Higginsen, Vy

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Vy Higginsen

1945(?)—

Playwright, theatrical producer, theatrical agent, performer

The widely varied career of Vy Higginsen reflects her deep commitment to preserving and celebrating the rich heritage of African-American culture. As a radio broadcaster, a magazine publisher, a writer and producer of plays, a founder of a school of musical arts, and much more, Higginsen has repeatedly broken down barriers and set new standards of excellence. With exuberant enthusiasm she has entertained tens of thousands of people with her musical productions, and with tireless effort she has worked to carry on the black cultural traditions of gospel, soul, and rhythm and blues (R&B) music from generation to generation.

Higginsen spent her early years in Harlem, the New York City neighborhood that is one of the oldest centers of African-American culture. Her father, Randolph A. Higginson, an immigrant from the Caribbean island nation of Barbados, was a preacher in a Pentecostal church in Harlem. In 1946 he suffered a sudden massive heart attack while delivering a sermon during a Sunday service. He died almost immediately, leaving behind a wife, Geraldine Payne Higginson, and four children, Doris, Joyce, Randy Jr., and Vy (who later changed the spelling of her last name to Higginsen).

Geraldine supported her young family by working as a real estate agent, becoming one of the few African-American women to earn a broker's license at the time. The family lived just down the street from her mother, who played a large role in raising the four Higginson children. During the 1950s and 1960s, drug use—and the crime that accompanied it—increased in Harlem, eroding the strong, family-based black community there. Like many other African Americans concerned for the safety of their children, Geraldine moved her family to the nearby borough of the Bronx. However, the children continued to visit their grandmother regularly and still felt part of the cultural life of Harlem. Higginsen's sister Doris, who had sung in the choir in her father's church, began working as an usher in Harlem's famous Apollo Theater and soon started her own music career as a singer under the name Doris Troy.

Higginsen herself demonstrated both creativity and ambition at an early age. She began babysitting for neighbors' children at the age of eleven, but soon set up an in-home childcare business that provided before-and after-school care for the children of working parents. As she grew up, she continued to contribute to the family finances with part-time jobs, such as working as a page in the public library.

Worked in Fashion and Advertising

Higginsen graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx and entered the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan. She studied merchandising and marketing by day, and worked for New York Citibank at night, balancing stacks of checks with an adding machine to pay for her education. After her graduation from FIT, she went to work at Alexander's, a local department store. The daily demands of the retail business taught her a sense of responsibility and diligence that would help her in all of her future jobs.

After leaving Alexander's, Higginsen went to the employment agency Snelling and Snelling, Inc. for help in seeking another job. The interviewer there was so impressed with her that he offered her a position working as an employment counselor for the agency. After a short time, however, she returned to the world of fashion by taking a job in the advertising sales department with a small fashion magazine called Boutique.

In 1963 Higginsen's sister Doris Troy performed the soul song "Just One Look" that quickly rose to number one on music charts in both the United States and England, boosting Troy to stardom. During the 1960s Higginsen joined her sister on tour, traveling with her in Europe and meeting many music industry celebrities.

Higginsen worked for Ebony magazine in the early 1970s, becoming the first woman to work in that journal's advertising sales department. She found the work rewarding in many ways: she enjoyed promoting Ebony as one of the major voices of black culture, and, as a marketing expert, she was interested in exploring data about the buying power of black consumers. However, she frequently found dealing with white-owned corporations to be frustrating. Many major advertisers were either ignorant or overtly racist about their African-American customers, and, while Higginsen worked hard to educate them, she eventually decided that she needed to do a different kind of work.

Broke Gender Barrier in Radio

Inspired by her experiences with her sister in the entertainment industry, Higginsen began attending night classes at the Columbia School of Broadcasting. After a period of study she made an audition tape, which she sent to Frankie Crocker, the program manager of the R&B radio station WBLS. Impressed by Higginsen's sophisticated voice, Crocker hired her, not for a fashion and beauty program as she had imagined, but as host and disc jockey of a midday show. Higginsen thus became the first woman to host her own primetime radio program in New York City, and she worked at WBLS for five years, attracting a number of loyal fans.

At the same time she was launching her radio career, Higginsen also decided to start her own magazine, an urban lifestyle journal aimed at an African-American audience. She published Unique NY from 1975 to 1980, while continuing to work in broadcasting. Though she loved the camaraderie of working at a black radio station, Higginsen felt that, as a woman, her opportunity for advancement was limited at WBLS. She left her job there and took a position as coanchor on a local NBC television program called Positively Black. She also hosted radio shows on New York stations WWRL and WRKS.

In 1981 Higginsen married Ken Wydro. Soon after their marriage, the couple began working on a theater project based on the life of Higginsen's sister Doris Troy. The resulting play, Mama, I Want to Sing, told the story of Troy's youth singing in the gospel choir at her father's church in Harlem, her difficulties in persuading her strictly religious mother to allow her to pursue a career in popular music, and her eventual return to her gospel roots. The play was presented in the form of a vintage radio serial, with Vy Higginsen introducing the scenes in her sultriest deejay style. The musical opened at the off-Broadway Heckscher Theater in 1983, becoming an immediate popular success, especially with black audiences.

At a Glance …

Born Vy Higginson on November 17, 1945(?), in New York City, NY; daughter of Randolph A. and Geraldine Higginson; married Ken Wydro, 1981; children: Knoelle. Education: Fashion Institute of Technology, BA in merchandising and marketing.

Career: Alexander's Department Store, assistant department manager; Snelling and Snelling, Inc., employment counselor; Boutique magazine, advertising sales; Ebony magazine, advertising sales; WBLS, radio host; Unique NY, publisher, 1975-80; NBC-TV, Positively Black, coanchor; WWRL, radio host; WRKS, radio host; playwright and theatrical producer, 1983—; Mama Foundation for the Arts, cofounder and chief executive officer, 1998—; Vy Higginsen, Inc./Reach Entertainment and Sports, founder.

Memberships: Harlem Arts Alliance; New York Association of Black Journalists.

Awards: Coalition of 100 Black Women, Candace Award, 1988; New York City Chamber of Commerce, Business Woman of the Year, 1989; Legacy magazine, Legacy Award, 2005.

Addresses: Office—Mama Foundation for the Arts and Vy Higginsen's School of Gospel, Jazz, and R&B Arts, 149 W. 126th St., New York City, NY 10027.

Produced Successful Series of Musicals

Mama, I Want to Sing ran off-Broadway for eight years, offering twenty-two hundred performances in New York, then touring the United States and around the world. Higginsen earned critical praise, not only for the play's exuberant gospel music and uplifting message of family solidarity, but also for attracting African-American audiences to the theater in record numbers. Higginsen understood and valued her black audience, and she used all of her marketing skills to promote her play to the people for whom it was written.

Family cooperation was not only one of the themes of Mama, I Want to Sing but also was key to the production. Higginsen wrote the play with her husband; her sister Doris joined the cast, playing the part of their mother; and their other sister, Joyce, became company manager. During the following years, other family members also joined the production.

Higginsen and Wydro followed Mama, I Want to Sing with two sequels: Sing! Mama 2 in 1990 and Born to Sing! Mama 3 in 1996. Each play was both a continuation of Doris Troy's life and career and a celebration of the African-American traditions of gospel, soul, and R&B music. Higginsen continued her role as narrator in each show, and audiences continued to pour in. Critics sometimes faulted the musicals for being unsophisticated and "homemade," but acknowledged that these very qualities made them genuinely intimate and powerful theatrical experiences.

As their reputation for attracting black theater audiences grew, Higginsen and Wydro were called on to produce other plays as well. One of these, August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, earned a 1988 Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Concerned for the well-being of her actors, Higginsen also formed a talent management company, called Vy Higginsen, Inc./Reach Entertainment and Sports, to offer career management assistance.

Founded School of Theater Arts

Though Higginsen enjoyed creating theatrical events, she wanted to do something more lasting to preserve the cultural history of black music. In 1998 she and Wydro used $35,000 of their own money to found the Mama Foundation for the Arts (MFA), a theater and musical arts school focused on African-American music. Through MFA, which was located in Harlem, in the building next door to Higginsen's childhood home, she hoped to offer training and performance opportunities to young people. One of MFA's most successful projects has been Gospel for Teens, a program of study that teaches both the techniques and historical roots of gospel music to students from thirteen to nineteen years of age.

In 2005 Higginsen's exploration of her African-American heritage took her in an entirely unexpected direction. Anxious to learn which part of Africa her ancestors had inhabited, she obtained an ethnoancestry test. Ethnoancestry is a type of DNA testing that can determine ethnic background and discover relations all over the world by tracing the y-chromosome carried by males in a family. Wydro asked a male cousin for a sample of DNA, obtained by swabbing the inside of the mouth, then sent it to a company that performed ethnoancestry testing. What she discovered surprised and fascinated her. Instead of being almost entirely African-American, with some Native American ancestry, as she had expected, Higginsen found that her background was 64% African, 28% European, and 8% Asian. Besides this startling information, she received a call from an unknown relative who had also done an ethnoancestry test, hoping to find British nobility in his bloodline. Marion West, a white rancher from Missouri, and Vy Higginsen from Harlem were surprised to find that they were related, but both were happy to expand their idea of family once they met.

Higginsen has continued her energetic career of production, management, and promotion of gospel and other black musical heritage. Besides creating a series of gospel musical productions including I Gotta Praise and Let Me off in Harlem, she has written two children's books: Mama, I Want to Sing, published in 1992, and This Is My Song! A Collection of Gospel Music for the Family, released in 1995. She continues her role as executive director and chief executive officer of MFA and is an ordained interfaith minister who speaks frequently on a wide range of topics, including gospel music, the role of women in radio, and achieving success. Her daughter, Knoelle Higginson, has followed Higginsen into the entertainment field, acting in several stage productions and slated to star in an upcoming film version of Mama, I Want to Sing.

Selected works

Books

(With Tonya Bolden) Mama, IWant to Sing, Scholastic Trade, 1992.

This Is My Song! A Collection of Gospel Music for the Family, Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1995.

Plays

(With Ken Wydro) Mama, I Want to Sing, 1983.

(With Wydro) Sing! Mama 2, 1990.

(With Wydro) Born to Sing! Mama 3, 1996.

Sources

Periodicals

Essence, May 1980, pp. 44-46.

Jet, February 1, 1988, pp. 34-36.

New York Beacon, April 26, 2000.

New York Times, March 29, 1988.

Washington Post, February 25, 1985.

Online

Coveney, Janine, and Dana Hall, "Women Speak out on Their Unique History in Male-run Music Industry," Billboard, February 21, 1998. Reproduced by All Business Web Site,http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4631808-1.html (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Doris Troy Biography," Musician Biographies,http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608004055/Doris-Troy.html (accessed December 28, 2007).

Holden, Stephen, "Love Arrives in ‘Mama, I Want to Sing’ Sequel," New York Times,http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9C0CEFD61E39F93BA15750C0A966958260 (accessed December 28, 2007).

Mama Foundation for the Arts,http://www.mamafoundation.org/ (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Reconstructing the Family Tree," CBS News 60 Minutes,http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/05/60minutes/main3334427.shtml?source=search_story (accessed December 28, 2007).

Stasio, Marilyn, "Marketing ‘Mama’: A Little Gospel and a Lot of Savvy," New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D9153EF937A15755C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3 (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Vy Higginsen," Biography Resource Center,http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Vy Higginsen Biography," http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Vy Higginsen's Gospel for Teens," My Space, http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=81641999 (accessed December 28, 2007).

Vy Higginsen Web Site,http://www.vyhigginsen.com/connect.html (accessed December 28, 2007).