THE FILE ON STORMY FOSTER
A Cartoon Movie Serial in Twelve Chapters
CHAPTER FOUR:
“RHUMBA CHILDREN”
TIME AND PLACE:
HAWAII, 1990 (and in flashback, 1942)
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
FREDDY BANG, the STUDIO OWNER
IRENE BANG, the CLUB OWNER
FANNIE FOSTER, the MUSIC DIRECTOR
STORMY FOSTER, the GREAT DEFENDER
MAMO, the HIGH PRIESTESS
TONI SANTAMARÍA, the LEAD SINGER
BASIL SINGAPORE, the DECOY
SNOOKS, the PARROT
This is Basil Singapore again. Today I’m going to continue the story of Stormy Foster, the man I knew as “Absalom”. The two of us met on Pajaro Island, secret refuge of my people, the Kanaka Tanga. I helped convert him to our faith and then witnessed his transformation into the Akua, one of our most revered religious icons. Akua are special servants of the gods, and Absalom was given an important task to fulfill. In order to do that, he had to return from whence he’d come.
He left Pajaro Island just before dawn one morning in August of 1942. Mamo, our high priestess, offered a prayer, the elders recited from ancient runes, and after partaking of Lavender Tarot root, he set off in the queen’s royal canoe. He was accompanied by the Magic Bird of Fire, that is, our shape-shifting queen in her original form; two male elders; and the band of loving brothers he had resided with. I was in that group.
You may wonder why Absalom didn't return to Hawaii alone using his power of flight. There are two reasons. First, Pajaro Island could only be reached or departed by sea! That was according to the will of our Gods. Second, it was written in our sacred lore that an Akua's brethren should accompany him on the first leg of his journey. We all loved Absalom dearly, and would've wanted to go with him even if no mandate had existed; so we set off together for Oahu.
During that canoe trip, the queen’s plumage changed color to a golden yellow. Absalom asked the elders what it meant; they merely smiled in reply and pointed to his hair. It had also changed color; the silver glow that symbolized his Akua status was gone, and his natural brown locks were visible again. In effect, Absalom and the queen had assumed everyday identities so as not to draw attention to themselves. This would help facilitate the Akua's mission in Hawaii.
Our party landed unobserved on Sunset Beach, where Absalom removed his loincloth and donned the “civilized” clothes that my late brother Puma had kept for him. I remember how we all cried as we said goodbye to our adopted brother. With our beloved queen perched on his shoulder, Absalom left us sitting in a semi-circle, smoking the sacred Tarot pipe in preparation for our return journey. He later told me that they hitch-hiked their way to Honolulu! Little did we suspect that neither of them would ever set foot on Pajaro Island again.
Absalom returned to Oahu looking very different from when he left: He’d cut the long hair he grew while living among us but still sported a full beard. He looked leaner and more muscular, too. Absalom really was a different person: Now professing mystical Kauwa beliefs, he’d been proclaimed a messiah figure and endowed with extraordinary powers. Those powers would enable him to complete a desperate mission; but initially, he had no idea how he would go about it.
There was nothing for him to do but take things one step at a time.
All of Absalom’s needs had been catered to on Pajaro Island, but now he was on his own again. He had to find a home and a way to earn money, and he was ravenously hungry! From the time I met him, he always displayed a healthy appetite. Fortunately, he knew somebody who’d welcome him with a hot meal and a bed for the night. He made a beeline for the home of Fannie Foster in the Kaka’ako neighborhood.
STORMY FOSTER, JAZZ SINGER
Vanita “Fannie” Foster had been a close friend of Absalom’s late mother. So close, in fact, that he considered her a member of his family. Growing up, he knew her as “auntie” and enjoyed eating African-American dishes at her house. Aishani Ben-Absalom often sought solace in Fannie’s company as she struggled to cope with her husband’s infidelity. After Aishani’s suicide, it was clear to Fannie that Absalom and his father could no longer live together. She offered to take him in, but he refused. “I felt I needed to make a clean break from my past,” he told me. He didn’t want any reminders of his tragic family life, so he pushed his auntie away.
She barely recognized Absalom when he showed up at her door; but when the strange bearded man with a parrot on his shoulder spoke, recognition came flooding back. Fannie smothered him in her warm embrace, and within the hour he was seated at her dinner table wolfing down homemade chicken and biscuits. Stormy never forgot that meal; he enjoyed Kauwani food but he always said: “It can’t compare to what came out of auntie’s kitchen!” Later, I sampled her cooking myself so I can vouch for how delicious it was.
Absalom didn’t share all that had happened since she’d last seen him; he knew that the story was too fantastic for her to believe. He also didn’t want to frighten Fannie with a demonstration of his powers; she found it shocking enough when he told her about the time he spent in a boy brothel! Once she found out about that, she refused to let him leave.
After I got to know Fannie Foster, she told me how she’d convinced Absalom to live with her.
“I said he’d never fall in with the wrong crowd again if he stayed with me,” she recalled. She told him that her musician friends smoked, drank, caroused and cussed up a storm, but for all that they were good, upstanding people; and she promised that he never had to worry about them, or her, taking advantage of him. After making sure that his “pet bird” could stay, too, Absalom agreed to stay. Fannie named the parrot “Snooks” after a comedian she’d heard on the radio. The queen seemed to like that name, so it stuck!
There was a stigma attached to bearded men back then; I know, because when I came to Honolulu I was pressured to get rid of my goatee. Any man who wasn’t “clean cut” was suspected of being a vagrant or some other kind of undesirable! Absalom knew he had to shave the facial hair he’d grown on Pajaro Island but he didn’t want to be completely clean-shaven again; somebody might recognize him as the ex-boxer and sex worker Kid Bombay! He no longer had reason to fear the thugs who tried to murder him, but boxing and prostitution were parts of his old life he hoped to forget.
He noticed that most of the musicians Fannie Foster knew sported mustaches, so he started wearing one. It gave him a sophisticated, grown-up look that he liked. He also started using Negro hair care products on his unruly curls! When I saw him again later, I almost didn't recognize him.
A new look called for a new name: In Hawaii, he preferred to use his nickname, Stormy, and he adopted Fannie’s surname after going into show business. Absalom was proud of being Tamil and Jewish and never wanted to conceal his heritage, but most performers with ethnic names used to Anglicize them for the stage. It's what was done in those days; so it was goodbye to Nirmahl Ben-Absalom and hello to Stormy Foster! Everybody called him that except me: I thought it sounded ridiculous!
As for him becoming a stage performer, it didn't take long for that to happen. For a little while, Absalom earned money doing manual labor but once he started mingling with Fannie’s Jazz crowd, his singing career beckoned. He’d listen in at their jam sessions and soon he was sitting in, too; he’d learned how to sing in Mrs. Tricks’ boy brothel and loved to do it.
Impressed with his voice, Fannie schooled him in Jazz technique, and introduced him to what we now call the Great American Songbook.
She was a great teacher, and as Irene has noted, Absalom was a fast learner. By the fall of 1942, he was augmenting his labor jobs with singing gigs around town. Fannie would arrange them. In fact, she arranged for him to come and work for my wife. At this point, I’ll defer to Irene; she’ll continue the story.
“SHE’S GOOD, BUT SHE’S NOT WHITE!”
Thank you, dear. I put Stormy Foster in a group called Rhumba Children. That group was led by a great singer who’s now forgotten: Her name was Toni Santamaría. I’d known Toni for years; we were Filipino-Hawaiian girls growing up together. She had a good voice, and her ambition was to sing with a band. She went away to the mainland to realize her dream, only to discover how hard it was to work as a non-White entertainer in a segregated world.
There were a few all-Asian bands around, but they played mostly folkloric music. Toni wasn’t interested in that. When Swing music swept the country, she gravitated toward it but found frustration at every turn! Ballroom and club owners didn’t want racial integration on their bandstands. She found a few White bandleaders who were willing to hire a Filipino girl singer, but they always caved in to pressure and fired her. Briefly, she considered passing as Black in order to work with an African-American big band, but in the end decided against doing that.
Toni wasn’t getting anywhere on the mainland, so she returned to Hawaii. The segregation wasn’t as bad here, and she talked about founding her own band. I agreed to help her; it was to my benefit. In 1941, I’d realized my own dream of opening a nightclub, and I needed acts. Toni and I often didn’t see eye-to-eye, but one thing we agreed on: Skin color didn’t matter, only talent!
TONI SANTAMARÍA AND HER
RHUMBA CHILDREN
I got into the entertainment business as a booking agent. When I was booking bands around town, I got to know Fannie Foster. A very good African-American pianist, and a great song arranger. I asked her to recommend musicians for Toni’s group. Right away she pushed for her nephew Stormy to be the boy singer, but that was a non-starter. It had nothing to do with him having been a sex worker, because there were already people on my staff with that background. I said no because he didn’t have any experience and besides, Toni didn’t want to share the microphone. So Fannie found Laird Douglas, Jr, who played drums and percussion, and a great guitar player named Pryce Rand, both White guys.
Toni started rehearsing them and asked Fannie to sit in on piano. She was so impressed that she asked Fannie to join and make the trio a quartet. Fannie agreed, but only if she could be the music director. Toni resisted, but I told her: “You couldn’t ask for a better package deal!” Not only did Fannie handle arrangements for Toni, she also wrote charts for Todd Yamaha who led my house band.
During rehearsals, Toni, Doug, Randy and Fannie discovered that they shared a love for Latin music. Doug was part Puerto Rican and had grown up with that sound. My club, the China-Bahama, had a hybrid Asian/Caribbean theme, so rhumba - what we called Latin music back then - was perfect for a band led by a Filipina. We batted group names around, and Doug came up with Los Niños del Rumba, which means “Children of Rhumba”. That sounded OK, but Toni felt the masculine Spanish word niños downplayed her leadership role. She lobbied for “Toni Santamaría and Her Rhumba Children”. The other group members weren’t crazy about it, but I thought there was an appealing novelty about that name. It wasn’t a democracy; Toni was the leader and I was the club owner. Rhumba Children they were!
Something was missing, though. Although Toni sang them well enough, those run-of-the-mill Latin standards just weren’t doing it for me. Chicka-chicka-boom-chick stuff, you heard that everywhere in 1942! Radio was boycotting the big song publishers and Latin novelties were coming on strong. I wanted to hear something different, material that would really distinguish the group and spark my patrons’ interest. I complained to Fannie, and that made her remember some very unique songs she’d forgotten about.
MOVIE MAGIC INTO MUSICAL MAGIC
In her younger days, Fannie Foster lived in England and she got involved with the movie industry over there. She wrote some uncredited music arrangements for movies, and even played some bit parts. Anyway, Fannie was dating a bit player from India who wrote songs on the side. He later became famous: His name was Sabu, and his movie career took off with a starring role in the first Jungle Book movie.
Sabu wrote some up tempo tunes that they both really believed in. Fannie wrote arrangements for them. Their relationship ended when Fannie decided to move back to the States, but she kept copies of his songs. She promised to try to get them published but Sabu’s compositions were very avant-garde for their time. Publishers couldn’t hear anything commercial in them. Fannie had set them aside, but now she had a new idea: With Latin-flavored arrangements, she thought they might work for Rhumba Children.
I agreed to hear them.
She brought her nephew Stormy into the club one afternoon to demonstrate Sabu’s songs for me. He first struck me as one of the handsomest South Asian men I’d ever seen! Then he started singing in a rough-hewn but very appealing baritone and blew me away. He performed “Undercover Lover”, “Love Potion”, “Midnight Message” and “Shake Your Bait”. The songs were very rhythmic and bawdy, just right for his kind of voice and personality.
I looked at Fannie and I knew she’d tricked me! She gambled that I’d not only want the songs but Stormy, too, as a second vocalist in Toni’s group. She was right.
Toni wasn’t easy to convince, but I simply had to have him join. He radiated the kind of charisma that was sure to draw women into my club.
That’s exactly what happened, but more than that: Stormy’s addition turned Rhumba Children into a total entertainment package: Singing, dancing, and comedy. Like a South Asian Sammy Davis, Jr, he could do it all!
Stormy took that so-called charm school training he got inside Mrs. Tricks' brothel and sent it up something terrible: What do you do with butter when there isn't any butter knife? Do we really want to discuss that during dinner? It was hilarious! And it was just the kind of spicy humor my club patrons loved. I got the idea of putting him and Toni together as a wisecracking song-and-dance team, something like what Sonny and Cher became years later.
I put them with my choreographer, Theresita Carmen, and presto! An attraction within an attraction was born. Toni and Stormy looked good and sounded great together; they became a sensation! Again, Toni had to be dragged kicking and screaming into forming a duo, but she agreed to it as long as she kept the lion’s share of lead vocals. Of course, that would change as Stormy’s popularity grew.
TONI AND STORMY STRUT THEIR STUFF
Sabu’s songs were a hit, too, so much so that people would approach Toni after the show and ask about where to buy the record. I knew I had to act fast! I’d already set up a publishing firm, Bang Music, to handle Todd Yamaha’s original compositions written for shows. Fannie Foster had kept in touch with Sabu and she introduced us over a long-distance phone call.
The two of us negotiated a Bang Music subsidiary called Jungle Boy Music, specifically for his songs. That politically-incorrect name was his own idea: It was inspired by his starring role in The Jungle Book. Sabu was still writing music, and he started sending us new tunes every few weeks. I requested that he send ballads along with up tempo material, because I wanted to promote Stormy as a ballad singer. Toni would sing the fast numbers. We soon had enough material to take Rhumba Children into the recording studio, and thanks to my brother, a studio was available.
Freddy was a mechanical genius, and his specialty was sound reproduction. Around 1937 he opened an audio processing service to handle soundtracks for movie studios that filmed in Hawaii. It was a lucrative business, because the islands were very popular for location shooting. Also at that time, there were no recording studios in Honolulu so, on the side, Freddy booked sessions for local musicians. By the time Rhumba Children came along, Bang Audio Processing had evolved into Baby Grand Recording Services.
PROMO FOR THE 1942
RHUMBA CHILDREN ALBUM
With Freddy and I acting as producers, we began tracking Rhumba Children in the late Fall of 1942. We founded an indie label that I named Ocean Records. I arranged for manufacturing and distribution in the Hawaiian Islands, and later on I found mainland distributors in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. In November, we released the first Rhumba Children album and singles. They weren’t huge hits but sales were decent, especially for our third single “Don’t You Want My Love?” That was an excellent Sabu song that we cut as a duet between Toni and Stormy.
During this same time period, something strange and frightening happened to my brother and me. We simultaneously had what I’d call waking dreams, the two most vivid dreams I’ve ever had in my life! I saw an elderly man and woman wearing traditional Hawaiian cloaks, standing apart. I gradually realized that they were massively tall, as big as two skyscrapers! Simultaneously they opened their cloaks, revealing nakedness underneath. I saw that they were transgender: The male figure had a vagina, and the female figure had a penis.
THE LEGEND OF THE KAUWA PEOPLE
Slowly, they raised their arms and some kind of multi-color haze began to form between them. The haze cleared, and I perceived moving pictures in color, but in sharper focus than any movie I’d ever seen.
At first I saw many pairs of female couples, and then each one had a man with them. Then I saw many more couples, some same-sex and some opposite sex, and somehow I knew they were descendants of the earlier women and men. To my horror, the opposite sex couples turned on the same-sex couples with a murderous rage and started to kill them! I could actually hear their death cries. It was ghastly!
Those who survived ran for their lives. Suddenly a bird with feathers of brilliant color appeared overhead. The bird called out to the survivors and led them away on a long journey. The journey took them to a beautiful island hidden in mist. Over the island, a shining four-color rainbow appeared each morning, rain or shine. The refugees settled this paradise and were happy there. Over time, some left the island and returned with other same-sex-loving people; but most of these newcomers came and went.
I felt the passage of many years, and then I saw the morning rainbow disappear. A swarm of invaders came and wreaked the same kind of carnage that had driven the settlers into hiding. After this massacre, the island was surrounded by a school of fearsome sharks with angry human eyes! Somehow I knew these sharks were reincarnations of the people killed long ago. They fiercely repelled all subsequent visitors: No more could come to the island, and none could leave.
The moving pictures dissolved into mist, but behind that mist I detected a figure moving slowly toward me. As he came closer, I could see it was a young man, dark and handsome, with arms outstretched. He was naked except for some kind of elaborate ceremonial loincloth. When he was close enough for me to touch, the two giant figures opened their mouths to speak. They both whispered the word Akua, but their whispers began to echo, and the reverberations became loud and earth-shattering. I clapped my hands over my ears in pain! Then I woke up . . .
FREDDY AND IRENE BANG’S
SPIRIT DREAM
It seemed as if I had been dreaming for days, but a glance at my bedside clock revealed that less than an hour had passed since I dozed off. I felt compelled to run to my telephone and call my brother. Freddy answered immediately, eager to speak to me. It turns out that we both had the exact same dream!
Neither of us had any idea what it meant. The only thing I knew is that I recognized that young man in the loincloth. Even though his hair was long and shaggy and his face was bearded, I knew it was Fannie Foster’s nephew Stormy!
When Freddy saw him at the club, he agreed that Stormy was the man we saw in our shared dream. I felt that I should approach him and ask if he knew what it was all about; but that seemed like a crazy thing to do, so I didn’t. As it turned out, I didn't need to: The next day, he approached us! He came to Freddy’s office near Waimanolo Beach when I was there.
He brought along his pet parrot, Snooks, and for the first time we witnessed that bird’s startling transformation into the brilliantly-colored guide from our dream. When the parrot’s plumage changed, Stormy’s hair took on a strange silver glow. That was shocking enough, but then Stormy shocked us more by saying he knew that Freddy and I were “Kanaka Tanga” . . . his name for Gay people!
Over a period of days, Stormy told us the incredible story of what had happened to him in the summer of 1942: His being taken to Pajaro Island, his conversion to the ancient Kauwa religion, his acquisition of supernatural abilities (which he proceeded to demonstrate!) and the mission he was given by Pajaro Hina, the Kauwani queen. Not until later did he tell us that the queen and his parrot were one and the same! It was a good thing he didn’t; we might have had him sent to a mental ward!
Even after we saw the bird from our dream and Stormy showed us his amazing powers over air, earth, fire and water, his story was too incredible for us to believe. And we didn’t know why he would tell us such a wild tale; we sent him away! Freddy believed he was playing tricks on us, and I questioned his sanity.
I even considered taking him out of Toni Santamaría’s group; but when Freddy and I went to sleep that night, the giant Polynesians returned to us in a second shared dream.
This time, they spoke our names, and we saw ourselves standing with Stormy, the man they had called Akua. When we awoke, somehow we both understood why Stormy had confided in us, and the meaning of it all. The following day, Freddy and I sought him out to apologize.
That’s when he talked about the Nazi internment of European Jews, Gypsies, Gay people and intellectuals – something the rest of the world knew nothing of at that time – and Adolph Hitler’s plans to make Hawaii a testing ground for his “final solution” in America.
Lesbian and Gay Hawaiians were his initial targets. Stormy’s sacred mission was to nip those plans in the bud!
Then he asked us to help him fulfill that mission, to fight the Nazi propaganda machine that had already begun to threaten us. Without really knowing how we would do it, we told him “yes”.
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Third chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
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Fifth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Concept by HAMPTON JACOBS and PATTY BALL
Art by STUFFED ANIMAL
Costumes by HENRIETTA la del BARRIO
Project Assistance by RODERICK MACK and DAVE PEARSON
Text by HAMPTON JACOBS