Cakewalk

 D. J. Williams. 'Lawrence "Lardie" Tulloch, Captain of Collingwood, 1902-04.' Drawing.

Cancel culture chooses to overlook Claude Debussy’s composition ‘Golliwogg’s Cakewalk’, even as the word golliwog cancans into archaism. Written between 1906 and 1908, it is a standard of classical solo piano. Debussy enjoyed strolling like a musical flaneur. The title reflects Parisian connections with French America, the South, and its nascent jazz culture, the composer possibly thinking himself at the time the height of political correctness. The cakewalk was a strutting or strolling dance performed by African Americans in the period, the best dance winning the cake, and I’ve always wondered if it was fashionable in Melbourne at the turn of the century. Cakewalk became ragtime. There is an aural similarity between Golliwog and Collingwood, making one wonder if there isn’t some connection, some reason why ‘cakewalk’ walked its way so easily into the club song, though its lyrics are said to have been made up in 1903. Other club songs are innocuous (‘We are the Navy Blues’), ludicrously cheerful (‘We’re a happy team at Hawthorn’) or philosophically postmodern (‘It’s a high flying flag, it’s the emblem for me and for you.’). Deconstruction is not on the agenda here. Collingwood’s song has edge, it cuts to the chase by bragging that Grand Finals are a walkover, when you’re Collingwood. In fact, only if you’re Collingwood. This is because cakewalk already had a second meaning, probably derived from the first meaning, anything that is achieved with ease, an accomplishment that’s in fact a complete pushover. Significantly, it is the only club song that acknowledges its multitudinous fans: ‘See, the barrackers are shouting, as all barrackers should, for the Premiership’s a cakewalk, for the Good Old Collingwood.’ Understandably, such an openly declared certitude will get up the noses of other football followers, even if it happens to be correct; the attitude could be described as Debussyan. Claude Debussy was known for his egocentric hauteur and opinionated arrogance, further reasons why he fits right in at Collingwood. He knew he was right all of the time, as we find in his one-eyed music criticism. But indeed the hubristic sentiments in the song have served to define the club, resulting in difficult emotional dramas and soul-searching when Collingwood happens by chance to not win a Grand Final, as occurred incredibly during the traumatic Colliwobbles period (1970-90). Things got so bad that some people at the club argued cakewalk should be removed from the song to save embarrassment. However, this minority view was only a temporary aberration, an unexpected loss of nerve, and after a brief reality check ‘cakewalk’ was soon reinstated by unanimous acclaim.