Speaker 1: I can't remember the first time I saw the musical Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember not knowing the words to the
Speaker 1: opening song. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
Speaker 1: There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn
Speaker 1: is as high as an elephant.
Speaker 2: Sigh, and it looks like it's climbing clear up to
Speaker 2: the sky. Oh what a beautiful burning, Oh what a
Speaker 2: beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feeling. Everything's going my way.
Speaker 1: Chokema sostrepho at Amanda Cob Greatham, Chickasha sayah, my name
Speaker 1: is Amanda Cob Greatham. I'm a Chickasauce citizen. I am
Speaker 1: a professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and I am very much from this born and raised
Speaker 1: in southern Oklahoma and the Chickasaw Nation.
Speaker 3: The song of Amanda's childhood is called Oh What a
Speaker 3: Beautiful Morning, and it's the opening number to Richard Rogers
Speaker 3: and Oscar Hammerstein's classic American musical Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: An interesting aspect to me of Oklahoma's mythology is the
Speaker 1: extent to which it is relatively unquestioned. The whole idea
Speaker 1: of there being a bright golden haze on this meadow.
Speaker 1: This is something that is both highlighted but also obscured.
Speaker 1: It's a haze you can't necessarily see clearly, so it's
Speaker 1: designed to make you feel something, but not necessarily to
Speaker 1: be clear about what that is.
Speaker 3: Amanda's writing a book about all this, about the gaps
Speaker 3: between myths and the state's actual history. Oklahoma the musical
Speaker 3: is front and center. She's calling her book right Golden
Speaker 3: Haze Oklahoma, Indian identity in myth and memory.
Speaker 1: Public history and memory combined. This is what we collectively
Speaker 1: agree our history to be. You have specific stories that
Speaker 1: are generally based on some fact, but then they take
Speaker 1: a turn and start to turn into the world of
Speaker 1: legend mythology. They work past that.
Speaker 3: Amanda argues that one of those stories is Oklahoma, and
Speaker 3: that it's been able to work past fact and history
Speaker 3: partly because it's got all the makings of the type
Speaker 3: of story that dominates American mythology, of the West.
Speaker 1: Of the coming to a new place, overcoming the odds,
Speaker 1: people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, of the building
Speaker 1: of something out of nothing, a perceived nothing, a perceived empty,
Speaker 1: vast planes or vast wilderness. It's the getting of the
Speaker 1: song Oklahoma itself.
Speaker 3: The massively famous title song of the musical.
Speaker 1: It couldn't be a better time to start in life.
Speaker 4: It ain't too early, and it ain't too late, starting.
Speaker 1: As a farmer with a brand new wife.
Speaker 5: So living in a brand new state.
Speaker 1: It is a version of the ultimate American story.
Speaker 3: This ultimate American story sits alongside some other big and
Speaker 3: pretty romantic ideas about westward expansion in the US, the
Speaker 3: taming of the land, a vision of not just Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: but the American West and the country itself.
Speaker 1: Something sort of idyllic, edenic, if you will, like, here
Speaker 1: is this perfect place, this perfect, pure and untouched place, which,
Speaker 1: of course it wasn't.
Speaker 3: The musical's vision of Oklahoma. This romantic vision is really
Speaker 3: at odds with the histories we've been telling you, the
Speaker 3: forced removal of Native people in the eighteen hundreds, government
Speaker 3: policies that took land so white settlers could get it.
Speaker 3: The musical is set in nineteen oh six, the year
Speaker 3: before Oklahoma became a state. In reality, that land was
Speaker 3: far from empty, far from an untouched eden. Amanda cob
Speaker 3: grief them remembers the first time this all started to
Speaker 3: dawn on her. She was in middle school in the
Speaker 3: audience with the musical she loved being performed for the
Speaker 3: state's seventy fifth anniversary.
Speaker 1: And that's when so many different schools, community theaters, production
Speaker 1: groups were doing the musical Oklahoma as part of their
Speaker 1: celebration year, right, And I remember, you know, seeing it
Speaker 1: again and standing and listening to it and clapping your
Speaker 1: hands and all of those things, and then thinking, why
Speaker 1: is it that there are no Indians in this musical?
Speaker 1: How is it that this show is just bright white?
Speaker 3: How is that possible?
Speaker 1: Knowing when and where this takes.
Speaker 3: Place, Amanda is still grappling with that question. How musical
Speaker 3: that she has really fond memories of from state celebrations,
Speaker 3: school performances, her dad singing it on car trips, could
Speaker 3: be obscuring something so much darker. How it could skip
Speaker 3: over a big part of the state's real history. How
Speaker 3: it could make something violent the era of native land
Speaker 3: being taken swiftly, brutally, seem warm and fuzzy, bright and golden.
Speaker 3: I'm Alison Errera and this isn't trust. If you haven't
Speaker 3: seen Oklahoma the musical, you've probably at least heard of it.
Speaker 3: It dominates imagery of the state. But back before it
Speaker 3: was a smashing success.
Speaker 1: Stories of OKI's and the grapes of Wrath dominated the
Speaker 1: national narrative about.
Speaker 3: Oklahoma the dust Bowl. The depression. Times in Oklahoma were hard,
Speaker 3: and people around the country knew that.
Speaker 1: And Oki was a dirty word, and all of Oklahoma's
Speaker 1: were represented as sad and ignorant and destitute.
Speaker 3: But then in the nineteen forties, the musical Oklahoma came along.
Speaker 1: It was so popular and its story, in all of
Speaker 1: its golden glow and nostalgia, was far more persistent.
Speaker 3: Oklahoma is a story about cowboys and farmers living in
Speaker 3: a territory just before statehood. It takes place around the
Speaker 3: turn of the century, when there were deep divine over land.
Speaker 1: Things are changing. There is discussion about prairies closing up,
Speaker 1: frontiers closing up. There's more offences than there used to be.
Speaker 1: There's contentious relations between the cowboy and the farmer, but
Speaker 1: that's all the background. The story itself hinges on a romance.
Speaker 3: Between Laurie, a farmer's daughter, and Curly, a cowboy. There's
Speaker 3: also a sprinkle of violence, but in the end.
Speaker 5: It makes you feel good. It's a very heartwarming story
Speaker 5: about simple folk in the Southwest in a kind of
Speaker 5: pastoral world that is idyllic, as are many pastoral worlds.
Speaker 3: This is Tim Carter. He's a musicologist at the University
Speaker 3: of North Carolina. His book is called Oklahoma, The Making
Speaker 3: of an American Musical. He spent years researching, writing, and
Speaker 3: just thinking about this musical, and Tim says that when
Speaker 3: it hit Broadway, no one really understood how big it
Speaker 3: would be.
Speaker 5: I think when Rogers and Hammerstein started out, they didn't
Speaker 5: think they were going to produce this great success that
Speaker 5: was going to have such massive implications both for Broadway
Speaker 5: and more broadly. But by some magic, it.
Speaker 1: Was enormously and incredibly popular. It had a record number
Speaker 1: twy two hundred and twelve performances on Broadway, and.
Speaker 5: It became the longest running musical on Broadway of its time.
Speaker 3: It was such a big deal. Tim says some of
Speaker 3: this success was a matter of timing. Oklahoma arrived at
Speaker 3: a big moment.
Speaker 5: It was performed in nineteen forty three on Broadway, so
Speaker 5: a very crucial time, banging in the middle of World
Speaker 5: War Two. So clearly there was a certain amount of
Speaker 5: propaganda there if you like that needed to go on
Speaker 5: here about belonging to the land that was grand along
Speaker 5: with and making people realize that there were things worth
Speaker 5: fighting for in the middle of World War two, at
Speaker 5: a time when the World War wasn't going so well
Speaker 5: for the Allies, and it was the job of Broadway
Speaker 5: and of the arts in general to try and make
Speaker 5: a contribution to the war effort.
Speaker 3: New York was a big transit point for members of
Speaker 3: the Armed Forces before going to Europe. Service members often
Speaker 3: got a chance to go to a Yankees game or
Speaker 3: a show. Imagine you're about to ship off overseas and
Speaker 3: go fight against Hitler's army.
Speaker 5: Goodness knows whether you're going to come back or not, and.
Speaker 3: You find yourself in the heart of Times Square, in
Speaker 3: a seat on Broadway, and.
Speaker 5: You hears a group on the stage singing, we know
Speaker 5: we belonged to the land, and the land we belonged
Speaker 5: to is At that point it has to be a
Speaker 5: powerful memory. It becomes a question of identity and keeping
Speaker 5: that identity in your mind as you're going through the
Speaker 5: horrors of warfare.
Speaker 3: And for many the message hit home.
Speaker 5: I was talking about Oklahoma once to a retirement community,
Speaker 5: and I was doing my usual talk about the staging
Speaker 5: of Oklahoma, the theater guild and so on, and there
Speaker 5: was an elderly gentleman in the front row who started crying.
Speaker 5: And I went up to him afterwards and I said, oh, sir,
Speaker 5: I hope I didn't upset you or offend you or
Speaker 5: anything like that. And he said to me, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5: I was crying because I was there. And I said,
Speaker 5: what do you mean I was there? He said, I
Speaker 5: was there in nineteen forty three when I was in
Speaker 5: transit to go to Europe to fight at the front,
Speaker 5: and I was one of those people who actually heard
Speaker 5: and saw Oklahoma. And at that point I thought, oh,
Speaker 5: my goodness, it was a very powerful memory on his part,
Speaker 5: very powerful memory.
Speaker 3: Following World War Two, the musical only became more ingrained
Speaker 3: into American identity.
Speaker 1: It traveled all over the world as part of America's
Speaker 1: post World War two Cold War cultural efforts, and year.
Speaker 3: After year, decade after decade, it seeped into American culture.
Speaker 3: It's been performed on the big screen where.
Speaker 4: The wind comes sweeping down the plane.
Speaker 3: High schools, in community theaters, grade schools, choirs and back
Speaker 3: on Broadway. Amanda says it told a story that many
Speaker 3: Americans wanted to believe in.
Speaker 1: It was really easy to use as a tool to
Speaker 1: make people feel good about being Americans right, and good
Speaker 1: about the stories of our origin of frontier history on
Speaker 1: the prairie. But that's not actually what would have been
Speaker 1: happening in history at that moment.
Speaker 3: So let's go back to what was actually happening here before.
Speaker 3: It was the state of Oklahoma, when this land was
Speaker 3: called Indian Territory.
Speaker 1: Which was carved out and set aside by policymakers in
Speaker 1: order to house tribes who were forcibly removed on the
Speaker 1: Trail of Tears.
Speaker 3: The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Quapa, and other tribal nations gave up
Speaker 3: their ancestral homelands in exchange for new treaty homelands assigned
Speaker 3: in Indian Territory, and there was a promise that this
Speaker 3: would be Indian land, land that would never be made
Speaker 3: to be part of any state. The federal government opened
Speaker 3: Indian Territory in the eighteen thirties, and almost immediately, non
Speaker 3: native people around the country tried to figure out how
Speaker 3: to get this land out of Native hands and so
Speaker 3: over decades, the government made laws and policies inside new
Speaker 3: treaties with tribal nations that chipped away at Native land.
Speaker 3: Tribes were even pushed out of some two million acres
Speaker 3: of land around what's now Oklahoma City. This was called
Speaker 3: the Unassigned Lands. The Battle to Settle those Unassigned Lands.
Speaker 3: It was one of the first big steps toward Oklahoma statehood.
Speaker 3: That story starts with a group called the Boomers.
Speaker 1: The history of Boomers has very much been erased.
Speaker 3: And it all comes to a head in the late
Speaker 3: eighteen seventies with men like David Paine.
Speaker 1: David Payne was the founder of what he called the
Speaker 1: Oklahoma Colony. They saw themselves as colonists, and he would
Speaker 1: get people to join together with him as fellow colonists,
Speaker 1: and then they would lead raids into Indian territory, into
Speaker 1: the Unassigned Lands.
Speaker 3: Amandasa's Pain knew it was against federal law to intrude there,
Speaker 3: and that federal marshals would come in and kick out
Speaker 3: his followers.
Speaker 1: This was purposeful, both the raids to settle and also
Speaker 1: the desire to be ushered out.
Speaker 3: Pain lit a violent campaign against Native people in the
Speaker 3: Unassigned Lands. He made a lot of noise around the
Speaker 3: country too. He and his followers, who called themselves Boomers,
Speaker 3: began a national media campaign.
Speaker 1: To paint themselves as victims. How can there be any
Speaker 1: land left in the United States upon which the white
Speaker 1: man cannot go? And that was a very successful media campaign.
Speaker 1: And one way to make that work was of course,
Speaker 1: to go in, start to settle, and be ushered out
Speaker 1: to have standoffs with the federal marshals.
Speaker 3: The Boomer movement picked up a lot of support from cattlemen, farmers, speculators, businessmen,
Speaker 3: and politicians. They all had interests in undoing federal laws
Speaker 3: that protected Indian territory. Shouldn't they have the right to
Speaker 3: this land too? That was the argument and pain and
Speaker 3: the Boomers won out, and.
Speaker 1: What it culminated in was the opening of the Unassigned Lands.
Speaker 3: In eighteen eighty nine, President Benjamin Harrison declared sections of
Speaker 3: Indian Territory open for settlement. Within weeks, tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of people arrived at the outskirts of Indian Territory ready
Speaker 3: to rush in and claim one hundred and sixty acres.
Speaker 1: April the twenty second, eighteen eighty nine, the day of
Speaker 1: the first largest and most glorified land run.
Speaker 3: The land run, a rush to stake out so called
Speaker 3: free land.
Speaker 1: Well, freeland never came at such great a cost.
Speaker 3: There was more more than one land run, but the
Speaker 3: one Amanda's talking about is the most remembered picture. This
Speaker 3: hundreds of men on horseback, schooners, others on foot, women,
Speaker 3: children lined up. They were waiting for the sound of
Speaker 3: a cannon and then they'd take off, doing whatever it
Speaker 3: took to stay claim to this land. Some people went
Speaker 3: in ahead of that starting gun to get the best plots.
Speaker 3: Cheaters basically, but history likes to call them the sooners,
Speaker 3: so that's the quick version. The US promised land to
Speaker 3: tribes who were forced here. That land was chipped away,
Speaker 3: and in spite of the promises made to indigenous people,
Speaker 3: eventually this place became a state, Oklahoma. But when it
Speaker 3: all gets remembered now, it's usually celebratory. There are the
Speaker 3: enactments of land runs at state celebrations and in grade
Speaker 3: school where kids get to go outside and pretend to
Speaker 3: lay clean to plots on a playground. There's a big
Speaker 3: land run monument in Oklahoma City. And if you're a
Speaker 3: college football fan, then you probably know about the University
Speaker 3: of Oklahoma where Amanda teaches.
Speaker 1: We are right here on the campus of the University
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma, well known for its football team, the mascot
Speaker 1: the Sooners. Who then when there is a touchdown, what happens.
Speaker 1: A land run reenactment.
Speaker 3: Happens every home game touchdown, a stadium full of people, cheer,
Speaker 3: shotguns go off. Two horses named Boomer and Sooner lead
Speaker 3: a covered wagon onto the football field and race around
Speaker 3: the stadium. But in all those versions of this history,
Speaker 3: there's something missing from the football cheer, the land run monument.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing Amanda noticed was missing from the
Speaker 3: music Native people. It's in a mission that's hurtful. In
Speaker 3: those school land run reenactments I mentioned, Native children have
Speaker 3: had to take part two for decades, reenacting an event
Speaker 3: that drove their own ancestors off their land. The reason
Speaker 3: we're going on about what happened in Indian Territory is
Speaker 3: that this it's the history of Oklahoma, a history that
Speaker 3: didn't make it into the musical, and that a mission.
Speaker 3: It's kind of surprising once you consider where Rogers and
Speaker 3: Hammerstein got the idea for their musical They didn't come
Speaker 3: up with the story themselves. It came from someone else,
Speaker 3: someone who was no stranger to the state's actual history.
Speaker 3: Rogers and Hammerstein based Oklahoma on a play written a
Speaker 3: decade earlier by a playwright who was born in Indian
Speaker 3: Territory within the Cherokee Nation, and though the musical took
Speaker 3: place in the Oklahoma territory, the original story before Rogers
Speaker 3: and Hammerstein changed it took place in Indian Territory. We'll
Speaker 3: be right back.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's really a clean way to understand
Speaker 1: musical Oklahoma without going back to that. This is a
Speaker 1: both a play written by Roley Lynn Riggs, Cherokee citizen,
Speaker 1: and these are the people that he knew.
Speaker 3: Lynn Riggs was a lot of things for someone born
Speaker 3: in Indian Territory in eighteen ninety nine. He was gay,
Speaker 3: a playwright, he loved writing letters and poems, and he
Speaker 3: was mixed race, being Cherokee from his mother's side.
Speaker 1: He was born pre statehood, but then would have been
Speaker 1: raised in the young state of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Amanda cop Greetham says that Riggs knew the complexity of
Speaker 3: this place. It was his neighbor's story, his family story,
Speaker 3: his story.
Speaker 1: He often called himself haunted by Home.
Speaker 3: We wanted to highlight some of his letters with a voice.
Speaker 6: I can't make and drama or poetry. The quality of
Speaker 6: a night storm in Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: Home, Oklahoma was everywhere in Riggs's letters and plays, with.
Speaker 6: A frightened farmer and his family fleeing across the money
Speaker 6: yard to the.
Speaker 1: Cellar he lived in New York, he lived abroad, He wrote,
Speaker 1: He found himself writing over and over again about people
Speaker 1: that he knew, the characters that he knew, the cadence
Speaker 1: of their speech, the things that they talked about, the
Speaker 1: songs that they sang.
Speaker 6: When a son and his wife stumbled drunkly into his
Speaker 6: mother's house, the words that came out of brazen, tortured throats,
Speaker 6: the murderer's hands threads.
Speaker 1: When he says haunted, I think he meant it. This
Speaker 1: was something that both tortured him in some ways, but
Speaker 1: that he had great love and affection for.
Speaker 3: Riggs wrote a lot of plays, but his best known
Speaker 3: work was called Green Grove the Lilacs. That's the play
Speaker 3: that became Oklahoma. As Riggs described it, the play is
Speaker 3: about a vanishing era in the Midwest, filled with characters
Speaker 3: he knew in places he'd been.
Speaker 6: The reason I continue to write about Oklahoma people is
Speaker 6: that I know more about the people in childhood and
Speaker 6: youth than any other. But it so happens that I
Speaker 6: knew mostly the dark ones, the unprivileged ones, the ones
Speaker 6: with the most desolate fields, the most dismal skies. And
Speaker 6: so it isn't a surprise that my plays concerned themselves
Speaker 6: with poor farmers, forlorn wives, tortured youth, plowhands, peddlers, criminals,
Speaker 6: with all the range of folk victimized by brutality, ignorance, superstition,
Speaker 6: and dread.
Speaker 3: Riggs started to play in nineteen twenty nine. In his letters,
Speaker 3: he said it was going to be something new, a
Speaker 3: drama intercut with American folk songs. Folk music was important
Speaker 3: to Riggs because it was important to the place he
Speaker 3: was from. One of the songs people sang there was
Speaker 3: called Green Grove the Lilacs, Green.
Speaker 4: Brold, Lilac Soul Spot, Glenn with the dew, I'm lone
Speaker 4: with a dollon cents of Lodon with the year, and
Speaker 4: by the next meeting.
Speaker 3: Riggs finished Green Grow the Lilacs in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 3: It had a run on Broadway and played sixty four shows.
Speaker 3: When Rogers and Hammerstein decided to use his play as
Speaker 3: the basis for Oklahoma, they acknowledged how great the story
Speaker 3: already was. In an interview with The New York Times,
Speaker 3: Hammerstein said, quote, give credit where credit is due. Mister
Speaker 3: Riggs's play is the wellspring of almost all that is
Speaker 3: good in Oklahoma. I kept most of the lines of
Speaker 3: the original play without making any changes in them, for
Speaker 3: the simple reason that they could not be improved upon,
Speaker 3: at least not by me. Riggs got royalties two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty dollars a week for life, but just eleven
Speaker 3: years after Oklahoma premiered on Broadway Way, Riggs died of cancer.
Speaker 3: Both stage versions of Riggs's stories center on the romance
Speaker 3: between Laurie and Curly. Both versions have a surly farmhand
Speaker 3: who comes between them. In Riggs's play, he's called Jeter.
Speaker 3: In Oklahoma, he's Judd. Riggs even bases a character on
Speaker 3: his Aunt Mary. She becomes Aunt Eller in both shows.
Speaker 3: You've had eighty years to see this, so we're not
Speaker 3: gonna worry about spoilers. In both versions, Curly asks Laurie
Speaker 3: to marry him, Jud's jealous. There's a struggle. Curly allegedly
Speaker 3: kills Judd or Jeter. This sets up the final tension,
Speaker 3: will Curly go to jail or will he go free
Speaker 3: to live happily ever after with Laurie. So much of
Speaker 3: the two shows is near identical, but one of the
Speaker 3: big changes between the two is how they end. Near
Speaker 3: the very end of Riggs's play, Curly and Laurie get married.
Speaker 3: Curly gets sent to jail for killing Jeter, but he
Speaker 3: busts back out to come back to see his new wife.
Speaker 3: The drama hits its peak when a posse of neighbors
Speaker 3: show up to haul Curly back to jail. What are you?
Speaker 3: He's a plow perminal he is breaking.
Speaker 5: Out of jail.
Speaker 3: Was away at Eller accuses the neighbors of trying to
Speaker 3: take Curly from his bride. But what's key is she
Speaker 3: accuses them of siding with the Federal Marshal of the
Speaker 3: United States. The way she's talking, the US isn't her
Speaker 3: government but a foreign government in States, just foreign country?
Speaker 4: Is me ye?
Speaker 3: Poor and the mob, well, they're from Indian Territory. People
Speaker 3: like Rigs And just a quick note, some of the
Speaker 3: language Riggs wrote nearly one hundred years ago, might be
Speaker 3: offensive today.
Speaker 5: I'm having one in territory.
Speaker 3: I'll plump fullman and myself me too, but I can
Speaker 3: aunt Eller shoes the mob away. Curly stays with his
Speaker 3: bride Laurie, before the posse comes to take him away
Speaker 3: in the morning. Just before the curtain falls, Curly singing
Speaker 3: a condemned cowboy with a guitar. As endings go, it's
Speaker 3: pretty unresolved, ambiguous, all in keeping with Riggs's world of hardship,
Speaker 3: clashes and complicated underdogs in Indian Territory. Here's Amanda cop
Speaker 3: greatham So.
Speaker 1: Although the Rogers and Hammerstein interpreted the musical itself as
Speaker 1: Holy White, in reality this is a play about Native Americans.
Speaker 1: It is actually probably an all Native American play or musical.
Speaker 1: And when then Green Girl the Lilacs was then sort
Speaker 1: of taken and turned into the Rogers and Hammerston extravaganza,
Speaker 1: you know that it became well that context didn't move
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 3: By the time the story returned to Broadway in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty three as Oklahoma, it was a new kind of
Speaker 3: musical theater. Singing and dancing wasn't just used to divide scenes.
Speaker 3: They drove the story forward, and that story was lighter
Speaker 3: and easier to digest. That meant Riggs's ending had to go.
Speaker 3: There was no place in the new show for a
Speaker 3: quiet wedding, a jail break, and a curtain coming down
Speaker 3: on a mournful cowboy, so Rogers and Hammerstein tweaked the ending.
Speaker 3: Tim Carter says, the big famous title song was actually
Speaker 3: a big happy accident.
Speaker 5: Rogerson Haberstein couldn't really figure out how to bring the
Speaker 5: show to its end. Okay, if we can't solve it dramatically,
Speaker 5: let's stick a song in there and hope for the best.
Speaker 3: Curley doesn't go to jail, he gets to Mary Laurie.
Speaker 3: So the ending had to become a celebration. So they
Speaker 3: jumped to a wedding party for Laurie and Curly, a
Speaker 3: song sung by the whole cast, a dance number with
Speaker 3: Farmers and Cowman, where a wedding party morphs into something else,
Speaker 3: something political.
Speaker 1: You don't see the wedding. Instead, they sing a song
Speaker 1: about statehood, brand new state, brand new state, gonna.
Speaker 3: Treat you great.
Speaker 1: So to me what you have? You have this romance
Speaker 1: that really is standing in as a metaphor for statehood.
Speaker 5: Now, of course, that made the show a hit. It
Speaker 5: also gave the Oklahoma side to the show Oklahoma, a
Speaker 5: much greater prominence. But then, of course, the song took
Speaker 5: on a life of its own.
Speaker 3: This is the story that premiered on Broadway in the
Speaker 3: middle of World War Two, a musical that builds to
Speaker 3: a rousing song that would become one of the biggest
Speaker 3: hits of the twentieth century. Since nineteen forty three, this
Speaker 3: musical has had a lot of power. It's become a
Speaker 3: blueprint for Broadway shows with big singing and dancing, but
Speaker 3: it's also become so much more. Its closing number was
Speaker 3: quickly adopted as Oklahoma State Song and still is seventy
Speaker 3: years later. Oklahoma the Musical is fundamental to how many
Speaker 3: people in America and around the world think about Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: the state, and the American story itself, the expanding West, pioneers, settlers,
Speaker 3: and cowboys. It's bright and golden, and as Amanda cap
Speaker 3: Greatham says, hazy, what's missing from this version of Oklahoma
Speaker 3: is the place where Lynn Riggs grew up, a place
Speaker 3: called Claremore within the boundaries of Indian territory, a whole
Speaker 3: backstory of Native Pole who were pushed aside by white settlers.
Speaker 3: A story for the collective memory that leaves out the
Speaker 3: most painful parts.
Speaker 1: Cultural memory that which a collective or a nation chooses
Speaker 1: to remember together. That's the process by which we negotiate
Speaker 1: what's included, what's excluded, what events we assign meaning to,
Speaker 1: and what meanings we assign to them. That's what cultural
Speaker 1: memory is for, to bind people together. Got to remember.
Speaker 1: The other half of memory is forgetting those go hand
Speaker 1: in hand.
Speaker 3: I asked Amanda how she feels about the land Run
Speaker 3: Sooner football games or Oklahoma the musical. I have.
Speaker 1: Collapped and yelled Boomer Sooner at football games. I ran
Speaker 1: the land Run as a kid. At the end of
Speaker 1: the music Loklahoma, when they're singing it, everybody in this
Speaker 1: state anyway stands up and clap your hands. And I
Speaker 1: admit these things freely because I'm not ashamed of my
Speaker 1: participation in it. Here's the thing, though, what is it
Speaker 1: obscuring when you start to ask yourself that, When you
Speaker 1: ask yourself, wait, are we all included in this identity?
Speaker 1: It's as if the state of Oklahoma thinks that if
Speaker 1: you just sing this song loud enough that you won't
Speaker 1: be able to hear anything else. And that's just almost true,
Speaker 1: but it isn't.
Speaker 3: Amanda also says there's something important to keep in mind
Speaker 3: about the stories that take hold in our memories. It's
Speaker 3: that they can change. New ones can come in and
Speaker 3: help redefine our sense of our history, add voices we
Speaker 3: haven't been hearing from. There's always room for a new
Speaker 3: Oklahoma story to take hold, maybe a big movie or
Speaker 3: a TV show like Reservation Dogs that can help recalibrate
Speaker 3: that cultural memory and make room for voices that have
Speaker 3: been missing, a voice like Lynn Riggs and a story
Speaker 3: like Green Grow the Lilacs.
Speaker 6: The play is concerned with the more golden day and
Speaker 6: Oka golden in the sense that the people I'm writing
Speaker 6: about were magnificently adapted to their environment, party vigorous gay
Speaker 6: people and their lives being rounded and buried were full
Speaker 6: of unpredictable choices.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, let's embrace the complexity of history. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a different, hopefully a golden future out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: Won't be perfect, but it need not be hazy.
Speaker 3: For more about the show, go to bloomberg dot Com
Speaker 3: slash in Trust In Trust is a production of Bloomberg
Speaker 3: and iHeartMedia. This episode was hosted by me Alison Erera
Speaker 3: and it was reported by Victor Eves. Rachel Adams, Hurt
Speaker 3: and I did additional reporting. Victor Eveyas is our senior producer.
Speaker 3: Jeff Grocott is our senior editor. Sage Bauman is our
Speaker 3: executive producer and head of Podcasts. Additional support from Katie Boyce,
Speaker 3: Gilda de Carle, and Kathleen Quillion. Sound engineering by Blake Maples.
Speaker 3: Our fact checking was done by Molly Nugent. Theme music
Speaker 3: by Laura Ortman, photography by Shane Brown, Voice acting by
Speaker 3: Jack Jackson. You can email us at podcasts at Bloomberg
Speaker 3: dot net. Find Intrust anywhere you get your podcasts