Where Is The Tribe For Me? Lyrics — Bajour

Song Overview

Written as a comic "I want" number, Bajour's "Where Is the Tribe for Me?" lyrics introduce Emily Kirsten as a young anthropology scholar chasing the one field-study subject nobody else has claimed. The scene plays like a smart Broadway patter song with a nervous grin - bookish, brisk, and slightly unhinged by design. Walter Marks gives her a lyric that keeps sprinting ahead of itself, full of academic references, cultural name-checks, and comic panic. That mix is why the song still lands: it is a character sketch, a thesis statement, and a controlled meltdown all at once.

Review and Highlights

"Where Is the Tribe for Me?" is one of those Broadway songs that seems to arrive from another planet. Nancy Dussault has to sing long chains of comic text while keeping Emily bright, eager, and just a little bit frantic. The melody does not settle for long. It keeps nudging the character forward, which suits a woman who cannot stop thinking, cataloguing, and chasing the next idea. Peter Filichia, writing for Masterworks Broadway, called it "arguably the most eccentric song ever written for a Broadway musical," and that sounds about right. The number works because it never plays Emily as a fool. She is serious, ambitious, and funny at the same time.

Key takeaways:

• It functions as Emily's "I need a subject now" song in Act I.
• Walter Marks blends patter, character comedy, and musical-theater bounce rather than giving her a standard ballad.
• Dussault's performance is the engine - crisp diction, quick pivots, and a scholar's impatience turned into rhythm.
• The song's dated anthropology language is part of its 1964 frame, which makes context essential when hearing it now.

Bajour (1964) - stage musical number - diegetic within the world of the show. The song appears early in Act I as Emily frames her research problem and asks Lou MacNiall for help finding an untouched community to study. Its job is plain but clever: establish her academic obsession, set up the New York based "tribe" solution, and turn exposition into comedy.

Creation History

Bajour opened on Broadway on November 23, 1964, with a book by Ernest Kinoy and music and lyrics by Walter Marks. The show was based on Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker stories, and its original company included Nancy Dussault, Chita Rivera, and Herschel Bernardi. The cast album was issued by Columbia Masterworks, with Lehman Engel credited as musical director and Thomas Z. Shepard associated with the recording side of the project. "Where Is the Tribe for Me?" was recorded for that original cast album as Emily's showcase, and digital editions now list it at 4:28. Even by the loose, adventurous standards of mid-1960s Broadway, the song stood out as a very odd, very literate star turn.

Lyricist Analysis

Walter Marks writes this piece in a speech-rhythm flow more than a locked, hymnbook meter. You can hear recurring stress patterns, but he keeps stretching and crowding the line to mimic a mind that moves faster than etiquette. That is the point. Emily is a scholar in a rush, and the lyric scans like a notebook thrown open in mid-panic.

The rhyme work is sharper than it first appears. Marks likes neat comic rhymes, but he also leans on learned words that sound a little ungainly in the mouth. That choice helps the character. A smoother lyric would flatter the ear more; this one flatters the brain and the laugh reflex. It can feel almost overstuffed, then suddenly click into a clean refrain. Nice trick.

Phonetically, the song loves punchy consonants. You get bursts of p, t, d, and g that keep the text pecking forward. The repeated title line gives the ear a hook, but the body of the lyric is full of academic clutter, and that clutter is musicalized instead of cleaned up. Breath economy matters here. Long phrases create the sense that Emily has one idea before she has finished the previous one. When the musical line opens up, it feels less like relief than a brief chance to inhale before the next wave.

Structurally, the song earns its payoff by breaking the search pattern. It starts as a real inquiry, then flips into discovery, then undercuts itself with comic recognition. That turn is the whole game. The number is funny because the bridge-like expansions widen her fantasy, while the returns to the title pull her back into the same unresolved obsession.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

Emily Kirsten is an ambitious anthropology student who needs a field subject worthy of a doctoral thesis. She wants a community untouched enough to feel original, academically useful, and uniquely hers. That search sounds noble for about ten seconds, then the song starts exposing the comic vanity, cultural blind spots, and sheer desperation behind the hunt. In Bajour, this becomes the doorway into the show's New York world of con artists, tribal theatrics, and romantic confusion.

Song Meaning

The meaning is less "find my people" in a modern identity sense and more "find me a subject I can own as scholarship." That difference matters. Emily is chasing discovery, prestige, and professional authorship. The song turns that drive into comedy, but it does not hide the hunger underneath. She wants entry into something authentic, while the show quietly hints that her idea of authenticity is already staged, filtered, and compromised. That tension gives the number its bite.

There is also a period piece buried inside the laugh lines. The references to famous anthropologists, institutions, and Cold War era public life place the song squarely in its 1960s Broadway moment. Heard now, the number feels both nimble and thorny. It is smart writing, but it also carries the era's casual assumptions about "primitive" peoples and exotic spectacle. A modern listener almost has to hear it with two sets of ears - one for craft, one for context.

Annotations

Where is the tribe for me?

This title refrain is doing several jobs at once. It is the comic hook, Emily's research problem, and the line that tells us she defines human connection through classification. Funny? Yes. A little chilling too.

A remarkable young woman

That was how a New Yorker review singled out Nancy Dussault's performance. The phrase fits because the song lives or dies on whether Emily feels merely fussy or fully alive. Dussault gives her velocity, not stiffness.

Theme and message

The core theme is the collision between knowledge and possession. Emily says she wants to study, but the song hints that she also wants to claim. That makes the number a sly critique of academic ambition, even while it lets the audience enjoy the mad dash of her thought process.

Mood and dramatic arc

The arc moves from curiosity to agitation to comic revelation. At first she sounds like a student with a problem. Then the lyric starts piling up names, categories, and impossible criteria. By the time the fantasy narrows toward a workable answer, the song has become a portrait of intellectual overreach dressed as jaunty entertainment.

Style, rhythm, and instrumentation

This is Broadway character writing with patter-song DNA. The rhythm drives hard, the melody keeps resetting the emotional temperature, and the orchestration - as preserved on the original cast album - supports the text rather than drowning it. It is less about vocal luxuriance than verbal attack. The beat feels like motion in place, which is a nice match for a character who is running in circles while calling it research.

Cultural and historical touchpoints

The lyric's anthropology references are not decorative. They place Emily inside a postwar academic world where discovery still carries glamour and where cultures outside mainstream American life are treated as collectible evidence. That is part of what makes the song fascinating now. It captures a real midcentury intellectual posture, then lets Broadway satire nibble at it from the edges.

Metaphors and key phrases

The "tribe" is literal inside the plot, but it also works as shorthand for belonging, subject matter, and authority. Emily wants a people to study, but she also wants a place in the scholarly pecking order. The phrase keeps folding those wants together. That is why the song feels bigger than its premise.

One more thing. The song's comic instability is its secret weapon. Plenty of Broadway "I want" numbers tell you exactly what the character needs. This one keeps changing the terms of the need. Emily wants a tribe, a thesis, originality, prestige, maybe even escape from ordinary life. That wobble gives the number its spark. It is not tidy. It should not be.

Technical Information (Quick Facts)

• Song: Where Is the Tribe for Me?
• Artist: Nancy Dussault with the Bajour Original Broadway Cast
• Featured: Bajour Orchestra
• Composer: Walter Marks
• Producer: Thomas Z. Shepard
• Release Date: 1964; many digital platforms list January 1, 1964
• Genre: Show tune, musical theater, comic character song
• Instruments: Orchestra
• Label: Columbia Masterworks; digital reissue via Masterworks Broadway
• Mood: Wry, restless, bright, brainy
• Length: 4:28
• Track #: 3
• Language: English
• Album: Bajour (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
• Music style: Broadway patter-inflected character number
• Poetic meter: Predominantly speech-rhythm with mixed stress patterns

Frequently Asked Questions

Who sings "Where Is the Tribe for Me?" in the original Broadway recording?

Nancy Dussault sings it as Emily Kirsten on the 1964 original Broadway cast album.

Who wrote the song?

Walter Marks wrote both the music and the lyrics for Bajour, including this number.

Where does the song appear in the show?

It appears in Act I, early enough to define Emily's academic obsession and launch the plot around the tribe she wants to study.

What kind of song is it?

It is a comic character song with patter elements - fast, literate, and built around a single escalating problem.

Why do theater fans keep bringing it up?

Because it is unusual. The song is a showcase for precision and nerve, and its tone is stranger than the average Broadway heroine number.

Is the language dated?

Yes. It reflects a mid-1960s stage vocabulary about anthropology and ethnic spectacle that a present-day listener will hear differently.

Did the show have major award recognition?

The Broadway production earned Tony nominations for Nancy Dussault and choreographer Peter Gennaro, and Walter Marks received a Grammy nomination tied to the cast album score category.

Was there a later revival or re-performance?

Yes. Bajour was revisited in York Theatre Company's Musicals in Mufti series in 2007, which kept the song in circulation among musical-theater collectors and historians.

Did the song chart as a single?

No reliable single-chart run turned up in the available sources. What is documented is the cast album's Billboard album-chart appearance.

Is there an official YouTube source?

Yes. A topic-channel upload of the original cast recording track is available on YouTube.

Awards and Chart Positions

The song itself did not surface as a separate chart hit in the sources checked, but the show and its album did pick up real industry attention. Bajour earned Tony nominations for Nancy Dussault and Peter Gennaro, and Walter Marks received a Grammy nomination for the cast album score. The original cast album also reached the Billboard album chart.

Additional Info

• The song is attached strongly to Nancy Dussault's stage identity. Later coverage of her cabaret work still cited it as a signature oddball number.
• A 2007 Musicals in Mufti presentation of Bajour kept "Where Is the Tribe for Me?" alive in performance history, with Emily sung there by Angel Desai.
• According to Masterworks Broadway commentary, the number has long divided listeners - some hear it as hilarious, others as excessive, which is probably a sign the song is doing something risky.
• A New Yorker notice from 1964 highlighted the song early in the proceedings, which suggests it registered immediately even for critics who had mixed feelings about the show around it.

Key Contributors

Sources

Data verified via IBDB production records, Playbill's production vault and later features, Masterworks Broadway album and editorial pages, Grammy artist and awards pages, Billboard archive references, digital music metadata from Apple Music and Spotify, and recording documentation in Discogs, Presto Music, and Ovrtur.