Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, James Brown, the Jackson Five, and now… Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
Amateur nights at New York’s legendary Apollo Theater have helped launch a Who’s Who of American singers and performers since 1934.
On Tuesday, with an excited crowd crammed into the ornate venue to watch a giant screen, it was Romney’s and Obama’s turn to demonstrate their talent.
Of all the debate watching parties around the United States, there can’t have been one with a much tougher audience.
Even the great James Brown is said to have been booed off the Apollo’s stage when he first strutted his stuff here in Harlem five decades ago.
So, there was little surprise in this bastion of African American musical heritage that Obama got wild cheers the moment he appeared on screen.
Nor that Romney got booed.
Every time Obama scored a point, he got a cheer, and when he fired off particularly stinging one-liners like, “Romney doesn’t have a five point plan — he has a one point plan,” the crowd erupted.
In fact, Obama didn’t have to score. He only had to speak.
It was almost like a pantomime.
“Go, black man!” one over-excited man in the audience kept shouting when Obama spoke.
“What do you know?” a woman chimed in when Romney spoke.
The Apollo is tailor made for drama. Compact, gilded, with 1,500 red seats and a small stack of golden side balconies, the theater is intimate, but big enough to hold a lot of passion.
Before the debate started, a former Amateur Night violin and singing star played the national anthem, then brought the house down with a rendition of what many call the African American anthem, “Lift every voice and sing.”
Then a panel of commentators, from left and right, provided a warm-up with predictions and advice for the candidates.
“President Obama has his own swagger. He needs to look in the mirror and rediscover his mojo,” says Esther Armah, a radio host, to cheers.
Romney’s “basic task is to show he’s basically a normal human being,” says William Tucker, with the conservative American Spectator. “He’s basically a modest man.” Jeers.
Seated on one of the plush red seats, New York public transport worker Chiniqua Levine, 41, said she’d love to see Obama and Romney at Apollo Amateur Night, competing live on stage, not just on live TV.
Romney would be heckled, she admitted.
But, taking a moment to consider Romney’s task from a purely performance point of view, she said: “I think he’s kind of stiff. He needs to loosen up a bit. A place like the Apollo could really help him find his inner whoever-he-wants-to-be.”
In his historic 2008 election as America’s first black president, Obama could count on feverish support in places like Harlem.
Although he is expected to retain the black vote this time, there are questions about whether the excitement level — and turnout — will be as high.
Many black audience members in the Apollo said the candidates don’t spend enough time on the kinds of gritty issues of poverty and violence that plague the streets of Harlem and other non-white neighborhoods around urban America.
But Levine said that when November 6 comes, there’ll be no mistaking African Americans’ support.
“We have such faith in him in this community. I believe on election day, they’ll stop doing whatever they’re doing to vote,” she said.
At Harlem's Apollo Theater, debate is a talent show
