Look around. There appears to be a surge in the arts right here in Durham. Think about it: Organizers of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (formerly known as Doubletake) could have held their prestigious event anywhere, but every year since 1998, they have chosen Durham. That same year, Manbites Dog, Durham's preeminent community theater company, moved into its permanent home right outside downtown. And DADA, the Durham Association for Downtown Arts, which brought us September's Hip Hop Film Festival and the annual Durham Bands Showcase, emerged as an influential cultural force in 2000.
To hone all of this artistic energy, local leaders in the arts, business and government are even coming together with community members to construct a "cultural masterplan."
In lofty tones E'Vonne Coleman, assistant director of Continuing Education at Duke and former director of the Durham Arts Council declared: "What Durham as a whole community has not done is look at the interests and needs of its citizens and citizens of the future in terms of cultural opportunities and outlets. A cultural masterplan is designed to take a look at what we want, what's missing, what's here and how we strengthen it."
But what accounts for this artistic buzz in Durham? Well, it's just the next step in the evolution of a city with fascinating, and firmly imbedded, artistic roots. Like so many other things in Durham, the story begins with tobacco....
Tobacco Town
"If there had been no town, there would be no culture," according to Perry Pike, education coordinator at the Durham Historical Preservation Society.
Without tobacco though, there would be no town. Durham was not much more than a few mudflats, farms and warehouses when the Civil War began. When it ended with the surrender at Appomattox, there were thousands of troops left in Durham without a war to fight. So, naturally, they looted the tobacco warehouses for all they had and returned home with souvenirs of battle.
Before the tobacco farmers had time to worry about their losses, letters started pouring into the Durham post office asking where to get more of Durham's specially-cured, delicious, "brightleaf" tobacco that the soldiers had brought home after the war. They wanted more, and Durham tobacco was in high demand.
"So there's the birth of Durham right there," Pike said. "It was like the first commercial for Durham."
As a booming new town, Durham attracted both blacks and whites with entrepreneurial spirits. After striking a deal with the inventor of the cigarette rolling machine, the Duke family was able to monopolize 90% of the cigarette market by producing 200 machine-made cigarettes per minute compared to the standard four hand-rolled cigarettes.
"With all that money pouring in--and it was a tremendous amount--they wanted to entertain people and bring dignitaries or businessmen to town and there was nothing to show them," Pike said. "It was just a backwater town with muddy main streets."
So to heighten Durham's prestige, the Dukes financed the construction of a 1000-seat theater located above Ciity Hall and a butcher shop. And thus, with one brushstoke, began the cultural scene for the established white business class.
The Other Side of the Tracks
At the same time, literally across the railroad tracks from where the white elite were developing a visible cultural base, the black community, known as Hayti, was quickly becoming the most prosperous in the United States. What is now Parrish Street in downtown Durham was known as "Black Wall Street" thanks to the concentration of black-owned businesses, including the largest in the world at that time, North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company.
With this economic and social prosperity, Durham's black community was able to attract some of the best artists of the time, particularly musicians travelling between the South and the North. Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Billy Strayhorn lit up the clubs along Pettigrew Street, which served as the center of black social life.
Adding to Durham's attractiveness for these performers, the Biltmore Hotel was one of only a few hotels in the country that catered primarily to a black clientele.
"Durham has always had a very rich arts and entertainment scene, even from the early days of the Hayti community," said Dianne Pledger, president of the Hayti Heritage Center. "It's so amazing to bring artists in and they'll say, 'Well, I've been here before.' They talk about where they've been--the Biltmore Hotel, the juke joints or the places they played."
An About Face
Although tobacco established the foundation for Durham's cultural scene, the demise of the industry in the mid-1980s did not signal the demise of the artistic community that had stayed afloat since the days of Calloway and Buck Duke for two reasons.
First, aside from infusing the area with a portion of the capital that had left with tobacco, the burgeoning biotechnology firms in Research Triangle Park have attracted people from around the world.
"During my nine years as director of the Durham Arts Council, the majority of board members of all the arts organizations I worked with--including my own--were people who were not born in Durham," Coleman said. "So they bring those world experiences, that vision. The diversity of the Triangle and the quickness of how people move in and out always keeps it flourishing."
Secondly, downtown Durham became a virtual ghost town when tobacco pulled out--buildings were abandoned and property values plummeted.
But there was an upshot: Artists could afford studio space in the old warehouses, and they benefitted from being in such close proximity to one another.
"The vacancy of the buildings in the last decade or so has allowed for artists to move into the space, and we are reinventing the direction for community art," Pike said.
The New Direction
Doug Broyles has lived in Durham on-and-off since attending high school in Raleigh in the 1950s and spending his undergraduate years at Duke. A self-proclaimed "recreational" musician, Broyles has witnessed the changing face of Durham over the years.
"I would call what's happening now a concentration rather than a resurgence," he said. "People have been doing what they've been doing all along, but now they're doing it all in one place."
Broyles defines his artistic community as that which takes place within Durham homes, where friends and neighbors would--and still do--gather to enjoy some good old-time jams. Though he and fellow musicians get together to play for occasional dances and receptions, Broyles emphasizes the laid-back attitude that he believes has characterized indigenous Durham music since the booming days of tobacco and blues. Now, he says, with the arrival of new blood in and around Durham, music is becoming more varied--and more public.
"It's been here all along, but southerners tend to be more low-key; they tend to hang out with it," Broyles said. "[New Durham residents] come in and make what they like happen. It can be a little self-serving, but I think it's good. I like it."
Dorothy Clark is one of those ambitious transplants.
Upon moving to Durham from Indicott, New York in 1998, Clark noticed a gap that needed to be filled. Though Durham's music scene was as strong as ever, she sensed a lack of theater arts accessible to the Durham public.
"If people want to see theater and they're not in a college community, they have to go to Raleigh," said Clark, who works at the Duke University Museum of Art.
After meeting other Durham residents with similar desires for a public creative outlet and despite many obstacles for funding, Clark formed Front Porch Entertainment, an independent, non-profit and community-based theater group that focuses on the experience and culture of African-Americans. Their first play debuted in September at the Hayti Heritage Center and featured high school students and married couples acting together on stage in a truly grassroots theatrical endeavor. However, the future of Front Porch, and similar grassroots endeavors, depends on the ability to secure funding at a time when budgets for the arts are dwindling across the board.
Local artist Emily Weinstein, also sensing the need for low-cost grassroots art, began painting murals around Durham. Calling on volunteers from the community, Weinstein has brought together Durham residents and students to expand their creativity on walls at the Durham Arts Council, the Hayti Heritage Center, the Durham Technical College and St. Francis Animal Hospital.
"The murals are right out there for people for free, which makes it very successful," Weinstein said.
From Broyles, to Clark, to Weinstein--from music, to theater, to visual arts and everything in between--Durham's present artistic scene is building on a tradition that was laid out over a century ago. Addressing the need to sustain that tradition even through economic downturns, the newly-devised "cultural masterplan" seeks to unify Durham's diverse arts communities by pouring more money and energy into their continued progress.
"Durham is a place that is extremely tolerant of new ideas," Coleman said. "That's a very unique feature in North Carolina. Durham is not stale, it is not stagnant. There is always an embracing of creativity."
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