Belgrade Nights of the Creole Goddess

Freda Josephine MacDonald was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, and grew up in the Mill Creek neighborhood, a racially segregated poor neighborhood where most homes had no running water. Already as a child, she mastered the skills of street dancing near the Union train station, and at the age of 15, in New York, she entered the vortex of the Harlem Renaissance - the intellectual, social, and artistic explosion of Manhattan. At Broadway revues Shuffle Along, Adelaide Hall i The Chocolate Dandies she dominates as the closing dancer, after the chorus, scantily clad, with strategically placed flamingo feathers on her body. She was the highest paid member of the dance scene.

Performance blackface comedy, a stage performance intended mainly for white performers, which caricaturally imitates black-skinned people, she is recommended for Paris. There, at Folie Bergère, her erotic dance set the standard for all future acts of this kind. Legendary La Danse Sauvage the act in which she "drawn" geometric figures with her feet set new dance standards. The epithet naked was stolen only by her pink feather scarf, while the magic of the dance was created by every muscle, look, and smile. In performance Le Folie du Jour, the final step in seducing the Parisian audience, she wore a costume made of artificial bananas. Her success coincided with the rise of Art Deco at the great exhibition of decorative arts in 1925. Role in The Revue Nègre in the theater on the Champs-Élysées further established her fame.

The American commune in Paris at the time - Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein - was enamored with the "Creole Goddess", as they called her. Ernest Hemingway drank bloody merri cocktails with her at Harry's Bar in Downon Street. Picasso, for whom she was the "Nefrette of today", transferred her beauty to the canvas, as did Henri Matisse (series of paintings Jazz), while Jean Cocteau opened the doors of cinema for her. For Paul Colin, she was an inspiration for posters, for Claudel for sculptures.

FIRST TIME IN BELGRADE

She appeared in Belgrade at the height of her popularity, in April 1929. Belgrade welcomed her in "a range from euphoria and acceptance of the spectacle, to apparent affection and racist rhetoric", as art historian Simona Čupić concluded in her study "Civic Modernism and Popular Culture". And while they narrow-mindedly confirmed the catchphrase Ignorance breeds fear., the majority rejoiced over her, admiring her appearance like the Venus de Milo, which combined two ideals of female beauty, ancient and modern. Especially the youth enjoyed it, and according to "Politika", when the train entered the Belgrade station, there was a real commotion, with murmurs and screams of the curious. "Josephine is truly made of gold." Her skin is like old translucent amber, the color of a ripe peach. According to the testimony of those present, her smiles were natural and loud at the time." It seemed that she passed through the railing from the train to the car for hours, everyone wanted to touch her, to take a part of that freedom and impudence from her. Knez Mihailova was blocked, and the hotel "Excelsior" became the starting point for all reporters in the country.

She stayed in Belgrade with the Italian nobleman, Sicilian Giuseppe "Pepito" Abatino, partner and manager, with whom she experienced a complete vocal transformation, which was crowned a little later in the opera La Creole, at the Marigny Theater in Paris. According to the Belgrade press, "she does not speak in certain final sentences. She chirps, she clicks and laughs. Josephine's cheeks are like the edges of a tawny camellia. And the mouth is red, redder than blood. Her teeth are shining. When Josephine Baker winks, her whole face comes alive. And big black eyes, and a mouth as juicy as a slice of watermelon. As if the shoulder barely perceptibly went up. Everything is flashing. Not that he knows she's so beautiful, but that he can't help it. And in her behavior from the beginning, there is something mangup and harmless, similar to the behavior of schoolgirls imprisoned in strict Catholic boarding schools". Journalists described her in superlatives and pointed out that she sang with her soul, not her voice, they talked about her temperament, sincerity, slender long legs, a yellow banana belt around her thighs, hands... Among her impressions, we single out the following: "Oh! You know, you are such unusual people, you here in Belgrade. The young men are almost fighting to get to me. And on the street! The girls stop. They all know me."

After the show in Luxor, Josephine Baker and her chosen one Pepito came to the newly opened bar Jar, where she raised money for the poor by selling autographs from table to table. She, who at that moment had the world under her feet, was collecting money for hungry children she had never seen. She collected 1430 dinars, which the representative of "Politics" handed over to the vulnerable. When asked by the "Politika" journalist why, she answered: "I just did my duty."

SOFKA NIKOLIC

The plane she used to come to Belgrade in 1968 was delayed, but the Black Pearl, as the media called Josephine Baker at the time, still arrived half an hour before the start of the concert. She was dressed in a youthful black suit and white blouse, which was not usual for a 62-year-old lady, and completely changed the perception of age. In the first part of the concert, Jimi Stanić sang with the accompaniment of the Radio Belgrade entertainment orchestra led by Vojislav Bubiša Simić.

The headliner appeared in a cut-out black velvet dress with feathers on the head and back, and charmingly asked visitors to tell her if they really liked it. To the affirmative answer, she responded with a smile and coquetry, singing I have two loves, Malu from Tonking, Life in pink she paid homage to Edith Piaf. Pianist Vlada Vitas, a member of the great jazz orchestra of Radio Television Belgrade, was in limbo: "For a long time after the concert, we sat as if mute, and that doesn't happen very often to us as professional musicians." And Josephine's constant companion, conductor Maurice Mercadier, was delighted by the skill and ease of the Belgrade orchestra's improvisations. Josefina then recalled her first guest appearance in Belgrade: "It was as if I had come to a new city! I heard that Belgrade suffered a lot in the war, but the people remained the same, intimate and spontaneous".

A special event was a touching meeting with Sofka Nikolić, a celebrated pre-war singer - the queen of Shkadarlija and the white nights. Let's mention at this point the fact that Sofka Nikolić is the first woman in the region to win the title of the most popular singer in Europe, as well as the winner of the "Golden Horseshoe" in Paris. In terms of the number of records sold, she was just behind the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. Then, in 1968, in Belgrade, Josefina and Sofka met for the first time after 40 years.

They met in 1929 in Zagreb, where they enjoyed Serbian specialties in the then only restaurant of its kind in Zagreb - "Kolo".

"She sang that I didn't understand, but I did feel her emotion and heartbeat," recalled Sofka, who was singing at the time, and her husband Paja Nikolić, a priest, played Josephine's favorite Kara Picina. Later, in Paris where she was recording the album, Sofka saw Josephine in "Foley Berger", but they did not meet.

When they saw each other in Belgrade in 1968, Josephine threw herself into her arms, exclaiming: "You are my most beautiful gift." She gave the received bouquet of carnations from a fan to our singer.

She visited Belgrade for the third time, in 1973, as a UNICEF ambassador, when she also met with Josip Broz Tito. One of the most authentic photos from Tito's receptions for foreign dignitaries is the one with Josephine in an elegant white dress with net embroidery, sunglasses and fox fur coats. A rock star, the kind UNICEF has never had before, and not even after! She visited the zoo with Tita and Jovanka Broz, and later a reception was arranged for her in the Assembly. After Belgrade, Tito and Jovanka Broz hosted her in Brioni.

AMERICA AND THE FRENCH RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

She returned to America in 1951 after her triumphant performances in Folly Berger. A year before that, she had already supported the Civil Rights Movement. She campaigned for the abolition of racial segregation in the clubs where she performs, and because of her insistence on racial diversity, she received numerous threatening letters from the Ku Klux Klan. A conflict over racism with Sherman Billinsley, the owner of the Stork club in Manhattan, gave birth to an unforgettable friendship. Namely, that evening, as a result of the discussion, Grace Kelly, a child of an aristocratic Irish Catholic family, who was a rising acting star in those years, took Josephine's side. The latter Princess of Monaco hugged Josephine without leaving her all evening.

The crown of her struggle was certainly the March on Washington in 1963, in which she walked hand in hand with Martin Luther King, who then delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech. She was the only official speaker - a woman, dressed in the uniform of Free France. She was the role model of Rosie Parks and Daisy Bates. She was posthumously inducted into the Missouri Hall of Fame in 1995, and one of St. Louis' main avenues was named after her.

During World War II, she was active in Charles de Gaulle's Resistance Movement. Her charm and presence helped gather information at official gatherings, especially from Japanese officials and Italian bureaucrats, which she passed on to England. Under the guise of a pop career, she lobbied in neutral Latin American countries. Valuable honors, the Rosette of the Resistance Medal and the Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest decorations for military and civilian merit, were presented to her by Charles de Gaulle in 1961.

At a 1968 concert at London's Carnegie Hall, she broke down in tears because of the standing ovation she received before the concert even started. Along with the one in Belgrade, which she held the same year, and the one in Paris in Olympia, this concert is one of her biggest comeback concerts.

Josephine Baker adopted children, creating a family she called the "Rainbow Tribe" at Miland Castle, in the Dordogne region. She raised two daughters, French Mariana and Moroccan Stelina, and ten sons, from all parts of the world. She wanted to show that children of different ethnicities and religions can be brothers.

She celebrated fifty years of her career in 1975 in Paris, at the Bobino Music Theater on Montparnasse, under the patronage of Prince Rainier, Princess Grace and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Stars like Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli sat in the first row at the premiere. That evening was also her "goodbye". She died a few days later, on April 12. She left shining bright and brilliant, disappearing into the night, enigmatic and mysterious, without actually ever leaving us. Tens of thousands of Parisians paid their respects to her. She was buried in Monaco, with military honors.