, where wreaths of smoke settled heavily upon the frowsy air. “Suits me all right,” he drawled. “What about you fellows?”

“Well, I hope it won’t turn into another bloody mess of a riot this time,” said the ukelele-player.

“Here youse just like you would be at home. This is my street,” said Banjo. A girl came up and, patting him on the shoulder with a familiar phrase, she pushed him into the bistro.

As they entered a Senegalese who had been dancing to their voluptuous playing at the African Bar, exclaimed: “Here they are! Now we’re going to hear some real music⁠—something ravishing.” And he begged Banjo to play the “Jellyroll.”

One of the soldiers was evidently “slumming.” There was a neat elegance about his uniform and shoes that set him apart from the ambiguous dandies of military service, the habituées of shady places. His features and his manner betrayed class distinction. He offered Banjo and his companions a round of drinks, saying in slow English: “Please play. You American? I like much les Nègres play the jazz American. I hear them in Paris. Épatant!”

Banjo grinned and tossed off his Cap Corse. “All right, fellows. Let’s play them that thing first.”

“And then the once-over,” said the mandolin-player.

Shake to the loud music of life playing to the primeval round of life. Rough rhythm of darkly-carnal life. Strong surging flux of profound currents forced into shallow channels. Play that thing! One movement of the thousand movements of the eternal life-flow. Shake that thing! In the face of the shadow of Death. Treacherous hand of murderous Death, lurking in sinister alleys, where the shadows of life dance, nevertheless, to their music of life. Death over there! Life over here! Shake down Death and forget his commerce, his purpose, his haunting presence in a great shaking orgy. Dance down the Death of these days, the Death of these ways in jungle jazzing, Orient wriggling, civilized stepping. Sweet dancing thing of primitive joy, perverse pleasure, prostitute ways, many-colored variations of the rhythm, savage, barbaric, refined⁠—eternal rhythm of the mysterious, magical, magnificent⁠—the dance divine of life.